Newfangled #26: The lost art of concentration
Can tech save us from the distractions of modern life?
I’m supposed to be finishing my dissertation, in particular, the half-written synopsis of my half-written novel. This quote seems pertinent:
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. - Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
Instead, I am mulling over the distraction economy attention economy and equally, the digital innovations that are attempting to monetise concentration. Let’s pick them off in turn.
The Attention Economy
Whether based on a ‘social graph’ (Meta) or an ‘interest graph’ (TikTok), Tech Bros are keen to capture our attention. They then monetise that attention, and the accompanying data on our interests, to squeeze marketing dollars out of companies big and small.
Content, and increasingly video content, is created by their user base for free to feed the flywheel of attention growth.
At current levels, people are spending the equivalent of more than 6 years of their lifespan on social media.1
So, the next time you’re saying “I don’t have time for that!” you might want to reconsider.
But the distractions are a huge business - four of the five biggest companies in the world by market capitalisation are all tech companies.2
In parallel, work environments become increasingly distracted with the boon of open plan offices, touchdown spaces and employees with conflicting views on whether office or home is best for actually getting work done. Or maybe there are just too many meetings? Apparently, there are 250% more meetings in a work day than pre-pandemic.3 Let's just dwell on that - 250% more.
So, is tech going to restore our concentration?
Concentrating On Demand
Almost turning procrastination into an art form, I’ve been experimenting with the world of shared “Deep Work”. Guess what, it’s “Deep-Work-As-A-Service”. As I write this, I am currently sitting on Zoom, on mute, with my webcam on, with a bunch of strangers. This is the world of co-working. YMMV but it works for me.
Flown, has raised £2.5M in seed funding and has a whole well-being wraparound. And as well as co-working sessions called Deep Dives and Power Hours, Flown has something called a Porthole, where you can work alongside pre-recorded footage of a painter working on a canvas or a poet conquering writer’s block or an investor looking at a spreadsheet. That last one may or may not be inspirational. Or perhaps, that is what the return to the office is for!
Others include Focusmate (thank you Paula for flagging - I’ve not tried myself but this is a 1-2-1 version), Power Hour and various smaller co-working initiatives, inside membership organisations or on Eventbrite.
My favourite is “The Writers’ Hour” from London Writers Salon with four sessions a day for an hour. Dip in and buy them a virtual coffee or become a member. No frills, no fuss, and freemium as a lead into membership options.
But beware the dangers of virtual co-working. In one session, I was so taken aback when the host took themselves off mute to announce the end of the session that I screamed. That’s real deep work right there as I had forgotten all about Zoom and thought there was an intruder in the house. Luckily, I was still on mute. And I pressed Zoom’s red ‘Leave’ button pretty sharpish.
Of course, there are low-tech / no-tech options like:
The Library
Headphones
Closed Door Offices
Or perhaps I am being nostalgic here?
Have you tried virtual co-working? Or does it make you want to rush back to the office?
I have so many opinions on this! I have trialled lots of remotenwork options recently. But one thing I found really useful was to use an app which stopped me picking up my phone. There are a few where you can 'grow trees' during the time when you don't use your phone (and they are translated into actual planted trees by the organisation) which I quite liked, and I found one which counted how many times I picked up my phone during the day (which was HORRIFYING). But the one which really cracked it for me was the DreamLab app which uses your phone as part of a network of computers to run calculations for Cancer Research programmes. You are encouraged to leave it on for as long as possible (ideally overnight) so as not to interrupt things and it generally needs to be charging. There are no incentives (such as planted trees) but it requires lengthy sessions to really do some good and I found that was the push I needed not to check my email for the 32nd time in an hour.