Observing a coworker open a document, type half a sentence, look at a phone, click into Slack, return to the document, and then forget what the sentence was about is subtly unsettling. These days, it occurs frequently. in coffee shops, open offices, and living rooms converted into temporary workstations. The work rhythm has shifted, and it doesn’t appear to be for the better.
Since 2004, when researchers were still using stopwatches to follow people around, Gloria Mark, a psychologist at UC Irvine, has been tracking this change. To be honest, it’s difficult to change the numbers she arrived at. So, two and a half minutes of concentration on any one screen. Now it’s forty-seven seconds. At about forty, the median is even lower. The time it takes to boil a kettle is longer than half of the time we spend in front of a screen.
Big work still occurs, though, for some reason. Books are written. Bridges are designed. The surgeon does not check a notification mid-incision when performing surgery. There’s a feeling that those who create meaningful things have discovered something that the rest of us haven’t, or perhaps they’ve just refused to abandon an outdated method of operation.
Ten years ago, Cal Newport named this more traditional approach “deep work.” The concept is simple. Pushed to the limit of cognitive ability, extended periods of distraction-free focus yield the kind of results that fragmented effort cannot. At Bollingen, Carl Jung constructed a stone tower. According to different accounts, Obama kept his door closed while working late into the night. It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the individuals frequently used as examples of deep work come from a different era of attention, one that didn’t have a glowing rectangle in its pocket.
The peculiar thing about the present is that we continue to pay even though we are aware of the expense. Rapid attention switching is associated with quantifiable stress, slower performance, and more mistakes, according to Mark’s research. They are made by pilots. They are made by surgeons. The rest of us create them discreetly in emails and spreadsheets and convince ourselves that we are working efficiently. She notes that multitasking is mostly a myth. What appears to be juggling is actually a sequence of switch costs, each of which imposes a tiny mental tax that adds up over the course of the day.
This is resisted by big work. It requires you to sit with a problem long enough to detest it, then long enough to comprehend it, and finally long enough to use it for something beneficial. There isn’t a shortcut. A novel or a vaccine trial cannot be completed via TikTok. As the cultural muscle for sustained focus wanes, industries that rely on sustained thought, research, engineering, writing, and design are quietly suffering.
There are some responses that seem almost desperate. internet blockers. Pomodoro timers. Hugo Gernsback, who constructed an isolation device in the 1920s and had to add an air supply after he almost choked inside it, used wooden helmets. It’s an ancient instinct. The instruments shift.
The fact that the underlying capacity hasn’t vanished is encouraging, as Mark is careful to note. The brain is still capable of focusing. All it needs is a setting that doesn’t penalize it for making an effort. Mornings are quieter. fewer consecutive meetings. A legal right to disconnect that allows the workday to truly end, similar to what France has established.
It’s still unclear if companies will create that atmosphere. It’s still unclear if people will demand it. However, the argument for large-scale work has not diminished. In fact, it is now the rarest and most valuable thing a person can make in a 47-second world.
