Capturing Our Attention

The Capturing of our Attention

by Attention

An article by Johann Hari in The Guardian is a review of the research he has done while interviewing a number of experts in the field of attention. Within the article he states that ‘there is strong evidence that stress and exhaustion ruin your attention’ and ‘about 35% of workers feel they can never switch off their phones because their boss might email them at any time of day or night’.

He suggests that a ‘digital detox’ doesn’t actually work for the medium or longer-term (which I agree with). He does, however, suggest two better solutions could be a) implementing ‘the right to disconnect’ allowing workers to determine what is reasonable in after-hours work-based connectivity and b) forcing tech companies to change how they operate and make a profit. 

Although I am sure he highlights a number of other insights and solutions within his book (released later this week: 6th January 2022) that covers the research he’s done on attention, but I would suggest that we need to take a more active, personal role in managing our own attention, rather than subcontracting the responsibility to the government and tech companies. 

This is especially important for those who use technology to fulfil their job function. We need to recognise that the technology we use is changing how we think and how we process information. Technology is capturing our attention and reducing our ability to focus. Both personal and work-based notifications can distract us. Another article from December 2020, highlights research on the impact of notifications points out that, the cognitive effort required to ignore a notification can be mentally draining – wondering what they want and thinking about it until replying.

Technology is capturing our attention and reducing our ability to focus. Both personal and work-based notifications can distract us. In another article from December 2020, highlighting research on the impact of notifications, points out that the cognitive effort required to ignore a notification can be mentally draining. If you receive a notification and can’t reply for a while, you end up wondering what your friend has to say and think about it until replying.

In his book ‘The Shallows’, Nicolas Carr showcases how dependent we have voluntarily become on technology and how technology is constantly rewiring our (neuroplastic) brains. 

Digital detoxes provide a temporary salve to our technology habits. Long-term tech habits, however, require conscientious, continuous steps being taken every day to make a more permanent change to how we engage with technology. 

With technology becoming such a key part of our daily living, our attention is being eroded by the use of the same technology that enables us to be more ‘in-tune’ with others and the world around us.  We need to become more strategic and tactical in what we allow our attention to be focussed on. 

Our brains have limited ability to process the bombardment of incoming stimuli from all of our senses. This is because, the attention that we give to specific stimuli is associated with a process of ‘selection’ i.e. what we pay attention to determines how we allocate our cognitive resources.

This is efficiently demonstrated in a study by an experiment involving ‘The Monkey Business Illusion’. If you haven’t seen this before, it may surprise you how little you notice the first time you watch the video.

A number of other experiments have also been conducted, such as that of Simons and Levin (1998) on change blindness. The experiment showed how few people truly take note of the appearance of a stranger asking them directions and, therefore, how much we truly pay attention to.

A few theories help us to understand more about how our attention works:

  1. Limited Capacity Theory: suggests that the amount of cognitive processing resources allocated to attention is finite.
  2. Multiple Resource Theory: suggests different pools of cognitive resources process different types of incoming stimuli e.g. one pool allocated to sound, another to sight and another to touch.
  3. Attentional Spotlight Theory: is where our cognitive effort is focussed on what our eyes (or our ears) are registering. This can either be concentrated on a small area or lightly spread over a larger area. This theory suggests we can control what we are paying attention to.

Our attention can shift, depending on its meaningfulness to us. Think of those times when we are in the middle of a conversation and we hear our name in another conversation. Our attention shifts dramatically to hear what is being said in the other conversation to the point that we are no longer listening to the person talking to us. 

We do need to recognise that the technology we use is changing how we think, our attention capacity and what we focus on. This directly impacts our levels of productivity and effectiveness within the workplace. Our workplace norms, technological business models and societal norms encourage us to spend as much time as possible in front of a screen. It is up to us as individuals to take back control of our technology use. 

Start with small changes. 

  • Turn off all as many notifications as you are able to – even starting with turning off the notifications from one app every day 
  • Take scheduled tech breaks each day and use the time to do something else completely different – pick up a book, go for a walk, head out into the garden, start a new (non-tech) hobby. Start with short chunks of time and make them longer as you get use to time away from screens
  • Aim to call or meet up with one person a week rather than send them a message 
  • Don’t put your phone on the table when meeting up with someone – put it in your bag if you have one with you
  • Don’t look at your phone during mealtimes – use that time to talk to someone else or focus on the food you are eating
  • Try leaving your phone in a room where you don’t sleep at night – try keeping a notepad by your bed and start writing down things you are grateful for or a ‘to do’ list each evening &/or morning.

Creating good tech habits is like creating good eating or exercise habits. It takes energy, determination, and persistence. There is no ‘silver bullet’ to this and like asking the food industry to stem the tide of obesity, trying to get the tech industry to reduce our reliance on tech is probably not the solution we would hope it would be.

Wendy Suzuki, a neuroscientist who studies the effects of exercise on our brain, has shown that long-term exercise can help us with improving our attention.

A great reason to use a scheduled ‘tech break’ for increasing the exercise you do.

Slightly outside of the realm of the topic of attention, other benefits of exercise on the brain is improved pre-frontal cortex and hippocampus functioning. 

The prefrontal cortex is the ‘work-horse’ of the brain. It is where information is held, processed and where risks are assessed and decisions are made. An interesting fact about the prefrontal cortex is that it only fully matures around 25 years old – which helps to explain why younger people are prone to making riskier life-decisions.

The hippocampus is where spatial and some longer term memory  is stored. Studies done on London Taxi drivers have shown larger than average sized hippocampus, which is due to their having to know every street in London, how to navigate there from memory. 

If you are interested, you can watch the longer version of the talk here.

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Please get off your phone

We need to minimise our phone use

by Individual Differences and Impact

There are a number of articles around at the moment about Burnout. They all have good points and good advice to follow. However, there is one small thing I would like to point out. Research has shown that employees are not always aware that they are heading toward burnout.

Although there are a number of reasons people burn out, a lot of the blame is laid at the foot of increased workloads and workplace job pressure. Yes, this is true, but we forget that we are also to blame for ‘allowing’ this to happen. E-anxiety that is one of the causes of burnout comes from excessive email monitoring in private hours.

Monitoring emails and work-based communication when you should be taking time out from work can have a detrimental effect on you as a worker, your significant other and your family. Signs of burnout are often manifested first in home-based conflict. Partners and children start getting frustrated and annoyed with you not being fully present with them, prioritising a project or work colleague/supervisor over them.

Catching burnout before it catches you is something we can do something about. Some people say that they have no choice, but they actually do. We can put our phone down, turn off notifications, switch the phone (or computer) off, walk away, do something else, be more present in our private time. You are not irreplaceable at work, you are irreplaceable at home.

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Making Time Off

Making Time Off Predictable – And Required

by AttentionProductivityResearch
Extracts and summary of the research: 'Making Time off Predictable and Required'.

Research Authors: Leslie A. Perlow and Jessica L. Porter (October 2009)

Key quotes: 

  • “Responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness”
  • “When people are always “on,” responsiveness becomes ingrained in the way they work, expected by clients and partners, and even institutionalized in performance metrics”
  • “Our experiments with time off resulted in more open dialogue among team members…[and] sparked new processes that enhanced the teams’ ability to work most efficiently and effectively”
  • “Compared with those not participating in the experiments, people on time-off teams reported higher job satisfaction, greater likelihood that they could imagine a long-term career at the firm, and higher satisfaction with work/life balance”
  • “Consultants and other professionals can provide the highest standards of service and still have planned, uninterrupted time off”
  • “The payoff… [is] about preserving a strong, engaged pool of talent and, ultimately, cultivating productive work processes for the long term”

Below is a summary of the article from the Harvard Business Review: 

BCG ran a number of predictable time-off experiments with their consultants on a number of projects over the course of a year. Initially, the consultants and project leaders were sceptical and feared career progression and team member retribution. Once the benefits of completely ‘switching off’ from work (and work-based technology) either one evening a week or one full day a week, the consultants noticed how refreshed they were when they recommenced their work. They also found they communicated more and created more efficiencies within their work processes. Additionally, their overall work-life balance improved. 

The researchers found that it is essential that everyone in the team take off the same ‘type of time’, to reduce perceptions of unfairness. This is also more conducive to team members protecting the time that they and their colleagues have off. 

They also found that having ‘time-off goals’ were an important part of the success of the experiment in addition to open dialogue, with regular weekly check-ins – where team members were accountable to and supportive of each other in how to improve their ability to take the required time off. These discussions shifted more towards “how work was being done [rather] than on what work was being done” and towards “priorities, expectations, and problems”, rather than just the problems they were encountering. 

Implementing a work culture or norm that encourages teams to experiment with different processes, allows previously unquestioned ways of doing things. The option of transforming processes into more efficient, effective and integrative ways of working can also increase team collaboration and learning. 

The change in work culture needs to be underpinned with support, openness and encouragement from senior levels. The measurement and rewarding of employee performance also needs adjusting to include: how well team members communicate and maintain personal commitments while delivering against project needs; and how well senior team members model having a sustainable career while respecting personal and team members personal commitments. 

Read the original article here

If you are unable to access the web page, you can read a PDF of the article here. 

Return to the main Research Page
Screen vs Social Media Time

There is a difference between screen time and social media time

by Social Media

CyberPsychologists, in general, have a both-and perspective on technology use. They refer to it as the ‘Goldilocks Hypothesis‘. This hypothesis surmises that there is a balance of ‘just the right amount’ of tech use, rather than the ‘too little’ or ‘too much’ tech use debate. There is, of course, another element to consider: the individual i.e. ‘What’, ‘How’ and ‘Why’ they are using the technology, and the accompanying impact or empowerment on that individual. The what-how-why framework, developed by Dr Linda Kaye, showcases that not every minute spent using technology has the same impact on everyone.

A recent article in The Washington Post, has helped to highlight that there is a difference between ‘screen time’ (terminology parents often use) and ‘social media time’ (which is what is often measured when referring to smartphone use and teen mental wellness – a rather ‘hot topic’ for many within mass media). In general, there is a correlation between extensive social media use and teens mental health – especially amongst girls. Although this is a worthy debate to be had, the media (and potentially a lot of researchers) seem to have forgotten that spending excessive amounts of time on social media has mental health implications for adults too.

As working adults, we do need to become better at distinguishing between how much time is spent online versus how much time is spent on social media. We also need to become more conscienscious of how the time spent engaging online is taking us away from other activities (known as ‘displacement theory’) that may help to boost our mental wellness – such as time spent in productive work, spending in-person time with families, friends and others in our community, as well as time spent outside or engaging in hobbies, reading, charity work, etc.

Social media companies use the time we spend on social media to make money and they know how to keep us spending a lot of time on their channels. Someone recently said (when referring to smartphone apps) that either we pay for a product, or we are the product.

In light of that, we need to become more conscious of how we view ourselves when we do feel we’ve ‘wasted’ time on social media. We need to stop berating ourselves around ‘wasting scrolling time’. We are agents of our own time choices and can make better choices going forward. A few suggestions:

* Turn off push notifications – helping to reduce a tendancy to slip into periods of mindless scrolling.

* Set aside dedicated ‘social media time’ each day that you can rack-up to ‘guilt free’ scrolling time.

* Reach out to others in your closer network via messenger or a phone call.

* If you have children in your household, have conversations around screen-time, social media time, the boundaries, the benefits and the implications and negotiate an agreed ‘healthy’ amount of time spent on their phone/apps.

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Rethinking Digital Leadership Skills

Rethinking Digital Leadership Skills

by Futuristic Leadership

Many experts are espousing the notion that ‘Hybrid Work’ is the future for knowledge work roles.

The question is whether we have fully come to understand how this may play out in terms of:

  • leadership behaviour,
  • who, how often and when hybrid working is a good idea for a company and the individuals employees and
  • how we can maximise team productivity while maintaining strong emotional and mental wellbeing amongst the individuals within that same team – wherever they get the job done.

Leading remote and teams requires a different set of management skills to those required for managing in-office teams. 

Historically, companies promoted successful employees (i.e. those that made the biggest impact on the company bottom line) into management positions as a reward for a ‘job well done’. This premise may also assume that successful employees will be best able to lead successful teams. Even pre-pandemic this notion often proved unsuccessful. 

A recent McKinsey Report on ‘The Great Resignation’ found that employees prioritise: 

  • feeling valued by their organisation or manager
  • feel a sense of belonging at work
  • having a good work-life balance

Employees are also looking for better and stronger career paths where they are recognised and developed within their roles. These new expectations around satisfying work roles requires a very different management mindset.

With this in mind, keeping good employees is going to require:

  • team-based negotiation around working hours and how team members intend to meet individual and team KPI’s
  • open communication amongst team members with managers being a co-ordinator of (rather than the bottle-neck for) team knowledge, ensuring all team members are up to speed on projects they are involved in
  • regular coordination of work and project updates
  • regular check-ups on remote or hybrid team members
  • higher than average empathetic skills, emotional intelligence and social intelligence
  • ability to build a sense of community amongst project and team members – wherever and whenever individual members get work done. 

In addition to all of this, good leaders will understand:

  • the implications of remote and hybrid working on mental wellness and work-life balance
  • how various digital technologies impact on productivity levels, tiredness and cause anxiety or stress amongst team members
  • how to spot the signs of overwork, stress, tiredness, or mental exhaustion amongst their team and where to signpost them to help team members to strike a better balance. 

In summary, the way forward in the digital work marketplace is one that requires a different type of manager than the previous industrial revolution required. With a constant engagement with digital technology in order to get work done, knowledge workers do not need a ‘productivity-focussed manager’, but rather a human-centred manager that can help each team member achieve a more productive, focussed working life. 

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Do we control technology

My Little Therapy Box – technology and individual well-being

by Digital Health & WellbeingNews and talks

How technology impacts our individual well-being

27 November 2021 (Pre-recorded online video presentation at the Annual Mental Health Conference) 

My Little Therapy Box

Pre-recorded online video presentation at the Annual Mental Health Conference: 27 November 2021

How technology impacts our individual well-being

Topics Covered: 

  • What is CyberPsychology
  • The Remote / Hybrid Working Model
  • Workplace Norms
  • Working Parents
  • Busyness and Email Expectations
  • Our Brains are Malleable
  • Embrace Individual Personality Differences
  • Create Boundaries Between Home and Work
  • Use Strategic Technology Layering
  • Create Better Tech Habits in Personal Time
  • Managing Zoom Fatigue
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Nir Eyal Article Image

Indistractable & Hooked – Nir Eyal

by AttentionBook Reviews

In his latest book, Nir walks through how technology is making us more and more distractable and has numerous suggestions on how we can claw back time in every area of our lives. 

Nir is also the author of Hooked, a book that has been widely read throughout the tech industry. It is an insightful read into how technology is purposefully engineered to capture your attention and keep you hooked. 

Reading through the book will help you to understand the mechanisms that are used within technology and help you to find personal strategies to unhook yourself from the technology you use. 

You can read a more extensive review of both Hooked and Indistractable in this Guardian article. If you aren’t able to access the article, you can read a PDF of the article here.

About the Author:

Nir is an author and lecturer who specialises in behavioural engineering, using behavioural science that creates habit forming products. Nir’s philosophy is that tech companies should not be regulated, but rather it is up to the individual to regulate their own behaviour around their technology use. You can read more about him at his website or follow him on Twitter.

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xr:d:DAFuUDRNCqo:155,j:4479253552820548231,t:24040315

Productivity signalling while remote working

by Workplace Norms, Expectations and Responsibilities

Research prior to Lockdown 1 around remote working, suggested that there was a productivity bias related to those not physically present in the office.

The results of many studies showed that those who were either actively or passively present within the geographical office were more likely to be promoted, have higher salaries and were given more learning and career opportunities than those who spent more time away from the office. 

Those not (always) in the office were perceived as less dependable, potentially slacking off and less productive than those in the office. 

To counterbalance this bias, those who worked either in a hub office, while away from the office or at home, spent a lot of time and energy ‘signalling’ their working hours and productivity to their managers and others in their teams. 

This signalling behaviour came in the form of:

  • Attending every video conference meeting they were invited to
  • Taking on last-minute projects to showcase their willingness to participate in work
  • Sending emails throughout the course of the day
  • Working longer hours than the traditional in-office worker

This ‘productivity signalling’ is now happening on a much wider scale and has inadvertently changed the working hour norms – extending them into what was previously commuting time. 

Traditionally, commuting time was spent catching up on emails,  reading, listening to music, thinking about the tasks needing to be worked on and planning ahead. All relatively lower-level cognitive tasks. 

Now that time is spent doing higher-level cognitive tasks, which use higher levels of energy and are more likely to lead to longer-term cognitive exhaustion. 

Additionally, commuting time traditionally served as a distinct intersection between one life-realm and another. 

It was a signal to the subconscious brain that ‘we’re now shifting from this part of life into this other part’. We got to mentally shift gears. 

When we were working from home, there was: 

  • Regular and constant cognitive shifting between our various life realms
  • Limited transition time to help us catch up, plan and decompress from a day in the office or a stressful morning getting everyone ready for the day ahead. 

Longer working hours result in our brains still whirling by the time we go to bed – reducing both the depth and duration of our sleep. 

This results in lower levels of productivity and being more prone to distraction from notifications, emails, messages and self-distraction activities. 

We substitute for the lower productivity levels by working longer hours to get the same level of work done, leading us into a downward spiral of cognitive, physical and emotional tiredness. 

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Pokemon Go MetaVerse

Pokemon Go’s Creator Isn’t a Fan of the Immersive Metaverse

by The Metaverse

Pokemon Go’s creator, Niantic CEO John Hanke, has stated grave concerns around the proposed immersive nature of MZ’s metaverse plans. In an interview with Wired, he set out his plans for Niantic’s version of the metaverse. 

He believes that an augmented reality version has much greater mental and physical health benefits than the immersive virtual reality version. In a similar way that Pokemon Go encouraged children and families to get out into nature, his plans are to enhance reality by layering on virtual images in ‘the merger of pixels and atoms’ and ‘where bits meet atoms’. 

He used the example of historical events being ‘played out’ over the current geographical space, or virtual arrows highlighting the direction of travel. 

His overall aim is to enhance reality, get people off the couch and out into nature/the real world, and improve overall mental health, rather than encouraging them to stay indoors and immerse themselves in a virtual world. 

There is no doubt that his motives are financial, but they also seem to be humanistic and empathetic. 

If you cannot read the original article, you can view a PDF of that article here. 

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Microsoft 3D Avatar

Is it better to talk to a blank screen, a photo or a 3D avatar of the person when in a virtual meeting?

by Futuristic Work

A research question that may need answering soon. At this point, from a presenters/meeting controller perspective, I can only guess that it is better to have a 3D avatar engaging with you with some body-language feedback, than an array of black video screens with no visual or auditory feedback.

Microsoft have just announced their introduction of 3D avatars as part of their strategy to dominate virtual meetings within the Metaverse.

From a participant perspective, we do know that the creation of a better looking avatar in VR can improve a person’s overall self-esteem. Named ‘The Proteus Effect’ and ‘The Ideal Elf’, having an avatar that is better looking than your real self, can give you more confidence in the VR world. This confidence gained in VR then translates back into the real world – giving the person behind the avatar more confidence in offline situations.

What does this mean for virtual business interactions?

– It may help to increase levels of self-confidence for less confident colleagues.

– It may reduce the number of black screens – as we don’t have to appear constantly engaged for the entire meetings, the avatar can do that for us

– It may be easier for the presenter to engage with others on the call, especially if they are getting more regular body-language feedback – even if it is from an avatar.

– It could even reduce the amount of zoom fatigue that is created by ‘the mirror effect’ of having to constantly self-adjust when seeing a reflection of self on-screen, potentially leaving to lower levels of exhaustion at the end of a workday.

I do have a few concerns though.

– If the avatar’s actions reflect the authors tone of voice, we will have to constantly mentally adjust our tone of voice to ensure the avatar is reflecting (or potentially not reflecting) our current feelings.

– Will this technology further alienate those who have lower levels of confidence when it comes to tech uptake? If you are not familiar with the new tech, having to learn how to use it in order to fulfil your job function, or keep up to speed with other members of the team, can add a lot of additional stress and anxiety to your role.

– For those having to already switch between multiple video conferencing platforms, such as freelancers, consultants or the self-employed, learning multiple complicated meta-based 3D virtual meeting platforms can become a real barrier to business productivity.

For Microsoft, this is another step forward towards a more 3D virtual work environment. They do, however, needs to go some way in developing easier to use augmented reality technology, if they are to create good up-take in the metaverse environment amongst business users. Although they seem to be head-to-head with Facebook (it may be some time before I can call them ‘Meta’) in the race for the metaverse domination, I do wonder if a smaller, more dynamic, tech company may just pull the meta-rug out from under their very large extended-reality feet.

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