Why Focus Is Dying

Concetta Cucchiarelli
January 06, 2025 | 4 min read

Wait. Is our focus really dying?

Well, the experts certainly seem to think so…

Gloria Mark, in her fascinating book Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity, reveals surprising results from her decades of research into how technology affects our attention. I also love the comprehensive list of the elements deeply affecting our focus by Johann Hari in his fantastic book Stolen Focus.

Now, evaluating attention, which is a very complex process, is incredibly challenging, so we’ll likely never know if our focus is truly shrinking compared to people of the past. But it is clear that in recent decades, there has been a massive transformation in our lifestyles and the way we focus that we still completely don't understand.

In this article, I want to focus on the four that I consider to be causing the most the most important regarding the level of disruption in our lives:

The ability to focus is a delicate combination of a lot of elements, and these unprecedented times we are living in are seriously affecting it.

Here are the four elements I think are most disruptive to our lives:

1. Information Overload

This is a very new phenomenon. We've never seen our brains deal with this amount of info on a daily basis.

Information overload happens at an unconscious level. In order to understand this concept, it is helpful to understand that "the most important function of attention isn't taking information in, but screening it out" (from the book The Attention Economyby Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck).

Our brains have a limited capacity for processing info for an evolutionary reason — it guarantees that our brain is not overwhelmed by information. For that reason, in an environment with too much information — like our modern environment — the most important task our brain has is the filtering, which has become more and more taxing.

The load on this filter is enormous (as we’ve talked about before). It requires a lot of cognitive and physical energy. This can generate a lot of problems, even at an emotional level.

[READ MORE IN "CHALLENGES WRITERS FACE IN THE DIGITAL AGE."]

2. Attention As A Currency

At the same time as we're being inundated with information, we also have a market fiercely competing for our attention. They do this by trying to make things more and more interesting to us and other ways to get us hooked on their content.

Corporations and their algorithms shape our online experiences by selecting the content we see and aiming to keep us engaged for longer. While this seems helpful, the true goal is monetization: algorithms maximize ad revenue by using our data to target ads effectively.

Our attention, not money, is the valuable currency in the "Attention Economy." And this shift further reduces our ability to tear our attention away from where advertisers want it and instead focus on what we want to focus on.

[READ MORE IN "HOW INTERNET ALGORITHMS ARE DESIGNED TO TRAP US."]

3. Multitasking

We often attempt to "steal" our attention back from addicting online content and media by multitasking. We've all done this before. Maybe we "work" while also watching something on Netflix and also scrolling Instagram.

Bad news if this souds familiar. Multitasking isn't real.

Instead, we are rapidly switching between tasks, which reduces focus and increases errors. This switching creates "attention residue," where parts of previous tasks linger, impairing our performance.

To make matters worse, there's evidence that multitasking damages the brain's ability to recall information.

[READ MORE IN "WHAT MULTITASKING IS DOING TO YOUR BRAIN."]

4. Modern Technology

Since we use tools that are not meant to do just one thing but many different things, we often find ourselves involved in doing more than one thing at a time. (See the aforementioned multitasking.)

Until some time ago, driving while reading a text would have been weird and considered dangerous. Now, we drive while also watching the screen on the dashboard showing us directions.

And we've gotten more and more used to it. Our laptops, phones, and tablets are designed to do a thousand things, but that just contributes to our multitasking. And as we've already established, that's not good.

[READ MORE IN "YOUR LAPTOP IS KILLING YOUR WORD COUNT (AND YOUR MENTAL HEALTH)."]

Making Changes

All this together does not bring just a loss of focus and interest; it's a potential threat to our brain's ability to work properly. But is it our ability to focus that's shrinking? Or is it our willingness to focus?

Either way, it doesn't have to be like this.

There are some things we can and must do, because attention and focus are the most critical tools for creating the life we want and finding fulfillment. It's also the foundational block for memory, what we retain of our past, on which our vision of the future depends.

So how do we invert these alarming trends? Here's a starting point:

1. Work on motivation. Learning to find a purpose or meaning in what you do is like a cheat code. It will increase your motivation instantly. And you can do this for any task, small or large.

2. Train your attention. You can learn how to manage your attention better, and find a sustainable way forward for your body and brain. Rethink the myth of 24/7 productivity and focus because that will only deplete you. Instead, learn to put your attention where it's needed when it's needed.

3. Manage your exposure to information and stimuli. The absolute best solution I've found is to have a purpose-built tool for the most important tasks in your life. If you spend a lot of time on the phone get a phone that is just a phone. If you're a writer, use a Freewrite. In these cases, constraint means more freedom because you're intentionally building your focus on one thing.

These are just a few tactics you can try to build a lifestyle in which your focus is not constantly fractured. In which you can achieve the things you want to.

Recommended articles

More recommended articles for you

March 31, 2025 4 min read

Recently, over 10,000 writers, writing instructors, and publishers from across the U.S. gathered at the annual conference for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

We asked them to answer a few questions about creativity and living a writing life. Here's what they had to say...

March 22, 2025 4 min read

I’ve spent years writing while secretly fearing that a single misplaced word would expose me — not just as a bad writer, but as a fraud.

My background is originally in photography, and I see it there, too. A photographer I know recently posted a before-and-after comparison of their editing from 2018 versus now, asking if we also saw changes in our own work over the years.

Naturally, we should. If our work is the same, years apart, have we really grown as artists?

So why is that the growing, the process of it, the daily grind of it, is so painful?

So why is that the growing, the process of it, the daily grind of it, is so painful?

The Haunting

Hitting “publish” on an essay or a blog always stirs up insecurity — the overthinking, the over-editing. The fear that someone will call me out for not being a real writer.

I initially hesitated to make writing part of my freelance work. My background is in photography and design. Writing was something I gravitated toward, but I had no degree to validate it. No official stamp of approval.

Like many writers, I started with zero confidence in my voice — agonizing over edits, drowning in research, second-guessing every word.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

If my words weren’t my own, they couldn’t be wrong. Ghostwriting meant safety — no risk, no vulnerability, just words without ownership.

I still remember the feeling of scrolling to the bottom of an article I had written and seeing someone else’s name, their face beside words that had once been mine.

The truth is, I always wanted to write. As a kid, I imagined it. Yet, I found myself handing over my work, letting someone else own it.

I told myself it didn’t matter. It was work. Getting paid to write should be enough.

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

The Disappearing Act

This was true when I was writing under my own name, too. The more I worried about getting it right, the less I sounded like me.

I worried. I worried about how long an essay was (“people will be bored”), finding endless examples as proof of my research (“no way my own opinion is valid on its own”), the title I gave a piece (“it has to be a hook”), or editing out personal touches (“better to be safe than be seen”).

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting. Advice meant to help only locked me in. It created a sentence rewritten to sound smarter, an opinion softened to sound safer, a paragraph reshaped to sound acceptable.

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

It took deliberate effort to break this habit. I’m not perfect, but here’s what I know after a year of intentionally letting my writing sound like me:

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

The Resurrection

The drive for acceptance is a slippery slope — one we don’t always realize we’re sliding down. It’s present in the small choices that pull us away from artistic integrity: checking how others did it first, tweaking our work to fit a mold, hesitating before saying what we actually mean.

And let’s be honest — this isn’t just about writing. It bleeds into everything.

It’s there when we stay silent in the face of wrongdoing, when we hold back our true way of being, when we choose work that feels “respectable,” whatever that means. It’s in every “yes” we say when we really want to say “no.”

If your self-expression is rooted in a need for acceptance, are you creating for yourself — or for others? Does your work help you explore your thoughts, your life? Does it add depth, energy, and meaning?

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

I get it. We’re social creatures. Isolation isn’t the answer. Ignoring societal norms won’t make us better writers. Often, the most meaningful work is born from responding to or resisting those norms.

But knowing yourself well enough to recognize when acceptance is shaping your work brings clarity.

Am I doing this to be part of a community, to build connections, to learn and grow?

Or am I doing this to meet someone else’s expectations, dulling my voice just to fit in?

The Revival

Here’s what I know as I look back at my writing: I’m grateful for the years spent learning, for the times I sought acceptance with curiosity. But I’m in a different phase now.

I know who I am, and those who connect with my work reflect that back at me — in the messages they send, in the conversations we share.

I know who I am, and those who connect with my work reflect that back at me — in the messages they send, in the conversations we share.

It’s our differences that drive growth. I want to nurture these connections, to be challenged by difference, to keep writing in a way that feels like me. The me who isn’t afraid to show what I think and care about.

So, I ask you, as I ask myself now:

If no one was watching, if no one could judge, what would you write?

If no one was watching, if no one could judge, what would you write?

March 20, 2025 6 min read

A book deal without an agent? An agent offer after a book deal? Learn how Writer Bobby Miller took his publishing journey into his own hands.