Attention span: definition, and what shortens it
Quiet Wall ·
What an attention span is, what a short one means, and why no single number describes it. Plus the plainest way to give it room again.
An attention span is the length of time you can stay with one thing before your attention moves somewhere else. It is not a fixed amount: it changes with the task, how tired you are, and what else is competing for you, which now is almost everything.
What attention span means
The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as "the period during which you can stay interested or listen carefully to something." The APA Dictionary of Psychology says "the length of time an individual can concentrate on one specific task or other item of interest."
In everyday use it is a judgement more than a measurement: a teacher says it about a class, a parent about a child, an article about everyone with a phone.
Attention is not one number
The same person can watch a two-hour film without moving and lose the thread of a one-page form after a minute.
Psychologists also split attention into kinds. Sustained attention is "attentional focus on a task for an extended length of time," in the APA dictionary's words, and it is tested with tasks: a continuous performance test asks people to respond to a target and ignore the rest. That measures one person, on one task, on one day. It is not a score you keep.
What a short attention span means
In everyday speech it means drifting off: starting something and finding yourself doing something else, or reaching for the phone mid-sentence. It describes a habit and a setting, not a diagnosis.
If trouble paying attention is constant and gets in the way of daily life, bring it to a doctor.
The average attention span figures
The best-known average, that people now have an eight-second attention span, shorter than a goldfish, came from a 2015 Microsoft Canada report and traces back to no study anyone has found.
The real research measures something narrower. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at UC Irvine, has timed how long people at work stay on one screen before switching. In her own account, it was about two and a half minutes in 2004, about 75 seconds around 2012, and about 47 seconds in her recent studies, the figure in her 2023 book Attention Span. It is a figure about screens at work, and it says as much about the screens as about the people.
What shortens it in practice
Most of what cuts attention short is in the room:
- notifications, each a small request to look elsewhere
- a phone within reach
- several things open at once
- no gap in the day without something playing
These are surroundings, and surroundings can be changed.
A few minutes with nothing competing
- put the phone in another room, or across this one
- do one thing, with one window open
- practise staying with an empty few minutes, the hardest version
Quiet Wall is that last step as a timer: a reminder arrives, the phone goes across the room, and you look at a blank wall until a sound brings you back.
What is the definition of attention span?
The length of time you can stay with one thing before your attention moves elsewhere. The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines it as the length of time an individual can concentrate on one specific task or other item of interest.
Do I have a good attention span?
There is no single score to compare against. How long you stay with something depends on the task, how tired you are and what else is competing for you, so the same person can have a long attention span for one thing and a short one for another.
Why do I have a short attention span?
Usually because something else is always within reach: notifications, a phone nearby, several things open at once, and tiredness. If trouble paying attention is constant and gets in the way of daily life, bring it to a doctor.
How do you reset your attention span?
There is nothing to reset. Change the surroundings instead: put the phone out of reach, do one thing at a time, and spend a few minutes a day with nothing competing for you.
How is attention span measured?
Not with one test. Researchers measure kinds of attention with tasks, such as continuous performance tests for sustained attention. Studies of people at work have timed how long they stay on one screen before switching.
Read on
- The goldfish attention span myth — You may have read that people now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. Where the eight-second figure came from, and why it does not hold up.
- Overstimulated: what it means, and what helps — What being overstimulated means, how it shows up, why some days it happens more easily, and the change that addresses it directly: less coming in.
- Sitting in silence: how to do it, what to expect — Sitting in silence sounds easy and is not. What it is like, why the first minutes are the hardest, and a way to start that does not involve meditating.