Dr. Gloria Mark on Attention Span

Dr. Gloria Mark is Chancellor’s Professor Emerita at the University of California, Irvine, and has spent ten years as a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research. She received her PhD from Columbia University in psychology. For over two decades, she has researched the impact of digital media on people's lives, studying how using our devices affects our multitasking, distractions, mood, and behavior.

She has published over 200 papers in the top journals and conferences in the field of human-computer interaction, has received numerous paper awards, and was inducted into the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2017 in recognition of her contribution to the field. She has also been a Fulbright scholar and has received the prestigious NSF Career Grant.

Her work has been widely recognized outside of academia: she has appeared on The Ezra Klein show, NPR’s Hidden Brain, Sanjay Gupta’s CNN Chasing Life, CBS Sunday Morning, Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert, among many others. Her work has been featured in the popular media, e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Atlantic, BBC, and others. She has been invited to present her work at SXSW and the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Her recent book Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity, was named by The Globe and Mail as the #1 Best Business and Management book of 2023, and chosen as the Season 20 selection of the Next Big Idea Book Club.

Gloria had several amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“You have to be agile to put your attention to where it’s important” (6:50).

“Multitasking is not possible for us humans unless one of those tasks is automatic” (7:50).

“It’s not humanly possible to do 2 challenging, difficult things in parallel” (8:25).

“It takes longer to do 2 or more tasks when we multitask compared to if we do the tasks sequentially one after the other” (11:20).

“[Multitasking] creates stress” (12:35).

“There’s a myth that when people multitask, they’ll be more productive” (14:15).

“There’s a blurriness between our work and personal lives” (18:20).

“Our motivation changes when we work from home” (19:30).

“So often we might be with other people, but we have this lure of the internet still there” (25:30).

“When something becomes a habit, it really prevents us from using our conscious attention” (28:30).

“It’s really about becoming more intentional and conscious about what we’re doing when we’re on our devices” (32:15).

“Distractions are natural. It’s part of our human experience” (33:30).

“People mind-wander about 47% of the time” (33:40).

“Attention spans have declined [over the last 20 years]” (39:05).

“[New technology] has created a lot of pressure to think about performance at the expense of our wellbeing” (43:00).

“60% of global respondents reported some symptoms of burnout” (44:15).

“When people have positive wellbeing, they actually perform better” (44:55).

“Being an artist taught me that I could think out of the box” (46:30).

“The way I talk with scientists is very different from the way I talk with artists” (48:05).

“Boredom is associated with negative affect. When people are bored, they tend to be in a bad mood” (56:45).

“20 minutes in nature can help people destress” (58:40).

“We can practice forethought” (1:04:00).

“Goals are very powerful but they’re very slippery” (1:05:00).

Additionally, you can connect with Gloria on Twitter and LinkedIn, check out her website (where you can purchase her book, Attention Span, and find much more), and also subscribe to her Substack.

Thank you so much to Gloria for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.