Why Can't We Focus More Than A Few Minutes?

I promise this will only take 4 minutes

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My friend Maggie and I were talking the other day. She is my coaching client, and we talk about everything. We are quickly becoming friends.

One of the things that came up was books. We talked about much content we consume on Medium and YouTube and how we haven’t been able to finish a real book for a very long time. We both used to be voracious readers. For me, I used to easily finish a novel every 2 days. I went through a stack of books a week and was proud of my reading habit.

I loved fantasy and science fiction. I read business and productivity books. I even liked self-help — it was one of my guilty pleasures. I read for the joy of it and felt like I was a more intelligent person because I consumed so many words.

But lately, mostly since the pandemic, I find I both have no time and no patience for sitting and reading a book. Sure, I can watch an 8-minute video, or read a number of 5-minute Medium posts, but I cannot seem to get through anything longer.

I can’t even sit through a 2-hour Netflix movie, I canceled it because we never watch.

It seems as though my attention span has shrunk. I have no time or patience for anything that is not quick and dirty. And I am not the only one. Not only has Maggie told me the same thing, but I hear it from others too.