A Call For Rational Inattention

You may have heard that our attention spans are shrinking. That we now have roughly the attentional focus of a goldfish. But I’ve looked at the research underlying the news hype, and I see no evidence that this is true. Attention spans are not shrinking. And goldfish are smarter than we think.

In Their Own Box, oil and cold wax on board. Anne Kearney

So why does it feel like your attention span is shrinking?

Many of us suffer from information overload and a low tolerance for being bored. The result is fuzzy thinking and distractibility. We struggle to start what needs doing. And we struggle to stay on task when what we’re doing isn’t inherently interesting.

It is tempting to diagnose our inability to focus as a permanent condition – as though we have lost some ancestral skill.

But the problem is not that our attention spans are shrinking. The problem is that they are drowning.

The number of things our brains can pay attention to at any given moment is limited and always has been. What’s more, when we deliberately decide to use this limited attention capacity to focus on some things and tune out others, we use up mental energy leaving us with less for whatever comes next.

These cognitive limitations probably weren’t big problems for our ancestors. But we now live in a world where our brains are being force fed information at every turn. And far too much of that information is both low quality and almost impossible to ignore.

We are drowning in information and our limited capacity to pay attention cannot keep up.

The good news is that once we understand that frayed attention has more to do with our environments than with ourselves, we set the stage for doing something about it. We can stop consuming every bit of information in our path. We can take on the responsibility of deciding how to spend our attention.

Rational inattention – a life preserver for a drowning brain

Rational inattention – a term I’m borrowing from economics – is a way to liberate ourselves from informational excess.

The rational inattention approach to information consumption accounts for the fact that people have limited time and attention capacity. It encourages decision makers to stop pursuing perfect information and instead to consider the costs and benefits of acquiring and processing information. They can then decide what information to focus on and what information to ignore. One can debate how this plays out in reality – decision making is rarely that rational and the value of information is hard to know before you have it. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting idea.

I suggest we borrow the concept of rational inattention and use it more broadly, as a way to embrace the idea that it is okay – a necessity really – to thoughtfully ignore information.

We cannot pay attention to everything. We cannot know everything. We cannot get to the bottom of our social media feeds. What we can do is be more thoughtful about where to spend our limited attention.

Why practice rational inattention?

The gifts of rational inattention

Economists talk about rational inattention as a strategy for increasing efficiency and productivity, but that is not all life is about. The real benefits of rational inattention, as I see it, extend far beyond efficiency.

Freedom. There is a sense of freedom to be had from abandoning the impossible ideal that we must keep up to date on everything, respond to everything, and have opinions about everything.

Creativity. When we are not constantly processing information, we make room for the mind to wander, to connect disparate thoughts, and to stumble upon insights that we would never find through a deliberate search.

Impact. By choosing where not to spend our attention, we create the conditions for deeper immersion with what remains. The conversation that is unbroken by glances at the screen builds a stronger social connection. The activist who focuses on one or two key issues is more likely to make a difference.

Resilience. By protecting ourselves from information that drains without enriching, we preserve our mental capacity to deal with unexpected challenges and to engage with what matters most.

What might rational inattention look like in practice?

Start with an attention audit

Try spending several days tracking how and where you spend your attention. Keep a journal at hand and make a note of what you are doing and what might be distracting you. You can set a timer to do this every hour or two. If that proves too disruptive, you can take a moment to reflect during natural breaks or as you switch from one task to the next.  Ask yourself the following:

How am I spending my attention?
What distractions are pulling my attention away from where I want it?
What is making it difficult for me to focus or do what I’m trying to do?
Do the mental energy costs seem unnecessarily high for the task at hand?
Am I getting a good return on my attentional investment?

Once you have an idea of how and where you are spending your attention, you can start putting some strategies in place to help you focus on what’s actually important and ignore what is not.

Five strategies for rational inattention

Eliminate or reduce distractions. This is not rocket science. We know what we need to do. Based on my attention audit, my list includes putting my phone out of sight, dropping some chat groups, and organizing my studio.

Be more intentional. There are many situations in which we want or need to pay some attention, but we find we are paying too much. Structuring your tasks, time, environments, or workflow can help make your information consumption more intentional.

I am trying to strike a balance between staying informed and doom scrolling by limiting my news-feed consumption to twice a day. I’m trying to be more efficient in how I do research for these blog posts in order to keep myself from going down too many rabbit holes. And I’m trying to shorten some of my zoom meetings by keeping them more focused.  

Limit task-switching. Each time we switch our attention back and forth there is a cognitive cost. Sometimes the cost is worth it – for example when we need a break or when we are losing steam and need to switch it up. But when we are task-switching because we are distracted or because we are under the illusion that we are multi-tasking, we get nothing in return for the price that we pay. One way that I’m limiting task-switching is by batching tasks like responding to email. If I do them all once at a particular time of day, I give myself permission to ignore them at other times.

Make a conscious decision to let some things go. We all have worries about which we can do nothing. We all have “should dos” that we are actually never going to do. To get these internal distractions out of the way, Konmari your mental space.

Build in periods of inattention. Maintain and restore your attention by doing things where you can relax your focus – a walk in the park is a perfect example. Allowing yourselves these periods of intentional inattention not only helps top up your mental reserves, it also gives your brain time and space to process what it has been doing and to engage in creative mind-wandering. Think about building in both longer periods of inattention and micro inattention breaks throughout the day.

How will you spend your attention?

If we don’t decide how to spend our attention, it will be decided for us. And in a world designed to capture our attention through ever more sophisticated means, perhaps the most revolutionary thing we can do is to decide, with intention and care, not to pay attention.

In doing so, we may end up discovering all that we have been missing by trying so hard to miss nothing.

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