This 8 seconds of pure attention used to be 12 seconds twenty years ago, which means that we are fifty percent worse than we were.
Wow what a crazy metric to be able to measure. I knew these dang Gen-Zers were distractable but by that much?! I wonder how much worse it is for the next generation that I am teaching now. This does not give me much hope.
did you pay attention all the way through to the article, or did your thoughts wander?
Well funny you ask, because I typically copy and paste the quotes I respond to in the moment, before even finishing the article. So as I read through, if there is a quote or point that evokes a response from me, I pop it into the comments and write my reply immediately.
Sometimes this yields interesting results because I'll respond to a point you make before reading your conclusion where you may also address it. I also find that this allows me to better connect to my stream of thought in the moment, so I don't lose what I was thinking about as I progress through your writing.
I think it is going to get worse - because not only is the attention span going down, but it creates a learning gap to increase it again.
I thought I was the only sucker that did this! :D
I reckon there is value in it and doing so leads to more considered answers. Many just answer to one particular point that they remember at the end, losing what they had gathered along the way.
There's benefits to both approaches. When you comment to a point in the moment, you don't get to see the big picture until you're done with the comment. But you're right, I prefer to write what I feel when I feel it so it stays fresh.
Attention and focus can be easily trained using for example meditation with a subject, even paying attention to breathing is improving focus. And of course, the pinnacle of attention training, lucid dreaming. For world class level.
Yes I do breathwork in the morning when I wake up and it is something I very much want to incorporate into my classroom with my 11-13 year old students.