Take control of your attention
- Beth Repp
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
"I don't have any time!"
"I never get anything done."
"I just can't focus."
"I don't have the bandwidth for that."
"I went down another social media rabbit hole last night."
Do any of these sound familiar to you? Are you feeling bombarded with information, fatigued, overwhelmed, and constantly distracted? We are living in a period of time that is unprecedented in regard to the amount of information coming at us, and the extent to which our time and attention is being wrenched from us. I have been feeling like this for awhile, so when I saw the cover of The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource in our local bookstore recently, I was all in. In this incredibly well researched book, journalist Chris Hayes describes why we are feeling like this, and makes very convincing arguments for putting down our phones.
Our collective attention in the Information Age (the current period of time that started in the 1950's with the introduction of computing) has become a valuable commodity, much like our labor did in the preceding Industrial Age. With the introduction of smartphones and social media, our attention became a highly sought after and fought over resource to be bought and sold. But because our daily amount of time and attention is finite, companies have come up with ways to extract it to the fullest extent possible: first by increasing the intensity of the initial attention grabber (think sensational news headlines), then by using any trick necessary to keep our attention as long as possible (alerts, likes, inflammatory comments, advertisements), even extracting sleep from us as a society to a remarkable extent. Social media platforms are "dynamic attention auctions where eyeballs are sold to advertisers based on which content makes you stop scrolling (p 246)." Of course, it doesn't matter to the platform if the content your eyeballs pause on is untrue, inflammatory, or frankly destructive to individuals or whole societies. All that matters is whether it grabs and then holds your attention. The longer your eyes are on the screen, the more advertising they can sell.
Social media platforms are not the only things being enriched by the amount of time we spend on our phones. Private news organizations are benefitted by our excessive news consumption. Retail companies greatly benefit from our time spent online. A quick search shows that an estimated $300 billion will be spent on social media advertisements by global companies in 2026. According to a 2023 survey, each American spent $754 on average per year impulsively buying products he/she saw on social media. That was just on impulsive in-the-moment buys. The amount of money spent on products some time after seeing ads on social media I think would be much greater than that. (https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/social-media-survey/#nearly-half-of-americans-made-an-impulse-purchase-after-seeing-a-product-on-social-media)
On p. 144 of The Sirens' Call, Chris quotes Bo Burnham as saying "'We used to colonize land, that was the thing you could expand into. And that's where money was to be made. They are now trying to colonize every minute of your life...They're coming for every second of your life.'" This has resulted for us in fractured attention, not meeting goals, not getting good at anything, having difficulty learning new things, fatigue, isolation, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and symptoms of information overload - "akin to 'the symptoms noted among battle-stressed soldiers, disaster victims, and culture shocked travelers (p 163).'" "The promise of the information age was unparalleled access to every single last bit of human knowledge at every moment, and the reality is a collective civic mental life that permanently teeters on the edge of madness (p 248)."
He goes on to state "what grabs our attention - the sirens - and what we as conscious creatures actually want to view or spend our time on are always at war." I couldn't agree more. Here is an exercise that I periodically do, and always opens my eyes. Write down your values, dreams, goals, and ideal life. Think about how you imagine yourself living next Tuesday. Think about how you imagine living on an ideal Tuesday three years from now. Now actually look back on the last few days and see how you spent your time. Be honest with yourself. Look at your daily screen time on your phone. Look at what you watched on streaming services. Did any of that excessive amount of time move you closer to your goals? Does your time spent reflect your values?
Though smart phones, technology, social media, streaming services, 24 hour cable news, and now AI have monopolized our attention more than ever, I am reassured to know that the root problem is not a new one. The Stoic Epictetus is quoted as saying 2000 years ago "You become what you give your attention to." Seneca referred to "busy idleness"—being incredibly busy but achieving nothing of true value. Though the modalities were different, distractions and moments of immediate gratification have always been present. Humans have been able to insightfully recognize and work to overcome their distractions for millennia.
In Andrew Huberman's 9/1/25 Huberman Lab podcast conversation with the famous climber Alex Honnold, he said that his friend Tom Bilyeu advises mentees to work as if smartphones don't exist. Andrew and Alex went on to discuss how smartphone distraction can interfere with "doing the reps" physically (working on physical skills and fitness) and mentally (problem solving, planning, and pondering). Alex says at one point "It's just so hard to actually be good at something."
In Courtney Carver's 2025 book Gentle: Rest More, Stress Less, and Live the Life You Actually Want, she says "You'd think that with general life progress and all our fancy technology, we'd be smarter about the way we get things done. When the internet and smartphones made things easier, we could have said 'Lovely, now we can get our work done in less time.' Instead we said, 'Oooohhhhh great! Now we can do even more!' Today, not only are we expected to get more done, we have to do it fast and make it look good for social media."
Beware of late night "revenge scrolling." According to Wikipedia, "revenge scrolling, or revenge bedtime procrastination, is the often subconscious act of delaying sleep to consume content on devices to reclaim a sense of freedom after a busy, high-stress, or restrictive day. It is a common reaction to a lack of work-life balance, particularly among over-worked, high-stress, or busy individuals." Trust me, this feels good in the moment. It is a way of immediately boosting dopamine, and giving oneself a feeling of escape. But just like slot machines and cupcakes, imbibing to excess leads to net negative results in our lives.
So take back your time, your schedule, your attention, your focus, and your money. Stop enriching others. Take all that excess time and funnel it in to enriching yourself. Read something. Learn something new. Practice a skill. Play a game with your kids. Take a course. Take a walk. Lift weights. Cook a healthy meal. Learn a language. Dedicate yourself to a hobby. Connect with loved ones. Simply sit with your own thoughts. Rest. Sleep. Refer to your list of goals and to your image of an ideal day. What must you do and how must you spend your time in order to inch closer to those goals?
Here are some actionable steps to take back your power:
Do not take your phone to bed. Charge your phone across the room or even in a separate room from your bed. This simple change has been enormously helpful for me. I charge my phone in my adjacent bathroom overnight. I do not allow myself to get in bed with my phone. It is the kiss of death. If I look anything up in the evening, I have to be sitting upright in a chair, or standing in my bathroom. I set my morning alarm on my phone, which means I have to peel my warm, sleepy body from its bliss and pad across the cold room to turn it off. This simple move has resulted in me getting more reading done, more sleep, and getting up earlier.
First thing in the morning, don't look at anything other than texts or calls that you may need to respond to. Set your own mood for the day, as opposed to letting the headlines or social media set it for you.
Look at your average daily screen time for last week. Think about what you could be working towards if you spend even half that much time per day on it.
Remove social media apps from your phone. Consider only looking at social media on a computer, or by logging in through a browser on your phone. This makes it much clunkier to use and gives a barrier to easy and excessive use.
Set timers for certain apps, or even the timer on your phone whenever you pick it up.
Recognize that there is nothing wrong with you and you are not alone if you are spending an excessive amount of time on your phone. Our modern phones have been designed by brilliant people to do whatever they can to grab and hold our attention.
Recognize the game. Its all a game to get money. If they get your attention, they get money. Rise above it. Align your attention with your goals and values.
Recognize that your time and attention are limited and incredibly valuable resources. They are not renewable. Use them to enrich yourself, not social media platforms, private news organizations, or retail marketers.
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