I have absolutely zero attention span and I am constantly distracted. You know, the reason I go to a movie theater is because that is a place I have focus. You know, I'm not on my phone. I'm not doing anything else. I'm watching to see what's happening.

This is David Polinchock. He was one of the millions who flocked to the movies this summer. He wanted to enjoy himself, but he also wanted some alone time to focus.

Hey, Barbie. Can I come to your house tonight?

Sure.

Barbie, a production of CNN's parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery, is being credited with helping get people back to the movie theaters in numbers that, frankly, hadn't been seen since before the pandemic.

So cool.

And because of that, Polinchock worried that people's theater etiquette might be a little rusty. You know, the little distractions, the occasional side conversation, quick phone light. After all, that kind of stuff happened before the pandemic. But the behavior he saw, left him a little flabbergasted.

Maybe four or five rows up from us, somebody who clearly was getting a lot of tweets or text message or something, some communication, so was on their phone a great deal. You know, there were a couple of people behind us who kind of chatted during the movie. And again, it's one thing when you're movie chatting about the movie; it's a totally different thing when you're just kind of chatting.

And Polinchock says these folks barely tried to even hide what they were doing. You know, the truth is, in the last few months, there have been countless articles in social media posts about people simply not being able to sit still, to focus even for a short time. There have been these stories about movies being interrupted by people constantly scrolling on their social media. Or even having full on conversations in the middle of the movie.

It's starting long before the movie starts. You know, that people are just not fully focused and still in that distractible state and then carrying that through the whole movie in some cases.

So David's story kind of got me wondering, why does it seem much harder for people to sit still these days? My girls, my teenage girls, they won't even go to the movies. They know that they won't be able to sit still. So are attention span shorter than they used to be? And what role does our brain really play in paying attention? I'm a neurosurgeon, so it should come as no surprise that for me, the brain is endlessly fascinating. Truth is, there's still so much we don't know about it. But we do know this - the brain can be trained and in surprising ways. Like so much of the human body, there are things we can all do to make it stronger and to specifically serve us better even as we get older. So this season, we're going to take a close look at how the brain functions under different conditions and in a variety of scenarios. Most importantly, we're going to learn how to make your brain work better for you. We're talking about the frightened brain, the depressed brain, the concussed brain, just to name a few. But today, we're going to start with the distracted brain and how we can transform it in some way into the attentive brain. My guest today, a psychologist and a researcher, says that is more doable than you might think.

When many people think of distractions, they think only of external distractions. You know, like a phone call, a notification text chime. It turns out that nearly half the time we are distracted by ourselves.

Look, summer's basically over. School is back in session. So I think there's no better time to hunker down and focus. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent. And this is Chasing Life.

Before we go any further, I want to quickly take us through a brain 101 refresher course. First, I'd like to make a distinction between the brain and the mind, okay. That's right, sometimes the two are used interchangeably, but you know they're not the same. The brain itself, the three and a half pounds of gray matter inside your skull, well, that's arguably the most complicated tissue in the universe. And you can think of it like an operating system that happens to also have a parallel operating system known as consciousness. It controls everything we do, deliberately, automatically and everything we perceive. Think about that. Our touch, our vision, our emotions, our memory, our pain, our breathing, our walking, even being brokenhearted - starts in the brain. Basically, all day long, the brain is sending and receiving chemical and electrical signals from throughout the body at the speed of an Indy race car. And it's constantly sending alerts about the body itself and its environment. Now, the brain acts on some of these signals while others are sent down the spinal cord to other parts of the body. The mind, on the other hand, well, that's less tangible. Some experts have described it as our, quote, aliveness. The mind uses the brain to tell us how to think, how to feel, what to choose. It helps us form our unique personalities. Now the brain and the mind often work together, but it's that inflection point that brings us to the distracted brain.

There's a part of her mind that's called executive function. And you can think of this as the CEO of the mind or the governor of the mind.

That's Gloria Mark. She's a psychologist and professor at University of California, Irvine. She's also author of the book, "Attention Span A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity."

It helps us keep out distractions, filter out distractions. It helps us choose, make decisions of what we should focus on. So selective focusing.

She's talking about executive functions, and it's kind of what it sounds like. It's your highest level cognitive skills, like how you plan your day or strategize to complete a project. And yes, it's also the ability to simply pay attention to something - attentiveness. Professor Mark says when we concentrate, the executive system is constantly sifting out distractions - like noise from the leaf blower outside. But at the same time, it's also sending out signals that say, hey, this is what's important right now. So, for example, if we smell smoke or hear a baby cry, we still know to act. But here's the thing. There is a very fine line between attention and distraction. Let me repeat that. There is a fine line between attention and distraction.

We have a limited tank of attentional resources. And there's things we do during the day that build up our resources, like taking a break, getting really good quality sleep, and there's things we do that deplete our resources. And I would say really paying full attention is really making optimal use of these attentional resources. So you really have this full set of resources that's applied to to this thing that you're doing.

And can anybody get there? Can anyone maximize their attentiveness, their attentive brain?

Yes, I absolutely think so.

We're going to get to exactly how we can do that in a bit. But before we do, I wanted to go back to something David Polinchock said - that attention spans seem to be shortening. And I was curious if that was real or just his perception.

We measured attention spans empirically, attention spans when people are using their devices. And we found that attention spans have diminished over the years. So we first started measuring this back in 2003, and we found people's average attention span on a screen was two and a half minutes. That was an average. And that shocked me at the time. I thought, that's pretty short.

Yeah.

In 2012, we measured it at 75 seconds, and in the last five years or so, it's averaged 47 seconds.

Wow.

And it's this has been replicated by other people who have found very similar measures. So attention spans are really quite short.

Did you hear that? Our attention spans are now 47 seconds. So why is this happening? Well, Professor Mark says the devices themselves are not the only culprits here.

That's certainly a factor. You know, we're swept away by notifications, but it's not the only factor. The story is much more complicated. Personality is also a factor. Some people are more distractible than others. If you happen to score high in a personality trait called neuroticism, you're unfortunately more likely to have a shorter attention span.

So what she's saying is, if you are neurotic, compulsive, maybe you're very task oriented, but you are probably also more easily distracted. And that may be the opposite of what you thought. And it also doesn't help that most of the ways that we now consume content has changed dramatically.

I also want to stress that it's not just videos like TikTok, but if you look at TV and film, the shot lengths of TV and film have decreased over the years, and now average 4 seconds. And commercials also have decreased in length. You know, many years ago it was common to see 60 second commercials and they went down to 30 seconds and then 15 seconds. Now, it's not uncommon to see six second commercials. You know, people's attention spans are getting shorter. And directors and film and TV editors, tech companies are gearing content according to what they think people will pay attention to.

And it gets even more complicated because, as it turns out, not all attention is created equal.

When I was studying attention, I realized that most people characterized attention as two states. You're focused or you're not focused. And I realized it's it's a lot more nuanced than that.

Right.

Because people, you could be doing a really difficult task and be focused. You can also be doing something really easy, like playing solitaire and be really focused. And I realized that there is another dimension, another aspect of this that's really important to consider. And that's how much challenge is involved. And so I did an experiment, and this was a real world experiment with people in the workplace, and I sent them probes. These were quick, very quick questionnaires that they could answer on their computers or phones. And it asked them two very simple questions: how engaged are you in the thing you just did and how challenged are you in the thing that you just did? And we had timestamps. And we also logged their computer activity so we could see exactly at any point in time what people were working in their computer.

Hmm.

And it found that people did vary in their responses to these questions. And so I came up with these four types of attention. If you're highly challenged and you're engaged, I call that a state of focus. If you're engaged and you're not at all challenged, I call that rote attention. And that's like playing solitaire, Candy Crush, scrolling through social media. So you're really engaged, but you're not really applying attentional resources. You're not putting in effort. If you're not engaged and you're not challenged, I call that boredom. It's a state of boredom. And if you're challenged and not at all engaged, I label that a state of frustration.

So again, the types of attention are focused, rote, bored, frustrated. Again, focused, rote, bored, frustrated. The key is to be both engaged and challenged. No surprise, though, the ability to focus is very personal and everyone even has their own rhythm in terms of when they can best hunker down and concentrate. For example, for me, over the years, I've learned the best times of day and even the best days of the week for my optimal attentiveness. I can basically tell how long after a meal, how long after exercise or even rest is best for me to be the most engaged. How did I learn this? Simply by paying attention to myself and observing myself. Figuring out when I am in that flow state and recognizing when I get to that flow state, I am far more likely to be attentive and stay attentive. And if I am not, my productivity drops off a cliff. During those times, I know that I just need to wait it out, wait until the flow state strikes again. None of this is easy. You got to spend some time really figuring yourself out. But it is worthwhile because there are serious costs associated with losing your focus and then jumping from one thing to another.

Decades of research in the laboratory show that when people are shifting their attention fast, which essentially is multitasking, it's associated with higher stress. And we know that blood pressure rises, both diastolic and systolic pressure rises. There's a physiological marker in the body that indicates people are more stressed. Another consequence is that we know that people make more errors when they shift their attention. We know that from laboratory research where people were given tasks to shift their attention. Now there's a real world task, and I think you're going to be struck by this study because it was done with physicians. And as you know, physicians are interrupted a lot. They're distracted a lot by nurses, patients, technology. And it turns out that the more distracted physicians were, the more prescribing errors they made.

Wow.

So errors is is really an important thing. And one last consequences - it takes people longer to do something. Because there is a switch cost. There's time to reorient and a metaphor that I can use is imagine that you have a whiteboard in your mind, and for every task we do, we have a mental model of what that task is. And so, you know, if I'm working on a paper, I have a mental model of that paper, and then I suddenly switch and I do another task, I have to erase that whiteboard and rewrite new information for the new task. And I switch again. I have to erase and rewrite. And just like on a real whiteboard, sometimes you can't erase it completely. So imagine that I go to a news site and I read about some, you know, horrific thing that happened in the news. And it stays with me and it interferes with the next task that I do. So there are performance costs when we shift our attention so fast.

The idea of multitasking leading to happy efficiency is is not true. You're neither more efficient nor are you more happy. Your more stressed it sounds like.

Yes.

I always remember my mom when she was backing up the car in the driveway. This is always something that we would joke about. She had to immediately turn down the music. She could have music when she was just driving down the road and doing something that she normally did. But when it became sort of more cognitively demanding, like having to check the rearview mirror, turn her head over her shoulder, look behind her - turn off the music! It was this thing, and I guess it sort of fits with what you're describing. She was trying to eliminate distractions for something that seemed rote, but in this case was a little bit more cognitively challenging.

Yes, that's right.

But here is the problem. Multitasking is such a huge part of how we're all expected to work and live these days. Employers often list it as a desirable quality on job postings. And for parents, we're always juggling ten things at once. It becomes a necessity. But as you just heard, that switching back and forth is putting stress on our brains. So what to do?

What makes the most sense to me if I'm working on my computer, is to imagine my future self at the end of the day. So where do I want to be at 7 p.m.? I want to be relaxing. I don't want to be thinking about work.

That, of course, probably sounds good to you. It sounds good to me. But how do you get there - in both brain and mind? Professor Mark tells us more, after the break.

And now back to Chasing Life and my conversation with the University of California, Irvine Professor Gloria Mark. You know, I want to quickly go back to this idea of how we focus at work. I think there's this idea that you show up to the office or your desk and you're expected to be head down and super productive for eight hours straight or more. But Professor Mark says that is not how we humans really operate.

It turns out that most people don't come to work, you know, ramped up and ready to go in full focus. But it takes them time to ease into a state of focus. They do smaller tasks, usually more rote kinds of attentional tasks. And then they get into a state of focus, usually by mid-morning, late morning. Then they're really in full force focus. Then they take a break for lunch. They're replenished because they've gone away from their computers and then they come back and by mid to late afternoon, they're in full focus again. So we see rhythms of focus. And so it to me, it makes the most sense for people to become aware of what your own natural rhythm is when you are best able to apply your attentional resources and also when it's time to pull away to replenish.

I am no expert in this, but I have to tell you, for me personally, just as someone in their early fifties now who sort of, you know, straddles this world of medicine and journalism, what I find is that when the moment strikes, when I feel like, hey, I have an attentive brain right now, then I then I try and put it to good use. You know, now's the time to write; now's the time to sit in front of the desk or do something that is going to require that sort of higher octane brain, that higher octane, attentive brain. And at the same time, when I'm not feeling it, to sort of put it aside, I think is really important. And what I will do is I will be like, ah, I got all these things I still need to do. I'm not feeling it. My brain is not so attentive. I'll quickly jot those things down on a piece of paper and leave it. Again, I'm not the expert, but it does seem to to work for me. And maybe maybe that really caters to those rhythms that you're talking about.

Yeah, I think that's that's great and makes a lot of sense. One of the things you mentioned, you know, jotting things down, one of the things that can interfere with our ability to focus is thinking of unfinished tasks.

Yes. I know I've been there, and I'm sure you probably have too. What you're doing, in essence, is distracting yourself. As that mental to do list piles up, it's all you can think about, and those nagging thoughts can actually prevent you from actually checking anything off the list. So writing the unfinished tasks down can help offload them from your brain. But then what about all those extraneous distractions? What can be done about that? That's something Professor Mark has thought a lot about as well. Now, you might have heard about different kinds of software that can help restrict your time on certain websites. And the question is, can they really be helpful? Well, Professor Mark decided to put them to the test in an experiment she conducted.

They're called blockers. And we asked people to block those online activities that were distracting for them. And I would say nearly everyone blocked social media, along with some other sites like news and other other kinds of sites. And we also measured people's personalities. And it turns out that our sample was divided into two types. There were people who had high self-control. These were people who scored very high in a personality trait called conscientiousness and very low in a personality trait called impulsivity. And it turns out that these software blockers affected these two types in different ways. So, first of all, people with low self-control, the software blockers did have an effect and people were able to focus longer and they had less stress. But people with high self-control, it actually harmed them.

That's interesting.

Why? Because if you're a person with high self-control, you can go on social media and and you can pull yourself back because you have good self-control to do that. But I personally am not a fan of using software to to gain agency, because that's just offloading the work on to tech. I think it's so much better for people to learn themselves how to gain agency.

Let me just ask you, with all that you've learned and all that you've written about, what can people do to help them create a more attentive brain?

It's really about gaining agency over your attention so that you're in control and you don't feel that your devices are in control. Because I have heard over and over again from participants in my studies that they feel out of control and they feel that their actions are simply ruled by by the devices. And one of my favorite quotes is one participant who said, my life is ruled by by the bells and pop-ups in my life. And when I heard that, I thought, wow, you know, we have to do something. So, so many things we do on our devices are automatic. So we hear a chime and we immediately run to grab that phone. We see the image of our phone sitting on the desk, and we grab it without thinking. We see an email notification; we immediately switch to email. And the idea is to become aware of these unconscious actions to to raise them to a conscious awareness. And if we do that, then we can become more intentional in our actions. We can form a plan. For example, okay, I'm going to work 20 more minutes on this. Or I'm going to work through to the end of this chapter and then I'm going to take a break. So that's one thing. Another technique is to practice forethought. And forethought is about imagining our future selves and what makes the most sense to me if I'm working on my computer, is to imagine my future self at the end of the day. So where do I want to be at 7 p.m.? I want to be relaxing. I don't want to be thinking about work. I want to be reading a book. I want to be watching her show. And the more concrete of a visualization we can have about our future self, at the end of the day, the better we are able to have control over our attention currently. Another thing that's really important is to try to maintain this tank of attentional resources, to not let it get depleted. How do we do that? It's so important to get good sleep. It's so important to take a really long break. And we know that when people go out in nature, it has a rejuvenating effect on people. The other thing that I would say is that we need to reframe how we think about scheduling our day. You know, the typical thing is you write down a time and a task that needs to be finished. I have to finish this report by 11 a.m. I have to finish this other thing by 12 noon. Let's think instead about designing your day, right? Being proactive and designing the tasks that you have to do based on what your own personal rhythm is for when you're at your best, at your focus. And save those times for doing those tasks that require the hardest work and the most creative energy. And, you know, for goodness sake, don't do email during those times. Or really save it for that really important work and we can perform better.

It's all part of turning your distracted brain into your attentive brain. And, you know, for me, since speaking to Gloria, I've already started implementing many of these things into my daily life, really understanding my rhythms, making sure my attentional tank of resources is full and working on things that are both engaging and challenging and, yes, fully imagining what I want my day to look like in a few hours from now. That really helps. Maybe I imagine relaxing with my dogs or going crazy with my kids. But every day I think the point is you want to ask yourself two questions: what do I want to accomplish today and how do I want to feel? The first is a task, a goal, the other an emotional goal. And Professor Mark says asking those questions and being really honest and then checking in on your progress throughout the day can really help you stay on track, stay focused, stay attentive.

When many people think of distractions, they think only of external distractions. You know, like a phone call, a notification text chime. Turns out that nearly half the time we are distracted by ourselves. So we have internal interruptions. And it could be an urge. It's a memory of something that we have to do. It's this desire to look at social media so we distract ourselves.

My nails suddenly need trimming. I need to go, I have to go to the bathroom far more often all of a sudden. You know, it is interesting. And I have to say, just as a point of personal sort of observation, that it can be quite a joy to find yourself very attentive to something like that, just like almost to the point where you get into that flow state where you don't want it to be detrimental to the rest of your life. But the idea that God, I was able to, it's kind of like having a fancy sports car and just letting the engine open up for a period of time. I mean, if you can do that with your brain and your mind, it can be hard to get there. But when you do it, it can be pretty magical, I find.

Yes, absolutely. It's it's thrilling, right?

Yeah.

And your reward is because you're learning something.

Right.

Right. So you're you're getting something out of that. It's not just, you know, superficial kinds of rewards that you get from looking at a TikTok video, which, you know, might, it's entertaining, of course, but you're really learning something that can maybe change the way we think.

It's powerful and it really speaks to what our brain and our mind are capable of. If we can train ourselves to focus, really concentrate, that can unlock so much for us. So I really recommend you try out some of Professor Mark's tips at school, at work, or wherever else you find your thoughts wandering from time to time. All it takes is a little planning or a little forethought to get back on track. And next week, as we continue this journey through the brain, we know sleep is good for us. But what about things like naps? When we're all so busy, how can you make recharging your brain a part of your daily routine?

Rest is really, really important. And whether that be sleep or some other form of rest, it is extremely important.

That's all for this episode of the new season of Chasing Life. If you liked it, recommend it to your friends. Also, it's really important that I hear from you what questions you might have about your own brain. Are there specific things you want to know? Let me know. You can record your thoughts as a voice memo and email them to ASKSANJAY@CNN.COM. Or give us a call: 470-396-0832 and leave a message. We might even include your response in a future episode. Thanks for listening.

Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio. Our podcast is produced by Eryn Mathewson, Madeleine Thompson, David Rind, Xavier Lopez and Grace Walker. Our Senior Producer and Showrunner is Felicia Patinkin. Andrea Kane is our Medical Writer and Tommy Bazarian is our Engineer. Dan Dzula is our Technical Director and the Executive Producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. Special thanks to Ben Tinker, Amanda Sealy and Nadia Kounang of CNN Health.