Finding Sleep Again
For many, nights consist of constant tossing and turning, with restless nights leading to dreadful mornings and a day of unproductive work, a cycle that often seems inescapable. For students, this problem is often tenfold, going to sleep with a phone in hand, completing a full day tired, and risking falling asleep at the moment a professor turns off the lights.
This lack of slumber often contributes to an overall lack of focus throughout society, as life feels like it is constantly moving faster and there is less time to complete tasks that seemed menial before. Sune Lehmann, a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Technical University of Denmark, also had the same feeling. He discusses how he felt like he was increasingly losing his own ability to focus, and felt more consumed in the day-to-day mindless activities online. He decided to conduct research on how long topics stayed relevant on a variety of commonly used sites. Sune found that in 2013, a topic would remain in the top fifty most-discussed subjects for 17.5 hours. By 2016, that figure had dropped to just 11.9 hours.
“I had been obsessed with how i was losing my own ability to focus…somehow, I was not able to control my own use of the internet.”
~ SUNE LEHMANN
PROFESSOR – TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF DENMARK
With our attention spans rapidly dropping and our minds becoming increasingly more scattered, we have to wonder–what will this mean for our future? Well it often means that we are going to spend more of our time trying to pry our attention away from the devices meant to distract us, and this is valid for both adults, students, and children. On average, an office worker in the US will never get a single hour uninterrupted, leading to more mistakes in our work, and believing we have to spend more time “multitasking” to make our time back.
By freeing ourselves of our distractions, we are given space to flow and get better work done, all the while becoming more creative in the process. If we slow life down, and give ourselves regulated breaks from the shackles our devices bind us to, we might finally be able to create our best work, and get a restful night of sleep.
Hari, Johann. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again. Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd, 2022.