We also emphasize how technology and the digitally-driven world makes maintaining attention and focus difficult. For creative professionals, it’s prudent to understand what distracts us—the mechanisms behind distraction—and develop strategies and disciplines to rise above our tendency toward busyness.

If you doubt that our Western culture lacks focus, open almost any nonfiction book published in the last two decades. Notice how the book is typeset: the relatively short length of chapters and paragraphs as well as the frequent breaks in the text with a torrent of subheadings and other forms of spacing.

Now, open a book from the 1950s. The text can scroll for pages without as much as a new paragraph. Although today’s format may be more reader-friendly, the changes necessarily addressed the limitations of the general reader. Publishers realize that the reading public has a short attention span. (Surveys have shown that most people never get past the second chapter in a given book.)

And what happens when we fully adapt to social media, becoming accustomed to messages of 140 characters? (We have an entirely new generation relying on text messaging as a dominant form of communication.) What happens to our focus and attention then?

We all possess the capability for attention and focus, but it’s a faculty that needs consistent training and practice. As our fast paced information-intensive, media-driven world doesn’t promote or facilitate this vital faculty, it’s up to us to set the agenda—to commit to increasing our mindfulness, our contemplative practices, and our overall focus.

Otherwise, our perception gets more and more fragmented. Greater fragmentation has a tendency to weaken our values and show us a world of less meaning, leading to greater emotionality and stress. Attention and focus, in contrast, helps us expand to a larger vision of the world (and even of our businesses), giving way to steadiness, inner resilience, and peace. That’s reason enough to cultivate these vital assets.

Related posts:

1. Child Mind versus Mature Mind
2. Reading with Purpose
3. Five Strategies to Improve Reading Effectiveness