Our guest today has written a book that has people talking all over the world since it first published in January of this year. The title of the book is “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity.” The author is Gloria Mark, Chancellor’s Professor of Informatics at UC Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. Professor Mark’s research area is human-computer interaction. She studies how technology affects people’s attention, mood, and stress level. Thank you for joining us today, professor Mark.

我们今天邀请的嘉宾写了一本书，自今年1月首次出版以来，全世界的人都在谈论它。这本书的标题是《注意力广度：恢复平衡、快乐和效率的开创性方法》。本文作者是加州大学欧文分校唐纳德·布伦信息与计算机科学学院信息学教授格洛丽亚·马克。马克教授的研究领域是人机交互。她研究科技如何影响人们的注意力、情绪和压力水平。谢谢你今天来参加我们的节目，马克教授。

Capuano:
I really appreciate that we’re both screen free for this conversation. That’s a rarity in today’s technological times, and that’s really at the center of some of the questions that your book is trying to answer around our capabilities to get anything done with so many different tasks and devices that demand our attention. How would you describe the research that went into writing “Attention Span”?

我真的很感激我们在这次谈话中都没有屏幕。这在今天的科技时代是很罕见的，这也是你的书试图回答的一些问题的核心，这些问题围绕着我们在这么多不同的任务和设备中完成任何事情的能力，这些任务和设备需要我们的注意力。你如何描述写《注意力持续时间》的研究?

Mark:
I’m trained as a psychologist and typically psychologists bring people into a laboratory. And laboratory studies are great because you can control all the things that you don’t want to study, and you just focus on that variable of interest. So, what you’re doing is you’re setting up an abstract model of the world. But you know we use technology in all aspects of our lives. We use it at work, we use it at home, and a laboratory just can’t possibly simulate all the things that happen to us in real life, right? It can’t simulate the amount of stress we feel or the relationships we have, or the conflict you just experienced or the things that make us laugh. And so, to that end, I decided that it’s really important to go where people are — to go in their natural environments and study their tech use. So, I set up what I call “living laboratories” and I use a variety of different methods. I use sensors. I use computer logging techniques to see exactly how long people are on each screen. I use probes where people answer very short questions when they pop up on their phones or computers. I do surveys. And I use all of this information together to create a holistic understanding of how people are using their devices.

我是一名心理学家，通常心理学家会把人带到实验室。实验室研究很好，因为你可以控制所有你不想研究的东西，你只关注你感兴趣的变量。所以，你所做的就是建立一个抽象的世界模型。但是你知道我们生活的方方面面都在使用科技。我们在工作中使用它，我们在家里使用它，实验室不可能模拟我们在现实生活中发生的所有事情，对吧?它无法模拟我们感受到的压力或我们拥有的关系，或你刚刚经历的冲突或让我们发笑的事情。因此，为了达到这个目的，我决定去人们生活的地方——去他们的自然环境中，研究他们对科技的使用，这一点非常重要。所以，我建立了我所谓的“生活实验室”，我使用了各种不同的方法。我使用传感器。我使用计算机记录技术来查看人们在每个屏幕上的确切时间。我使用探针，让人们在手机或电脑上弹出非常简短的问题时回答。我做调查。我把所有这些信息结合起来，对人们如何使用他们的设备有一个全面的了解。

Capuano:
What drew you to studying this topic?

是什么吸引你研究这个课题?

Mark:
My own experience. I was living and working in Germany and in the year 2000, I came back to the U.S. and I started out as an academic — as an assistant professor at UC Irvine. And in contrast to where I was working in Germany, which was a research institute and where I only had to focus on a single project, here I am in academia and, all of the sudden, I have multiple research projects and multiple people. Everything was very exciting. It was very hard to say no — to turn anything down. And I found that my attention was just switching from project to project, from screen to screen. But at the same time, I also found myself glued to my screen. For me, grabbing lunch was just a very short break to grab food, come back and get back in front of my screen. And I began to wonder, “Is it just me or are other people experiencing this as well?” And I decided, “You know, I’m a scientist, I can study this.” And that’s what started me off.

我自己的经验。我一直在德国生活和工作，2000年，我回到美国，开始在加州大学欧文分校做一名学者助理教授。我在德国工作的时候是在一个研究机构，我只需要专注于一个项目，而现在我在学术界，突然之间，我有了多个研究项目和很多人。一切都很令人兴奋。说“不”是非常困难的——拒绝任何事情。我发现我的注意力从一个项目切换到另一个项目，从一个屏幕切换到另一个屏幕。但与此同时，我也发现自己被屏幕粘住了。对我来说，吃午饭只是短暂的休息，吃点东西，然后再回到屏幕前。我开始想，“是只有我有这种感觉，还是其他人也有这种感觉?”我决定，“你知道，我是一个科学家，我可以研究这个。”这就是我的出发点。

Capuano:

I remember the first article that I read about your book. A pair of numbers made my eyes pop out of my head. Those two numbers are 47 seconds and 25 minutes. This is your work — your groundbreaking work. So, can you please share with our audience the significance of those two numbers?

我记得我读到的第一篇关于你的书的文章。一对数字使我的眼睛都要跳出来了。这两个数字分别是47秒和25分钟。这是你的工作，你开创性的工作。所以，你能和我们的观众分享一下这两个数字的意义吗?

Mark:

For the 47 seconds, let me start by saying we first started studying people’s attention span on their screens back in 2003. And, at the time, we found that people’s attention averaged about two and a half minutes on any screen before switching. And that first study was published in 2004. The paper had a funny title — it was called “Constant, Constant Multitasking Craziness,” which we thought described pupil’s experiences. We kept tracking attention spans. In 2012, we found that they averaged 75 seconds on any screen before switching. And in the last five or six years, we found that they averaged 47 seconds. It’s not just my work — others have replicated it. One person found 50 seconds on average. Another person found 44 seconds. The midpoint is called the “median” and that’s 40 seconds. And what that means is that half of all the observations we found were 40 seconds or less. So, people’s attention when they use their devices just flits around from screen to screen, from device to device. I call this “kinetic attention.” Kinetic means dynamic — and that’s exactly a way to describe what we observe with people.

在这47秒的时间里，让我先说一下，我们从2003年开始研究人们在屏幕上的注意力持续时间。当时，我们发现人们在切换屏幕之前，在任何屏幕上的注意力平均约为两分半钟。第一项研究发表于2004年。这篇论文有一个有趣的标题——叫做“持续的，持续的多任务疯狂”，我们认为这描述了学生的经历。我们一直在追踪注意力持续时间。2012年，我们发现他们在切换屏幕前平均停留75秒。在过去的五六年里，我们发现它们平均为47秒。这不仅仅是我的工作——其他人也在复制它。一个人平均找到了50秒。另一个人发现了44秒。这个中点被称为“中位数”，也就是40秒。这意味着我们发现的所有观测中有一半是40秒或更短的。所以，当人们使用他们的设备时，他们的注意力只是从一个屏幕到另一个屏幕，从一个设备到另一个设备。我称之为“动态注意力”。Kinetic的意思是动态的——这正是描述我们观察到的人的一种方式。

I also thought maybe it’s not so bad to switch so frequently if you’re working on the same project. So as an academic, when I write papers, I might be reading something. I might be writing in a word document. Maybe I’m checking email about something to do with this project. So, it all concerns the same project.

我还想过，如果你们在做同一个项目，那么频繁切换也没有那么糟糕。所以作为一个学者，当我写论文的时候，我可能会阅读一些东西。我可能会写一个word文档。也许我正在查看与这个项目有关的邮件。所以，这都涉及到同一个项目。

So, what we did was we clustered our observations into projects. And first of all, we found that people spend about 10 and a half minutes on any project before switching. And if a person is interrupted — and you can be interrupted by something external, like a notification. You can also be interrupted by something within yourself. And we are as likely to interrupt ourselves as to be interrupted from something external to us. So, you’re working on a project, 10 and a half minutes on average. You get interrupted, you work on something else, on average about 10 and a half minutes. And then something else. You start to work on yet another project, and then you go back, and you pick up that original interrupted project.

所以，我们所做的是将我们的观察结果集中到项目中。首先，我们发现人们在换工作前会花大约10分半钟在一个项目上。如果一个人被打扰了——你可能会被一些外部的东西打断，比如通知。你也可能被自己内心的某些东西打断。我们很可能会打断自己，就像被外界事物打断一样。所以，你在做一个项目，平均10分半钟。你被打断了，你在做别的事情，平均大约10分半钟。然后是别的。你开始做另一个项目，然后你回去，捡起原来被打断的项目。

That’s the general pattern of behavior that we find for information workers over the course of the day. So, it takes about 25 and a half minutes to pick up that original interrupted project. There’s a lot that happens in between. And one thing to consider is that every time we get interrupted, you’re focusing — or should be focusing — on some other activity, and then you switch, turn your attention to something else. This can leave a residue. So, imagine I’m working on my article and then I check news and then I read something horrifying in the news — that can leave a residue. And I try to go back and focus on something else, but I keep thinking of this horrible accident. It creates interference. There’s a lot that goes on when we’re switching tasks.

这是我们在信息工作者的日常工作中发现的一般行为模式。所以，大概需要25分半钟的时间来恢复原来被打断的项目。在这两者之间会发生很多事情。需要考虑的一件事是，每次我们被打断时，你都在专注于——或者应该专注于——其他活动，然后你切换，把注意力转移到其他事情上。这可能会留下残留物。所以，想象一下，我正在写文章，然后我查看新闻，然后我在新闻中读到一些可怕的东西——这可能会留下残留物。我试着回过头去想别的事，但我一直在想那场可怕的事故。它会产生干扰。当我们切换任务时，会发生很多事情。

Capuano:

I have long recognized in myself that I have varying levels of engagement depending on the activities that I’m doing. And I want to thank you because in the book you actually break down that there are different types of attention. How do you describe those?

我很早就意识到，根据我所做的活动，我有不同程度的投入。我想感谢你，因为在书中你把注意力分成了不同的类型。你怎么描述这些呢?

Mark:

You know, most people think that there are only two states of attention. We’re focused or we’re unfocused. And, you know, I began to think about this some more and I realized that there’s some things we do where we’re deeply engaged in it, and it requires a lot of mental effort. If I’m reading an article, I really have to use some effort to try to understand it. But other things we do, we can be deeply engaged in it — like watching a Netflix film or if I’m playing some game on my phone, right? I’ll be very engaged in it, but I’m not exerting any kind of effort at all. So, the first kind of attention with effort I call “focused attention.” It’s a label, right? The second kind of attention where you’re deeply engaged and not at all challenged, I call “rote attention.” Now, you can also be neither engaged nor challenged. I call that a “state of boredom.” You can also be very challenged and not at all engaged. Like, if I have a tech problem and I just can’t solve it, but I have to — if I want to get any work done — I call that a “state of frustration.” It’s a label that I use. So, we have these four types of attention.

你知道，大多数人认为注意力只有两种状态。我们是专注的还是不专注的。你知道，我开始更多地思考这个问题，我意识到我们做的一些事情是我们深深投入其中的，这需要很多的精神努力。如果我正在阅读一篇文章，我真的需要花一些精力去理解它。但我们做的其他事情，我们可能会深深投入其中——比如看一部Netflix电影，或者用手机玩游戏，对吧?我会非常投入，但我不会付出任何努力。所以，第一种需要努力的注意力，我称之为“集中注意力”。这是一个标签，对吧?第二种注意力是你深度投入，完全没有挑战，我称之为“死记硬背的注意力”。现在，你也可以既不参与也不被挑战。我称之为“无聊状态”。你也可能面临很大的挑战，但却完全不投入。比如，如果我遇到了一个技术问题，但我无法解决，但我必须解决——如果我想完成任何工作——我称之为“沮丧状态”。这是我用的标签。我们有这四种类型的注意力。

Capuano:

That makes perfect sense. Your book also details some myths about attention. What are they?

这完全说得通。你的书还详细介绍了一些关于注意力的神话。它们是什么?

Mark:

The first myth comes from a popular narrative. We hear this all the time. And that is, when you’re using your computer, you have to be focused as long as possible. You should feel guilty if you can’t focus. You see phrases like “how to achieve nonstop focus,” “how to focus for 10 hours.” It turns out that it’s just not the way we as humans are set up to be able to focus for lengthy periods of time, especially if we don’t take breaks. It’s just not natural. We can’t focus nonstop — in the same way that we can’t lift weights nonstop — without getting ourselves exhausted.

第一个神话来自一种流行的叙述。我们经常听到这样的话。那就是，当你使用电脑的时候，你必须尽可能长时间地集中注意力。如果你不能集中注意力，你应该感到内疚。你会看到诸如“如何做到不间断地集中注意力”、“如何连续10小时集中注意力”之类的短语。事实证明，这并不是我们人类能够长时间集中注意力的方式，尤其是如果我们不休息的话。这是不自然的。我们不可能不间断地集中精力——就像我们不可能不间断地举重一样——而不让自己精疲力竭。

What I also found is that people actually have rhythms of when they have focused attention, and it corresponds with the ebb and flow of the attentional resources that we have. And so, there’s times when we’re at peak focus — where we have a lot of attentional resources that we can use for tasks — and for most people, this actually happens mid- to late-morning. Then there’s a second peak, which is in the afternoon about 2-3:00 p.m. You know, it’s important to understand what these rhythms of peak focus are ­— as opposed to thinking about just spending nonstop focus for many hours at a time.

我还发现，人们集中注意力的时间其实是有规律的，它与我们所拥有的注意力资源的潮起潮落相对应。所以，有时候我们的注意力会达到顶峰——我们有很多注意力资源可以用来完成任务——对大多数人来说，这实际上发生在上午中段到晚些时候。然后是第二个高峰，大约在下午2点到3点。你知道，重要的是要了解这些高峰注意力的节奏是什么——而不是想着一次只花几个小时不间断地集中注意力。

The second myth is that the ideal state of attention that we should strive for is the idea of flow when we use our technologies. Now, flow is a term that the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi came up with ­— he discovered this. And flow is really … it’s a state of high creativity and people are just unaware of the passage of time.

第二个误区是，我们应该追求的理想注意力状态是当我们使用科技产品时的心流状态。心流是心理学家Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi提出的一个术语——他发现了这个。心流是一种高度创造力的状态，人们只是没有意识到时间的流逝。

Now many people have experienced flow, so they understand what this means. I started out as an artist ­— I used to experience flow regularly. If you’re a person who plays music or plays sports or you have a hobby that you’re passionate about doing — say carpentry — you might be able to experience flow quite regularly. But for most people who do knowledge work, which means the primary task that they do is dealing with digital information, it’s just not realistic to expect that people will get into flow. It’s about the nature of the task.

现在很多人都经历过心流，所以他们明白这是什么意思。我最初是一名艺术家——我曾经经常体验心流。如果你是一个喜欢音乐或运动的人，或者你有一个热爱的爱好——比如木工——你可能会经常体验到心流。但对于大多数从事知识工作的人来说，这意味着他们所做的主要任务是处理数字信息，期望人们进入心流是不现实的。这与任务的性质有关。

We have to think about having just the right balance of challenge and using our skill and having the right conditions for intrinsic motivation to really get into a flow state. And you can do that with any kind of artistic or music or sports endeavor, but it doesn’t happen magically when we’re using our devices. And unless you’re playing computer games or you’re a computer coder who writes really complex coding ­— they get into flow.

我们必须考虑如何在挑战和使用我们的技能之间取得适当的平衡，并为内在动机创造合适的条件，从而真正进入心流状态。你可以通过任何形式的艺术、音乐或体育努力做到这一点，但当我们使用我们的设备时，它不会奇迹般地发生。除非你在玩电脑游戏，或者你是一个编写非常复杂代码的计算机程序员——他们会进入心流状态。

The third myth — and we hear this quite often — is that the reason why we’re so distracted when we use our devices is primarily because of the notifications and targeted ads that we receive when we use our computers and phones. Well, it’s true. They are responsible for some of our distractions, but it’s not the full story.

第三个误区——也是我们经常听到的——是我们在使用设备时如此分心的主要原因是我们在使用电脑和手机时收到的通知和定向广告。嗯，这是真的。它们是我们分心的原因之一，但这并不是全部。

We do not use technology in a vacuum. We’re part of what I call a sociotechnical world. What that means is that there are all kinds of social influences. There are other technical influences that affect our attention.

我们不会在真空中使用技术。我们是我所说的社会技术世界的一部分。这意味着有各种各样的社会影响。还有其他影响我们注意力的技术因素。

For example, people may not realize that the very design of the internet was set up to mimic the way that our memory works. We think in terms of associations — that’s a theory of how semantic memory is structured. The internet, which comes from an idea called the Memex from Vannevar Bush back in 1945, was originally conceived as way to organize information in terms of associations. So, we go onto some internet page – let’s say a Wikipedia page — we start reading it and there’s so many entry points into our mind’s network. And we see an idea, we click on that link, and it sets off just a firestorm of associations inside of our minds. Then we see another link that’s associated with something we’re thinking of … before we know it, we’re down the rabbit hole.

例如，人们可能没有意识到互联网的设计是为了模仿我们记忆的工作方式。我们从联想的角度来思考——这是一种关于语义记忆结构的理论。互联网起源于Vannevar Bush在1945年提出的Memex的想法，最初的设想是通过关联来组织信息。所以，当我们进入某个网页，比如说维基百科的网页，我们开始阅读它，有很多进入我们大脑网络的入口。我们看到一个想法，我们点击那个链接，它就会在我们的脑海中引发一连串的联想。然后我们看到另一个与我们正在思考的事情相关的链接，在我们意识到之前，我们就掉进了兔子洞。

We’re social beings. We check email because we want to maintain a balance of social capital. So, I’m going to answer your email because I’m hoping you’ll answer mine, right? So, we exchange in social capital. There are all kinds of other influences as well: there’s power, there’s maintaining online identity. So, there’s just a host of reasons why we’re distracted. It’s not just notifications and targeted algorithms.

我们是社会生物。我们查看邮件是因为我们想保持社会资本的平衡。所以，我会回复你的邮件因为我希望你也会回复我的邮件，对吧?所以，我们交换社会资本。还有其他各种各样的影响:有权力，有维护网络身份。所以，我们分心的原因有很多。这不仅仅是通知和有针对性的算法。

The fourth myth is that when we do some kind of rote activity — remember, this is the activity where you’re really engaged and you’re not at all challenged — that when we do that, it has no purpose for us. It’s wasting our time. We shouldn’t play mindless, silly games because they’re taking away from something more important. And I argue that they serve a purpose for us.

第四个误区是，当我们做某种死记硬背的活动时——记住，这是你真正投入其中的活动，你根本不会受到挑战——当我们这样做时，它对我们来说是没有目的的。这是在浪费时间。我们不应该玩愚蠢的游戏，因为它们会让我们失去更重要的东西。我认为它们是为我们服务的。

So, first of all, our research finds out that when people do this kind of rote, mindless activity, they’re actually happier. Why? It has a calming influence on people. I have a game — a simple anagram game — that I play on my phone. Now, we can use these kinds of activities strategically to help us step back from hard work. Help our limited attentional resources replenish, right? It’s a way to calm us. Now we have to be strategic. You know, you can’t do that if you know that you’ve got to prepare for a meeting in an hour. Of course, it’s not a good idea to do it. But if you have a few minutes before a meeting that you know is going to be difficult, you can just kind of sit back, you can do some mindless activity for a few minutes and then you know, you have to stop.

首先，我们的研究发现，当人们做这种机械的、无意识的活动时，他们实际上更快乐。为什么?它对人有镇静作用。我有一个游戏——一个简单的字谜游戏——我在手机上玩。现在，我们可以策略性地利用这些活动来帮助我们从艰苦的工作中解脱出来。帮助我们补充有限的注意力资源，对吧?这是一种让我们平静下来的方法。现在我们必须有策略。你知道，如果你知道你要在一个小时内准备一个会议，你就不能这样做。当然，这样做不是个好主意。但是如果你知道会议前几分钟会很困难，你可以坐下来，你可以做一些不需要动脑的活动几分钟，然后你知道，你必须停下来。

We can create what I call hooks to pull us out of these rabbit holes. An example of a hook is knowing you have an appointment coming up. Another hook is you’re doing a commute and you know you’ve got to stop doing this activity to get off on your stop — hopefully you will stop. But we can look around us and we can create hooks — you know, external events that can help pull us out of these rabbit holes. In other words, we can allow ourselves a few minutes to do this kind of mindless rote activity. And it can help us. It might even make us happy.

我们可以创造一个我称之为钩子的东西把我们从兔子洞里拉出来。钩子的一个例子是知道你有一个约会即将到来。另一个吸引人的地方是，你正在上下班，你知道你必须停止做这个活动，在你到站的时候下车——希望你会停下来。但是我们可以看看我们的周围，我们可以创造钩子——你知道，外部事件可以帮助我们走出这些兔子洞。换句话说，我们可以给自己几分钟的时间来做这种无意识的死记硬背的活动。它可以帮助我们。它甚至可能使我们快乐。