Losing your concentration?
So is almost everyone. Here's what to do about it!
"I’m done ceding my brain — the core of all that makes me who I am — to the financial interests of a small number of technology billionaires or the shortsighted conveniences of hyperactive communication styles." - Cal Newport, New York Times
As Cal Newport wrote above, our minds and our thoughts comprise the essence of who we are. Said differently, all that you truly have is your consciousness. Let that sink in for a moment. Then consider what you are doing to keep that consciousness flourishing and free of contaminants.
Preserving our ability to think
The other night we went to dinner with two other couples. Our wide-ranging conversation turned at one point to the limestone cliffs and deep valleys that characterize the Illinois and Iowa river towns along the Mississippi. Our chatter followed the river north to Wisconsin, where adorable little towns outside of Madison have similar topography.
All of us knew there is a name for this swath of land that was left untouched by glaciers and retained its hilly topography, but none of us could think of the word. After a couple of tries, someone reached for a phone.
“No!” I commanded, all in good fun. “Let’s think of it.” Everyone seemed happy with the challenge.
We thought for another minute or two and soon Sophie exclaimed, a little hesitantly, “Driftless?”
Yes! That was it. Driftless. The places where receding glaciers didn’t leave behind their drift, or deposits of silt, clay, and rock. It felt like a victory that we, collectively, remembered the correct answer without using a machine. For that moment, anyway, the six of us had preserved our ability to think.
How are your cognitive skills?
Consider the following questions:
Have you found it harder to concentrate on reading (paper) books lately?
Is it hard for you to focus on a difficult challenge for long periods of time?
Is it hard for you to write or create in the analog world for long periods of time without checking media?
Do you tune out or become tempted to check a device while in a long, in-person conversation?
I imagine that you responded affirmatively to at least one of these questions. I answered yes to them all, which is the saddest commentary since I know what I’m about to write.
The rapid decline of critical thinking
A decade ago, author Cal Newport came out with a book called Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. He argued at the time that email and the internet were eroding our ability to concentrate on mental tasks for long stretches of time. He posited that those who could train themselves to continue to do so would win the future. They would have a rare skill to employ in solving many types of problems across industries and the arts.
Last month, Newport wrote an article for the New York Times called “There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate.” Over the last ten years, he has revised his hypothesis. Initially he had been focused on helping people find time to think, but in 2026 he is concerned about a drastic dip in the mere ability to think. He wrote, “In 2016 my main concern was helping people find enough free time for deep work. Today I think we’re rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all, regardless of how much space we can find in our schedules for these efforts.”
In the article, Newport traces a number of studies that reveal a decline in cognitive skills, dating from the mid-2010s when smartphones and social media became rampant in quotidian life. He cites additional data that show that consuming short-form videos like TikTok and YouTube Shorts decrease critical thinking.
But Cal Newport is not down about it. Instead, he proposes revolution in “thinking health” the way we’ve had a recent revolution in understanding the dangers of ultraprocessed foods: “Much of the digital content that ensnares our attention in the current moment is also ultraprocessed, in that it’s the result of vast databases of user-generated content that are sifted, broken down and recombined by algorithms into personalized streams designed to be irresistible. What is a TikTok video if not a digital Dorito?”
"What is a TikTok video if not a digital Dorito?" - Cal Newport
What we can do if TikTok really is a “digital Dorito”
Newport suggests, with evidence, that the videos that we are increasingly scrolling on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, news apps, and more are akin to ultraprocessed food for the brain. He proposes solutions as “cardio for our ailing brains.”
For example, he muses, what if reading a dozen pages in a book per day could become the new 10,000 steps? He does suggest reading, which requires thinking, as an important fix.
We can also reject the phone-as-appendage model of living. Keep it out of reach, in another room. Only check it at designated times, or when necessary.
At the office, Newport says we must change collaboration strategies so they don’t require constant back-and-forth messaging. A study he cites found that the average employee is interrupted every two minutes during the work day! That’s a disaster for critical, creative thinking.
We should also, according to Newport, be careful about our approach to using artificial intelligence, making sure that it doesn’t cause more work or what is now being called “brain fry.” While using AI to automate repetitive tasks can decrease burnout, Newport says we should be very careful about using AI to make core tasks less “cognitively demanding.” For example, “Your writing should be your own. The strain required to craft a clear memo or report is the mental equivalent of a gym workout by an athlete; it’s not an annoyance to be eliminated but a key element of your craft.”
A deep soul success story
I have long maintained that employing the deep soul strengths can guide us toward living our most authentic, creatively productive lives. They guide us to use and develop our own personal AI —our Authentic Intelligence. When I look around at the people who are living less distracted lives, who are able to concentrate on their craft and deep work, I see active deep souls behind the curtain.
Take a dear friend of mine who shall remain behind that curtain for the purposes of this article. She is someone whose creative productivity I aspire to. In the last couple of years, she has written one novel, revised it at least seven times, started another novel, prolifically written poetry, and painted many canvases and pages with watercolors and oil paints. Of course, she doesn’t think she’s doing a good job of it, but she’s immersed in the common fog of imposter syndrome. I on the other hand can look at her from the mountain-top vantage point of an outsider.
The other day I asked my friend, in the spirit of Mason Currey, about her daily practices. In fact, they are quite similar to the daily practices of the classic creators profiled in Currey’s Daily Rituals books. Most of those creators didn’t have to contend with this deluge of digital distraction, and my friend is doing an exemplary job of it!
She wakes before the house and writes a poem and a journal entry. During this time she doesn’t check her phone, which she has changed to grayscale to make it less appealing.
She’s not on social media.
She leaves email off her phone and checks it on her computer about three times daily.
Her daily average of phone pickups is 56 right now, mostly related to the notes feature. She views her phone as a tool to collect inspiration.
She has several Zoom-based cowriting groups that help keep her on a writing schedule, and accountable to her writing. She has other in-person groups for both writing and art that meet more infrequently, and these give her resources to contact when she’s stuck or needs feedback. The feedback she gives to others when they reach out to her serves as inspiration, too.
She rarely reads the news.
She reads or listens to about 60 bound books each year and has no streaming services, but does make use of the library’s Roku for movies of interest. She doesn’t drink caffeine for health reasons. She doesn’t have Amazon prime nor does she spend time shopping online except for used books which sounds like a guilty pleasure as opposed to an addiction.
She walks every day, which she finds useful for idea generation, solving problems, inspiration, and of course exercise.
If this to you sounds like a life of self-denial and boredom, you are greatly underestimating the satisfaction of the creative process and living in the real world!
My friend is one of the most interesting people to talk with. She always has thoughtful questions to ask and ideas to share. She has insights. She observes. She knows things because she has immersed herself in learning them. She won’t admit to being a great thinker, but she does admit to being a good listener.
She would also admit to being an explorer, a wonderer, a researcher, and an experimenter. She would blush and protest at being called a genius, but that’s what I’m going to call her: a genius. At this moment in time, it is genius to maintain your personal AI—your authentic intelligence, which is your power to think. And she is doing this.
My friend is not a hermit, either. She’s active in the community, with her family, and as a volunteer. She gets her hands dirty in a garden. She goes to the gym. And the work that she does brings beauty, humor, and perceptivity to a world greatly in need of being reminded that there is, indeed, good.
Which brings me back to Cal Newport, and the decline of cognitive thinking as witnessed across the land, and the need for you and me to concentrate. Here are those four important questions again:
Have you found it harder to concentrate on reading (paper) books lately?
Is it hard for you to focus on a difficult challenge for long periods of time?
Is it hard for you to write or create in the analog world for long periods of time without checking media?
Do you tune out or become tempted to check a device while in a long, in-person conversation?
And now I’ll add a fifth and a sixth:
Do you wish to get better at thinking? Do you want your concentration back?
If the answer is yes, you don’t have to do exactly what my friend does to nurture and exercise your mind. In fact, the lesson that I learned reading hundreds of profiles of creative thinkers and doers in Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals books is that each one of them had a particular, unique approach that worked for them. But there is overlap, like going for walks every day, that many productive thinkers across centuries have used to nourish their original thinking.
The key is to be deliberate, to be intentional, and to not let the currents of life pull you unthinkingly through your days. Devise an approach to beat the cognitive decline and keep your own thinking in tip-top condition. In so doing, you will be sought after for your unique skill in this modern era.