Caught in the Information Age: How Distraction and Evolutionary Wiring Clash in the Battle for Focus

The battle to grab your attention is hotter than the core of the sun. The speed at which we respond to stimuli is accelerating, resulting in our attention span diminishing. If you don’t believe me, here are some stats,

• 150 – Number of times we check our phone every day.

• 5 – Minutes before we are interrupted at work by an email or a colleague.

• 50 – Percentage of users reply to an email as soon as they get it.

• 35 – Days it took Angry Birds 35 days to get 50 million users, contrast that with radio, which took 38 years.

• 15 – Billion dollars is the estimated lost productivity cost of on-the-job smartphone use.

• 300,000 – Texting while driving crashes each year.

We are constantly connected, leaving us unavailable at any given moment.

The brain science

Our pleasure centre, nucleus accumbens, is a cluster of nerve cells right below the cerebral cortex. The region that lights up when gamblers place a bet, drug addicts snort, or when people have orgasms. The likelihood that an activity will lead to addiction is related to.

• how fast it releases dopamine.

• the intensity of that release

• the reliability of that release

All social media, smartphones, and modern-day tech are designed to cause a dopamine surge in the nucleus accumbens as fast as possible.

Peter Milner and James Olds, both neuroscientists, in a famous experiment placed a small electrode in the brains of rats on the nucleus accumbens. The rats had access to a lever when pressed sent a small electrical signal directly to their nucleus accumbens. The rats loved the lever action so much they forgot to eat, sleep, and even skipped sex. The rats kept pressing until they just dropped dead.

“Humans are information-seeking creatures.”, says Neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley. We are wired in a way to respond to information as quickly as we can. We evolved successfully precisely because of our ability to respond to information, and not be super focussed. If our ancestors heard a twig crack [new information] it would have served well to respond to that information than being focussed on whatever they were doing. What if it was a lion, clearly the new cave art could wait.

Every time we dispatch an email, tap out a text, or scroll through our news feed, our brain gets a dopamine hit, and we feel a tiny sense of accomplishment.

Distraction and Performance Relationship

Adam Gazzaley defines distractions as, “goal-irrelevant information that we either encounter in our external surroundings or generate internally within our minds.”

Our information-seeking drive is stronger than top-down cognitive control — attention, working memory, and goal management.

Repeated interruptions cause brain fatigue, and the casualty is attention, memory formation, and self-distraction. Simply put, the more you eliminate irrelevant input, the more resources you have for high-fidelity focus, mandatory for you to enter an optimal performance state.

Distraction shows up in the lives of sellers in many ways. My favourite few.

• Constantly checking emails and responding to them throughout the day.

• Getting sidetracked by social media notifications and updates.

• Engaging in non-essential conversations or meetings that eat up valuable time.

• Chasing after low-priority leads or prospects.

• Multitasking during important sales calls or meetings, reducing their effectiveness.

• Over-researching potential clients or competitors, losing focus on immediate tasks.

• Falling into the trap of “shiny object syndrome,” pursuing new opportunities impulsively.

• Allowing personal life or external factors to disrupt their workday.

• Dwelling on past rejections or failures, impacting their current sales efforts.

• Succumbing to procrastination instead of adhering to a structured sales plan.

Get unstuck and rewire our brains!

1. Goal Setting – This is the big one, this alone can reduce distractions more than all of the other recommendations put together. The Skwill protocol is the SMARTF3 method to set your goals. SMARTF3 protocol is an upgrade to the traditional SMART goals as it binds an emotional reason and the first three steps (F3) that sharpen your focus and increases commitment.

2. Time Management – Time Management is crucial for achieving your sales goals. At Skwill, we have a simple four-step process to make the most of your time:

   1. Task Selection: Identify performance events – tasks strongly linked to sales outcomes – and focus on them. Other tasks are less critical.

   2. Task Prioritization: Prioritize based on the 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle), focusing on what matters most, supported by research.

   3. Task Chunking: Break tasks into smaller parts to make them manageable and maintain your momentum. This prevents tasks from going unfinished.

   4. Task Scheduling & Execution: Different tasks require varying levels of cognitive and physical energy. Align tasks with your personal circadian rhythm whenever possible. For instance, schedule meetings and negotiations during your high-energy times, like 9:00 am – 12:00 pm.

3. Notification Ban – We all know the frustration of constant alerts from various sources like Outlook, Slack, Salesforce, WhatsApp, newsletters, and more, interrupting our work every few minutes. A straightforward solution is to enable the Focus settings on your Windows, Android, or Apple laptops and configure them to activate during periods when your cognitive energy is at its peak. This way, you can minimize distractions and boost your productivity.

What else can I do?

• While hanging out with friends or family, ask everyone present to turn off their phones or at least limit the time they take it out.

• Educate your team, friends, and your families about distractions.

• Nature walks can help reset fatigued brains.

• Meditation can enhance attention, memory, and processing speed.

• Physical exercise, especially aerobic activity strengthens our brain’s agility and resilience.

We’d love to hear your views in the comments.