Why Do People Lose Focus

As technological advances continue to surpass what anyone could have imagined in the 1950s, we continue to feel pressed for time. Despite technological advances that have saved time, members of our society have taken that time and applied it to additional tasks, aiming to achieve more with each second of time they can spare elsewhere. While multitasking has become integrated into the American lifestyle and a normal part of everyday life especially for Millennia's and Gen Z, and something that many think increases productivity, some studies find that multitasking actually causes people to lose focus and ultimately achieve far less than they would if they otherwise focused on one task at a time. In the New York Times article, “Multitasking Can Make You Lose … Um … Focus” by Alina Tugend, Tugend argues that multitasking doesn’t make people more productive but rather, causes them to lose focus on one task due to continuously shifting focus.

Swedish economist, Staffan Linder diagnosed the issue in 1970 when he noticed that increases of work-time also caused people to maximize the time they spent in indulging in leisure. As a result, people would consume more goods within a specified time period than they otherwise would if not trying to maximize time. One example Linder proposed of maximizing leisure time is of an individual enjoying a coffee, smoking a cigar, sipping on a French cognac, reading the New York Times and entertaining his wife all at once. According to Linder, by indulging in “simultaneous consumption,” leisure time feels less leisurely. Additionally, things like instant gratification produced by instantaneous access to goods/services, new technologies such as e-mail and smart phones, fast delivery times and immediate feedback processes have caused people to become more impatient and demand more in less