An Experiment in Healing Attention
What blocking access to your phone does for your ability to focus. Plus, advice from Jenny Odell, the author of How to Do Nothing , on fighting distraction.
Julie Beck, a staff writer at The Atlantic, opens the final episode of the podcast "How to Touch Grass" by expressing her own concerns about her relationship with her phone. She admits to getting lost in Instagram Reels and forgetting to lock her locker at the gym, leading to lost time.
Her co-host, Natalie Brennan, shares that she too worries about her attention span, having noticed it declining since the start of COVID-19 about five years ago. They both grapple with the idea that their relationship with their phones is unhealthy and they desire to heal it.
In this episode, they also hear from Jenny Odell, the author of "How to Do Nothing" and "Saving Time." Odell discusses how her antagonism towards her phone initially helped her make peace with it. She emphasizes that attention spans are not just affected by smartphones but are also deeply intertwined with our relationship to technology as a whole.
Odell explains that the attention economy thrives on quick fixes, but lasting change requires time and patience. She likens forming habits to geological processes, which can take time to see results. She also notes that muscle memory plays a significant role in our interactions with our phones, making it difficult to break free from ingrained behaviors.
Written by urgent.news from The Atlantic's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
