Each of us has a small computer in our pockets at all times that, for some baffling and reductive reason, we refer to as a phone. It gives us constant access to everyone and everything.

Worse still, it ensures we never go too long without receiving a notification of some kind, all pinging with the same urgency no matter how trivial the content of the actual message.

So if you feel like your attention span is getting shorter, it is, but it’s not exactly your fault. Our worsening attention spans are one symptom of a systemic problem with few sustainable solutions.

Most of us know the problem started in Silicon Valley. The social media revolution hacked our brains. It was intentional, and it was more effective than anyone could have predicted.

Gamifying our attention spans with notifications, like buttons, and intermittent variable rewards granted each time we load updates on our feeds or swipe on Tinder have made a handful of apps undeniably addictive.

Tricking users into engaging with apps as long as possible is integral to the social media business model. For many of us, we find this annoying and exploitative, but not necessarily harmful for our brains.

But it is. And it doesn’t stop at Instagram or TikTok. It may have started there -- our inability to focus began sliding rapidly downhill with the advent of social media -- but now distractions are an expected and often necessary part of our everyday lives.

Statistically speaking, all office workers have been losing their ability to focus. We are all taking a lot longer than we should to get things done, and we aren’t performing as well as we could be at work. On average, knowledge workers focus on any one task for about 3 minutes before being distracted or moving on to something else.

It’s important to keep in mind that we are not collectively lazy, and we aren’t less motivated than we were 5 or 10 years ago.  It’s that text messages, emails, Instagram notifications, TikTok, Reddit, and the constant, insidious beckoning of the internet has kept many of us in the shallow-end of our minds for years.

Shifting the blame onto individual responsibility obfuscates the real issue, which is that our dogged pursuit of technological innovation has given rise to a problem that -- if left unaddressed -- will continue to rob us of one of the most beautiful and gratifying gifts of being human: thinking deeply and creatively.

How distractions really limit us

Journalist and author Johann Hari is particularly bothered by this coordinated attack on our attention spans. In an article for the Guardian, which features findings from his book, Stolen Focus, Hari explored this issue and took it upon himself to see if he could resolve its side effects in his everyday life.

What bothered Hari most about our societal problem with attention management is that it makes it nearly impossible for us to enter a “flow state”.

Flow is the deepest form of attention: it’s that boundless inner world you slip into when you’re really in the zone and working on something you care about. In a flow state, focusing deeply feels natural. Hari says you “lose track of time and shed your ego,” which is an accurate characterization of the experience I’ve had when I’ve been writing for a few hours uninterrupted.

As part of his research for Stolen Focus, Hari interviewed Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Claremont, California, about what it takes to enter a flow state. First, you need to focus on just one goal. To achieve a flow state, you must use all your mental energy deliberately toward a single task.

Second, the goal needs to be meaningful to you, or you won’t get in the groove. Third, you need to do something that is at the limit of your capabilities. The example Hari uses is “if, say, the rock you are climbing is slightly higher and harder than the last rock you climbed.”

When I am honest with myself, the frequency with which I met all 3 of these criteria within the last year is probably zero. I never got into a flow state at any time this year.

I haven’t made substantial progress on any passion projects or finished a single book. I got a third of the way through Ulysses, about 20 pages from the end of The Door by Magda Szabo, and started but abandoned a book (ironically) about deep work.

This is a huge loss. I am happiest and feel at my best when I am writing in a flow state. It doesn’t matter what I’m working on -- it matters how it feels, and whether I’m able to dive into that fast, personal landscape where truly original thoughts live.

But the chance that any of us will have the opportunity to enter a flow state is becoming more and more unlikely.

And it’s not just our attention spans that suffer when we switch from Instagram to our texts to a news app and back again all day long. Our work performance suffers as well.

In his research, Hari stumbled on a study at the Carnegie Mellon University’s human computer interaction lab that asked 136 students to take a test. One group had their phone turned off for the duration of the test, and one group received intermittent text messages throughout. The students who texted throughout the exam, on average, performed 20% worse.

The conclusion of this experiment was, basically, that multitasking is a lie. Your brain cannot effectively execute on multiple tasks, follow multiple lines of thinking, or complete multiple projects at once with precision. The truth is that it can switch between each thought and project somewhat sloppily and with shallow attention to detail, but ultimately focusing on a singular task is far more productive than trying to juggle several.

This is not good news for me. I check my email about every ten minutes. I’m on Slack all the time. I respond to texts throughout the day -- several an hour. I look at Instagram less now than maybe ever -- it’s lost its luster for me -- but every time I can’t think of a word or remember an actor’s name I open Google and satiate my thirst for niche, useless knowledge immediately.

To restore his access to the most creative parts of his mind, Hari left his phone behind and stayed in a house in Provincetown without internet access for three months. He got a lot done, and he felt way better. For him, it was as simple as that. He felt more present, more aware, and more creative.

Reading his account, it was of course an attractive concept, but I knew I wouldn’t feel shiny and new and refreshingly alive the entire time if I completely disconnected.

Hari is 40 and spent half his life without cell phones. I’m 29, and have known the seductive comforts of a handheld device where me and my friends could constantly text and indulge an internet teeming with entertainment and news for most of my life. I knew I’d feel anxious if I eliminated my access to the digital world, but I decided to give it a shot.

Disconnecting and recalibrating

I did my own mini-experiment adjusted for a knowledge worker with a job at a young startup who cannot afford to ditch their phone and cut off internet access for months.

I turned my phone off for one day -- Wednesday, a day when I need to be especially productive. I figured it would be a good chance to see if disconnecting would improve my productivity and maybe make me feel a bit better and more focused at work.

I still checked my email occasionally, but without my phone to notify me of every new (usually unimportant marketing email from a brand), I checked it a lot less. I still checked Slack occasionally, but with notifications turned off, only twice that day. I didn’t have access to TikTok, the ultimate time thief, or the news, or instagram, or my texts, or Reddit, or Twitter.

That’s it. And the results, while perhaps not as extreme as Hari’s, were still pretty astounding to me.

When I woke up on Wednesday, I checked the clock on the stove in my apartment and saw it was 7:18. I didn’t use my alarm to wake up, I just let my body do it naturally, and I awoke at the same time I do just about every morning.

This isn’t too surprising -- our bodies have a reliable internal mechanism that measures and monitors our sleep and naturally wakes us up when we’re rested, and if we wake up at the same time every day, our bodies adjust to that rhythm. But it was a subtle reminder that I often rely on my phone for things I don’t really need, at least most of the time.

Immediately, I felt anxious. I went to the bathroom and my first impulse was to take my phone with me while I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Not being able to do so felt like going outside without shoes on.

But I did my morning routine without it, and after a few seconds of discomfort, I felt totally fine. I felt alone in my apartment, in a good way. I lit some candles and wrote this blog post.

I got into a flow state writing the first half of this blog post. I didn’t know what time it was and I didn’t care. I knew it was about time for lunch when I started getting hungry, and I looked at the time in the top right corner of my laptop to find that three hours had passed.

I felt lucky that I’d been able to get into a flow state within an hour of starting my experiment, but it made sense. I had set a concerted intention to do deep work, and without any meaningless distractions to disrupt my focus or dilute my passion for the experiment, I’d been able to meet my goal.

During lunch, I went for what felt like a long walk without my phone. This was difficult and uncomfortable. I was bored and antsy, and when I came back inside I saw I’d only been gone for thirty minutes. The addiction to our phones does have consequences, and it would likely take a few more days of mindful disconnection to enjoy walking or exercising without my music.

After my walk, I continued with my workday. I felt more alert and present during meetings and generally less impatient and restless than usual during the yawning afternoon slump from 2pm to 5pm.

I closed my laptop feeling a sense of fulfillment. Prior to this experiment, I ended every day feeling stressed and anxious that I had left some loose end undone somewhere across my workflow. But on this day, I felt like I had devoted myself to my work at full capacity, which kept that familiar gnawing anxiety at bay.

Back to reality

The following day, I turned my phone on. I was instantly overwhelmed by Gmail, text, Slack, Instagram, and TikTok notifications. Most, of course, were of absolutely no importance. In my day offline, I had actually missed very little.

Agreeing as a society to throw our phones into the ocean and break free from this era of constant connectivity is not a realistic solution to our attention management problem. However, there are smaller, less dramatic ways to begin building up our attention spans so that flow states become more accessible in our daily lives.

Silencing unnecessary notifications (as in: basically all of them) and leaving our phones in the other room during work hours is one way to reduce distractions. But to effectively solve this problem, we will need to start pushing tech companies at the forefront of innovation to change the way they design their products such that gamification and engagement are no longer KPIs.

We need technology that encourages us to engage as little as possible. We need to choose products with business models that do not base profitability on how many addicted users are gained and retained each month. And we need to vote for this paradigm shift with our consumer choices and purchasing decisions.

When we, as users, start demanding and favoring apps and products that respect our desire to stay in control of our time and attention, we will create the opportunity for innovators to fill this need. It may take a while for the tide to shift away from addictive technologies, but it’s possible if we make it a priority.