Clickbait, picbait and our attention
One of the biggest challenges all working humans face today is how to manage their attention. Distraction is now at our fingertips and ‘multitasking’ is now an excuse for not being able to stay focused.
Social media platforms are still one of the best ways for those in business to educate themselves, with thousands of research articles, insightful articles and culture ideas being shared daily. If only we had the discipline to find and read them!
Think about your last attempt to read a substantial article online. How many times did you get distracted? How many notifications pulled you away? How long was it before you skipped to the end? There’s a good chance that you struggled to get through this article without your phone luring you into another dopamine-fuelled rabbit hole!
It’s not just you, it’s pretty much everyone. According to research our attention spans have plummeted from around 2½ minutes to around 45 seconds over the past two decades.
The technology platforms know this, of course. Social media algorithms are specifically designed to trigger dopamine responses through intermittent reinforcement, which is the same principle that makes gambling machines so addictive. They're not accidentally making us scroll mindlessly; they're exceptionally good at it.
Which means that it’s up to you to be discerning when it comes to the content you ‘consume’ in your feed as essentially it becomes self-reinforcing, like digital fast food. It tastes good at that moment, but does nothing to nourish you in the medium to long-term and the chance for real education is lost.
Think about your LinkedIn feed for a moment. How much of what you're consuming actually makes you better at your job? How much genuinely challenges your thinking or teaches you something useful? I'm willing to bet that most of it falls into two categories:
Clickbait - headlines that immediately resonate as they confirm what you already believe; or what I like to call
Picbait - those motivational quotes plastered over sunset photos that make you feel momentarily inspired before you forget them entirely.
The more that we ‘like’ clickbait and picbait, the more of it will be presented to us and you’ll end up in a never-ending ‘scroll-like-scroll-like-scroll-like’ doom loop.
Yet this does nothing to serve the ‘future you’. Our attention is a limited cognitive resource that depletes throughout the day. If you're spending your prime mental hours scrolling through content that doesn't add value to you, you're essentially giving away your most precious resource for free.
Instead of passively consuming whatever the algorithm serves up, become an active curator of your own learning. Seek out content that genuinely challenges your assumptions. Follow people who you disagree with intelligently. Read articles that make you think rather than just nod along.
I've started applying a simple test to everything I consume: "Will this make me better at what I do, or will this challenge how I think?" If the answer is no to both, I move on. It's amazing how much time this frees up for actually useful learning. It also has the secondary effect of ‘cleaning up’ my feed to present me with more of the content that I’m looking for, especially on LinkedIn.
This habit change can also influence how we work together too. Teams that build cultures of deep focus and intentional learning consistently outperform those that operate in constant distraction mode.
The good news is that we all have agency over how we choose to direct our attention. Start small. Pick one source of genuinely valuable content each day. Read it properly. Think about it. Maybe even discuss it or share it with a colleague without immediately moving on to the next thing. You could start with this one!
Your future self will thank you for treating your attention like the finite, valuable resource it actually is. Because in a world full of distractions, the ability to focus deeply will become a competitive advantage.
You made it to the end, well done! And thank you, I hope it has given you something to think about.
