Professor shares her opinion on productivity barrier

Posted by Elena del Valle on June 7, 2023

Attention Span

Photo: Hanover Press

Gloria Mark, Ph.D., professor, Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, believes she has found a new concept that identifies how our brains work in the digital world. She calls it kinetic attention and describes why she thinks it may help readers of Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity (Hanover Press, $28.99), her new book, to gain control of their productivity.

The 360-page hardcover book, published earlier this year, is divided into 14 chapters and three main parts: The Anatomy of Attention, The Underlying Forces of Distraction and Focus, Rhythm and Balance. In the book she explains that although we are in the Wild West era of the digital age we should be able to modify and manage the digital world despite the many pressing challenges it poses in our daily lives. Each of us has the power to determine where to focus our attention regardless of the many forces seeking to draw our attention toward them, according to the author.

Mark has been a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research since 2012, according to the biography in her book. She did not reply to requests for an interview or to answer questions submitted via email to a representative from her publishing company.