In today’s hyper-connected world, the most valuable commodity is no longer oil, data, or even gold…it’s your attention. Yet despite our awareness of our growing inability to focus on one thing at a time, it would seem this critical resource continues to vanish before our very eyes. Studies show that the average person checks their phone well over 100 times per day (Wheelwright, 2025). Couples now report their partners spending more time on their smartphones than with them (Mahipal, A., Wright, S., and McConomy, S., 2021). Many people are now accessing the internet at home through their mobile devices (Sidoti & Dawson, 2024). Young people exhibiting symptoms of ADHD have surged (Zeyrek, I., Tabara, M.F. and Çakan, M., 2024; Panagiotidi, M. and Overton, P., 2020; Kim, S. G., Park, J., Kim, H. T., Pan, Z., Lee, Y., & McIntyre, R. S., 2019), and entire industries have been reshaped by shrinking consumer patience and shorter content formats. Nowadays, when we are asked to concentrate for extended periods of time, we may miss the message altogether.
It’s safe to say we are living through an attention crisis spurred by our collective, compulsive relationship with technology and social media. And in the high-performance career space, commonly including professions in sports, medicine, finance, sales, and really any results-driven jobs requiring deep levels of focus, concentration, creativity, and poise under pressure, the effects of our compulsive tech usage have already impacted the quality of our workforce in ways we’ve never really experienced in society. Our brains are changing quicker than we can account for.
In this sort of environment, something as simple as monotasking—the ability to focus deeply on one task at a time—isn’t just a productivity hack. It’s become a future-proof mental skill that may increasingly distinguish top performers from the distracted majority. For entrepreneurs, executives, and high-level professionals, learning to protect and refine your focus could become your most valuable competitive edge in the decades to come.
The Age of Distraction: How Technology Hijacked Our Focus
We’ve all seen them by now. The distracted employees, head down, staring at their phone amongst customers, texting, scrolling, irritated, you would dare disrupt their conversation to ask which aisle the toilet paper was located in. Unfortunately, this is now the ubiquitous, commonplace experience of the modern smartphone and social media landscape. Due to how integrated these devices have become in society, one study shows that up to 98% of Americans own a cellphone, 91% of them being smartphones (Sidoti & Dawson, 2024). Employers have likely been forced to develop a level of tolerance for distracted workers in order to remain staffed and fully functional. It’s simply part of life now. Walk through any office or scroll through any Zoom call, and you’ll see the eyes glancing back and forth, from computer screens to phones, and back again. It’s become hard to avoid, even for the most focused minds with the best intentions of concentration in the here and now.
But the issue runs deeper than we may realize. Our neurology has actually been targeted and exploited beyond our awareness.
Most digital platforms are engineered to stimulate our brain’s dopamine reward system—the same circuitry reinforces addictive behavior (Mallory, 2024; Mukica, Crowell, Villano, Uddin, 2022). Every like, notification, or new message delivers a small hit of dopamine, creating powerful feedback loops when you consider the frequency with which we access our devices. Our brain, in a sense, has been retained, beyond our awareness, to crave digital consumption. The result? Perpetual inattentiveness and partial, shallow engagement across many areas of our lives. This may not seem as bad as it is until you consider the possibility of our overall effectiveness at life and our jobs declining in multiple areas as a result of these new habits.
Culturally, we’ve compounded the issue by integrating smartphones and social media into basically everything we do. Interestingly, though, despite our love affair with hustle culture and championing those who always appear busy, the science is clear: multitasking is a myth (Madore, K. P., & Wagner, A. D., 2019; American Psychological Association, 2006). The brain does not actually multitask. What we mistake for multitasking is, in reality, rapid task switching. Take elite professionals—surgeons, athletes, day traders, and top executives—they aren’t dividing their attention across multiple tasks; they’re rapidly switching between them with remarkable speed, accuracy, and effectiveness. Their real skill? Deep mastery of the individual tasks comprising their overall job description and an ability to transition between them, seamlessly, with minimal effort, all while maintaining their poise and performance standards. If it sounds like a lot, well, it is. That’s why they are so good at what they do.
What most of us are doing, though, is the opposite. We are not rapidly switching between tasks out of necessity, but out of untrained habit, doing way too many things at once, often none of them very well. The “multitasking” we’re most familiar with, jumping between apps and open browser tabs, has been shown to tax working memory, increase error rates, and drain cognitive resources (May, K.E., Elder, A.D., 2018). As a result, our ability to critically analyze, deeply concentrate, and creatively problem solve all declines. And when it does come time to “lock in” and focus on the moment, we’re more likely to struggle.
The Erosion of Concentration in Daily Life
Due to the compulsive, patterned, and repetitive nature we use our devices and log into our accounts, our loss of focus has become generalized across almost all areas of our lives. Inattentiveness is spilling over into relationships, parenting, hobbies, and career endeavors.
Excessive screen time has also been shown to impact us emotionally (Santos et al., 2023). The more fragmented our attention, the more likely we feel anxious, dissatisfied, and disengaged. In a world built on surface-level interactions, experiences such as deep connection—both with others and ourselves—become harder to sustain the more we detach with screen time. Parents stare at their phones now instead of playing with their kids. Children walk through grocery stores wearing headphones, walking forward while staring down into their devices, avoiding social interaction. Athletes check social media profiles during halftime of games instead of strategizing with teammates about their approach in the second half.
Obviously, to return the foundational mental skills we’ve lost over time, something has to change. And since the tech isn’t going anywhere, the onus is on us to regain what we’ve lost.
Focus and Mastery: The Foundation of High Performance
This article wasn’t written solely to focus on the deficits created by excessive cellphone, TikTok and Instagram usage, but to highlight the potential costs of our compulsive behavioral patterns and reflect on what might be necessary to regain the mental skills that may have been lost in the process.
As a mental performance coach who has worked with elite performers across professional sports, business, and entertainment for over 10 years, I have seen from experience that no matter the performance context, the mental skills required to perform at a high level remain the same across all areas of life. Deep focus, concentration, poise, creativity, endurance, and resilience are some of the core mental abilities enabling us to be our best, both at home and in the workplace.
Consider a neurosurgeon in the operating room, a musician mid-performance, or a founder pitching to investors. They are not multitaskers. They are professionals who have spent years building the cognitive endurance to engage in deep work for extended periods—the kind of focused, uninterrupted effort necessary to be great at what you do. They don’t do multiple things at once or even tout that as some sort of accomplishment. Instead, they master the individual elements of their work and learn to perform them very well. Their mastery enables their quickness. There is no mindless, wasted effort.
For today’s professional seeking to separate from the pack, consider the benefits of learning to monotask again. Review some of the suggestions provided below and think about how setting time away from digital noise may help improve your life and performance.
Reclaiming Focus: Mental Skills from Sports Psychology
Focus is a skill. And like any skill, it can be trained, and you can get better. The same way we unintentionally trained ourselves into patterns of inattentiveness through compulsive engagement of our devices and social media profiles, the same way we can develop new systems and infrastructure supporting the redevelopment of our ability to focus on one thing at a time.
Here are a few strategies for retraining your brain to monotask, concentrate, be where your feet are, and mindfully experience life again without a screen:
1. Read physical books, magazines, and newspapers
One of the best ways to avoid the negative effects of screen time is to re-engage with physical media. While digital media has become the dominant medium for reading and learning in today’s society, there is no replacement for learning to sit still, focus your eyes from left to right on the physical text in your hands, and read a real book.
You’d also be surprised how much information in physical books cannot be found on the internet. The people who actually read physical books tend to know more than those who don’t.
2. Meditation
In our current digital climate, we don’t set aside enough time to be fully present with ourselves. Although wellness is a common byproduct of regular meditation, meditation is also not all about physical wellness. It’s about connecting to the soul and spiritual infinity inside of you, inside all of us. The mind, unlike the physical body, is endless. It’s the only part of you that has no boundaries. When we stare at screens most of the day, filling our time with physical stuff and mindless noise, we lose this part of ourselves quickly.
Set aside 5 to 10 minutes per day to be still, experience your thoughts and feelings, and meditate. And remember, there is no wrong way to meditate, so you don’t have to question whether “you’re doing it right.” Always remember this: the answers you seek in life often lie in the places you rarely go.
3. Mental Rehearsal
For the professionals of the world, this one is for you. Mental rehearsal, or intentional visualization, is a powerful preparation technique used by many of the world’s elite performers. An athlete may visualize the successful execution of their technique before a big performance. A CEO might visualize masterfully weaving together several concepts into a great speech at an upcoming conference. A surgeon might imagine maintaining steady hands, stable breathing, and experiencing deep feelings of confidence and security while engaged in a complex operation.
By rehearsing how you want your days or experiences to go prior to encountering them in the physical, you prime the brain and body for successful execution. There is no limit to the number of mental repetitions you can use to supplement your study and physical training. A byproduct of doing this repeatedly is also retrain yourself into focusing and concentrating for extended periods on a singular task.
This is a more advanced form of intentional meditation that can even be used in your personal life. Sometimes rehearsing tough conversations with a friend or loved one in your head prior to the moment can help you feel better about what’s to come too.
Pro tip: When you do this form of meditation, be sure to stimulate as many of your five senses as possible. This makes the experience more vivid, engaging, and effective.
4. Develop a hobby that doesn’t require technology
Knit, sew, build pyramids with Lego blocks, read a book, cook a new dish, learn to change the brakes on your car, cut down that tree in the back yard, and make a table. The point is, put your phone down. Don’t ask the internet how to complete the project. Use the physical instructions provided in the package, use your mind, and figure it out.
Reconnect with your physical reality. Something requiring you to be still, analyze, and focus on the task at hand without any unnecessary digital devices, especially your phone.
5. Go to in-person work trainings, and leave your phone in the car.
The work-from-home model has made it too easy for us to no longer feel obligated to be fully present in our skill-building process. Instead of sitting in front of your computer from home playing Candy Crush while your training video plays in the background, try going to in-person trainings instead. You’ll be more present, likely learn more, and experience a deeper level of engagement with your skill-building.
It may be just what’s necessary to help get you to the next level. Leave your phone in the car to eliminate the distraction of unnecessarily checking it during break times. You’ll survive the anxiety you may feel in its absence.
Inserting any combination of these practices into your personal or professional life will help you gradually improve your ability to focus on one thing at a time again. Once you find the right combination of tech-free things that work for you, be sure to integrate them into your daily lifestyle. Only through the repetition of stepping away from your devices regularly and reducing overall screen time will your brain gradually regain its ability to concentrate and monotask like a champion.
Monotasking is the Competitive Advantage of the Future
We’re entering an era where maintaining concentration is quickly becoming a rarity. Proactive professionals should see this as an opportunity to develop an elite mental skill and competitive edge others might lack as modern life and the job market evolve. The people who run the world are always the most focused.
Don’t overcomplicate the process of trying to get ahead by thinking you need to master everything, everywhere, all at once. Something as simple as monotasking and learning to maintain your attention on what’s right in front of you can make all the difference. The true leaders of tomorrow will be those who can master the art of doing just one thing at a time.
And let’s face it…nobody likes it when you can’t pay attention long enough for them to finish what they were trying to tell you anyway.
LinkedIn | MIKE WILEY JR |
| Mike Wiley Jr. is a licensed therapist and mental performance strategist with over a decade of experience in clinical counseling and performance coaching. He is the current owner and founder of MadeMind Wellness & Performance, a therapy and coaching private practice based in the Atlanta, GA area. Mike was previously the Director Mental Performance for the Chicago Bears in the NFL and has helped elite performers across sports, business, and entertainment master the pressures of high-pressure environments, enhance focus, and lead with grounded intention and purpose. |
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