Tired? Distracted? Burned-Out? Listen to This.

I’m convinced that attention is the most important human faculty. Your life, after all, is just the sum total of the things you’ve paid attention to. And we lament our attention issues all the time: how distracted we are, how drained we feel, how hard it is to stay focused or present. And yet, while there’s no shortage of advice on how to improve our sleep hygiene, or spending, or physical fitness, there’s hardly any good information about how to build and replenish our capacity for paying attention. So for the start of the new year, I wanted to have a conversation with Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, author of the book “ Attention Span ,” and one of the few people who’s deeply studied the way our attention works, how that’s been changing, and what we can do to stop frittering our attention budgets away. Book recommendations: “ The Challenger Launch Decision ” by Diane Vaughan “ The Undoing Project ” by Michael Lewis “ The God Equation ” by Michio Kaku Mentioned: We’re looking for a researcher to join our team. Learn more and apply here . And we’re looking for an associate engineer. Learn more and apply here . Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us…