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Martine Ellis

πŸ’­ How Long is Your Attention Span?

Published 2 months agoΒ β€’Β 2 min read

Hello friend,

I hope you've had a good week.

I'll keep my introduction brief today as I'm at the achy stage of a seasonal bug so planning to return to a horizontal state ASAP. Thankfully, past-me pulled together everything in today's email earlier in the week, so I have some great things to share with you today.

Here's your weekend digest. I propose a perkier introduction next weekend.

✏️ Doodle Essay

​This week's doodle essay shares a scary statistic about the length of our attention spans while using screens. The research behind the number (47 seconds!) was carried out by Dr Gloria Mark. I have just added her book, Attention Span, to my reading queue.

In my doodle essay, I refer to the Pomodoro Technique as a way to train your attention. I just updated this post which shares my four favourite Pomodoro timers.

πŸ“š Read

Here are some articles from other creators I thought you might enjoy:

  • Rahul from Hulry shares a lovely experiment: he's writing quarterly emails to himself using Gmail's scheduling feature to check in on goals. Nice idea!
  • I'm curious about the idea of adding to your life through subtraction. In this article, Dr Boardman invites us to consider that we might just need to do less this January... and that is OK.
  • Here's another cracking post from Bree Groff: 20 Short Rules for Better Days at Work. This post led me to last week's doodle essay topic, Yutori. I also love her suggestion 16 (as you've probably already noticed, I love it when past-me does things for future-me).

If you're curious about the books I'm reading, you can see my library in Tana here: Library. I'm craving familiar, "comfort" fiction at the moment, so a slow re-read of Lord of the Rings is hitting the spot.

πŸ“Ί Watch

​This video from Daniel Pink offers some solid suggestions for improving our attention spans (try watching it without doing ANYTHING else):

video preview​

🎧 Listen

My two favourite podcast episodes this week were:

  • ​This episode of Feel Better Live More: Dr Rangan Chatterjee interviews Joshua Fields Milburn from The Minimalists about how decluttering your home can improve your mental wellbeing.
  • ​This episode of the Zoe podcast: An interview with National Geographic Fellow and longevity expert, Dan Buettner, sharing the five daily habits of people who live longer.

I listen to podcasts in the Snipd app, but you can find shows and episodes I recommend on your preferred podcast platform. Use my referral link to get a month of Snipd Premium for free.

That's all from me today. Have a great week, and I will be in touch again next weekend.

Best wishes,

Martine

Whenever you’re ready, here are a few ways I can help:

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Martine Ellis

martineellis.com

Sustainable productivity starts with wellbeing. Each weekend, I share practical strategies, short essays, doodles, and recommendations to help you live and work in a way that supports your wellbeing.

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