Taking back control of your attention

Frequently asked questions

My job requires me to answer quickly, how do I manage? Responsiveness is almost always less demanding in practice than in principle. Start by measuring the delay actually expected: it is often an hour, rarely two minutes. Then negotiate the form: announce slots for handling messages, for example three times a day, and a separate channel for what is genuinely urgent. An announced unavailability goes down well, an unannounced one does not. Finally keep one or two protected blocks a day, even short ones. If your post really imposes continuous response, the problem is organisational and is dealt with by your manager.

And children, should screens be limited? The question goes well beyond this programme, which addresses adults about their own use. Two simple markers are worth stating even so. What counts is less the number of hours than what the screen displaces: sleep, free play, physical activity, exchanges. And family rules hold when they apply to everyone and bear on moments rather than quotas. For the rest, in particular managing conflicts around screens and setting a frame without spending your evenings on it, see Screens and social media: a guide for parents, which addresses these situations directly.

Remote work makes everything harder, is that normal? It is common, for three reasons. The boundaries of place and time disappear, so nothing signals the start and the end of work. Permanent availability becomes the visible proof that one is working, which pushes towards fast replies. And the social markers that structured the day — commutes, shared breaks, lunches — have gone. The useful levers are mainly material: a place reserved for work however tiny, announced start and end times, a symbolic commute before and after, and blocks entered in the shared calendar so that they are visible to others.

Do social networks damage mood? A link is observed between certain uses and lower mood, particularly among already vulnerable people. But causality remains disputed: it is quite possible that low mood also increases use, which would give the same correlation in the other direction. The average effects reported are small, and above all highly variable across people, platforms and ways of using. Scrolling passively while comparing yourself does not have the same effect as exchanging with people you know. The most reliable marker is your own: note your mood before and after for a week, and see which uses leave a low trace. That is more useful information than any average.

Can I read on a screen before sleeping? The role of screen light has probably been overstated in public discussion. The most decisive factor is what you are doing, not the device you are holding. A novel read on an e-reader without notifications is much like a book. A feed, a series that runs episodes together, or work messages stimulate, engage and supply material to chew over, which delays falling asleep far more reliably. If you read on a screen, switch off every notification and choose content that ends. And if your sleep is lastingly degraded, that is a subject in its own right: see Getting your sleep back: the Psychotip® programme.

Do I have an attention disorder? That is a question for a professional, not for a fact sheet or an online questionnaire. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, is characterised by attention difficulties and sometimes impulsivity present since childhood, in several areas of life, with substantial and lasting impact. Distractibility that appeared recently, limited to work or arising in a context of tiredness, stress or low mood, closely resembles ADHD without being it. These situations are hard to tell apart from the outside, and self-diagnosis often leads to mistaken conclusions in both directions. If the question concerns you, speak to your doctor, who can refer you for an assessment.

Should I switch to a basic phone to get out of it? It works for some people and not for many others, generally because genuinely necessary functions disappear at the same time: journeys, payments, group messages, work tools. Before a radical solution, try the graduated version described in step 3, which often obtains a good part of the result at a lower cost. If you still want to try, do it as a dated experiment, two or three weeks, with a planned return. You will then know what you lose and what you gain, instead of supposing it.

How long before I see a change? The effects of environmental changes show quickly, often within the first days, because they require no daily effort. The capacity to stay a long time on a task progresses more slowly, generally between the third and the sixth week, and irregularly. The relationship with the phone in private life is the slowest, because it touches habits of comfort. A good indicator of progress is not screen time, but two other figures: the duration of the blocks you actually hold, and the number of times you have to resist in a day. The second should fall faster than the first rises.