The fight for focus in a world of distraction

All In The Mind

ABC

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Be honest, how many times have you checked your notifications in the last hour? Or opened a new, totally unrelated tab? Or stopped what you're doing even though you really need to do it?

Distractions are everywhere. And whether they're self-imposed or coming from our environment, it can be hard to focus.

Today, we explore the ramifications of our rapidly shrinking attention spans, debunk some myths about focus, and discuss the art of taking a break.

You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on the ABC Listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode first aired in March 2025.

Guests:

Dr Emma Fitzgerald Clinical Neuropsychologist

SebEmma's son and distracted teenager

Gloria Mark, PhDChancellor's Professor Emerita, University of California, IrvineAuthor, Attention Span

Credits:

Presenter/producer: Sana Qadar
Senior producer: James Bullen
Producer: Rose Kerr
Sound engineer: Bella Tropiano

To find the transcript for this episode, head to its original webpage.

Extra info:

Gloria's The Future of Attention substack

Smartphones in the nursery: Parental smartphone use and parental sensitivity and responsiveness within parent–child interaction in early childhood (0–5 years): A scoping review

Ditching your smartphone won't stop you being distracted, study finds

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	ABC Listen, Podcasts, Radio, News, Music and more.
0:07.7	Australia's always been the lucky country, sunshine, beaches, and that one magpie that
0:13.0	always seems to know where you live.
0:14.8	Yeah, get away from my chip, please.
0:16.9	Luck might not cut it anymore.
0:18.8	So can we make our own luck and turn this complicated world to our advantage?
0:24.6	That's our global roaming summer season.
0:27.1	Can Australia surf the world's chaos without wiping out?
0:31.0	Fresh new episodes all summer, search for global roaming on the ABC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:37.3	Hello, it's Sana here from All In The Mind from ABC Radio National.
0:42.3	We are replaying some of our most popular episodes from 2025.
0:46.3	And I have to say, I'm not surprised that this one is on the list because it's an episode all about focus.
0:53.5	This is an issue a lot of us struggle with, myself included.
0:57.1	Here is the episode.
0:59.1	The Japanese have this expression, which I love.
1:02.6	It's called Yohaku nopi, which means the beauty of empty space.
1:07.1	I started out as an artist.
1:09.5	And what we learned in art is that the figure that you're painting,
1:13.6	it's really important, but what's also important is the space around the figure,
1:18.6	because that really helps frame it and really helps set it off.
1:23.6	And so when we think about our days, we think of packing as much as we can, and we don't think of leaving empty space so that our minds can refresh.
1:40.6	We are living in an age of distraction.
	...

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