WELLBEING AI
RESEARCH INSTITUTE

In our modern economies, attention has become a very scarce resource, with various companies battling over making their users addicted to their product, as to be able to occupy as much as possible of their attention, and sell it. This approach of course does not benefit wellbeing at large, employing cognitive tricks and knowledge we have gained about the mind against the human mind.

The sheer amount digital products, their notification system design and the complexity of our modern lives is not conducive to focusing, with our brains getting overwhelmed and our ability to gain information and conduct relationships becoming shallower and less satisfying.

Meanwhile, the opposites of distractibility and lack of focus – mindfulness and presence are known to deeply increase the quality of wellbeing and life satisfaction. To be happy we need to have our attention resources protected, and engage with the topics important to us. Only in the presence of attention is the experience of flow, conducive to happiness and creativity, possible.

The opposite of designing for the mind to get addicted to sell it’s attention is using knowledge about the human mind to design products and experiences the nudge us into desirable behaviour, so that less willpower is used for us to achieve our goals.

One step further is having our technology protect and enhance our attentional resources, in order to enable to reach states of deep engagement, focus and longer lasting flow more often and with more ease.

Intrigued? Would you like to learn how to protect and increase your focus, or whether they are start-ups that can do it now? Want to hear from (other) experts on the topic, contribute to building the next focus technologies?