WELLBEING AI RESEARCH INSTITUTE
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WELLBEING AI RESEARCH INSTITUTE
ATTENTION - RESOURCES
STARTUP: FOCUSMATE
Category: Attention Boosting
Focusmate virtual coworking helps you get things done.
STARTUP: FOREST
Category: Attention Boosting
Forest is an app that helps you stay focused on the important things in life.
- Whenever you want to stay focused, plant a tree.
- Your tree will grow while you focus on your work.
- Leaving the app halfway will cause your tree to die.
STARTUP: ENDEL
Category: Attention Boosting
Founded by a collective of imaginative creatives and artists in 2018, Endel is democratizing wellness by making AI-powered mindfulness accessible to all. The company’s core technology Endel Pacific creates personalized, adaptive soundscapes to reduce stress, improve sleep, and boost productivity — all backed by neuroscience and the science of the circadian rhythm.
STARTUP: ATTENTION INSIGHT
Category: Attention Boosting
Attention Insight’s predictive attention heatmaps show you potential performance issues during the design phase. So you can make sure your concepts will perform better from the second you publish them.
STARTUP: FREEDOM
Category: Attention Boosting
Use Freedom to block distractions so you can get your work done. Block what you want, when you want, and be more productive.
STARTUP: SESSION
Category: Attention Boosting
Session is a Pomodoro app that helps build your productivity momentum. Block distractions, work in short intervals, and take regular breaks to recharge your mind. What makes Session stand out is its huge focus on analytics. This is the app that not only helps get things done, but also reflect on your work and track your progress over time.
STARTUP: BRAIN.FM
Category: Attention Boosting
Brain.fm is a collaboration between scientists, musicians and developers who each believe that the best approach to functional music is not curation of existing music, but through research, testing, and in every way crafting music with function first.
AI AND BIG DATA ARE CHANGING OUR ATTENTION SPANS
The business of answering that question attracts hundreds of billions of dollars every year. As long as there have been things to buy, there’s been a market for human attention.
Thousands of algorithms on millions of servers auction off your every click and tap, anticipating which emails you’ll open, which search results you’ll read, even how your eye might dart around the page.
Google and Facebook rely almost exclusively on directly reselling human attention. Machines are starting to help optimize email subject lines and article titles based on what might catch your eye. The playbook is simple: attract human attention with cheap or free stuff — cheap newspapers, Google search, interesting reading material — and optionally resell that attention to the highest bidder.
Where are we headed? In the face of this transformation, what can we expect?
DISTRACTION THEORY: HOW AI WILL HELP WORKERS TO BE MORE FOCUSED
During the average day, we get distracted and are forced to switch between apps, email, and messaging channels more than 400 times. This means that about every 40 seconds, our attention at work is being disrupted.
Increasingly it seems the answer may lie in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Curious to discover more, we’re working hard to build immersive demonstrations and scenarios to evaluate how technology might enable workers to regain their focus and concentration in the future.
RESEARCH PAPER: ATTENTION IN PSYCHOLOGY, NEUROSCIENCE, AND MACHINE LEARNING
Lindsay, G. W. (2020). Attention in psychology, neuroscience, and Machine Learning. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2020.00029
Attention is the important ability to flexibly control limited computational resources. It has been studied in conjunction with many other topics in neuroscience and psychology including awareness, vigilance, saliency, executive control, and learning. It has also recently been applied in several domains in machine learning. The relationship between the study of biological attention and its use as a tool to enhance artificial neural networks is not always clear. This review starts by providing an overview of how attention is conceptualized in the neuroscience and psychology literature. It then covers several use cases of attention in machine learning, indicating their biological counterparts where they exist. Finally, the ways in which artificial attention can be further inspired by biology for the production of complex and integrative systems is explored.
RESEARCH PAPER: THE ROLE OF ATTENTION IN LEARNING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Lodge, J. M., & Harrison, W. J. (2019). The Role of Attention in Learning in the Digital Age. The Yale journal of biology and medicine, 92(1), 21–28.
New and evolving technologies provide great opportunities for learning. With these opportunities, though, come questions about the impact of new ways of acquiring information on our brain and mind. Many commentators argue that access to the Internet is having a persistent detrimental impact on the brain. In particular, attention has been implicated as a cognitive function that has been negatively impacted by use of digital technologies for learning. In this paper, we critique this claim by analyzing the current understanding of the cognitive neuroscience of attention and research in educational settings on how technologies are influencing learning. Across the two bodies of literature, a complex situation emerges placing doubt on the claim that the use of digital technologies for learning is negatively affecting the brain. We suggest therefore that a more systemic approach to understanding the relationship between technologies and attention involving researchers examining the relationship at different levels from the laboratory to the real world.
BOOK: THE ORGANIZED MIND
Daniel J. Levitin – The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload
The information age is drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data. At the same time, we’re expected to make more—and faster—decisions about our lives than ever before. No wonder, then, that the average American reports frequently losing car keys or reading glasses, missing appointments, and feeling worn out by the effort required just to keep up.
But somehow some people become quite accomplished at managing information flow. In The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, uses the latest brain science to demonstrate how those people excel—and how readers can use their methods to regain a sense of mastery over the way they organize their homes, workplaces, and time.
With lively, entertaining chapters on everything from the kitchen junk drawer to health care to executive office workflow, Levitin reveals how new research into the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory can be applied to the challenges of our daily lives. This Is Your Brain on Music showed how to better play and appreciate music through an understanding of how the brain works. The Organized Mind shows how to navigate the churning flood of information in the twenty-first century with the same neuroscientific perspective.
BOOK: DEEP WORK
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.
In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four “rules,” for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.
A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.
BOOK: CHECKLIST MANIFESTO
Atul Gawande – Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies‚neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist.
First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.
In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from homeland security to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds.
An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.
BOOK: YOUR BRAIN AT WORK
Your Brain at Work explores issues such as: – Why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources
– Why it’s so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions
– How to maximize your chance of finding insights that can solve seemingly insurmountable problems
– How to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible
– How to collaborate more effectively with others
– Why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier
– How to be more effective at changing other people’s behavior
BOOK: INDISTRACTABLE
You sit down at your desk to work on an important project, but a notification on your phone interrupts your morning. Later, as you’re about to get back to work, a colleague taps you on the shoulder to chat. At home, screens get in the way of quality time with your family. Another day goes by, and once again, your most important personal and professional goals are put on hold.
What would be possible if you followed through on your best intentions? What could you accomplish if you could stay focused and overcome distractions? What if you had the power to become “indistractable”?
International best-selling author, former Stanford lecturer, and behavioral design expert, Nir Eyal, wrote Silicon Valley’s handbook for making technology habit-forming. Five years after publishing Hooked, Eyal reveals distraction’s Achilles’ heel in his groundbreaking new book.
In Indistractable, Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving us to distraction. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as swearing off our devices: Abstinence is impractical and often makes us want more.
Eyal lays bare the secret of finally doing what you say you will do with a four-step, research-backed model. Indistractable reveals the key to getting the best out of technology, without letting it get the best of us.
BOOK: HOOKED
Nir Eyal – Hooked
How do successful companies create products people can’t put down?
Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us?
Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.
Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.
BOOK: STOLEN FOCUS
Johann Hari – Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention
Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And, most importantly, how do we get it back?For Stolen Focus, internationally bestselling author Johann Hari went on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons why our teenagers now focus on one task for only 65 seconds, and why office workers on average manage only three minutes. He interviewed the leading experts in the world on attention, and learned that everything we think about this subject is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failing – a flaw in each one of us. It is not. This has been done to all of us by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen. Johann discovered there are twelve deep cases of this crisis, all of which have robbed some of our attention. He shows us how in a thrilling journey that ranges from Silicon Valley dissidents, to a favela in Rio where attention vanished, to an office in New Zealand that found a remarkable way to restore our attention. Crucially, he learned how – as individuals, and as a society – we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it.
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