第1489期:Pay attention!

I wonder how many of you will read this article or listen to my voice right through to the end? With our busy lifestyles and continuous distractions, it's hard to stay focussed on one task and I wouldn't be surprised if I lose you somewhere along the way – but we'll see!

我想知道你们中有多少人会读到这篇文章，或者从头到尾听我的声音？由于我们忙碌的生活方式和不断的分心，很难专注于一项任务，如果我在途中的某个地方失去你，我不会感到惊讶 - 但我们会看到！

Some experts believe that out attention spans are actually shrinking. We often joke that goldfish have the shortest level of concentration, so much so that they forget what they saw nine seconds earlier. Well now a study says that humans have an even shorter span – just eight seconds. This I can believe – there's always so much to do and so much to remember that my brain gets overloaded and I find it hard to zero in on one thing.

一些专家认为，注意力跨度实际上正在缩小。我们经常开玩笑说金鱼的注意力是最短的，以至于他们忘记了九秒前看到的东西。现在一项研究表明，人类的跨度更短——只有八秒。我可以相信——总是有很多事情要做，还有很多事情要记住，我的大脑已经超负荷了，我发现很难在一件事上归零。

Of course, smartphones, the internet and social media all take up a lot of our attention. Chicago-based research firm Dscout found that we look at our mobile phones for, on average, 2.42 hours every day. It is tempting to keep glancing at our phones when we should be focussing on other things and it's something we didn't and couldn't do before the boom in digital media and smartphones, so maybe that's why the amount of time we can concentrate has been dropping. A report carried out for Microsoft said the average human attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds but has now fallen to just eight seconds.

当然，智能手机、互联网和社交媒体都占据了我们很多注意力。总部位于芝加哥的研究公司 Dscout 发现，我们平均每天看手机的时间为 2.42 小时。当我们应该专注于其他事情时，我们很容易继续看手机，这是我们在数字媒体和智能手机蓬勃发展之前没有也无法做到的事情，所以也许这就是为什么我们可以集中精力的原因一直在下降。微软的一份报告称，2000 年人类的平均注意力持续时间是 12 秒，但现在已经下降到只有 8 秒。

However, a BBC radio programme called More or Less, couldn't find evidence to back up Microsoft's report. It spoke to Dr Gemma Briggs, a psychologist at the Open University, who says there are problems with the idea of measuring attention spans and it's all down to the individual person, "so attention-switching ability may well have developed in recent years, in the age of the smartphone and the internet. But because someone's distracted by their smartphone… it doesn't mean that they then don't have the ability to control and sustain their attention when they carry out another task."

然而，一个名为“或多或少”的 BBC 广播节目无法找到支持微软报告的证据。它与开放大学的心理学家 Gemma Briggs 博士进行了交谈，他说测量注意力持续时间的想法存在问题，这完全取决于个人，“因此，注意力转换能力可能在近年来得到了发展，在“智能手机和互联网的时代。但是因为有人被他们的智能手机分心......这并不意味着他们在执行另一项任务时就没有能力控制和维持他们的注意力。”

This suggests we're getting better at switching our attention quickly between different tasks; we can multi-skill better than before so we can achieve more things. This is useful in the modern workplace where we need to turn our hand to many different jobs.

这表明我们在不同任务之间快速切换注意力的能力越来越强。我们可以比以前更好地多技能，所以我们可以取得更多的成就。这在我们需要将手转向许多不同工作的现代工作场所中很有用。

But for people who want to grab our attention, such as advertisers, they have to think of clever ways to make us sit up and take notice of them. And there are still times when something demands our full attention, without any distractions, like reading or listening to this article. Did you make it to the end?!

但是对于那些想要吸引我们注意力的人，比如广告商，他们必须想出聪明的方法让我们坐起来注意到他们。有时，有些事情需要我们全神贯注，没有任何分心，比如阅读或听这篇文章。你到最后了吗？！

词汇表

distraction 分散注意力的东西，分心的事情
focussed 专注的
task 任务，工作
attention span 注意力持续时间
shrink 缩小，变小
zero in on something 把注意力全部集中于某事
glance 快速的看一眼，扫视
sustain 维持
multi-skill （同时拥有）多种技能
turn our hand （我们）去尝试
grab our attention 抓取我们的注意力
full attention 全部注意力