Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

I have a successful businessman friend who says his attention span is seventeen seconds. On the surface, it sounds like self deprecation. The more I dug into it, I realized he’s bragging! Interesting enough the average human attention span has decreased from 12 seconds in the year 2000 down to 8 seconds today, officially below that of a goldfish, weighing in at 9 seconds. The blame for the dramatic decrease … the smartphone.

Have you noticed more distracted driving lately? Look close enough and you’ll see a large number of “drivers” looking at their phone for email, texting, calling, checking the navigation or whatever it might be that steals their focus. Steals their focus to stay between the lines, use their signals, brake gradually…avoid running over the curb, into another car, or over a pedestrian or a bicyclist.

Art imitates life and I make reference to movies often because I have a short…time and space to write blogs (you thought I was going to say attention span, didn’t you). If a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth millions. In that light, have you watched the movie “seven pounds”? Will Smith plays a character who can identify with this topic and spends the rest of his life trying to rectify an irreversible mistake.

Another movie that highlights a severe lack of focus is “Up”. The adorable dog character Dug struggles to stay on point and frequently breaks a conversation looking for a “squirrel!”

We used to think it was funny. The shiny object syndrome (SOS) or attention deficit disorder (ADD) can be comical as the YouTube clip shows but it’s become a more significant issue not only to be made fun of but to be immensely more aware of.

Naturally, the next question might be how do we overcome this? If smartphones had such an impact, what do we do to reverse the effects…or prevent them in the first place?

Being present, mindful and start putting your phone in the “glove” compartment before you put the car in gear.

Have a blessed weekend!