We used to read 300-page novels and fall asleep to the shipping forecast. Now we’re told that our attention spans are shrinking, that we can’t handle more than a ten-second reel on our phones. And yet my own phone cheerfully reports two to four hours of screen time a day. We binge entire box sets in a weekend but lament that we can’t finish a novel. So, have we really become goldfish with Wi-Fi – or is something far more interesting going on?
Behavioural thinker Rory Sutherland calls this a trend-and-counter-trend moment. While everyone insists that attention is collapsing, the evidence suggests otherwise. Look at the rise of long-form podcasts: Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO, Joe Rogan’s three-hour marathons, Mel Robbins’s deep-dive interviews. None are afraid to take their time, and millions of listeners happily go with them. Far from running out of focus, we’ve become better at choosing where to spend it.
We Have the Choice in Our Hands
As Rory points out, our old idea of “normal” attention was never natural to begin with. TV dramas lasted 50 minutes not because that’s how long we could concentrate but because they had to fit between the adverts. Now we can set the pace ourselves. The same person who skips a three-minute online clip will devour 10 episodes of Breaking Bad without blinking. It isn’t that we’ve split into two tribes – the long-formers and the scrollers. It’s the same person, the same brain, selecting different speeds of engagement, like choosing music for the gym or the bath.
And here’s the part the data rarely captures. Women in their 60s and beyond – Sixty and Me readers among them – aren’t struggling with fading attention. We’re living in a world that too easily mistakes selectivity for decline. The desire to slow down and go deep isn’t a symptom of ageing; it’s a privilege of perspective. When the twin pressures of career and family ease, time itself opens up – time to feed our curiosity, to learn, to think, to savour. By midlife we’ve become connoisseurs of attention: we know what deserves it.
So when a woman chooses to learn something new – to give an hour of her day to thought, conversation, or the beauty of another language – she isn’t indulging a hobby. She’s making a quiet declaration: that her curiosity still burns bright, that her mind still hungers for complexity, that long sentences and layered ideas remain pleasures worth keeping. Our attention hasn’t gone. It has simply grown discerning.
The Long and the Short of It
Once you start looking for it, this rhythm of short and long runs through everything we do. A quick scroll through the headlines before breakfast, then an hour lost in the garden or a good conversation after dinner. A short burst of focus to check the bills, then a long read that pulls you in completely. We’re not losing attention – we’re learning to manage its temperature.
I see this every day in my work at The French Room, an online space I founded for adults who want to learn French at their own rhythm. Some learners pop in for a brief moment of focus – 10 minutes of fresh vocabulary or a small win that keeps their French alive between other things. Others linger for longer sessions, where ideas link, laughter builds, and an hour seems to dissolve. The short moments are nimble, practical, and satisfying – like a quick espresso for the brain. But it’s the longer stretches that bring nourishment, the kind that lingers afterwards.
When we slow down enough to think, talk, or learn without interruption, the brain settles. We stop hopping from one thought to another and start joining the dots. That’s when learning stops feeling like a task and starts feeling like discovery. You can almost sense the mind exhale.
When Focus Feels Like Flight
There’s a point, when you’re absorbed in something you love, where focus stops feeling like effort. It becomes its own reward. Time loosens; thought sharpens. You look up and realise an hour has passed, and yet you feel clearer, not drained.
I’ve watched this happen in countless French classes at The French Room. It’s the moment when people stop rehearsing what to say and simply start speaking. The tension drops from their shoulders, laughter starts to ripple, and they forget to be nervous. It’s what psychologists call flow, but to me it looks more like joy – a feeling of being utterly present, connected, and awake.
After years of living in fast-forward, that kind of focus feels almost medicinal. It steadies you. It’s the opposite of the scattered buzz we get from constant notifications. Focus, at its best, is nourishing. It gives something back.
What’s interesting is how this kind of deep attention also feeds confidence. Once you’ve felt it, you stop apologising for wanting it. You stop mistaking stillness for idleness. You begin to see focus as a kind of freedom – the right to be absorbed, to care, to go deep again.
The Case for Horsepower Learning
Rory Sutherland once said that while the modern world worships efficiency, human beings thrive on meaning. After more than 10,000 hours of teaching adults, I’ve found the same to be true. The moments that really move people – in language, in life – are rarely the most efficient ones. They’re the meandering, fully engaged ones. The ones that look a little messy from the outside but leave everyone feeling more alive inside.
We’ve been trained to think that faster is better: quick results, instant feedback, everything at a tap. But real understanding takes friction – the good kind. The kind that slows you down enough to connect ideas and make them yours. That’s where the horsepower lies. Not the racing kind, but the kind that pulls weight and makes steady progress.
I sometimes call it beautiful inefficiency: the time spent finding the right word, laughing at mistakes, chasing digressions that turn out to matter. None of it is wasted. Apps are designed for speed; people are designed for depth. When you give yourself permission to take your time, learning doesn’t just happen – it takes root.
Why Depth Feeds the Mind
There’s a lovely paradox at the heart of all this. The more time we give to something, the more time seems to expand. When we focus deeply, the clock behaves differently. It stops feeling like a deadline and starts feeling like an invitation.
That’s why depth has always been linked to joy. You feel it in a great conversation, in a book that grips you, in learning something that lights up a forgotten corner of the mind. It’s the same quiet satisfaction that comes from walking instead of driving – you see more, notice more, remember more.
Anyone who’s ever lost themselves in something knows that focus feeds happiness. It sharpens memory, lifts mood, and leaves the mind steadier afterwards. In later life, when time feels both precious and elastic, that kind of engagement becomes one of the most rewarding forms of self-care we have.
These moments of deep engagement are what I’ve built my teaching life around at The French Room – not lessons in the traditional sense, but spaces for connection, curiosity and the pleasure of thinking in another language.
And perhaps that’s the real story about attention. It was never about how long we could focus – it’s about what feels worth focusing on. Our attention hasn’t gone anywhere; it’s simply grown wiser, more discerning, more beautifully our own.
Reader Reflections:
When was the last time you gave something your full attention – and felt restored by it? Where in your life do you still crave the pleasure of depth?
