🏁 Productivity

•

May 9, 2025

•

min reading

How to Get My Time and Attention Span Back

The idea for this week’s topic came to me from recent conversations I had with entrepreneurs. The rise of new technologies is saving us a lot of time by simplifying and replacing numerous tasks and processes. Yet, more than ever, we feel like we’re running out of time.

So, I decided to dive into this paradox inherent in hyper-connectivity.

The Great Paradox of Free Time

Jean Viard, a doctor in sociology and a specialist in “social time,” says that we’ve never had as much free time as we do now.

“Today, we spend about 10% of our lives working (70,000 hours out of 700,000 hours), whereas a century ago, workers and farmers worked around 200,000 hours in a 500,000-hour lifetime.”

Since the 1970s, thanks especially to technological advancements, our time outside of work and sleep has significantly increased.

So, how do we explain the fact that we feel more “overwhelmed” than ever? Why do we constantly feel like we’re running out of time?

This is one of the paradoxes that digital life brings:

Quantitatively, we’ve never had so much free time.
Qualitatively, it feels like we have less time for ourselves.

While it has made our daily lives easier in many ways, the digital world has sped up the pace of life. It’s raised expectations around productivity and availability.

The result is that, despite saving us time, technology simultaneously consumes it. We’ve never had so many options to “spend” that extra time we’ve been given. So much so that we’re constantly running after it. The reality is this: technology absorbs much of that excess time.

👉 The average French person spends 60% of their free time in front of a screen.

Ashley Williams addresses this topic in her book Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life. According to her, digital tools, far from freeing us, chip away at our free time and undermine our ability to fully enjoy those "off" moments

We’re all familiar with digital distractions during work; it’s a topic often discussed in this newsletter. More insidiously, these distractions seep into our rest periods, pulling us out of the present moment and diminishing our ability to engage fully in relaxing activities.

We struggle to “disconnect.” Digital life creates a constant tension between different facets of our lives, blurring the lines between what we could do and what we should do.

Hyper-connectivity has fostered a culture of immediacy, urgency, and short-term focus. These overwhelming demands have created a phenomenon of time fragmentation.

The boundaries are blurring: work time and free time are less and less distinct. Digital interruptions frequently break into our leisure time, leaving it fragmented.

Ashley Whillans calls this phenomenon “time confetti,” referring to these little fragments of time lost here and there during our free time, in a kind of unproductive multitasking.

She highlights the striking difference between Figure 1-1 and Figure 1-2.

Do you see yourself in this? This fragmentation diminishes the quality and value of our free time. This is what gives us that unpleasant sense of having less time, and of it being less rejuvenating.

Of course, it’s not always a personal choice. The players in the attention economy each want their slice of the pie. 🎂

Your time is cleverly exploited.

Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, even said in 2017 that their biggest competitor is sleep. It’s a fierce battle for that “available human brain time.”

To do this, tech giants have recruited hundreds of experts in human behavior and addiction to keep your attention as long and as often as possible. This system has significantly disrupted the brain’s reward circuit, conditioning our minds to frequent, high doses of dopamine.

Beyond fragmenting our free time, technology warps it to occupy more and more space. Someone mentioned to me, these so-called space-time glitches a few days ago. That moment when you start scrolling and wake up 30 minutes later, wondering what you did.

Yet those same 30 minutes seem endless in a useless meeting. How can the same amount of time feel so different?

Here’s the reasoning behind that classic phrase: “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

A 2016 study by Sofia Soares and her research team at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon shows that dopamine secretion (there it is again!) alters our perception of time.

To summarize, our internal clock doesn’t produce the same number of “ticks” as a regular clock. Dopamine influxes slow down the brain’s periodic electrical signals, giving the impression that time passes more quickly during dopamine-rich activities.

While scrolling, for instance, the number of brain ticks is reduced. This creates a sense of shorter time, turning half an hour into 10 “neural minutes.”

To demonstrate this, neuroscientists blocked the activity of dopamine neurons in mice and then tested their time perception with a very clever system — If you want to dive deeper, here’s the study in question.

Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” perfectly illustrates this modern time distortion.

The attention economy, masterfully exploiting our brain’s vulnerabilities, makes these time traps extremely tempting. So much so that they are more frequent and longer than ever.

This evolution presents us with a crucial challenge: reclaiming our time to turn it into a lever for value creation and well-being.

So, I decided to dive into this paradox inherent in hyper-connectivity.

The Great Paradox of Free Time

Jean Viard, a doctor in sociology and a specialist in “social time,” says that we’ve never had as much free time as we do now.

“Today, we spend about 10% of our lives working (70,000 hours out of 700,000 hours), whereas a century ago, workers and farmers worked around 200,000 hours in a 500,000-hour lifetime.”

Since the 1970s, thanks especially to technological advancements, our time outside of work and sleep has significantly increased.

So, how do we explain the fact that we feel more “overwhelmed” than ever? Why do we constantly feel like we’re running out of time?

This is one of the paradoxes that digital life brings:

Quantitatively, we’ve never had so much free time.
Qualitatively, it feels like we have less time for ourselves.

While it has made our daily lives easier in many ways, the digital world has sped up the pace of life. It’s raised expectations around productivity and availability.

👉 The average French person spends 60% of their free time in front of a screen.

We struggle to “disconnect.” Digital life creates a constant tension between different facets of our lives, blurring the lines between what we could do and what we should do.

Hyper-connectivity has fostered a culture of immediacy, urgency, and short-term focus. These overwhelming demands have created a phenomenon of time fragmentation.

The boundaries are blurring: work time and free time are less and less distinct. Digital interruptions frequently break into our leisure time, leaving it fragmented.

Ashley Whillans calls this phenomenon “time confetti,” referring to these little fragments of time lost here and there during our free time, in a kind of unproductive multitasking.

She highlights the striking difference between Figure 1-1 and Figure 1-2.

Of course, it’s not always a personal choice. The players in the attention economy each want their slice of the pie. 🎂

Your time is cleverly exploited.

Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, even said in 2017 that their biggest competitor is sleep. It’s a fierce battle for that “available human brain time.”

Yet those same 30 minutes seem endless in a useless meeting. How can the same amount of time feel so different?

Here’s the reasoning behind that classic phrase: “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

A 2016 study by Sofia Soares and her research team at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon shows that dopamine secretion (there it is again!) alters our perception of time.

While scrolling, for instance, the number of brain ticks is reduced. This creates a sense of shorter time, turning half an hour into 10 “neural minutes.”

Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” perfectly illustrates this modern time distortion.

The attention economy, masterfully exploiting our brain’s vulnerabilities, makes these time traps extremely tempting. So much so that they are more frequent and longer than ever.

This evolution presents us with a crucial challenge: reclaiming our time to turn it into a lever for value creation and well-being.

So, I decided to dive into this paradox inherent in hyper-connectivity.

The Great Paradox of Free Time

Jean Viard, a doctor in sociology and a specialist in “social time,” says that we’ve never had as much free time as we do now.

“Today, we spend about 10% of our lives working (70,000 hours out of 700,000 hours), whereas a century ago, workers and farmers worked around 200,000 hours in a 500,000-hour lifetime.”

Since the 1970s, thanks especially to technological advancements, our time outside of work and sleep has significantly increased.

So, how do we explain the fact that we feel more “overwhelmed” than ever? Why do we constantly feel like we’re running out of time?

This is one of the paradoxes that digital life brings:

Quantitatively, we’ve never had so much free time.
Qualitatively, it feels like we have less time for ourselves.

While it has made our daily lives easier in many ways, the digital world has sped up the pace of life. It’s raised expectations around productivity and availability.

👉 The average French person spends 60% of their free time in front of a screen.

We struggle to “disconnect.” Digital life creates a constant tension between different facets of our lives, blurring the lines between what we could do and what we should do.

Hyper-connectivity has fostered a culture of immediacy, urgency, and short-term focus. These overwhelming demands have created a phenomenon of time fragmentation.

The boundaries are blurring: work time and free time are less and less distinct. Digital interruptions frequently break into our leisure time, leaving it fragmented.

Ashley Whillans calls this phenomenon “time confetti,” referring to these little fragments of time lost here and there during our free time, in a kind of unproductive multitasking.

She highlights the striking difference between Figure 1-1 and Figure 1-2.

Of course, it’s not always a personal choice. The players in the attention economy each want their slice of the pie. 🎂

Your time is cleverly exploited.

Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, even said in 2017 that their biggest competitor is sleep. It’s a fierce battle for that “available human brain time.”

Yet those same 30 minutes seem endless in a useless meeting. How can the same amount of time feel so different?

Here’s the reasoning behind that classic phrase: “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

A 2016 study by Sofia Soares and her research team at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon shows that dopamine secretion (there it is again!) alters our perception of time.

While scrolling, for instance, the number of brain ticks is reduced. This creates a sense of shorter time, turning half an hour into 10 “neural minutes.”

Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” perfectly illustrates this modern time distortion.

The attention economy, masterfully exploiting our brain’s vulnerabilities, makes these time traps extremely tempting. So much so that they are more frequent and longer than ever.

This evolution presents us with a crucial challenge: reclaiming our time to turn it into a lever for value creation and well-being.

Your Phone, Your Rules.

Block apps. Limit time. Grow better habits. Endless possibilities.

Try for free

Your Phone, Your Rules.

Block apps. Limit time. Grow better habits. Endless possibilities.

Try for free

Your Phone, Your Rules.

Block apps. Limit time. Grow better habits. Endless possibilities.

Try for free

Reclaiming Your Time and Attention

The digital world follows us everywhere, constantly prompting us to do multiple things at once. Hyper-connectivity accelerates the pace.

It’s a real paradigm shift, as it pushes us toward an endless drive to be more productive, often resulting in unproductive multitasking.

To counter this trend, we need to reclaim our time: moving from passive time to intentional time. Taking control and making intentional choices.

Ashley Whillans speaks of time poverty and time affluence.

Time poverty: feeling like you have too many things to do in one day and not enough time to do them
Time affluence: feeling in control and having enough time to do what you want

To strive toward time affluence, the first step is to audit your time. For instance, using this matrix.

This introspection helps classify habits and gain clarity on time management.

Start keeping a journal where you note your main morning, afternoon, and evening activities over a typical day. Note how these activities made you feel:

Was the time spent productive or unproductive?
Did the activity feel satisfying or unpleasant? How did you feel afterward?

Based on this matrix, try to analyze what you can eliminate, outsource, or delegate. You’ve got the idea: minimize everything in the bottom left, i.e., unproductive activities that don’t bring you satisfaction afterward.

On the other hand, maximize activities that recharge you and bring value.

To stick with it, a hack I use frequently is time-blocking: dividing my days into time blocks, each dedicated to a high-value task or activity, and sticking to it. Whether it’s work or leisure, do one thing at a time. Limit multitasking as much as possible, even in your free time.

To successfully stick to time-blocking, you need to:

Be clear on your intentions
Add friction to distractions to avoid multitasking and stay focused (phone out of reach, no notifications…)

Time affluence, of course, is different for each of us. Everyone has their own aspirations and priorities.

It might mean spending 10 extra minutes learning piano, 15 minutes doing yoga, or a Sunday afternoon learning to manage personal finances instead of watching every Instagram story.

Thus, to achieve time affluence, work on:

Recognizing and avoiding the digital time traps
Intentionally carving out more meaningful moments each day.

Whatever you choose to do, do it with presence and as few interruptions as possible.

Taking Action

There are two things you need to focus on: awareness and finding a way to take action. It’s the combination of both that will help you make lasting changes.

#1 - Becoming Aware

I came across some powerful visuals that serve as a reminder that time is limited and intentionality should be our guide. They offer a perspective on the true value and precious nature of lifetime.

But in daily life, it’s challenging to keep such broad visualizations in mind. That’s why it’s helpful to analyze the time spent on your phone and ensure it’s working for you—not the other way around. For this, you can use the Jomo app, available free on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

With the Journaling feature, you can quickly associate a “feeling” and an activity with each app use. This helps you see if the time spent has been beneficial or simply wasted. It’s a practical way to dispel “false” beliefs around screen time and gain a “real” view of what you’re doing and what it brings you.

#2 - Taking Action (Simply, but for the Long Term)

To make this change, you need a tool that genuinely works. We highly recommend the Jomo app. Beyond its Journaling feature, it offers over 20 ready-to-use blocking rules.

With just a tap, you regain control of your screen time—all without frustration. Two rules are especially key for lasting change: a “Conscious Use” session and an app limit.

"Conscious Use" is a session that continuously blocks your most distracting apps. You can still use them, but you’ll first need to request a break from Jomo, with a time limit for the break. But there’s more! You’ll also need to give Jomo a good reason before accessing the app! Say goodbye to mindless scrolling!
The app limit feature helps manage your overall time on an app. It’s crucial, as it acts as a safeguard, preventing you from losing hours without realizing it. Often, we’re unaware of how much time we’re spending, and it can quickly spiral. What’s great about Jomo is that you can enable notifications to get a gentle reminder when you’re approaching your limit or set intervals (like every minute or longer!) to remind you to take a break.

Reclaiming Your Time and Attention

The digital world follows us everywhere, constantly prompting us to do multiple things at once. Hyper-connectivity accelerates the pace.

It’s a real paradigm shift, as it pushes us toward an endless drive to be more productive, often resulting in unproductive multitasking.

To counter this trend, we need to reclaim our time: moving from passive time to intentional time. Taking control and making intentional choices.

Ashley Whillans speaks of time poverty and time affluence.

Time poverty: feeling like you have too many things to do in one day and not enough time to do them
Time affluence: feeling in control and having enough time to do what you want

To strive toward time affluence, the first step is to audit your time. For instance, using this matrix.

This introspection helps classify habits and gain clarity on time management.

Start keeping a journal where you note your main morning, afternoon, and evening activities over a typical day. Note how these activities made you feel:

Was the time spent productive or unproductive?
Did the activity feel satisfying or unpleasant? How did you feel afterward?

On the other hand, maximize activities that recharge you and bring value.

To successfully stick to time-blocking, you need to:

Be clear on your intentions
Add friction to distractions to avoid multitasking and stay focused (phone out of reach, no notifications…)

Time affluence, of course, is different for each of us. Everyone has their own aspirations and priorities.

It might mean spending 10 extra minutes learning piano, 15 minutes doing yoga, or a Sunday afternoon learning to manage personal finances instead of watching every Instagram story.

Thus, to achieve time affluence, work on:

Recognizing and avoiding the digital time traps
Intentionally carving out more meaningful moments each day.

Whatever you choose to do, do it with presence and as few interruptions as possible.

Taking Action

There are two things you need to focus on: awareness and finding a way to take action. It’s the combination of both that will help you make lasting changes.

#1 - Becoming Aware

I came across some powerful visuals that serve as a reminder that time is limited and intentionality should be our guide. They offer a perspective on the true value and precious nature of lifetime.

#2 - Taking Action (Simply, but for the Long Term)

To make this change, you need a tool that genuinely works. We highly recommend the Jomo app. Beyond its Journaling feature, it offers over 20 ready-to-use blocking rules.

With just a tap, you regain control of your screen time—all without frustration. Two rules are especially key for lasting change: a “Conscious Use” session and an app limit.

"Conscious Use" is a session that continuously blocks your most distracting apps. You can still use them, but you’ll first need to request a break from Jomo, with a time limit for the break. But there’s more! You’ll also need to give Jomo a good reason before accessing the app! Say goodbye to mindless scrolling!
The app limit feature helps manage your overall time on an app. It’s crucial, as it acts as a safeguard, preventing you from losing hours without realizing it. Often, we’re unaware of how much time we’re spending, and it can quickly spiral. What’s great about Jomo is that you can enable notifications to get a gentle reminder when you’re approaching your limit or set intervals (like every minute or longer!) to remind you to take a break.

Reclaiming Your Time and Attention

The digital world follows us everywhere, constantly prompting us to do multiple things at once. Hyper-connectivity accelerates the pace.

It’s a real paradigm shift, as it pushes us toward an endless drive to be more productive, often resulting in unproductive multitasking.

To counter this trend, we need to reclaim our time: moving from passive time to intentional time. Taking control and making intentional choices.

Ashley Whillans speaks of time poverty and time affluence.

Time poverty: feeling like you have too many things to do in one day and not enough time to do them
Time affluence: feeling in control and having enough time to do what you want

To strive toward time affluence, the first step is to audit your time. For instance, using this matrix.

This introspection helps classify habits and gain clarity on time management.

Start keeping a journal where you note your main morning, afternoon, and evening activities over a typical day. Note how these activities made you feel:

Was the time spent productive or unproductive?
Did the activity feel satisfying or unpleasant? How did you feel afterward?

On the other hand, maximize activities that recharge you and bring value.

To successfully stick to time-blocking, you need to:

Be clear on your intentions
Add friction to distractions to avoid multitasking and stay focused (phone out of reach, no notifications…)

Time affluence, of course, is different for each of us. Everyone has their own aspirations and priorities.

It might mean spending 10 extra minutes learning piano, 15 minutes doing yoga, or a Sunday afternoon learning to manage personal finances instead of watching every Instagram story.

Thus, to achieve time affluence, work on:

Recognizing and avoiding the digital time traps
Intentionally carving out more meaningful moments each day.

Whatever you choose to do, do it with presence and as few interruptions as possible.

Taking Action

There are two things you need to focus on: awareness and finding a way to take action. It’s the combination of both that will help you make lasting changes.

#1 - Becoming Aware

I came across some powerful visuals that serve as a reminder that time is limited and intentionality should be our guide. They offer a perspective on the true value and precious nature of lifetime.

#2 - Taking Action (Simply, but for the Long Term)

To make this change, you need a tool that genuinely works. We highly recommend the Jomo app. Beyond its Journaling feature, it offers over 20 ready-to-use blocking rules.

With just a tap, you regain control of your screen time—all without frustration. Two rules are especially key for lasting change: a “Conscious Use” session and an app limit.

"Conscious Use" is a session that continuously blocks your most distracting apps. You can still use them, but you’ll first need to request a break from Jomo, with a time limit for the break. But there’s more! You’ll also need to give Jomo a good reason before accessing the app! Say goodbye to mindless scrolling!
The app limit feature helps manage your overall time on an app. It’s crucial, as it acts as a safeguard, preventing you from losing hours without realizing it. Often, we’re unaware of how much time we’re spending, and it can quickly spiral. What’s great about Jomo is that you can enable notifications to get a gentle reminder when you’re approaching your limit or set intervals (like every minute or longer!) to remind you to take a break.

Credits

This article is a revised version of Edition #16 of the Screenbreak newsletter created by Julien Rousset. With his permission, we're sharing this high-quality content with you today! So many thanks to Julien. 😌

Photographies by Unsplash, Lummi, ScreenBreak, Dali and the Internet.

[1] Whillans - Time Smart, How to reclaim your time and live a happier life

[2] Soares, Atallah, Paton - Midbrain dopamine neurons control judgment of time, PubMed, 2016.

[3] Fottorino - Pourquoi n'avons-nous jamais assez de temps ?, RadioFrance, 2018.

[4] Comment la technologie a transformé notre perception du temps: une analyse de «Juste un instant...», Little Joe Blues

[5] Whillans - Time Confetti and the Broken Promise of Leisure, Behavioral Scientist, 2020.

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