It's Not That We Can't Focus. It's That We Don't Have To.

Attention and effort aren’t the same thing. Attention is the capacity to focus, but effort involves the willingness to stay with something long enough to process it deeply. Increasingly, those two things are becoming distinct. When answers are immediate and summaries replace processes, we don’t just get faster—we adapt. We become highly efficient at extracting just enough to proceed, while the skill of sustained engagement begins to feel unnecessary, and eventually, out of reach.