The Attention Economy Is Quietly Undermining Your Organisation

There’s a moment most leaders recognise but rarely stop to examine. You reach the end of a full day. Back-to-back meetings. Dozens of messages. Constant decisions. You’ve been busy relentlessly so.

And yet, when you pause (usually later than you should), there’s a nagging sense:

What actually moved forward today?

I’ve been reflecting on this from a very different setting. I’m writing this from the south of France, café au lait in hand, looking out over a stretch of green, water, and trees. No interruptions. No background noise. No subtle pressure to respond, react, or perform. And the difference is immediate.

Not in effort but in thinking.

Ideas connect more easily. Problems feel clearer. Decisions feel… better.

My team often joke that I’m at my most productive when I’m away. They’re probably right. Which raises a more uncomfortable question:

If this is what good thinking feels like what exactly are most of our working environments optimised for?

We Are Designing Work Against the Brain

To answer that, we need to start with a reality many organisations are underestimating:

The cognitive baseline has shifted.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation highlights rising anxiety and reduced psychological resilience, particularly linked to constant digital exposure. At the same time, attention itself is under strain.

Research from Gloria Mark shows that we are switching tasks more frequently than ever before, with measurable declines in sustained focus.

So people are not arriving at work as they once did.

They are arriving:

• More distracted

• More cognitively fatigued

• Less practised in deep focus

And then we place them into environments that amplify every one of those challenges.

From Distraction to Depletion

Look at how most organisations operate day to day:

• Meetings stacked on meetings

• Notifications as a constant backdrop

• An expectation of immediate response

This creates what psychologists call continuous partial attention.

But more importantly, it creates cognitive depletion.

Because what we often call “multitasking” is actually task switching and every switch comes at a cost.

Research on attention residue (Leroy, 2009) shows that part of our focus remains stuck on the previous task, reducing our ability to fully engage with the next.

Over time, this leads to:

• Shallower thinking

• Poorer decisions

• Reduced problem solving ability

So the issue isn’t just that people are distracted. It’s that they are operating below their cognitive capability.

Why This Is Starting to Look Like ADHD (But Isn’t Quite)

This is where the conversation gets more nuanced.

ADHD is a real, neurodevelopmental condition with strong genetic underpinnings (Faraone et al., 2021).

But what we are increasingly seeing in workplaces is something different:

Environmentally driven attentional difficulty.

Research suggests that high levels of digital stimulation and task switching (Ophir et al., 2009; Mark et al., 2023) are associated with:

• Reduced sustained attention

• Lower cognitive control

• Increased distractibility

In other words:

People are not developing ADHD But they are experiencing ADHD-like patterns of attention

And here’s the critical link:

We are not just observing this we are designing for it.

When Focus Drops, So Does Thinking Quality

Once attention is fragmented, something more important starts to erode:

The ability to think deeply.

Cal Newport describes this as the difference between deep work and shallow work.

Deep work:

• Requires focus

• Produces insight

• Drives innovation

Shallow work:

• Is reactive

• Is visible

• Feels productive

Most organisations are structurally biased towards shallow work.

And that creates a predictable consequence: Thinking declines.

And When Thinking Declines, Behaviour Adapts

Here’s where everything connects. When:

• Attention is degraded

• Deep thinking is rare

• And meaningful output becomes harder to see

People don’t disengage. They adapt.

Specifically, they shift towards what can be measured and seen.

Impression Management: The Rise of Performance Theatre

In organisational psychology, this is known as impression management (Goffman; Bolino et al., 2016).

In modern workplaces, it looks like:

• Full calendars as proof of value

• Instant replies as proof of commitment

• Constant activity as proof of productivity

Research (Rosen et al., 2022) shows that in digital environments, these signals become even more important, because real performance is harder to observe.

So a loop forms:

• Work becomes more fragmented

• Output becomes harder to evaluate

• Visibility becomes the proxy

• Performative behaviour increases

From the outside, it looks like high activity.

Inside, it often feels like:

A lot of effort… with limited progress.

“We’ve Confused Activity with Effectiveness”

Aaron Dignan captures this perfectly:

“We’ve confused activity with effectiveness.”

We see this in practice constantly.

Organisations full of capable, driven people, working hard, moving fast, delivering continuously.

And yet…

Not quite breaking through. Not quite innovating. Not quite achieving the growth they’re aiming for.

Because the system rewards motion.

Not progress.

One More Complication: Not Everyone Thinks the Same Way

And just to make this more complex people don’t process information in the same way.

Some:

• Need time and space to think

Others:

• Think out loud

Some:

• Prefer written clarity

Others:

• Prefer verbal exchange

Neurodivergent individuals may:

• Thrive in deep focus

• Struggle in high switching environments

But most organisations optimise for one mode: Fast, visible, reactive work. Which doesn’t just reduce performance. It distorts how we recognise performance.

So What Needs to Change?

The organisations getting this right are not adding more.

They are removing friction from thinking.

They:

• Protect time for deep work

• Challenge back-to-back meeting culture

• Reintroduce structure (agendas, notes, decisions)

• Reward insight not just responsiveness

And perhaps most importantly:

They treat thinking as work.

Final Thought

Sitting here, the contrast is obvious. The quality of thinking changes when the environment changes.

Which leads to a simple but critical leadership question:

Are you designing an organisation that helps people think at their best… or one that unintentionally prevents it?

Because in a world of constant noise and distraction 

Clarity is no longer a given. It’s a competitive advantage.

5 things leaders can do today to create the conditions for deep work (and reduce performance theatre):

• Protect thinking time; in diaries if it’s not scheduled, it won’t happen (Newport, 2016)

• Reduce task switching; fewer priorities, done properly (Leroy, 2009)

• Reinstate clarity structure; agendas, decisions, written summaries

• Reward outcomes over visibility; make impact, not activity, the signal (Bolino et al., 2016)

• Challenge back-to-back meeting culture; space drives insight, not just efficiency

The best leaders we’re working with right now aren’t adding more.

They’re creating the conditions for better thinking and seeing the difference in performance, clarity, and growth.

References :

• Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work

• Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? (attention residue)

• Bolino, M. et al. (2016). Impression Management in Organisations

• Rosen, C. et al. (2022). Digital work & visibility/performance signalling

• Faraone, S. et al. (2021). ADHD genetics and neurodevelopment

• Ophir, E. et al. (2009). Media multitasking and cognitive control

• Mark, G. et al. (2023). Attention and task switching research

• Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation

FIVE KEY TAKEWAYS

• We’ve engineered distraction into work → constant meetings, notifications, and task-switching are actively reducing people’s cognitive capacity, not just interrupting it

• Shallow work is winning over deep thinking → organisations reward visible activity (emails, meetings, responsiveness) instead of focused, high-quality thinking that drives real progress

• “ADHD-like” behaviours are often environmental → it’s not that people can’t focus, it’s that modern work conditions are training fragmented attention and cognitive fatigue

• Performance theatre is replacing real performance → full calendars, quick replies, and busyness have become proxies for value because meaningful output is harder to see

• Clarity and deep thinking are now competitive advantages → leaders who protect focus, reduce noise, and reward outcomes over activity unlock better decisions, innovation, and growth