I recently met a university professor who teaches a capstone course on leadership to senior business majors. The class used to meet once a week for 2 ½ hours. But a few years ago, the professor had to change the structure. Her students simply can’t concentrate for 150 minutes anymore. Now the course meets twice a week for 75 minutes.

And just yesterday I was listening to a podcast on which a writer admitted that she’s struggling to read physical books. She can only get through a few pages before grabbing her phone to scroll Instagram.

We hear it all the time. We feel it all the time.

We’ve lost our focus.

Ezra Klein, a New York Times’ columnist and podcaster, says he’s “convinced that attention is the most important human faculty.”

“Your life, after all, is just the sum total of the things you’ve paid attention to,” he continues. “We lament our attention issues all the time — how distracted we are, how drained we feel, how hard it is to stay focused or present. And yet, while there’s no shortage of advice on how to improve our sleep hygiene or spending habits or physical fitness, there’s hardly any good information about how to build and replenish our capacity for paying attention.”

Klein tackled the subject in what has become one of his most popular podcast episodes of the year: “Tired? Distracted? Burned Out? Listen to This,” featuring Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of “Attention Span.” I highly recommend spending the 58 minutes it takes to listen to it.

It’s not just a personal problem

Just as individuals can lose focus, so can our businesses. We add products to our lines. We exhibit at more trade shows and attend more of them, too. The ways we communicate directly with customers and clients multiply, as do our marketing channels. We add tools to boost our teams’ productivity and then have more tools to keep up with. It seems everyone needs something, and everyone needs it right now.

With all the distractions and busyness, it can be hard to even take the time to stop and try to hone our focus but doing so can be rewarding, helping us to spend time on what’s most important, most effective and most profitable.

As you plan for end-of-year reviews and think ahead to 2025, you might want your team to focus on, well, focus.

Just a few things you could consider during those discussions:

 * How can you support individuals so they can fit in more time for deep work and creative exploration?

* What “legacy” aspects of the business can you jettison? (Consider everything from processes to procedures to products that may have outlived their usefulness or are now redundant.)

* What takes more time and effort than the value it brings?

You might be met with some resistance as you try to narrow your business’ focus. Anyone who’s tried to quit using their favorite social media app knows it’s hard to give something up, even if it will benefit you in the long run. Corporate cultures get attached to things, too.

When editors are trying to get writers to hone their work, they often counsel to “kill your darlings.” The idea is that you sometimes must get rid of the bits you love to make the overall piece of writing better.

To regain our focus, we need to kill our distractions. Easier said than done, but our work will be better for it in the end.