Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening--and how to get our attention back. "The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction."--Adam Grant, author of Think Again "Read this book to save your mind."--Susan Cain, author of Quiet WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Post, Mashable, Mindful In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions--even abandoning his phone for three months--but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention--and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers' productivity. Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus--as individuals, and as a society--if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.
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Community Reviews
My first read on this subject matter. The fact that I picked it up and put it down so many times is testament that I sadly suffer from having my focus stolen. Before I started reading this book, I thought it didn't really apply to me and that I would read and learn about the wider/majority population in general. But alas, even though I have barely any social media apps, the book applied to me in so many ways I had not even thought about. I used to be able to pick up a book and read for hours uninterrupted but I have found the way and the length of time I spend reading a book has eroded a lot over the last few years. More of a jolt, is there are so many other areas of my focus and life that have been affected too. The book is well researched and Johann has a very readable, storytelling method of writing, which is not always the case when reading non-fiction. He covers a number of issues that he feels are contributing to humankind's inability to pay attention and focus for long periods at a time. Information technology is an obvious one and the flow-on effects of this are vast and to be honest dark and disturbing. Stress, deteriorating diets, pollution, etc are also discussed as contributing factors. There have been a number of reviews/comments relating to his writings on ADHD in this book. Having no personal experience in this area, I can only say that I do see cause and correlation and a lot of what he wrote actually made sense to me, although I feel it was over simplified. There were certainly a lot of alarm bells and AHA moments for me and as a result of reading this book I have made a number of personal changes in my life, some baby steps towards clawing back my focus and slowing down the pace of the world we live in. I would be interested to know what other (younger) generations think/feel about this book, as IT and Social Media is something that has been in their lives for a much longer period of time and in some cases almost a necessity. Definitely a book worth reading and sharing with your family members and children as I am sure it will generate some interesting discussion.
I only really liked the first few chapters when he was going through it and gave tips. After that it fell off steeply for me.
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