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Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Nonfiction (2022)Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening--and how to get our attention back.
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.
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.
357 pages, Hardcover
First published January 6, 2022
About the author
Johann Hari
15 books2,470 followersJohann Hari is an award-winning British journalist and playwright. He was a columnist for The Independent and the Huffington Post, and has won awards for his war reporting. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, El Mundo, the Melbourne Age, El Pais, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Irish Times, The Guardian, Ha'aretz, the Times Literary Supplement, Attitude (Britain's main gay magazine), the New Statesman and a wide range of other international newspapers and magazines.
Hari describes himself as a "European social democrat", who believes that markets are "an essential tool to generate wealth" but must be matched by strong democratic governments and strong trade unions or they become "disastrous". He appears regularly as an arts critic on the BBC Two programme Newsnight Review, and he is a book critic for Slate. He has been named by the Daily Telegraph as one of the most influential people on the left in Britain, and by the Dutch magazine Winq as one of the twenty most influential gay people in the world.
After two scandals in 2011 involving plagiarism and malicious editing of Wikipedia pages, Hari was forced to return the prestigious Orwell prize he had won in 2008, and lost his position at The Independent.
Hari describes himself as a "European social democrat", who believes that markets are "an essential tool to generate wealth" but must be matched by strong democratic governments and strong trade unions or they become "disastrous". He appears regularly as an arts critic on the BBC Two programme Newsnight Review, and he is a book critic for Slate. He has been named by the Daily Telegraph as one of the most influential people on the left in Britain, and by the Dutch magazine Winq as one of the twenty most influential gay people in the world.
After two scandals in 2011 involving plagiarism and malicious editing of Wikipedia pages, Hari was forced to return the prestigious Orwell prize he had won in 2008, and lost his position at The Independent.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,829 reviews
February 21, 2022
This was so good!
One of those books everyone should read.
My sometimes lazily taken notes:
• In 2013, on twitter, a topic would remain in the most discussed topics for 17.5 hours. In 2016, this had dropped to 11.9 hours.
• Scientists used an algorithm to check how long people spend on a topic before going onto something new. They scanned books from the 1800 hundreds up to now and analysed the Internet. They found convincing data which showed a sharp decline in attention, or the ability to sustain focus on one matter.
Although the Internet has sped up this decline in attention rapidly, it has been going on a good deal longer.
• Johann was talking to a scientist. He said he seen a video of a room of people all wearing virtual reality headsets, all but Mark Zuckerberg who stood at the front of the room. This is a metaphor for the future. There will be a hypnotised class, the majority, then there will be the upper class who were aware of how essential attention span is, who are aware of the dangers of constant stimulation.
• Johann recites a study which stated that speed reading decreases retention of information the quicker you read. He says the data suggests speed reading isn't legit and wonders if we're all trying to speed read our way through life.
• People talk significantly faster now than they did in the 1960s, and in just the last twenty years people have started walking quicker in city's.
• Multitasking doesn't work.
Switch cost effect: when you switch from one task to another, your brain has to reconfigure.
A company did a study on their employees, they did an iq test on them after multitasking and again after being focused on one task. Their iqs dropped by about 10 points from multitasking. That's twice the knock you take from smoking cannabis. "You'd be better off getting stoned at your desk than checking your phone intermittently.
When you switch from task to task your brain has to remember what it was doing prebiously which causes glitches and uses more energy.
Creativity drain: your mind, given free and undistracted time, will go over what it learned and seen/absorbed and draws connections between them in new ways.
The brains like a muscle. This more practice monotasking, the better your brain gets at it.
Chapter 2!!
The interruption of our flow states
• Johann begins 2 by explaining the withdrawals of social media.
• In the same way animals can be conditioned to do certain tasks by rewarding them, so can humans.
• We all have a choice, fragmentation or flow.
• Johann cried tears of relief when, after reading hours of War and Peace, he realized his brain was back online. It was permanently broken.
• Johann started to wake up feeling refreshed, not needing or wanting coffee. He could remember feeling this good waking up since when he was a child.
• The first thing to go when you're tired is your ability to pay attention.
• When the sun was going down and light was waning, our bodies would release energy to get us to our caves. This mechanism is still built in, so if we have artificial light turned onto until we intend to sleep, it will only be when that's turned off that we get the rush to go to shelter. This is causing a lot of insomnia, it's important to be in the dark a while before you intend to sleep
The fall of sustained reading:
• Recreational reading at lowest ever recorded.
• 2004 and 2017, the number of men who read for pleasure dropped by 40%, women by 29%.
• 1978 - 2014, number of people who had never read a book trippled.
(Both studies done in America)
• Ann mangan studied how reading has changed since the Internet for two decades. She says reading used to trains use to focus in a linear manner, from one thing to the next. The Internet has trained us to manically jump from one thing to the next. We're more likely to scan and scim, to run our eyes over the information to extract what we need. This sort of reading on the Internet bleeds over to normal reading and causes us to do the same with books (p.n. I wonder of it also bleeds into how we think)
• Television has changed our ability to think in a way that is so fundamental it's hard to see. The medium is the message. Its not a pipeline, its a filter, it's a format of goggles. Twitter for example, that medium send the message that life is simple and your half baked opinions need to be thrown into the void. Books insinuate life is complicated and requires the time, focus and thought to begin to understand.
• Scientists hypothesised reading novels makes you more empathetic. They did a study where they asked people to deduce what people were feeling, showing them just their eyes. Those who read novels were better able to judge what they were feeling. Novels, fiction, will always be a better form of virtual reality than any technology. (P.n. archetypes) some scientists were skeptical, said maybe empathetic people enjoyed books more. Both are probably true. A different study found that kids who were read books develop better empathy.
Ch5 - Disruption of mind wandering
• Attention is a spotlight.
• Mind wandering causes you to imagine how what your experience relates to your life. How it relates to what was previously said. Mind wandering lets you see the theme of what your reading is. This helps neurons connect it to a relevant network. Connections are made when mindwandering and you develop a more integrated and whole understanding of things.
• Creativity is connecting two things you already know. Most breakthroughs come when scientists, inventors, or artists aren't focused.
• Get freedom software for laptop and keysafe for phone
Chapter - The rise of technology that can track and manipulate you
• People in silicon Valley are mourning what they've created. The collective downgrading of humans, and the upgrading of machines, is causing far reaching effects on society. We are becoming less focused, less rational, less compassionate. The negativity bias causes these platforms to push negativity and extremism.
Ch8 - cruel optimism
• The idea is being pushed that distractions are our fault. The reality is that the system is rigged against us. The environment is designed for us to struggle with distraction. It's not only a personal issue of productivity, it's an issue of algorithms and programmers taking advantage of our vulnerability.
Ch9 - first glimpses of deeper solution
• Before harvest, farmers did test. After they did it again, after harvest, they scored 13 points higher iq. Financial stability boosts cognitive function.
• Pollutants in the atmosphere and food have been linked to attention difficulties.
• Zoo animals are given psychiatric medication. Even pets.
THE CONFINEMENT OF OUR CHILDREN
• Aerobic exercise expands the growth of brain connections, the frontal cortex and the brain chemicals that support self regulation and executive functioning. Exercise helps the brain grow more and get more efficient.
• Kids develop focus by pursuing things that interest them. School closes them off from this. It also limits their physical movement, their ability to talk with peers, and their ability to ask questions. Most teachers don't encourage questions generally speaking, they need need plough through the prescribed material in order to be ready for tests. Kids learn and grow the most when they are left to their own devices to be creative, now days we just leave them on devices.
CONCLUSION
• First 5 mins of last chapter- spotlight, aerobic exercise expands the growth of brain connections, the frontal cortex and the brain chemicals that support self-regulation and executive functioning. Exercise helps the brain grow more and get more efficient at light, daylight, + hacking analogy
• Seeking flow is better than punishing yourself for distractions.
• Act on mind wandering. This is letting your mind drift away from immediate surroundings, it then drifts among memories of the past, starts to game out the future, and makes connections between the different things you've learned. Johann says he not goes for an hour walk daily without his phone.
One of those books everyone should read.
My sometimes lazily taken notes:
• In 2013, on twitter, a topic would remain in the most discussed topics for 17.5 hours. In 2016, this had dropped to 11.9 hours.
• Scientists used an algorithm to check how long people spend on a topic before going onto something new. They scanned books from the 1800 hundreds up to now and analysed the Internet. They found convincing data which showed a sharp decline in attention, or the ability to sustain focus on one matter.
Although the Internet has sped up this decline in attention rapidly, it has been going on a good deal longer.
• Johann was talking to a scientist. He said he seen a video of a room of people all wearing virtual reality headsets, all but Mark Zuckerberg who stood at the front of the room. This is a metaphor for the future. There will be a hypnotised class, the majority, then there will be the upper class who were aware of how essential attention span is, who are aware of the dangers of constant stimulation.
• Johann recites a study which stated that speed reading decreases retention of information the quicker you read. He says the data suggests speed reading isn't legit and wonders if we're all trying to speed read our way through life.
• People talk significantly faster now than they did in the 1960s, and in just the last twenty years people have started walking quicker in city's.
• Multitasking doesn't work.
Switch cost effect: when you switch from one task to another, your brain has to reconfigure.
A company did a study on their employees, they did an iq test on them after multitasking and again after being focused on one task. Their iqs dropped by about 10 points from multitasking. That's twice the knock you take from smoking cannabis. "You'd be better off getting stoned at your desk than checking your phone intermittently.
When you switch from task to task your brain has to remember what it was doing prebiously which causes glitches and uses more energy.
Creativity drain: your mind, given free and undistracted time, will go over what it learned and seen/absorbed and draws connections between them in new ways.
The brains like a muscle. This more practice monotasking, the better your brain gets at it.
Chapter 2!!
The interruption of our flow states
• Johann begins 2 by explaining the withdrawals of social media.
• In the same way animals can be conditioned to do certain tasks by rewarding them, so can humans.
• We all have a choice, fragmentation or flow.
• Johann cried tears of relief when, after reading hours of War and Peace, he realized his brain was back online. It was permanently broken.
• Johann started to wake up feeling refreshed, not needing or wanting coffee. He could remember feeling this good waking up since when he was a child.
• The first thing to go when you're tired is your ability to pay attention.
• When the sun was going down and light was waning, our bodies would release energy to get us to our caves. This mechanism is still built in, so if we have artificial light turned onto until we intend to sleep, it will only be when that's turned off that we get the rush to go to shelter. This is causing a lot of insomnia, it's important to be in the dark a while before you intend to sleep
The fall of sustained reading:
• Recreational reading at lowest ever recorded.
• 2004 and 2017, the number of men who read for pleasure dropped by 40%, women by 29%.
• 1978 - 2014, number of people who had never read a book trippled.
(Both studies done in America)
• Ann mangan studied how reading has changed since the Internet for two decades. She says reading used to trains use to focus in a linear manner, from one thing to the next. The Internet has trained us to manically jump from one thing to the next. We're more likely to scan and scim, to run our eyes over the information to extract what we need. This sort of reading on the Internet bleeds over to normal reading and causes us to do the same with books (p.n. I wonder of it also bleeds into how we think)
• Television has changed our ability to think in a way that is so fundamental it's hard to see. The medium is the message. Its not a pipeline, its a filter, it's a format of goggles. Twitter for example, that medium send the message that life is simple and your half baked opinions need to be thrown into the void. Books insinuate life is complicated and requires the time, focus and thought to begin to understand.
• Scientists hypothesised reading novels makes you more empathetic. They did a study where they asked people to deduce what people were feeling, showing them just their eyes. Those who read novels were better able to judge what they were feeling. Novels, fiction, will always be a better form of virtual reality than any technology. (P.n. archetypes) some scientists were skeptical, said maybe empathetic people enjoyed books more. Both are probably true. A different study found that kids who were read books develop better empathy.
Ch5 - Disruption of mind wandering
• Attention is a spotlight.
• Mind wandering causes you to imagine how what your experience relates to your life. How it relates to what was previously said. Mind wandering lets you see the theme of what your reading is. This helps neurons connect it to a relevant network. Connections are made when mindwandering and you develop a more integrated and whole understanding of things.
• Creativity is connecting two things you already know. Most breakthroughs come when scientists, inventors, or artists aren't focused.
• Get freedom software for laptop and keysafe for phone
Chapter - The rise of technology that can track and manipulate you
• People in silicon Valley are mourning what they've created. The collective downgrading of humans, and the upgrading of machines, is causing far reaching effects on society. We are becoming less focused, less rational, less compassionate. The negativity bias causes these platforms to push negativity and extremism.
Ch8 - cruel optimism
• The idea is being pushed that distractions are our fault. The reality is that the system is rigged against us. The environment is designed for us to struggle with distraction. It's not only a personal issue of productivity, it's an issue of algorithms and programmers taking advantage of our vulnerability.
Ch9 - first glimpses of deeper solution
• Before harvest, farmers did test. After they did it again, after harvest, they scored 13 points higher iq. Financial stability boosts cognitive function.
• Pollutants in the atmosphere and food have been linked to attention difficulties.
• Zoo animals are given psychiatric medication. Even pets.
THE CONFINEMENT OF OUR CHILDREN
• Aerobic exercise expands the growth of brain connections, the frontal cortex and the brain chemicals that support self regulation and executive functioning. Exercise helps the brain grow more and get more efficient.
• Kids develop focus by pursuing things that interest them. School closes them off from this. It also limits their physical movement, their ability to talk with peers, and their ability to ask questions. Most teachers don't encourage questions generally speaking, they need need plough through the prescribed material in order to be ready for tests. Kids learn and grow the most when they are left to their own devices to be creative, now days we just leave them on devices.
CONCLUSION
• First 5 mins of last chapter- spotlight, aerobic exercise expands the growth of brain connections, the frontal cortex and the brain chemicals that support self-regulation and executive functioning. Exercise helps the brain grow more and get more efficient at light, daylight, + hacking analogy
• Seeking flow is better than punishing yourself for distractions.
• Act on mind wandering. This is letting your mind drift away from immediate surroundings, it then drifts among memories of the past, starts to game out the future, and makes connections between the different things you've learned. Johann says he not goes for an hour walk daily without his phone.
January 18, 2022
I loved most of the book, there's been quite some good advice I've been able to use to start healing my focus and I found the sections on how these sites are intentionally made to worsen our attention problems very enlightening. There is however a caveat - the chapter (or was it 2 chapters) on ADHD. Now, I'm not completely against touching on this as the problems with attention and how the environment is made to make it very hard certainly doesn't help people with ADHD, but he comitts all of the cardinal sins; 1) Not neurodivergent, 2) Talks with scientists about ADHD, 3) The scientists are not psychologists, 4) Narrows down ADHD to only being about paying attention, 5) Does not talk to anyone with ADHD or ND organization, 6) Only focuses on children, 7) Talks about cases of children mistakenly getting ADHD diagnosis but all of them are basically cases of gross misconduct by those who did it like a child who got a diagnosis of ADHD because he couldn't pay attention and had been sexually abused. A lot of concern against ADHD medication but really any solution other then that you can improve your attention in other ways, but again attention problems is only one (and maybe not even the biggest) issue people with ADHD have.
So by and large the book was very good, but I did want to write this out. And just as an aside I am SO tired of NTs writing/talking ABOUT US instead of TO US or WITH US. Sigh.
So by and large the book was very good, but I did want to write this out. And just as an aside I am SO tired of NTs writing/talking ABOUT US instead of TO US or WITH US. Sigh.
November 6, 2021
When I finished this book, I was extremely conflicted, and I figured out why. I hold Johann Hari to an extremely high standard because I truly believe that his previous book Lost Connections is one of the most important books ever written about depression, and I’ve read it multiple times. Johann and his team were kind enough to send me an early copy of this new book, and I binged it. Johann is an amazing writer, and I can breeze through just about any book he puts out there because his style is perfection. But when I saw what this book was about, I knew that Johann was going to be fighting a difficult battle because this book is all about how technology has stolen our attention, and this book topic has been covered extensively in books and articles for a while now. With Lost Connections, he had the same challenge, and he nailed it, but I don’t think he was able to do it as well with this book.
Don’t get me wrong, this book is fantastic, and I think everyone should read it. Although I’ve read dozens of books on this topic, there were definitely quite a few chapters where Johann brought something new to the conversation. I especially loved his chapters on the benefits of mind wandering as well as discussing some of the debates and controversies around the increase in ADHD diagnoses. One of my favorite parts of the book was his conflicted views on Nir Eyal because I’ve had a similar conflict about the man who wrote a book about getting people hooked on tech, and then his follow-up book is the exact opposite. I think Johann navigated this topic very well, and I’m glad he pushed back on Nir in their conversation. I’m also looking forward to listening to the full conversation on the book’s website.
Aside from the moments in the book where Johann brings something new, there’s a lot of repeat information for anyone familiar with this topic. Johann interviews and tells the stories of people we’re familiar with like tech ethicist Tristan Harris as well as the famous flow researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. There are also a few places in this book where he covers topics and research that were in Lost Connections such as Universal Basic Income, but he does use some different examples of the research behind it.
Overall, this is a great book, and I’m sure most readers will love it. I really enjoyed the book, but if you’re like me and are familiar with the subject matter, you may be somewhat let down. Again, I’m extremely biased because his previous book is one of my favorites, so I suggest you check it out and form your own opinion regardless because Johann is doing great work. One thing I respect about Johann is that he’s always looking at the biggest issues making us miserable and tries to find solutions.
Don’t get me wrong, this book is fantastic, and I think everyone should read it. Although I’ve read dozens of books on this topic, there were definitely quite a few chapters where Johann brought something new to the conversation. I especially loved his chapters on the benefits of mind wandering as well as discussing some of the debates and controversies around the increase in ADHD diagnoses. One of my favorite parts of the book was his conflicted views on Nir Eyal because I’ve had a similar conflict about the man who wrote a book about getting people hooked on tech, and then his follow-up book is the exact opposite. I think Johann navigated this topic very well, and I’m glad he pushed back on Nir in their conversation. I’m also looking forward to listening to the full conversation on the book’s website.
Aside from the moments in the book where Johann brings something new, there’s a lot of repeat information for anyone familiar with this topic. Johann interviews and tells the stories of people we’re familiar with like tech ethicist Tristan Harris as well as the famous flow researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. There are also a few places in this book where he covers topics and research that were in Lost Connections such as Universal Basic Income, but he does use some different examples of the research behind it.
Overall, this is a great book, and I’m sure most readers will love it. I really enjoyed the book, but if you’re like me and are familiar with the subject matter, you may be somewhat let down. Again, I’m extremely biased because his previous book is one of my favorites, so I suggest you check it out and form your own opinion regardless because Johann is doing great work. One thing I respect about Johann is that he’s always looking at the biggest issues making us miserable and tries to find solutions.
February 27, 2022
I read this book—and Hari’s other popular book, Lost Connections—before I realized that he has a somewhat checkered past as a journalist. I loved Hari’s writing, and he can certainly weave together compelling interviews to craft a strong argument. His books are a breeze to read. But once I Googled him, it really soured the experience of this book for me. I found myself constantly skeptical of Hari’s claims, unsure of how much I could believe and how much was distorted to fit the author’s narrative.
Hari does a great job developing his own argument about why our attention is so fragmented—and it happens to be one that I already agreed with before coming to this book. But Hari does a less good job presenting counterarguments to his own views. He’ll mention in passing that some research is disputed or that other people disagree with point (x). But after five pages arguing why (x) is the case, a single paragraph (or one measly sentence) disputing (x) is not enough.
I really did like this book, and I especially like that the author takes pains to point out that issues with distraction and lack of focus aren’t personal failings that can be solved by individuals, but rather are societal problems driven by the capitalistic requirement for constant economic growth and increased profits. it’s not your own fault you’re hooked on your phone all the time. Individuals didn’t make these problems, and we can’t solve them through sheer individual willpower. Hari makes a really good case for this.
But the entire time I was reading this book, I kept wondering “Whose side am I not hearing? Is there more to it than this? Are these studies reputable? Are these interview subjects representative of what many others in the field think? Did Hari quote these people accurately?” Because of his reputation for stretching the truth in the past, I didn’t feel I could fully trust the veracity of Hari’s claims here—and I don’t know enough about this field to dispute or support them.
Maybe I’m being too paranoid or too much of a stickler, but I would probably read other books on this topic before holding a strong opinion on the current state of human attention in the modern world. Overall, I enjoyed this book and I agree with its central thesis, but I can’t be sure if I’m right to do so.
Hari does a great job developing his own argument about why our attention is so fragmented—and it happens to be one that I already agreed with before coming to this book. But Hari does a less good job presenting counterarguments to his own views. He’ll mention in passing that some research is disputed or that other people disagree with point (x). But after five pages arguing why (x) is the case, a single paragraph (or one measly sentence) disputing (x) is not enough.
I really did like this book, and I especially like that the author takes pains to point out that issues with distraction and lack of focus aren’t personal failings that can be solved by individuals, but rather are societal problems driven by the capitalistic requirement for constant economic growth and increased profits. it’s not your own fault you’re hooked on your phone all the time. Individuals didn’t make these problems, and we can’t solve them through sheer individual willpower. Hari makes a really good case for this.
But the entire time I was reading this book, I kept wondering “Whose side am I not hearing? Is there more to it than this? Are these studies reputable? Are these interview subjects representative of what many others in the field think? Did Hari quote these people accurately?” Because of his reputation for stretching the truth in the past, I didn’t feel I could fully trust the veracity of Hari’s claims here—and I don’t know enough about this field to dispute or support them.
Maybe I’m being too paranoid or too much of a stickler, but I would probably read other books on this topic before holding a strong opinion on the current state of human attention in the modern world. Overall, I enjoyed this book and I agree with its central thesis, but I can’t be sure if I’m right to do so.
March 2, 2022
I did not finish this book. The chapter on ADHD is ableist nonsense and the author cherrypicks information from doctors and scientists to match his confirmation biases. The author insinuates that ADHD is caused by environmental factors, can be eliminated by changing the environment (spoiler: it can't) and implies that medicating people for ADHD is dangerous. He doesn't mention neuro-diversity, dopamine, or executive function. Yes, strategies for managing ADHD symptoms do help people with ADHD and reduce symptoms, but suggesting treating ADHD with strategies alone is unhelpful. He also only talking about the attention aspect of ADHD and completely bypasses hyperactivity (that wouldn't fit with the confirmation bias of the chapter!) Pushing the narrative that ADHD doesn't really exist, that attention problems can be solved by managing the environment, and that kids don't really need medication is ableist. It minimises the condition, suggests that the chemical imbalance in our brains is somehow both not real, and our fault, and is the kind of minimising judgement that stigmatises those who are neurodivergent. Really disappointing.
January 7, 2024
What stole our focus? The answer might surprise you.
We spend too much time on social media such as Facebook, Google, Instagram etc.
The tech giants are designing tech and algorithms to exploit our attention for profit.
Other factors include environmental pollution, poor sleep, and nutrition, which impact brain function.
We can improve our attention by limiting tech use, prioritizing sleep, and incorporating meditation into our lives.
We should slow down and focus on one thing at a time.
Try not multi-tasking...
We spend too much time on social media such as Facebook, Google, Instagram etc.
The tech giants are designing tech and algorithms to exploit our attention for profit.
Other factors include environmental pollution, poor sleep, and nutrition, which impact brain function.
We can improve our attention by limiting tech use, prioritizing sleep, and incorporating meditation into our lives.
We should slow down and focus on one thing at a time.
Try not multi-tasking...
December 19, 2023
In 2021, I wrote a negative review of this book. I was a young university student who felt cocky about reading any sort of literature or nonfiction. I was already on Instagram, feeling nervous and anxious about my image online and I think I put more effort into filtering a single photo than I ever did reading this book. I posted a very short negative paragraph calling it "tedious/boring" and did not think much of it.
Without any effort from my part whatsoever, my negative review gained traction and many people on Goodreads liked it. I receive notifications each week. 40 likes, 50 likes....Something about a review calling out the author for being unfocused while he was writing a book about focus felt deliciously vengeful and ironic.
I did feel a little weird about the fact that my negative review somehow became the most popular one I ever wrote. It wasn't even a defining review for a book I liked. It did not reflect me as a person. Somehow, the algorithm just kept showing people what they wanted to see and what they wanted to see was affirmation that the book was bad. So lots of people who felt the book was useless or unfocused just jumped on the bandwagon and found this short, pithy review written by a 20 year old insightful. They gave it a like, therefore boosting the idea/illusion that I was saying something important.
It's 2023 now. I have changed. The world has changed. I came back to this book around November 2023 and finished it in December 2023.
That was when I realized I was wrong.
The book wasn't perfect but suddenly, I was able to read it with a mature mindset and it opened up new concepts for me. It highlighted phenomena that I was seeing more of each day. It put a name to that strange, disconnected feeling I felt when doom-scrolling through my social media apps. It encapsulated the collective "funny feeling" Bo Burnham was singing about as the whole world watched atrocities unfold through our black mirrors and the whiplash we get when we scroll through ads, genocide, friendship photos, thirst traps and meaningless crap each day without it ever making an impact on our soul. It forced me to address the fact that I too had been very shallow, reading but never absorbing or understanding, unable to focus on anything for more than a long time. I put the book down multiple times and switched to cat videos on YouTube or scrolled through endless Instagram reels a few times.
That's when I knew I too had an attention problem.
This is why I am rewriting my review because I think the book is right. Our attention and focus has really been stolen. Yes, Johann Hari wrote about it in a very roundabout, wistful way but deep down, the book makes some very convincing and alarming points. He isn't talking nonsense. I myself have definitely experienced the erosion in my attention span and the numbness that comes from being on the Internet too long. It's like suddenly waking up and realizing that you've been in a house filled with radiation but you've gotten so used to the decay that it did not bother you last time until someone pointed it out.
What is this book about?
The first time I read it, I felt a little annoyed that the author took a no-tech vacation and retreated into total tech darkness at a little beachside town. He spends most of his time alternating between his memories at his cottage without technology and the research + interviews he conducted with prominent figures in the attention economy. This writing style may not suit everyone but I found it to be engaging and interesting. I thought that his ruminations while living without phone or internet to be useful and important to the main theme of this book: how do we get back our focus?
Through his tech free pilgrimage, he was essentially trying to answer the question, "Where did my focus go and how do I get it back?" Is it as easy as going on a tech detox? What does it mean to focus in this era of short-form content and insidious advertising that knows our preferences from our online profiles?
Johann found that there are twelve deep forces at work that are damaging our attention. Each chapter is dedicated to exploring the forces in detail. He then goes through a deep dive through all those forces, discussing with experts and prominent figures in those specific topics about their opinions. In summary, some of the forces eroding our attention are the rise of addictive technology, crippling of our flow states, physical and mental exhaustion, manipulative tech, cruel optimism and the death of mind-wandering. Basically, the world has become so fast-paced and capitalistic in nature that to even sit still and do nothing productive has become shameful. We fill all our waking hours with technology that distract and manipulate our attention because we cannot be unproductive or even present with our own thoughts for a second.
Think about it. When was the last time you sat down for a meal or on public transport or during a lull in your waking hours WITHOUT your smartphone around?
In fact, when was the last time you had a day without your smartphone by your side? And when was the last time you focused fully on a task without any interruptions?
The more I asked myself these questions, the more I realized with begrudging respect that I was wrong about this book. He was ringing the alarm bells loud and clear. I just did not like the ugly truth.
Overall, I think this book is a meaningful and slow exploration of the reasons why our focus is diminishing in this modern era and what we can do to get it back or at least fight against the forces causing this slow death.
What is the main problem? Do we have a common enemy?
Eventually, the book starts shifting the spotlight towards Big Tech. You know them. You use all their products: Facebook or Meta, Google and Microsoft. While he did touch on environmental factors that prey on attention spans, it's clear that the author is adamant on holding Big Tech responsible for unleashing its addictive technologies on the world without putting any breaks or mechanisms to reduce its harm. Big Tech appears many times throughout the novel, either through interviews with regretful ex-engineers who are remorseful about their monstrously addictive creations or sketchy entrepreneurs who preach that it's the people's fault for not using it "the right way".
But what I admired the most was Hari's decision to side with the people and say that it's not our fault for not being able to resist the lure of addictive technology. When it is so invasive, pervasive and normalized to the point of becoming socially outcast without it, how can one make the right choice to use it the right way if the tech giants themselves don't assist?
How can one pin the blame on the individual to have better self control when it comes to apps and tech that have been specifically engineered by thousands of experts to be as addictive as possible?
It's true that they won't do anything to make the tech LESS addictive because that would mean LESS attention and in this attention economy, LESS income for them. Them, being billionaires way out of our tax bracket, making money from billions of people using their apps for free with detrimental costs to their attention span.
So are we all doomed? What are the solutions?
The solutions that he provides are a mix of radical and practical. I had mixed feelings about the final chapter where the tone of the book shifts to increasing urgency and had a darker tone to it. Suddenly, Johann Hari was linking our inability to focus to climate change. Wait, what??
Hear me out, it sounds like a huge reach for me too but he justified it by saying that if we devoting our attention to useless things, we won't be able to focus our efforts where it counts. Hence, why climate change is just silently boiling in the background but we are too busy eroding our attention spans on Tik Tok to care. Okay, I felt like this one was probably influenced by him living in California and seeing wildfire destruction reach its peak during the year but he made some important points all the same. Climate change is indeed real and alarming. But what does he suggest we do about our stolen focus?
On one hand, he wants an all out war from regular users who hopefully have woken up from their slumber and refuse to become sheep. He wrote long passages passionately preaching advocacy, citizen action and protests from the public to make their voices heard. A rallying cry in the final chapters of the book is clear where Neff stands. He wants us to make a stand. He has shown us all the facts and hopes we are as horrified as he is about the findings. He wants us to...I guess, tweet our dissatisfaction? Boycott Facebook? It wasn't very clear since there was no single grassroots movement to get behind but he did add a few of them in his index.
Clearly, he feels everyone's right to attention is the most crucial thing in this economy that has now been dubbed the "attention economy". Your attention is the most precious thing now that marketers and greedy big corporations want to steal. If everyone treated attention like money, we would be more outraged about it being secretly stolen away, right? But we give our attention away to so many apps and websites without thinking. Johann Hari doesn't want us to give up without a fight.
On the other hand, I felt like his solution, while being very passionate and proactive, did not really provide the best solution for everyone. Honestly, the only foolproof solution is to unplug totally from social media and live on a commune. This is impossible for the majority of people. We are going to be under the thumb of Big Tech when we use their products and many people even rely on these social networking sites for their livelihood. It's inevitable. If the product is free, you are the product. We know that! I think the main problem is that we don't care.
Most people don't care about cookies or even reading the terms of conditions of their agreements. What makes him think that we are all going to rebel against our tech overlords? Once again, I am faced with the futility of our struggle. Still, Hari is more optimistic than me and says that if enough of us rebel, policies and regulation could be changed.
I wish there were some more practical tips on how we can resist the addictive, attention rabbit holes in the daily apps and technology that we use. Still, I think the book's main focus is on bringing the dangers and causes of this modern phenomenon to light. He achieved what he wanted to do. His main idea is that our attention is being STOLEN and I think he convinced me pretty well. Our attention spans existed, then the internet happened and whatever is left of it is being wrestled from my grasp unwillingly. This is indeed some kind of theft.
His writing style is poetic and lovely. It meanders sometimes but the book was meant to make you slow down and think deeply. Some of the most hopeful and beautiful quotes about humanity came from the last few pages and I found myself highlighting them since they resonated deeply with me.
These quotes make me believe that the author is trying to convince us about our stolen attention spans because he cares about humanity overall. Seeing us waste our potential doesn't feel right so I guess writing this book was his small protest, one small flag in the sea of uncaringness, hoping that it will resonate with others.
I felt the ripples. It woke me up.
In conclusion, I will be more careful with where I divert my attention to and how it is benefiting others who don't have my best interests at heart. Overall, it's been a good, humbling, eye-opening read and I urge you to think about the fact that my original negative review was promoted because of the algorithm. Algorithms only shows you what it wants you to see and negativity is the first thing that often gains more engagement and likes. Don't let it turn you into a puppet!
Now, let's get off our screens and into the real world where we can hone our focus.
I'll leave you with this final quote from the author.
Without any effort from my part whatsoever, my negative review gained traction and many people on Goodreads liked it. I receive notifications each week. 40 likes, 50 likes....Something about a review calling out the author for being unfocused while he was writing a book about focus felt deliciously vengeful and ironic.
I did feel a little weird about the fact that my negative review somehow became the most popular one I ever wrote. It wasn't even a defining review for a book I liked. It did not reflect me as a person. Somehow, the algorithm just kept showing people what they wanted to see and what they wanted to see was affirmation that the book was bad. So lots of people who felt the book was useless or unfocused just jumped on the bandwagon and found this short, pithy review written by a 20 year old insightful. They gave it a like, therefore boosting the idea/illusion that I was saying something important.
It's 2023 now. I have changed. The world has changed. I came back to this book around November 2023 and finished it in December 2023.
That was when I realized I was wrong.
The book wasn't perfect but suddenly, I was able to read it with a mature mindset and it opened up new concepts for me. It highlighted phenomena that I was seeing more of each day. It put a name to that strange, disconnected feeling I felt when doom-scrolling through my social media apps. It encapsulated the collective "funny feeling" Bo Burnham was singing about as the whole world watched atrocities unfold through our black mirrors and the whiplash we get when we scroll through ads, genocide, friendship photos, thirst traps and meaningless crap each day without it ever making an impact on our soul. It forced me to address the fact that I too had been very shallow, reading but never absorbing or understanding, unable to focus on anything for more than a long time. I put the book down multiple times and switched to cat videos on YouTube or scrolled through endless Instagram reels a few times.
That's when I knew I too had an attention problem.
This is why I am rewriting my review because I think the book is right. Our attention and focus has really been stolen. Yes, Johann Hari wrote about it in a very roundabout, wistful way but deep down, the book makes some very convincing and alarming points. He isn't talking nonsense. I myself have definitely experienced the erosion in my attention span and the numbness that comes from being on the Internet too long. It's like suddenly waking up and realizing that you've been in a house filled with radiation but you've gotten so used to the decay that it did not bother you last time until someone pointed it out.
Every day as a direct result of his invention, the combined total of 200,000 more human lifetimes - every moment from birth to death - is now spent scrolling through a screen
What is this book about?
The first time I read it, I felt a little annoyed that the author took a no-tech vacation and retreated into total tech darkness at a little beachside town. He spends most of his time alternating between his memories at his cottage without technology and the research + interviews he conducted with prominent figures in the attention economy. This writing style may not suit everyone but I found it to be engaging and interesting. I thought that his ruminations while living without phone or internet to be useful and important to the main theme of this book: how do we get back our focus?
Through his tech free pilgrimage, he was essentially trying to answer the question, "Where did my focus go and how do I get it back?" Is it as easy as going on a tech detox? What does it mean to focus in this era of short-form content and insidious advertising that knows our preferences from our online profiles?
Johann found that there are twelve deep forces at work that are damaging our attention. Each chapter is dedicated to exploring the forces in detail. He then goes through a deep dive through all those forces, discussing with experts and prominent figures in those specific topics about their opinions. In summary, some of the forces eroding our attention are the rise of addictive technology, crippling of our flow states, physical and mental exhaustion, manipulative tech, cruel optimism and the death of mind-wandering. Basically, the world has become so fast-paced and capitalistic in nature that to even sit still and do nothing productive has become shameful. We fill all our waking hours with technology that distract and manipulate our attention because we cannot be unproductive or even present with our own thoughts for a second.
Think about it. When was the last time you sat down for a meal or on public transport or during a lull in your waking hours WITHOUT your smartphone around?
In fact, when was the last time you had a day without your smartphone by your side? And when was the last time you focused fully on a task without any interruptions?
The more I asked myself these questions, the more I realized with begrudging respect that I was wrong about this book. He was ringing the alarm bells loud and clear. I just did not like the ugly truth.
Overall, I think this book is a meaningful and slow exploration of the reasons why our focus is diminishing in this modern era and what we can do to get it back or at least fight against the forces causing this slow death.
What is the main problem? Do we have a common enemy?
Eventually, the book starts shifting the spotlight towards Big Tech. You know them. You use all their products: Facebook or Meta, Google and Microsoft. While he did touch on environmental factors that prey on attention spans, it's clear that the author is adamant on holding Big Tech responsible for unleashing its addictive technologies on the world without putting any breaks or mechanisms to reduce its harm. Big Tech appears many times throughout the novel, either through interviews with regretful ex-engineers who are remorseful about their monstrously addictive creations or sketchy entrepreneurs who preach that it's the people's fault for not using it "the right way".
But what I admired the most was Hari's decision to side with the people and say that it's not our fault for not being able to resist the lure of addictive technology. When it is so invasive, pervasive and normalized to the point of becoming socially outcast without it, how can one make the right choice to use it the right way if the tech giants themselves don't assist?
How can one pin the blame on the individual to have better self control when it comes to apps and tech that have been specifically engineered by thousands of experts to be as addictive as possible?
It's true that they won't do anything to make the tech LESS addictive because that would mean LESS attention and in this attention economy, LESS income for them. Them, being billionaires way out of our tax bracket, making money from billions of people using their apps for free with detrimental costs to their attention span.
These sites and apps are designed to train our minds to crave frequent rewards....
The technical term for this system - coined by the brilliant Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff - is surveillance capitalism....
Facebook makes more money for every extra second you are staring through a screen at their site, and they lose money every time you put the screen away
So are we all doomed? What are the solutions?
The solutions that he provides are a mix of radical and practical. I had mixed feelings about the final chapter where the tone of the book shifts to increasing urgency and had a darker tone to it. Suddenly, Johann Hari was linking our inability to focus to climate change. Wait, what??
Hear me out, it sounds like a huge reach for me too but he justified it by saying that if we devoting our attention to useless things, we won't be able to focus our efforts where it counts. Hence, why climate change is just silently boiling in the background but we are too busy eroding our attention spans on Tik Tok to care. Okay, I felt like this one was probably influenced by him living in California and seeing wildfire destruction reach its peak during the year but he made some important points all the same. Climate change is indeed real and alarming. But what does he suggest we do about our stolen focus?
On one hand, he wants an all out war from regular users who hopefully have woken up from their slumber and refuse to become sheep. He wrote long passages passionately preaching advocacy, citizen action and protests from the public to make their voices heard. A rallying cry in the final chapters of the book is clear where Neff stands. He wants us to make a stand. He has shown us all the facts and hopes we are as horrified as he is about the findings. He wants us to...I guess, tweet our dissatisfaction? Boycott Facebook? It wasn't very clear since there was no single grassroots movement to get behind but he did add a few of them in his index.
They have to be stopped. They have to be stopped by us.
...Are we going to join them and put up a fight? Or are we going to let invasive technologies win by default?
I realized that if Facebook won't stop promoting facism - promoting Nazism in Germany - they will never care about protecting your focus and attention.
Clearly, he feels everyone's right to attention is the most crucial thing in this economy that has now been dubbed the "attention economy". Your attention is the most precious thing now that marketers and greedy big corporations want to steal. If everyone treated attention like money, we would be more outraged about it being secretly stolen away, right? But we give our attention away to so many apps and websites without thinking. Johann Hari doesn't want us to give up without a fight.
On the other hand, I felt like his solution, while being very passionate and proactive, did not really provide the best solution for everyone. Honestly, the only foolproof solution is to unplug totally from social media and live on a commune. This is impossible for the majority of people. We are going to be under the thumb of Big Tech when we use their products and many people even rely on these social networking sites for their livelihood. It's inevitable. If the product is free, you are the product. We know that! I think the main problem is that we don't care.
Most people don't care about cookies or even reading the terms of conditions of their agreements. What makes him think that we are all going to rebel against our tech overlords? Once again, I am faced with the futility of our struggle. Still, Hari is more optimistic than me and says that if enough of us rebel, policies and regulation could be changed.
I wish there were some more practical tips on how we can resist the addictive, attention rabbit holes in the daily apps and technology that we use. Still, I think the book's main focus is on bringing the dangers and causes of this modern phenomenon to light. He achieved what he wanted to do. His main idea is that our attention is being STOLEN and I think he convinced me pretty well. Our attention spans existed, then the internet happened and whatever is left of it is being wrestled from my grasp unwillingly. This is indeed some kind of theft.
His writing style is poetic and lovely. It meanders sometimes but the book was meant to make you slow down and think deeply. Some of the most hopeful and beautiful quotes about humanity came from the last few pages and I found myself highlighting them since they resonated deeply with me.
Most people don't want a fast life - they want a good life. Nobody lies on their deathbed and thinks about all that they contributed to economic growth.
We could redefine prosperity to mean having time to spend with our children, or to be in nature, or to sleep, or to dream, or to have secure work
These quotes make me believe that the author is trying to convince us about our stolen attention spans because he cares about humanity overall. Seeing us waste our potential doesn't feel right so I guess writing this book was his small protest, one small flag in the sea of uncaringness, hoping that it will resonate with others.
I felt the ripples. It woke me up.
In conclusion, I will be more careful with where I divert my attention to and how it is benefiting others who don't have my best interests at heart. Overall, it's been a good, humbling, eye-opening read and I urge you to think about the fact that my original negative review was promoted because of the algorithm. Algorithms only shows you what it wants you to see and negativity is the first thing that often gains more engagement and likes. Don't let it turn you into a puppet!
Now, let's get off our screens and into the real world where we can hone our focus.
I'll leave you with this final quote from the author.
I want to live in that light - the light of knowing, of achieving our ambitions, of being fully alive - and not in the menacing orange light of it all burning down
January 16, 2022
I was really interested to read this book. For the sake of clarity my eldest son has ADHD and having lived with his struggles I perhaps am more sensitive than most to the topics raised.
The first3/4 of the book tell us nothing we don't already know (my grandma knows how to suck eggs, thank you) interspersed with the opinions of some scientists. The last 1/4 deals with ADHD and children and this is mostly where I take issue. Hari writes that there should be no judgement on parents for ADHD and then explains that it doesn't really exist its just how a child is raised that leads to it. Sounds like judgement to me. Did Hari take the time to ask those with ADHD how it affects them? Or the parents?
My main issue with this book is that it is very 1 sided. Hari has picked the facts and figures and experts that support his narrative. There is very little, if any, counter argument. I honestly wouldn't waste your time reading this.
The first3/4 of the book tell us nothing we don't already know (my grandma knows how to suck eggs, thank you) interspersed with the opinions of some scientists. The last 1/4 deals with ADHD and children and this is mostly where I take issue. Hari writes that there should be no judgement on parents for ADHD and then explains that it doesn't really exist its just how a child is raised that leads to it. Sounds like judgement to me. Did Hari take the time to ask those with ADHD how it affects them? Or the parents?
My main issue with this book is that it is very 1 sided. Hari has picked the facts and figures and experts that support his narrative. There is very little, if any, counter argument. I honestly wouldn't waste your time reading this.
September 14, 2022
I fundamentally agree with this book's central thesis:
Your attention is being fragmented and your political views are radicalised through the Outrage Economy by large tech monopolies beholden to Surveillance Capitalism, particularly Twitter.
However, Hari's narrative raised some red flags. In short, he seemed entirely blind to his own ideological blind spots, and thus I found myself highly skeptical of many of his claims. I was about to write a review to this effect, but it turned out someone already had.
So instead, I'll link to some books I think explains/remedies the problems diagnosed by Hari (his own solutions strike me, perhaps unsurprisingly, as something a Terminally Online journalist would cook up):
1. The loss of focus/flow can be remedied by embracing the practice of Deep Work. Or, as Steven Pressfield would put it: Trusting the Soup.
2. Sleep is incredibly important. For some reason Hari didn't interview Matthew Walker, whose book, Why We Sleep, is essentially the Sleep Bible.
3. The anxiety and stress introduced by social media can be alleviated by (1) deleting social media, (2) meditation, and (3) application of Stoic principles. I hardly think (1) needs its own book, but The Power of Now and Meditations are good primers on the latter two points. I am sympathetic to the point that these techniques will not save those with genuinely stressful lives (like the American working class), but I hardly think social media is their main problem.
4. Unlike Hari, I don't think handing the political levers of social media to politicians is a good idea. I think my views are vindicated by Twitter's excessive censorship of non-progressive views and the Democratic Party's recent effort to create a literal Ministry of Truth. For a Left-wing perspective on how the only sane political party in the U.S. became a neoliberal bastion of the Professional Class, I strongly recommend Chomsky's Requiem for the American Dream and Frank's Listen, Liberal
5. And finally I think modern media (on both the Left and the Right) are a direct contributor to the political polarisation, and not just social media. Unlike Hari I don't consider The Guardian, NYT, or even the BBC any more unbiased than their conservative counterparts. There are countless articles about this from world-class journalists, but Matt Taibbi's book, Hate Inc, explains it best.
In short, this book read like a dope fiend trying to kick his own addiction. He makes a good case, he's an addict after all so he recognises there's a problem, but his solutions are badly tinted by his illness.
Your attention is being fragmented and your political views are radicalised through the Outrage Economy by large tech monopolies beholden to Surveillance Capitalism, particularly Twitter.
However, Hari's narrative raised some red flags. In short, he seemed entirely blind to his own ideological blind spots, and thus I found myself highly skeptical of many of his claims. I was about to write a review to this effect, but it turned out someone already had.
So instead, I'll link to some books I think explains/remedies the problems diagnosed by Hari (his own solutions strike me, perhaps unsurprisingly, as something a Terminally Online journalist would cook up):
1. The loss of focus/flow can be remedied by embracing the practice of Deep Work. Or, as Steven Pressfield would put it: Trusting the Soup.
2. Sleep is incredibly important. For some reason Hari didn't interview Matthew Walker, whose book, Why We Sleep, is essentially the Sleep Bible.
3. The anxiety and stress introduced by social media can be alleviated by (1) deleting social media, (2) meditation, and (3) application of Stoic principles. I hardly think (1) needs its own book, but The Power of Now and Meditations are good primers on the latter two points. I am sympathetic to the point that these techniques will not save those with genuinely stressful lives (like the American working class), but I hardly think social media is their main problem.
4. Unlike Hari, I don't think handing the political levers of social media to politicians is a good idea. I think my views are vindicated by Twitter's excessive censorship of non-progressive views and the Democratic Party's recent effort to create a literal Ministry of Truth. For a Left-wing perspective on how the only sane political party in the U.S. became a neoliberal bastion of the Professional Class, I strongly recommend Chomsky's Requiem for the American Dream and Frank's Listen, Liberal
5. And finally I think modern media (on both the Left and the Right) are a direct contributor to the political polarisation, and not just social media. Unlike Hari I don't consider The Guardian, NYT, or even the BBC any more unbiased than their conservative counterparts. There are countless articles about this from world-class journalists, but Matt Taibbi's book, Hate Inc, explains it best.
In short, this book read like a dope fiend trying to kick his own addiction. He makes a good case, he's an addict after all so he recognises there's a problem, but his solutions are badly tinted by his illness.
April 30, 2022
Some parts superb, other parts made me go hm, not sure. Hari's own focus got awfully broad in parts, as if he were trying to fit 3 books (and several editorials) into the space of 1. The writing style is lucid, supple, and persuasive (and "lucid" is my highest praise for nonfiction writing.)
One of the some-several things the book attempts is to be a sort of anti-virus program for high-tech efforts to hack our brains, though people who live less under a rock than I do may already be up to speed on all these issues. (I'm pretty sure my techie son is.) I was inspired to take two time-wasting ad-riddled games off my tablet, so there's that; the worst one still lingers, though. And to reconsider how I cope, or don't, with my chronic insomnia.
Some good stuff for writers and others being eaten by internet distractions, anyway.
Ta, L.
December 3, 2023
**Many thanks to Rachel Rodriguez at Crown and Johann Hari for an ARC of this book!**
How long can you TRULY go without looking at your phone?
...
5 minutes? Maybe an hour or two?
And if you happen to leave the house without it...does a fearful panic immediately set in?
And how about watching a movie? Can you remember a time when you could actually SIT and focus on one screen without feeling like you were missing a single thing? Do you remember leaving the house and not worrying about someone 'being able to get a hold of you' at any moment? Or having a thought and NOT immediately jumping to Google it for more information...but just letting your own brain ponder?
To Gen-Z, all of this may seem baffling and unimportant. Why WOULDN'T we do those things? What is to be gained by long periods of uninterrupted thought or action, by unhooking ourselves from the IV of technology we all find ourselves beholden to just to get through the day?
What Johann Hari explores in Stolen Focus is the cause (actually plural, CAUSES) of this inability of people across the globe to pay attention to ANYTHING anymore...and the forces both external and internal that have contributed to this disturbing shift. More importantly, he underlines the fact that if humans refuse to band together and tackle the problems at their root, that this is ONLY the beginning.
Hari set out to determine the root cause of this attention shift, and the results were mind-boggling. He first took a trip to a remote location without his phone, laptop, etc., thinking that a true digital detox would help to lull his mind back from the constant "tab hopping" it currently did. And for a while, it seemed to work: he felt calmer and was able to let his mind wander more often, feeling more creative all the while. But after a while, feelings of anger and resentment at not having his devices crept in, and once he returned from his trip he knew there had to be so much more at play here than the presence of technology and our devices themselves...and he was right.
Hari then works through the different causes in subsequent chapters, including our increase in speed, switch and filtering of information, our crippled flow states, the rise of physical and mental exhaustion, collapse of sustained reading, disruption of mind wandering, the rise of technology that can manipulate and track you, the rise of cruel optimism, the surge in stress and exhaustion, our deteriorating diets and climate change, the rise in ADHD and our response to it, and the psychological and physiological confinement of our children.
Phew. Does that seem like a lot? Because...to put it frankly...it IS.
Hari doesn't shy away from examining ALL angles of the problem, and particularly in America, so much of what drives us away from holding our attention is an environment that mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausts us. We then turn to technology to help relieve and mitigate these stresses in any way possible...and in turn, our technology keeps us on it, watching our habits and of course, inspiring us to spend, spend, spend, to crave more 'likes,' and to keep us distracted and disconnected from the pursuits that would give us joy...but might not help the economic machine as it stands. It's a heavy and multi-faceted proposition, covering all sorts of ground. Despite the heaviness and breadth of material, it was in its own way a sort of train wreck of truth: I couldn't look away.
While some have niggled over Hari seeming to 'cherry pick' certain research to bolster his points while potentially leaving out others, aside from the chapter on ADHD (which I do NOT feel qualified to disseminate on a medical level), I felt Hari did an effective job at presenting examples, interviews, and scientific excerpts to provide clarity and context on everything he posited. He also makes sure to emphasize that this text is NOT a self-help book, and therefore does not have a neat and tidy ending. Hari acknowledges that even after this deep dive into attention and all of the time and energy spent trying to reorient himself towards better habits and examine the root causes of this societal shift, that even being armed with this knowledge, it is STILL a struggle...but a struggle that is simultaneously worth the difficulty.
And only with acknowledgement, solidarity, and a firm resolve will we EVER be able to address all 12 facets of this problem as a society in order to forge a new path. Our progress probably won't be linear and will certainly face push back from the larger sociopolitical structures at play in our world. I'll leave you with one excerpt that sums up the mindset shift that needs to take place in order to turn the tide:
"One day, James Williams-the former Google strategist I met-addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: 'How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?'
There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand."
And if we are all able to focus just a LITTLE bit harder...perhaps in twenty years, with a similar group of people set to shape the very essence of how we live our lives through the powerful conduit that is technology...EVERY hand will go up.
4.5 stars
How long can you TRULY go without looking at your phone?
...
5 minutes? Maybe an hour or two?
And if you happen to leave the house without it...does a fearful panic immediately set in?
And how about watching a movie? Can you remember a time when you could actually SIT and focus on one screen without feeling like you were missing a single thing? Do you remember leaving the house and not worrying about someone 'being able to get a hold of you' at any moment? Or having a thought and NOT immediately jumping to Google it for more information...but just letting your own brain ponder?
To Gen-Z, all of this may seem baffling and unimportant. Why WOULDN'T we do those things? What is to be gained by long periods of uninterrupted thought or action, by unhooking ourselves from the IV of technology we all find ourselves beholden to just to get through the day?
What Johann Hari explores in Stolen Focus is the cause (actually plural, CAUSES) of this inability of people across the globe to pay attention to ANYTHING anymore...and the forces both external and internal that have contributed to this disturbing shift. More importantly, he underlines the fact that if humans refuse to band together and tackle the problems at their root, that this is ONLY the beginning.
Hari set out to determine the root cause of this attention shift, and the results were mind-boggling. He first took a trip to a remote location without his phone, laptop, etc., thinking that a true digital detox would help to lull his mind back from the constant "tab hopping" it currently did. And for a while, it seemed to work: he felt calmer and was able to let his mind wander more often, feeling more creative all the while. But after a while, feelings of anger and resentment at not having his devices crept in, and once he returned from his trip he knew there had to be so much more at play here than the presence of technology and our devices themselves...and he was right.
Hari then works through the different causes in subsequent chapters, including our increase in speed, switch and filtering of information, our crippled flow states, the rise of physical and mental exhaustion, collapse of sustained reading, disruption of mind wandering, the rise of technology that can manipulate and track you, the rise of cruel optimism, the surge in stress and exhaustion, our deteriorating diets and climate change, the rise in ADHD and our response to it, and the psychological and physiological confinement of our children.
Phew. Does that seem like a lot? Because...to put it frankly...it IS.
Hari doesn't shy away from examining ALL angles of the problem, and particularly in America, so much of what drives us away from holding our attention is an environment that mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausts us. We then turn to technology to help relieve and mitigate these stresses in any way possible...and in turn, our technology keeps us on it, watching our habits and of course, inspiring us to spend, spend, spend, to crave more 'likes,' and to keep us distracted and disconnected from the pursuits that would give us joy...but might not help the economic machine as it stands. It's a heavy and multi-faceted proposition, covering all sorts of ground. Despite the heaviness and breadth of material, it was in its own way a sort of train wreck of truth: I couldn't look away.
While some have niggled over Hari seeming to 'cherry pick' certain research to bolster his points while potentially leaving out others, aside from the chapter on ADHD (which I do NOT feel qualified to disseminate on a medical level), I felt Hari did an effective job at presenting examples, interviews, and scientific excerpts to provide clarity and context on everything he posited. He also makes sure to emphasize that this text is NOT a self-help book, and therefore does not have a neat and tidy ending. Hari acknowledges that even after this deep dive into attention and all of the time and energy spent trying to reorient himself towards better habits and examine the root causes of this societal shift, that even being armed with this knowledge, it is STILL a struggle...but a struggle that is simultaneously worth the difficulty.
And only with acknowledgement, solidarity, and a firm resolve will we EVER be able to address all 12 facets of this problem as a society in order to forge a new path. Our progress probably won't be linear and will certainly face push back from the larger sociopolitical structures at play in our world. I'll leave you with one excerpt that sums up the mindset shift that needs to take place in order to turn the tide:
"One day, James Williams-the former Google strategist I met-addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: 'How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?'
There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand."
And if we are all able to focus just a LITTLE bit harder...perhaps in twenty years, with a similar group of people set to shape the very essence of how we live our lives through the powerful conduit that is technology...EVERY hand will go up.
4.5 stars
December 29, 2023
This was SO good and I can't stop thinking about it (or talking about it). It feels like one of those books basically everyone should read!
February 15, 2022
I don't disagree with the general theme about distraction. Unfortunately, this book is itself an example of that restless unproductiveness. The author literally flies all around the world to talk to various people, presumably to gain insights he could have gotten by sitting still and reading some books. This is particularly annoying because one of the main reasons he gives for why we need to pay attention more is to deal with big complex problems like global warming. He does comment on this contradiction himself toward the end of the book, but if the point is that to attain whatever level of self-awareness he eventually achieved you have to quit your day-job and travel all over, then that's kind of nuts. There's also too much of his personal anecdotal stuff for my tastes. But if that style resonates with some people and helps them to disconnect from junk-feeds then that's good.
Alternatives:
Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Alternatives:
Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Read
February 25, 2022This was a really good read and I highly recommend it. It’s a conclusive book on the attention economy and its ramifications, and puts the emphasis on government and corporate responsibility over individual responsibility.
I haven’t read any other books on this subject so I don’t know if anyone covers it *better*, but Stolen Focus is very easy to read and understand–a factor I really appreciate as it makes an important topic more accessible to learn about!
I haven’t read any other books on this subject so I don’t know if anyone covers it *better*, but Stolen Focus is very easy to read and understand–a factor I really appreciate as it makes an important topic more accessible to learn about!
March 23, 2024
This book itself is a demonstration in being unfocused. It jumps from one topic to another, never deepening any of the information. It name drops people, while presenting their ideas in the most superficial manner possible. And worst of all it’s exhaustingly alarmist.
I have read a few books about the topic including Cal Newport, Jaron Lanier, and Shoshana Zuboff’s books. This is by far the worst addition to this sub genre of self-help/tech nonfiction. It’s exhausting to read because it’s so hyped up and scaremongering. It reads exactly like those divisive viral social-media posts that you’d want to get away from. Which is quite a strange choice in style. It might work as satire, but as a serious approach to a subject it’s bizarre.
The second part the book suddenly starts focusing on kids. How kids’ focus is being destroyed by food coloring and additives in food, by the pouted environment, and by helicopter parenting. And it keeps going on and on about this whole “think of the children” scaremongering, and spices it up with some info about the unschooling movement. What does this have to do with focus, or “why we can’t pay attention”? I don’t know.
Generally I don’t know what conclusion the author wanted to present with all of this, because in the last chapter titled conclusions he all of a sudden starts writing about the pandemic, and forest fires, and “oh my god climate change”. It feels very superficial and rushed. The whole thing never coalesces into anything. It presents a lot of things, some of which are scary, and some of which are romanticized ideas of the golden age of our grandparent’s time, but they are all somewhat distinct things, and don’t amount to anything in the end. There’s no bigger picture, no connections made, no interesting ideas, nothing. There’s one chapter that presents the idea of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as a big deal, and that was discovered by these two dudes that the author talked to. Ridiculous oversimplifications like this weigh down the book.
Also, one of the signs of the lost ability to focus according to the author is the decrease in reading books. While I have no problem reading books, including this one, the author himself seems to have a serious problem finding focus to write something coherent, and that examines a topic more deeply. Because this text read more like a series of social media posts, rather than a serious book. Very disappointed.
I have read a few books about the topic including Cal Newport, Jaron Lanier, and Shoshana Zuboff’s books. This is by far the worst addition to this sub genre of self-help/tech nonfiction. It’s exhausting to read because it’s so hyped up and scaremongering. It reads exactly like those divisive viral social-media posts that you’d want to get away from. Which is quite a strange choice in style. It might work as satire, but as a serious approach to a subject it’s bizarre.
The second part the book suddenly starts focusing on kids. How kids’ focus is being destroyed by food coloring and additives in food, by the pouted environment, and by helicopter parenting. And it keeps going on and on about this whole “think of the children” scaremongering, and spices it up with some info about the unschooling movement. What does this have to do with focus, or “why we can’t pay attention”? I don’t know.
Generally I don’t know what conclusion the author wanted to present with all of this, because in the last chapter titled conclusions he all of a sudden starts writing about the pandemic, and forest fires, and “oh my god climate change”. It feels very superficial and rushed. The whole thing never coalesces into anything. It presents a lot of things, some of which are scary, and some of which are romanticized ideas of the golden age of our grandparent’s time, but they are all somewhat distinct things, and don’t amount to anything in the end. There’s no bigger picture, no connections made, no interesting ideas, nothing. There’s one chapter that presents the idea of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as a big deal, and that was discovered by these two dudes that the author talked to. Ridiculous oversimplifications like this weigh down the book.
Also, one of the signs of the lost ability to focus according to the author is the decrease in reading books. While I have no problem reading books, including this one, the author himself seems to have a serious problem finding focus to write something coherent, and that examines a topic more deeply. Because this text read more like a series of social media posts, rather than a serious book. Very disappointed.
June 12, 2022
In, I think, the fall or winter of 2020/21, I hit a wall with social media.
I was doing my own job plus the jobs of two redeployed colleagues, taking care of my kid solo while their health deteriorated and chronic pain soared due to pandemic health-care shutdowns, then caring for them solo after their surgeries, and like many people at the time my entire working and social life happened on screens.
This should have been social media's golden moment to shine; if it connected us all in a genuine and human way, it should have been a balm and a solace. Instead, I found it angering me, constantly. Flame wars abounded. People I thought of as friends took on leadership roles in local anti-pandemic-measures protests and movements, based on so-called YouTube medical experts. Those who understood the medical science seemed to spend all their time screaming just the same, that the government obviously wanted everyone (i.e. their tax base) to die, and didn't care and wasn't even trying, while I watched my (government) colleagues burn out working long hours with no time off, and the job postings put up to hire (new) positions (on government funding) went unfilled because not enough people applied (apparently it was fine for many people to sit home and scream and rank that as their contribution to pandemic control, not connecting that if they "thought someone should DO SOMETHING," they might be the someone who could do something, and try to fill one of those open jobs).
On FaceBook and Twitter, the entire human race looked like a fucking dumpster fire. Even most of the 'good guys.'
And yet when I took the dog around the block, nearly all of my neighbours were decent and kind. Maybe a little confused, but trying their best to understand and do the right thing and enjoying those little moments of human connection we still had. OK, my next door neighbours never followed the rules; they had their kids and grandkids over every day. But they were vastly outnumbered.
I bought Freedom, used it to drastically limit my internet time, deactivated my FaceBook account, and kept only instagram and goodreads on my phone. I unfollowed or muted anything on IG that was primarily shouty, whether it was 'on my side' or not, and I spent what free time I had talking to people directly and doing things with my hands.
It's not just that my experience of people improved, though it did.
But my weekends improved. I didn't have fewer chores. I didn't have fewer bills. I didn't have more fun or less responsibility and my kid's health didn't magically improve. But my weekends expanded, somehow; they grew long and spacious enough that I could get bored in them again, a little bit.
I don't think it's because I was spending that much time on social media or my phone in any objective or measurable way, though I'm sure that contributed. But social media and a distracting stream of terrible news on my mobile device made me feel so frantic and overwhelmed that even when I wasn't doing anything, I felt hurried and stressed.
Stolen Focus is about attention, not social media, though Hari does spend a good chunk of the book talking about technology and our phones and how they were built to hack our minds, and I do find that terrifying and relevant. But he also writes about how our physical environments (pollution, noise, diet, exercise) contributes to a biologically less-healthy brain that sets us up for failure even before phones are introduced, and how all of this was exacerbated and exposed during the pandemic. All we had were our screens, and our screens were ... not great.
All over goodreads and in my life, I see and hear people talk about how they couldn't read a book anymore. Their focus was shot. I was able to read as many books as ever, but most as audiobooks, playing while I did something with my hands because I couldn't sit still and concentrate. It would take me months to finish a book that I would have been able to read in an afternoon, before. And I think Hari is right: stress and anxiety, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, crap food, weird chemicals, constant pinging notifications, and social media that intensify rather than ameliorate our isolation and distraction.
After an adolescence and early adulthood that had a lot of TV and video games in it, I feel lucky to have built a mostly analog adulthood and middle age. I embroider, sew, crochet, knit, hike, and dance. I read a lot. I try to see live music and art exhibits. I'm intensely introverted but I see my key humans in person; I'm not much of a texter and I don't like video calls.
And I really learned the value of everything I'd built that way when it was taken away in 2020, and how much I missed it as things have slowly opened up again. It's not just my focus, which was absolutely shattered and has only recently started to return to something like normal.
It's like -- I love instagram. I'm very intentional about it (which I realize is a white 2022 thing to say). I work in climate change and I immerse myself in bad news for a living; I don't worry that I'm sheltering myself. I've learned that if I am careful about what I follow and what I like, I can indeed train the algorithm to show me more of it. For example, IG has learned that we have a king charles cavalier, and now every day it shows me dozens and dozens of photos and videos of CKCs doing adorable and ridiculous things, and this makes my life better. It has learned that I like dancing, and it shows me videos of dancers. It has learned that I like embroidery, and it shows me photos of amazing embroideries.
But IG (and all SM and apps) do one thing very badly: they shrink reality to something you contain in your hand, rather than something that contains you. Have you ever had the experience of being on a hike in the woods, and you try to take a picture of how stunningly beautiful some vista is, and you can't get it right -- no matter the number of shots or the angle?
It's because half of the wonder and awe of the hike is the experience of being in it. It's not something in front of you that you are looking at; it is above, behind, to the side of, and beneath you. It is singing, calling, creaking, and rustling at you. It has a smell and a texture. It buffets you. You are part of it. Then you take a picture of some tiny 2D snippet with maybe a few seconds of sound and you look at it, tinny and tiny in your hand, and it's not the same, because of course it's not. You've shrunk it into insignificance.
I believe that when we live our lives through screens, we shatter our relationship to reality in a damaging, dangerous and fundamental way. We make it something we observe, something we are outside of, something we pick up and put down again, something small, rather than the overwhelming immensity that we are intrinsically inside of for every moment of our existence.
And what I learned in 2020 is that I really, really, really hate living that way.
This review is not much about the book, I realize. I do think Hari is fundamentally right, but it would be fair to question my slant here. I think this book (along with others, like How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy) can start to point or way out of this mess we're making, which is not something trivial, but is fundamental to our humanity and relationship to the rest of the world, and related to the other, ecological messes we're making. We are not avatars on a screen. We are not minds interacting in cyberspace. We are bodies, living in a physical world.
I was doing my own job plus the jobs of two redeployed colleagues, taking care of my kid solo while their health deteriorated and chronic pain soared due to pandemic health-care shutdowns, then caring for them solo after their surgeries, and like many people at the time my entire working and social life happened on screens.
This should have been social media's golden moment to shine; if it connected us all in a genuine and human way, it should have been a balm and a solace. Instead, I found it angering me, constantly. Flame wars abounded. People I thought of as friends took on leadership roles in local anti-pandemic-measures protests and movements, based on so-called YouTube medical experts. Those who understood the medical science seemed to spend all their time screaming just the same, that the government obviously wanted everyone (i.e. their tax base) to die, and didn't care and wasn't even trying, while I watched my (government) colleagues burn out working long hours with no time off, and the job postings put up to hire (new) positions (on government funding) went unfilled because not enough people applied (apparently it was fine for many people to sit home and scream and rank that as their contribution to pandemic control, not connecting that if they "thought someone should DO SOMETHING," they might be the someone who could do something, and try to fill one of those open jobs).
On FaceBook and Twitter, the entire human race looked like a fucking dumpster fire. Even most of the 'good guys.'
And yet when I took the dog around the block, nearly all of my neighbours were decent and kind. Maybe a little confused, but trying their best to understand and do the right thing and enjoying those little moments of human connection we still had. OK, my next door neighbours never followed the rules; they had their kids and grandkids over every day. But they were vastly outnumbered.
I bought Freedom, used it to drastically limit my internet time, deactivated my FaceBook account, and kept only instagram and goodreads on my phone. I unfollowed or muted anything on IG that was primarily shouty, whether it was 'on my side' or not, and I spent what free time I had talking to people directly and doing things with my hands.
It's not just that my experience of people improved, though it did.
But my weekends improved. I didn't have fewer chores. I didn't have fewer bills. I didn't have more fun or less responsibility and my kid's health didn't magically improve. But my weekends expanded, somehow; they grew long and spacious enough that I could get bored in them again, a little bit.
I don't think it's because I was spending that much time on social media or my phone in any objective or measurable way, though I'm sure that contributed. But social media and a distracting stream of terrible news on my mobile device made me feel so frantic and overwhelmed that even when I wasn't doing anything, I felt hurried and stressed.
Stolen Focus is about attention, not social media, though Hari does spend a good chunk of the book talking about technology and our phones and how they were built to hack our minds, and I do find that terrifying and relevant. But he also writes about how our physical environments (pollution, noise, diet, exercise) contributes to a biologically less-healthy brain that sets us up for failure even before phones are introduced, and how all of this was exacerbated and exposed during the pandemic. All we had were our screens, and our screens were ... not great.
All over goodreads and in my life, I see and hear people talk about how they couldn't read a book anymore. Their focus was shot. I was able to read as many books as ever, but most as audiobooks, playing while I did something with my hands because I couldn't sit still and concentrate. It would take me months to finish a book that I would have been able to read in an afternoon, before. And I think Hari is right: stress and anxiety, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, crap food, weird chemicals, constant pinging notifications, and social media that intensify rather than ameliorate our isolation and distraction.
After an adolescence and early adulthood that had a lot of TV and video games in it, I feel lucky to have built a mostly analog adulthood and middle age. I embroider, sew, crochet, knit, hike, and dance. I read a lot. I try to see live music and art exhibits. I'm intensely introverted but I see my key humans in person; I'm not much of a texter and I don't like video calls.
And I really learned the value of everything I'd built that way when it was taken away in 2020, and how much I missed it as things have slowly opened up again. It's not just my focus, which was absolutely shattered and has only recently started to return to something like normal.
It's like -- I love instagram. I'm very intentional about it (which I realize is a white 2022 thing to say). I work in climate change and I immerse myself in bad news for a living; I don't worry that I'm sheltering myself. I've learned that if I am careful about what I follow and what I like, I can indeed train the algorithm to show me more of it. For example, IG has learned that we have a king charles cavalier, and now every day it shows me dozens and dozens of photos and videos of CKCs doing adorable and ridiculous things, and this makes my life better. It has learned that I like dancing, and it shows me videos of dancers. It has learned that I like embroidery, and it shows me photos of amazing embroideries.
But IG (and all SM and apps) do one thing very badly: they shrink reality to something you contain in your hand, rather than something that contains you. Have you ever had the experience of being on a hike in the woods, and you try to take a picture of how stunningly beautiful some vista is, and you can't get it right -- no matter the number of shots or the angle?
It's because half of the wonder and awe of the hike is the experience of being in it. It's not something in front of you that you are looking at; it is above, behind, to the side of, and beneath you. It is singing, calling, creaking, and rustling at you. It has a smell and a texture. It buffets you. You are part of it. Then you take a picture of some tiny 2D snippet with maybe a few seconds of sound and you look at it, tinny and tiny in your hand, and it's not the same, because of course it's not. You've shrunk it into insignificance.
I believe that when we live our lives through screens, we shatter our relationship to reality in a damaging, dangerous and fundamental way. We make it something we observe, something we are outside of, something we pick up and put down again, something small, rather than the overwhelming immensity that we are intrinsically inside of for every moment of our existence.
And what I learned in 2020 is that I really, really, really hate living that way.
This review is not much about the book, I realize. I do think Hari is fundamentally right, but it would be fair to question my slant here. I think this book (along with others, like How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy) can start to point or way out of this mess we're making, which is not something trivial, but is fundamental to our humanity and relationship to the rest of the world, and related to the other, ecological messes we're making. We are not avatars on a screen. We are not minds interacting in cyberspace. We are bodies, living in a physical world.
December 25, 2022
Son zamanlarda okuduğum en iyi inceleme ve araştırma kitaplarından biri; iyi bir inceleme kaleme almanın, yazarın kendisini de konuya dahil etmesini, konuyu bir yerde hem içeriden hem de dışarıdan bir bakışla ele almasını gerektirdiğini gösteren iyi bir örnek. Johann Hari günümüzün en büyük sorununa parmak basmış; odaklanma, dikkat verme, yaratıcılık, eleştirel düşünme gibi yetilerimizin ciddi hasara uğradığı tespitinden yola çıkarak özellikle sağ siyasetin yükselmesinde azımsanmayacak bir payı olan sosyal medya meselesini enine boyuna incelemiş. Aynı sorundan kendi de mustarip olduğu için çok yerinde bir hamleyle önce bir adaya, internetten kopuk olacak şekilde uzunca bir süre inzivaya çekilmiş ve kendinde ortaya çıkan gelişmeleri kaydetmiş. Sonrasında da sosyal medyada konumlanan kilit önemdeki figürlerle meseleyi enine boyuna tartışmaya girişmiş.
İncelemenin iki asli meselesi var: birincisi, özellikle genç nesillerde meydana gelen düşünsel, bilişsel bozukluklar. Sözgelimi Amerika'da odaklanma süresi 3 dk'ya kadar gerilemiş durumda - ve sosyal medyaya bakıp yaptığınız işe gerdi döndüğünüzde yeniden odaklanmak için 27 dk'ya ihtiyacınız var. Bu koşullarda genç bireylerin uzunca bir dikkat süresi gerektiren herhangi bir kitabı okuması neredeyse imkansız gibi. Başta gençler olmak üzere insanlar her bir gün akıllı telefonlarda o kadar uzun süreler harcıyorlar ki bu durum artık kişinin bir konu üzerine esaslı bir şekilde eğilmesine imkan vermiyor. Ama mesele bundan ibaret de değil.
Davranışçı psikolojinin en önemli temsilcisi Skinner'ın 70'lerde uyarı-tepki mekanizmasından yola çıkarak geliştirdiği koşullanma teorilerinden esinlenen sosyal medya şirketleri, insanların en çok "öfke" uyandıran postlara kapıldıklarını keşfetmiş. Bu "eğilimi" çok iyi değerlendiren sağcılar, sosyal medya üzerinden insanlara yalan yanlış haberlerle öfke ve hınç duygusu aşılayarak geniş kitleleri mobilize edebiliyor. Bu yolla başa geçen siyasetçilerin başında elbette fbyle işbirliği yapan Trump ve Brezilya'da Bolsonaro var. Zira Bolsonaro'nun seçim zaferi mitinginde halk "fb" diye slogan atıyor - çünkü solcuların Brezilya halkını gizlice eşcinsellik aşıladığına dair bir paylaşım muazzam bir hızla viral olmuş. Popülist liderler, halkı yoksullaştırıp cahilleştiriyor, sonra da onlardaki öfke ve hınç duygusunu harekete geçirip rakiplerine karşı kullanıyorlar. Bunun için lgbti+ bireyler, göçmenler, mevsimlik işçiler gibi kimi kolay hedefler, günah keçileri göstermesi yeterli oluyor kimi zaman.
Kısacası son yirmi yıldır dünyayı yeniden pençesine alan ve yükselişi son yıllarda daha da hızlanan sağ siyasetin, "büyük gerileme"nin elindeki en büyük silahlardan biri sosyal medya.
Ancak yalnız o da değil: çevrenin ve doğanın katli, metropollerin günbegün insan sağlığın tehdit eder derecede kalabalıklaşması, sürekli artmakta olan çalışma saatleri ve sanayi tarımıyla yapay tatlandırıcıların yol açtığı yeni besinler düşünme ve odaklanma kapasitemize ciddi zararlar veriyor. Batıda halklar fakirleştikçe obesite artıyor örneğin.
Kısacası neden düşünme, odaklanma, zihinsel olarak yaratıcı "gezinme" yetilerimizi kaybettiğimizi, neden sürekli yorgun hissettiğimizi, neden orta uzunlukta bir roman okumanın bile zorlaştığını; ayrıca neden bir türlü topluluklar olamadığımızı, ayrıştırıldığımızı; dahası, sağ siyasetin ne yollarla dünyaya öfke ve zehir saçtığını merak edenler en azından bu gerçeklerin ardındaki önemli bir aracın nasıl işlediği konusunda kapsamlı bilgi edinecekler bu kitapla.
Dahası da var. Son bölümler dikkat eksikliği, hiperaktivite, özellikle çocukların kapalı dünyalarda yaşaması gibi konulara ayrılmış.
İncelemenin iki asli meselesi var: birincisi, özellikle genç nesillerde meydana gelen düşünsel, bilişsel bozukluklar. Sözgelimi Amerika'da odaklanma süresi 3 dk'ya kadar gerilemiş durumda - ve sosyal medyaya bakıp yaptığınız işe gerdi döndüğünüzde yeniden odaklanmak için 27 dk'ya ihtiyacınız var. Bu koşullarda genç bireylerin uzunca bir dikkat süresi gerektiren herhangi bir kitabı okuması neredeyse imkansız gibi. Başta gençler olmak üzere insanlar her bir gün akıllı telefonlarda o kadar uzun süreler harcıyorlar ki bu durum artık kişinin bir konu üzerine esaslı bir şekilde eğilmesine imkan vermiyor. Ama mesele bundan ibaret de değil.
Davranışçı psikolojinin en önemli temsilcisi Skinner'ın 70'lerde uyarı-tepki mekanizmasından yola çıkarak geliştirdiği koşullanma teorilerinden esinlenen sosyal medya şirketleri, insanların en çok "öfke" uyandıran postlara kapıldıklarını keşfetmiş. Bu "eğilimi" çok iyi değerlendiren sağcılar, sosyal medya üzerinden insanlara yalan yanlış haberlerle öfke ve hınç duygusu aşılayarak geniş kitleleri mobilize edebiliyor. Bu yolla başa geçen siyasetçilerin başında elbette fbyle işbirliği yapan Trump ve Brezilya'da Bolsonaro var. Zira Bolsonaro'nun seçim zaferi mitinginde halk "fb" diye slogan atıyor - çünkü solcuların Brezilya halkını gizlice eşcinsellik aşıladığına dair bir paylaşım muazzam bir hızla viral olmuş. Popülist liderler, halkı yoksullaştırıp cahilleştiriyor, sonra da onlardaki öfke ve hınç duygusunu harekete geçirip rakiplerine karşı kullanıyorlar. Bunun için lgbti+ bireyler, göçmenler, mevsimlik işçiler gibi kimi kolay hedefler, günah keçileri göstermesi yeterli oluyor kimi zaman.
Kısacası son yirmi yıldır dünyayı yeniden pençesine alan ve yükselişi son yıllarda daha da hızlanan sağ siyasetin, "büyük gerileme"nin elindeki en büyük silahlardan biri sosyal medya.
Ancak yalnız o da değil: çevrenin ve doğanın katli, metropollerin günbegün insan sağlığın tehdit eder derecede kalabalıklaşması, sürekli artmakta olan çalışma saatleri ve sanayi tarımıyla yapay tatlandırıcıların yol açtığı yeni besinler düşünme ve odaklanma kapasitemize ciddi zararlar veriyor. Batıda halklar fakirleştikçe obesite artıyor örneğin.
Kısacası neden düşünme, odaklanma, zihinsel olarak yaratıcı "gezinme" yetilerimizi kaybettiğimizi, neden sürekli yorgun hissettiğimizi, neden orta uzunlukta bir roman okumanın bile zorlaştığını; ayrıca neden bir türlü topluluklar olamadığımızı, ayrıştırıldığımızı; dahası, sağ siyasetin ne yollarla dünyaya öfke ve zehir saçtığını merak edenler en azından bu gerçeklerin ardındaki önemli bir aracın nasıl işlediği konusunda kapsamlı bilgi edinecekler bu kitapla.
Dahası da var. Son bölümler dikkat eksikliği, hiperaktivite, özellikle çocukların kapalı dünyalarda yaşaması gibi konulara ayrılmış.
January 25, 2022
This an easily accessible book about focus and attention. Of course we know a lot of the answers ourselves - we let ourselves get distracted by our devices and struggle to achieve flow. Cut out the notifications, sleep your minimum of 8 hours a night, eat right - and this will help somewhat.
However, we are up against big tech, who want us addicted and keeping updated, and in order to this, also radicalize and polarize us. So you're not to blame that you can't concentrate, you are a victim. That said, you can take measures to improve the situation, even if this can only go so far until there is some real legislative action. I read in the news paper today that EU is well on its way to restrict the power of the giant tech companies - it's either going to be a massive success or a massive failure for EU, according to its president Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen.
On average, office workers spent 3 minutes on a task between interruptions. As for myself, I have noticed that if I spend at least two hours in the morning concentrating on work that needs a lot of focus, without opening my inbox, that will be the most productive hours. The rest just disappears down a sinkhole of e-mails, meetings, chats, emergencies and what not. My phone gives no social media updates and is always on silent. Trust me, this gives me the problem of "where the f*** is my phone" - and calling it won't help - but so far I've always found it eventually. Generally speaking though, it helps. If not with focus, so then with stress. After a near burn-out nine years ago, I am absolutely allergic to all electronic noises.
Anyway, I loved the book and maybe you can glean some useful insight from it as well!
However, we are up against big tech, who want us addicted and keeping updated, and in order to this, also radicalize and polarize us. So you're not to blame that you can't concentrate, you are a victim. That said, you can take measures to improve the situation, even if this can only go so far until there is some real legislative action. I read in the news paper today that EU is well on its way to restrict the power of the giant tech companies - it's either going to be a massive success or a massive failure for EU, according to its president Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen.
On average, office workers spent 3 minutes on a task between interruptions. As for myself, I have noticed that if I spend at least two hours in the morning concentrating on work that needs a lot of focus, without opening my inbox, that will be the most productive hours. The rest just disappears down a sinkhole of e-mails, meetings, chats, emergencies and what not. My phone gives no social media updates and is always on silent. Trust me, this gives me the problem of "where the f*** is my phone" - and calling it won't help - but so far I've always found it eventually. Generally speaking though, it helps. If not with focus, so then with stress. After a near burn-out nine years ago, I am absolutely allergic to all electronic noises.
Anyway, I loved the book and maybe you can glean some useful insight from it as well!
December 15, 2022
DNF at 73%. The first half of the book is interesting- focusing on the tech industry- however it takes a sharp turn when talking about children & ADHD. As a therapist and adult woman with ADHD, I know a lot about this area. It was painful how clearly the studies and quotes were cherry picked to prove an agenda. My personal favorite example is name dropping Carl Hart’s research on stimulants in a paragraph implying that because “addicts” respond the same to street and prescription drugs, the later must also be bad. This is a huge logical jump and hilariously ignores Dr. Hart’s philosophical positions - he is in favor of recreational drug use in adults. Funny how we only heard about the work that supports the authors position.
My favorite conspiracy is artificial food dyes. This has been debunked so. Many. Times.
I agree that ADHD is often misdiagnosed in individuals who have PTSD or ASD (amongst others). But it could also be a co-occurring disorder! It’s unfortunate that we didn’t explore adult ADHD or the other aspects aside of attention span. The somber reality is that adults with ADHD live on average 7 years shorter and we are more likely to die by suicide, develop addictions, get divorced, and other unpleasant consequences. But these tangible harms that aren’t just a kid wiggling in class didnt fit the narrative.
So why demote the book to one star if the first half was so interesting? Well, the author lost credibility. I don’t know enough about the other areas to know whether or not I can trust the conclusions. If he was so off base in regards to ADHD, how can I trust that he represented the facts well on other issues?
My favorite conspiracy is artificial food dyes. This has been debunked so. Many. Times.
I agree that ADHD is often misdiagnosed in individuals who have PTSD or ASD (amongst others). But it could also be a co-occurring disorder! It’s unfortunate that we didn’t explore adult ADHD or the other aspects aside of attention span. The somber reality is that adults with ADHD live on average 7 years shorter and we are more likely to die by suicide, develop addictions, get divorced, and other unpleasant consequences. But these tangible harms that aren’t just a kid wiggling in class didnt fit the narrative.
So why demote the book to one star if the first half was so interesting? Well, the author lost credibility. I don’t know enough about the other areas to know whether or not I can trust the conclusions. If he was so off base in regards to ADHD, how can I trust that he represented the facts well on other issues?
September 10, 2022
rich white guy goes on boring digital detox and then flies around talking to other rich tech dudes (who design apps) about what we should do to be able to focus better
June 4, 2023
Bütün eksiklerine rağmen ben bu kitabı sevdim aslında. Uzun zamandır yaşadığım odaklanma eksikliğine biraz anlam kazandırdı, bazı şeyleri değiştirebileceğim kanaati uyandırdı, hatta bu şeyleri değiştirmem için motive etti beni. Gelgelelim Çalınan Dikkat'e baştan sona bir bütün olarak baktığımda iyi tarafları kadar yazarın yanlış yaptığı, kitabı vasata yaklaştıran şeyleri de görmezden gelemiyorum maalesef.
Çalınan Dikkat'in ilk yarısı, spesifik olmak gerekirse "Derinlikli Çözüme İlk Bakışlar" başlıklı 9. bölüme kadar olan kısmı, oldukça derli toplu, iyi yazılmış. Özellikle günümüz teknolojiyle hayatının belli bir aşamasında tanışmış, dolayısıyla öncesini de hayal meyal de olsa hatırlayan ve karşılaştırma yapabilen birçok kişinin hak vereceği küresel odaklanma kaybının olası sebeplerini tek tek sıralıyor Johann Hari; bunu yaparken de hem kendi deneyimlerinden verdiği örneklerle hem de bu alanda bir şekilde çalışan, düşünen çok sayıda kişiyle yaptığı görüşmelerle savlarını destekleyip açıklıyor bize. Buraya kadar çok güzel (aslında değil ama kitabın ortasına geldiğimde öyle olduğunu düşünüyordum, buna sonra geleceğim). Fakat yazar bize bir çözüm önereceğini söyledikten sonra kitap bocalamaya başlıyor.
Sıkıntı şu ki kitabın temelini oluşturan ve yazarın kendince nedenlerini sıraladığı dikkat kaybı sorununun asıl büyük sebebinin sistem olduğu ortaya çıkıyor. Evet sistem, bildiğimiz kapitalizm yani. Böyle spesifik bir soruna bu kadar büyük bir sebep sunduğunuzda sorunun sınırlarını da kaybediyorsunuz. Kapitalizm sebep değil demiyorum, tabi ki dünyada kötü giden birçok şeyde olduğu gibi bunda da çok büyük payı var. Fakat soruna böyle yaklaşınca bir çözüm sunmak da imkansızlaşıyor. Zaten Hari de kişisel çabaların bu sorunu çözmeyeceğini, ancak toplumsal bir hareketle koca teknoloji devlerini, devletleri bir şeyler yapmaya ikna edersek çözüm olacağını söyleyerek okurun o ana kadar olan kişisel motivasyonunu alaşağı etmeye yelteniyor. Kitabın kalan yarısı hep sistemi hedef alıyor, kişisel çabaların nasıl yetersiz kalacağını tekrar tekrar hatırlatıyor okura. Toplumsal bir hareketin imkansız olmadığını tarihte başarıya ulaşan örnekleriyle söylüyor yazar bize ama yine de kitabı bitirdiğimde hissettiğim şey umuttan çok çaresizlikti.
Yazarın sunduğu kişisel çözümlerin hep belli bir gelire, eğitim düzeyine, hatta toplumsal imkanlara bağlı olması; üstelik yazarın bu kitabı yazmasını sağlayan ve sık sık atıfta bulunarak kitabın belkemiği yaptığı "kısa süreli münzevilik" deneyiminin de ben ve hayatını 9-5 çalışarak sürdüren birçok okur için gerçekleştirilmesi imkansız bir şey olması kitabın çözüm konusunda çuvalladığı bir başka konu.
Bir diğer sorun da yukarıda da bahsettiğim ve yazarın kitap boyunca bir isimden diğerine atladığı görüşmeler. Bilim insanları, teknoloji sektörü çalışanları, aktivistler... Johann Hari belki de yüzlerce insanla görüşmüş bu kitap için, bazen iki paragraflık bir konu için bile başka bir ülkeye uçtuğunu öğreniyoruz. Ve bu görüşmelerin neredeyse tamamı okuru yazarın haklı olduğuna inandırmayı amaçlıyor. Yazarın savlarını desteklemeyen görüşmeler bile o görüşmenin yapıldığı kişinin düşüncelerindeki yanlışlar tek tek anlatılarak bize yazarın nasıl haklı olduğunu göstermek için varlar. Başlarda bundan rahatsızlık duymadım açıkçası ancak sayfalar ilerledikçe ve bahsedilen isimler arttıkça daha fazla gözüme batmaya, önceki görüşmeleri de sorgulamama sebep oldu.
Kitapla ilgili son büyük şikayetim de son bölümlerde ele alınan çocuklarda dikkat eksikliği hiperaktivite bozukluğu (DEHB) meselesi. Bu noktaya kadar sosyolojik bir kitap olan Çalınan Dikkat bir anda tıbbi konulara girerek kulvar değiştiriyor. DEHB'in odaklanma sorunuyla olan ortaklığını anlıyorum ancak böyle bir kitapta birkaç bölümde anlatılamayacak kadar ciddi ve önemli bir konu olduğu da aşikar. Dolayısıyla bu kısımlar yazarın savlarını güçlendirmek bir yana daha da zayıflatıyor, yazar -aynı görüşmelerde olduğu gibi- sırf kendini haklı çıkarmak adına kitaba dahil edilmiş hissi bırakıyor.
Bu kadar eleştirinin üzerine en başta söylediğim şeyi tekrar etmem lazım: ben Çalınan Dikkat'i okuduğum için gerçekten memnunum. Çok daha iyi bir kitap olabilirdi bence, ama böyle ciddi bir meseleyi bu kadar anlaşılır ve akıcı bir şekilde anlatması bile tavsiye etmem için yeterli. Umarım yakın gelecekte odaklanma sorunu üzerine çok daha fazla çalışma görürüz ve bu eserler bir şekilde bu sorunun çözülmesine önayak olurlar.
Çalınan Dikkat'in ilk yarısı, spesifik olmak gerekirse "Derinlikli Çözüme İlk Bakışlar" başlıklı 9. bölüme kadar olan kısmı, oldukça derli toplu, iyi yazılmış. Özellikle günümüz teknolojiyle hayatının belli bir aşamasında tanışmış, dolayısıyla öncesini de hayal meyal de olsa hatırlayan ve karşılaştırma yapabilen birçok kişinin hak vereceği küresel odaklanma kaybının olası sebeplerini tek tek sıralıyor Johann Hari; bunu yaparken de hem kendi deneyimlerinden verdiği örneklerle hem de bu alanda bir şekilde çalışan, düşünen çok sayıda kişiyle yaptığı görüşmelerle savlarını destekleyip açıklıyor bize. Buraya kadar çok güzel (aslında değil ama kitabın ortasına geldiğimde öyle olduğunu düşünüyordum, buna sonra geleceğim). Fakat yazar bize bir çözüm önereceğini söyledikten sonra kitap bocalamaya başlıyor.
Sıkıntı şu ki kitabın temelini oluşturan ve yazarın kendince nedenlerini sıraladığı dikkat kaybı sorununun asıl büyük sebebinin sistem olduğu ortaya çıkıyor. Evet sistem, bildiğimiz kapitalizm yani. Böyle spesifik bir soruna bu kadar büyük bir sebep sunduğunuzda sorunun sınırlarını da kaybediyorsunuz. Kapitalizm sebep değil demiyorum, tabi ki dünyada kötü giden birçok şeyde olduğu gibi bunda da çok büyük payı var. Fakat soruna böyle yaklaşınca bir çözüm sunmak da imkansızlaşıyor. Zaten Hari de kişisel çabaların bu sorunu çözmeyeceğini, ancak toplumsal bir hareketle koca teknoloji devlerini, devletleri bir şeyler yapmaya ikna edersek çözüm olacağını söyleyerek okurun o ana kadar olan kişisel motivasyonunu alaşağı etmeye yelteniyor. Kitabın kalan yarısı hep sistemi hedef alıyor, kişisel çabaların nasıl yetersiz kalacağını tekrar tekrar hatırlatıyor okura. Toplumsal bir hareketin imkansız olmadığını tarihte başarıya ulaşan örnekleriyle söylüyor yazar bize ama yine de kitabı bitirdiğimde hissettiğim şey umuttan çok çaresizlikti.
Yazarın sunduğu kişisel çözümlerin hep belli bir gelire, eğitim düzeyine, hatta toplumsal imkanlara bağlı olması; üstelik yazarın bu kitabı yazmasını sağlayan ve sık sık atıfta bulunarak kitabın belkemiği yaptığı "kısa süreli münzevilik" deneyiminin de ben ve hayatını 9-5 çalışarak sürdüren birçok okur için gerçekleştirilmesi imkansız bir şey olması kitabın çözüm konusunda çuvalladığı bir başka konu.
Bir diğer sorun da yukarıda da bahsettiğim ve yazarın kitap boyunca bir isimden diğerine atladığı görüşmeler. Bilim insanları, teknoloji sektörü çalışanları, aktivistler... Johann Hari belki de yüzlerce insanla görüşmüş bu kitap için, bazen iki paragraflık bir konu için bile başka bir ülkeye uçtuğunu öğreniyoruz. Ve bu görüşmelerin neredeyse tamamı okuru yazarın haklı olduğuna inandırmayı amaçlıyor. Yazarın savlarını desteklemeyen görüşmeler bile o görüşmenin yapıldığı kişinin düşüncelerindeki yanlışlar tek tek anlatılarak bize yazarın nasıl haklı olduğunu göstermek için varlar. Başlarda bundan rahatsızlık duymadım açıkçası ancak sayfalar ilerledikçe ve bahsedilen isimler arttıkça daha fazla gözüme batmaya, önceki görüşmeleri de sorgulamama sebep oldu.
Kitapla ilgili son büyük şikayetim de son bölümlerde ele alınan çocuklarda dikkat eksikliği hiperaktivite bozukluğu (DEHB) meselesi. Bu noktaya kadar sosyolojik bir kitap olan Çalınan Dikkat bir anda tıbbi konulara girerek kulvar değiştiriyor. DEHB'in odaklanma sorunuyla olan ortaklığını anlıyorum ancak böyle bir kitapta birkaç bölümde anlatılamayacak kadar ciddi ve önemli bir konu olduğu da aşikar. Dolayısıyla bu kısımlar yazarın savlarını güçlendirmek bir yana daha da zayıflatıyor, yazar -aynı görüşmelerde olduğu gibi- sırf kendini haklı çıkarmak adına kitaba dahil edilmiş hissi bırakıyor.
Bu kadar eleştirinin üzerine en başta söylediğim şeyi tekrar etmem lazım: ben Çalınan Dikkat'i okuduğum için gerçekten memnunum. Çok daha iyi bir kitap olabilirdi bence, ama böyle ciddi bir meseleyi bu kadar anlaşılır ve akıcı bir şekilde anlatması bile tavsiye etmem için yeterli. Umarım yakın gelecekte odaklanma sorunu üzerine çok daha fazla çalışma görürüz ve bu eserler bir şekilde bu sorunun çözülmesine önayak olurlar.
August 11, 2022
I loved this author’s book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions and this one also appealed to me so I was looking forward to reading it, even though I didn’t expect it to be nearly as good as the other book. This book wasn’t quite as good. It wasn’t quite as groundbreaking, but it was still great and it also explored innovative ideas and solutions for a wide range of sub-topics.
I didn’t listen to them but I appreciate that the author has posted audio clips of all the people he quotes in the book. Being able to listen along and hear directly from the people he interviewed is a good thing to do. They’re at stolenFocusbook.com/audio.
In addition to reading the hardcover edition of this book, I simultaneously listened to the audio edition. It’s read by the author. The narration is great and I love his accent.
I did laugh out loud when he and his godson were at Graceland and he tried to tell people that they didn’t need to look at their screens to see various part of the room but only had to turn their heads to look around because they were in the room.
I liked reading about flow states and about the motivation to do more things that work for a person.
I completely agreed with what he said about feeling unsafe vs. safe and its effect on the ability of people to focus.
I am so sleepy due to sleep deprivation that I struggle not to doze off as I read books, no matter what the time of day I am reading. The author addresses lack of sleep as a problem. When he writes about not reading as often or as deeply or attentively as he might I identified. Lack of sleep is one reason for my lack of focus although other reasons also apply to me.
I particularly enjoyed reading the parts when he writes about children and the ways they live now regarding their lives and development. Heartbreaking and hilarious. I loved reading about the alternatives he covered, especially the (now) unusual schools that reminded me a bit of the elementary school I attended when I lived in San Francisco. We weren’t quite as progressive but the education provided was closer to un-schooling than the typical education kids now get.
A lot of what he writes speaks to me.
He’s a good journalist and writes about important topics.
I like that while he states that this is not a self-help book he does give some ideas for changes that we can make, as individuals, groups, schools, workplaces, companies, and the world.
I have no special interest in addiction but I’m interested in reading the book he wrote about addiction, Chasing the Scream.
I really like this author. He’s honest about himself, interesting, and has a good sense of humor. I appreciate how his research always involves consulting experts in the field. The book is written so that the reader feels as though they are exploring and researching a topic alongside the author and I enjoy that.
I read something on his Goodreads author profile page that I did find disturbing and uncomplimentary. I hope he’s changed over the last decade. Either way, I like his books. I like his writing and what he has to say and how he says it.
4-1/2 stars
I didn’t listen to them but I appreciate that the author has posted audio clips of all the people he quotes in the book. Being able to listen along and hear directly from the people he interviewed is a good thing to do. They’re at stolenFocusbook.com/audio.
In addition to reading the hardcover edition of this book, I simultaneously listened to the audio edition. It’s read by the author. The narration is great and I love his accent.
I did laugh out loud when he and his godson were at Graceland and he tried to tell people that they didn’t need to look at their screens to see various part of the room but only had to turn their heads to look around because they were in the room.
I liked reading about flow states and about the motivation to do more things that work for a person.
I completely agreed with what he said about feeling unsafe vs. safe and its effect on the ability of people to focus.
I am so sleepy due to sleep deprivation that I struggle not to doze off as I read books, no matter what the time of day I am reading. The author addresses lack of sleep as a problem. When he writes about not reading as often or as deeply or attentively as he might I identified. Lack of sleep is one reason for my lack of focus although other reasons also apply to me.
I particularly enjoyed reading the parts when he writes about children and the ways they live now regarding their lives and development. Heartbreaking and hilarious. I loved reading about the alternatives he covered, especially the (now) unusual schools that reminded me a bit of the elementary school I attended when I lived in San Francisco. We weren’t quite as progressive but the education provided was closer to un-schooling than the typical education kids now get.
A lot of what he writes speaks to me.
He’s a good journalist and writes about important topics.
I like that while he states that this is not a self-help book he does give some ideas for changes that we can make, as individuals, groups, schools, workplaces, companies, and the world.
I have no special interest in addiction but I’m interested in reading the book he wrote about addiction, Chasing the Scream.
I really like this author. He’s honest about himself, interesting, and has a good sense of humor. I appreciate how his research always involves consulting experts in the field. The book is written so that the reader feels as though they are exploring and researching a topic alongside the author and I enjoy that.
I read something on his Goodreads author profile page that I did find disturbing and uncomplimentary. I hope he’s changed over the last decade. Either way, I like his books. I like his writing and what he has to say and how he says it.
4-1/2 stars
February 11, 2022
I was overjoyed when I realized Hari had a new book out, and like before, I wasn’t disappointed. He manages to look at problems differently, filling a gap in our understanding of how the world works. Stolen Focus discusses why we can’t focus and how that drains our energy and hollows out our lives. What I’m always fascinated by when it comes to Hari’s book is how he shifts perspective from the individual to society. Often we overlook how culture affect us and thereby where we should put our efforts. Instead of blaming ourselves for struggling with attention, Hari convincingly convinced me that’s only half the picture. I can already tell this will be the most influential book I’ll read this year, just how I felt when I read lost connections and chasing the scream.
July 13, 2022
I didn’t even make it past the introduction. What a bunch of self-satisfied assholery.
June 25, 2023
I liked stolen focus. The topic is something that I think everyone in this day and age experiences; the inability to focus. And as one would expect, it seems to get harder as we get older. This modern technological age has information coming at us all the time and sometimes it seems like the younger folks seem to handle this better because they've experienced it from birth. Hari points out that this is false. They may deal with the information overload differently, but the brain can only take so much input, no matter the age.
While I'm not a big fan of Hari's writing style, I have to admit the book was interesting and enlightening. It's a bit of a mash of scientific thought and Hari's anecdotal experiences. It felt a little disingenuous as if comingling the two (scientific fact and Hari's personal connection to the concepts), gives both legitimacy. For example, he states obvious things that are subjective; factually supported or otherwise. Or here's an example of a comingling
All in all, a good read with some really fascinating facts and interesting theories. Nothing earthshattering here, but Hari offers some strategies to moderate the constant demands for our intention and how find ways to have the time to breathe, wonder, contemplate and just be. Because the world such as it is, is stealing our quality of life. We can all do better both individually and collectively through governance and self-awareness. Hari claims this isn't a self-help book (IMO it is). I suppose that's his way of gaining control of his imagination in the world such as it is. Anyways, for me a nice introduction into a space that contemplates the impact of information age on our mental health. Just beware of ideas posing as facts, because Hari packs this book with both (interesting facts and interesting ideas posing as facts).
3.75 Stars
Read on kindle
"we are, collectively, experiencing “a more rapid exhaustion of attention resources."The science is fascinating and as one might expect, a little subjective. This book suggests everything one would expect: too much social media, physical and mental exhaustion, too much choice, stress, constant interruptions, isolation, attention deficit and rapid switching between tasks etc. And some things I didn't expect: diet, pollution, reading nonfiction.
While I'm not a big fan of Hari's writing style, I have to admit the book was interesting and enlightening. It's a bit of a mash of scientific thought and Hari's anecdotal experiences. It felt a little disingenuous as if comingling the two (scientific fact and Hari's personal connection to the concepts), gives both legitimacy. For example, he states obvious things that are subjective; factually supported or otherwise. Or here's an example of a comingling
"The more novels you read, the better you were at reading other people’s emotions."Sounds right though I do know people who read fiction exclusively that are not good at reading emotions. I do think that the concept of the quote is well accepted as true.
"reading nonfiction books, by contrast, had no effect on your empathy."Sounds specious. I have no idea what nonfiction he's reading but I just finished Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI and I was frickin livid and empathetic. I suppose an argument could be made that reading fiction got me there; however… chicken or egg which was first?
All in all, a good read with some really fascinating facts and interesting theories. Nothing earthshattering here, but Hari offers some strategies to moderate the constant demands for our intention and how find ways to have the time to breathe, wonder, contemplate and just be. Because the world such as it is, is stealing our quality of life. We can all do better both individually and collectively through governance and self-awareness. Hari claims this isn't a self-help book (IMO it is). I suppose that's his way of gaining control of his imagination in the world such as it is. Anyways, for me a nice introduction into a space that contemplates the impact of information age on our mental health. Just beware of ideas posing as facts, because Hari packs this book with both (interesting facts and interesting ideas posing as facts).
3.75 Stars
Read on kindle
February 5, 2022
This book was good in that it motivated me to take another long, hard look at how I interact with the Internet. Like the author, I’ve found my ability to focus for long periods of time has gotten worse and that anytime I’m not doing something, I instinctively reach for my phone. Stolen Focus puts a huge spotlight on that and has some good suggestions for ways to try to regain some of that attention.
Stolen Focus also dedicates quite a few pages to talking about the systemic problems with trying to maintain our ability to think deeply, engage with nature, and slow down in an environment where so many big forces are working against us. Tech companies are incentivized to do one thing—build a profile on you so they can show you things that will keep you engaged with their content as much as possible so they can then try to convince you to buy from their advertisers. The resources they command to constantly improve their ability to do just that are daunting.
Hari proposes some potential solutions to this problem—many of them along the lines of heavy regulation or state takeover of social media platforms. I see where he’s coming from but none of his solutioning was very compelling to me. It was either too heavy-handed or too implausible given the reality on the ground, as it were.
I had other minor issues with the book, but on the whole, I enjoyed the it and it’s made me much more mindful around my phone use and my screen time stats seem to, for the time being, reflect that as well.
Stolen Focus also dedicates quite a few pages to talking about the systemic problems with trying to maintain our ability to think deeply, engage with nature, and slow down in an environment where so many big forces are working against us. Tech companies are incentivized to do one thing—build a profile on you so they can show you things that will keep you engaged with their content as much as possible so they can then try to convince you to buy from their advertisers. The resources they command to constantly improve their ability to do just that are daunting.
Hari proposes some potential solutions to this problem—many of them along the lines of heavy regulation or state takeover of social media platforms. I see where he’s coming from but none of his solutioning was very compelling to me. It was either too heavy-handed or too implausible given the reality on the ground, as it were.
I had other minor issues with the book, but on the whole, I enjoyed the it and it’s made me much more mindful around my phone use and my screen time stats seem to, for the time being, reflect that as well.
March 20, 2022
Having coached college athletes and seen firsthand the damage inflicted upon young people's attention by social media and technology, I agree wholeheartedly with the author Mr. Hari that we are in the middle of a human crisis even more pressing than Climate Change. My scholarship college athletes struggled to make it through a 90 minute practice without incessantly checking their phones. Many adult friends experience the same withdrawal.
The first half of Stolen Focus identifies all of the major psychological shifts that manifested with the increased popularity of phones and their apps. The author concludes that technology in general and social media apps specifically are built to steal our attention and keep us addicted to our phones. There can be no refuting this point. Any person alive in the the 20th century has experienced this phenomenon and felt the twinge of guilt for wasting several hours each day on pointless phone viewing. Youtube, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat became billion-dollar companies precisely because they exploit a weakness in the human mind that craves the dopamine apps offer. Again, the first half of the book excels in its research, and reaches scary but real conclusions about the danger of social media and similar apps.
The second half of Stolen Focus is where things start to disintegrate quickly as Mr. Hari offers solutions to the challenges he presented in the first section. He claims that because the problem with phone apps is systemic, literally built into the system, it cannot therefore be solved individually. At one point he clearly states that an individual cannot overcome addiction to phone apps, and compares the inability of humans to stop looking at apps to their inability to stick to a diet. He casually throws out the statistic that 95% of dieters gain their weight back within 5 years, concluding any and all attempts to resist phone apps will result in similar fashion.
The bad news, he says, is that we cannot take personal action and solve this problem. Well, what are we to do then since we are powerless slaves to Big Tech? His solution, which he defends vigorously for the remaining chapters, is for Big Government to regulate these corporations "for the common good," to ultimately save us from ourselves. If only the government would put reasonable regulations on these companies, forcing Big Tech to limit their mind control over the ignorant and helpless masses! At this point Mr. Hari compares the obesity epidemic to the problem of psychological phone addiction. He claims the rise of obesity is caused by food companies flooding the market with cheap, sugary foods, rendering us powerless to resist in the exact same way software companies flood our phones with addicting apps. The solution to both problems is government agencies making healthy choices for us.
Here's why govt regulation wont work and never did in the past for these problems. First, humans don't need nor want government to tell them what to eat, watch, smoke, or how to spend their time. Second, when we open the door for regulation, we give up control to a select few people who may or may not make decisions that we agree with. For instance, let's say we accept food regulation and the FDA taxes all sugary foods and subsidizes all "healthy" food. Now a cupcake costs more than a bag of kale and, in theory, common people will buy less cakes and more vegetables. Except people won't because carrots don't release dopamine and sugar does. Broccoli isn't addictive and people will still crave ice cream. Soda will go into the shopping cart like always albeit at a higher price, deepening the hit to the family budget. Anyone who seriously believes raising prices on sugary foods will slow buying has no idea about the real world.
Caffeine is a highly addictive stimulant with the highest amount of addiction worldwide. Does Mr. Hari rant about regulating the destructive stimulant caffeine, slapping high taxes on evil corporations like Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks? Don't be silly, of course not. Why? Because we want our coffee! We have the right to ingest what we want in the amount we want, it's called freedom! Even if that freedom causes us migraine headaches and withdrawal symptoms whilst emptying our bank accounts on $6 sugary coffees. Ironically, Mr. Hari's previous book was about the futility of the war of drugs, the exact thing he desires for apps. But society wants apps and they deserve access just like they deserve the option to play video games, eat sugar and smoke cigarettes.
Like all liberals, Mr. Hari blames the capitalist system. Myspace was the Facebook of 2002 until a better option came along and then, poof, Myspace was gone without pesky govt regulation. Facebook's engagement has plummeted in the USA since 2019 because young people think Facebook is lame, and it will soon go the way of Myspace. That is why Facebook pivoted their resources into the Metaverse. Instagram is slowly losing engagement as well with the shift of users to TikTok and Snapchat. In 10 years all of these popular apps will disappear. It's called capitalism and it works. People get bored and crave something new. What they don't want is some guy in a suit choosing what is best for them.
And lastly, why does Mr. Hari reject the idea of personal responsibility? According to his book, because he has personally failed with his attempts to throttle his lifestyle. He gained weight eating bad foods and blamed the food companies; he's addicted to the dopamine of Twitter and blames the algorithm; he can't focus and feels lonely without his phone and it's Google's fault. No, sir. Mr. Hari, put down your phone and live your life. Not everyone struggles with addiction the same way you do. And more importantly, leave others to make their choices.
What Mr. Hari lacks is self-discipline. Maybe he needs an app for that.
The first half of Stolen Focus identifies all of the major psychological shifts that manifested with the increased popularity of phones and their apps. The author concludes that technology in general and social media apps specifically are built to steal our attention and keep us addicted to our phones. There can be no refuting this point. Any person alive in the the 20th century has experienced this phenomenon and felt the twinge of guilt for wasting several hours each day on pointless phone viewing. Youtube, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat became billion-dollar companies precisely because they exploit a weakness in the human mind that craves the dopamine apps offer. Again, the first half of the book excels in its research, and reaches scary but real conclusions about the danger of social media and similar apps.
The second half of Stolen Focus is where things start to disintegrate quickly as Mr. Hari offers solutions to the challenges he presented in the first section. He claims that because the problem with phone apps is systemic, literally built into the system, it cannot therefore be solved individually. At one point he clearly states that an individual cannot overcome addiction to phone apps, and compares the inability of humans to stop looking at apps to their inability to stick to a diet. He casually throws out the statistic that 95% of dieters gain their weight back within 5 years, concluding any and all attempts to resist phone apps will result in similar fashion.
The bad news, he says, is that we cannot take personal action and solve this problem. Well, what are we to do then since we are powerless slaves to Big Tech? His solution, which he defends vigorously for the remaining chapters, is for Big Government to regulate these corporations "for the common good," to ultimately save us from ourselves. If only the government would put reasonable regulations on these companies, forcing Big Tech to limit their mind control over the ignorant and helpless masses! At this point Mr. Hari compares the obesity epidemic to the problem of psychological phone addiction. He claims the rise of obesity is caused by food companies flooding the market with cheap, sugary foods, rendering us powerless to resist in the exact same way software companies flood our phones with addicting apps. The solution to both problems is government agencies making healthy choices for us.
Here's why govt regulation wont work and never did in the past for these problems. First, humans don't need nor want government to tell them what to eat, watch, smoke, or how to spend their time. Second, when we open the door for regulation, we give up control to a select few people who may or may not make decisions that we agree with. For instance, let's say we accept food regulation and the FDA taxes all sugary foods and subsidizes all "healthy" food. Now a cupcake costs more than a bag of kale and, in theory, common people will buy less cakes and more vegetables. Except people won't because carrots don't release dopamine and sugar does. Broccoli isn't addictive and people will still crave ice cream. Soda will go into the shopping cart like always albeit at a higher price, deepening the hit to the family budget. Anyone who seriously believes raising prices on sugary foods will slow buying has no idea about the real world.
Caffeine is a highly addictive stimulant with the highest amount of addiction worldwide. Does Mr. Hari rant about regulating the destructive stimulant caffeine, slapping high taxes on evil corporations like Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks? Don't be silly, of course not. Why? Because we want our coffee! We have the right to ingest what we want in the amount we want, it's called freedom! Even if that freedom causes us migraine headaches and withdrawal symptoms whilst emptying our bank accounts on $6 sugary coffees. Ironically, Mr. Hari's previous book was about the futility of the war of drugs, the exact thing he desires for apps. But society wants apps and they deserve access just like they deserve the option to play video games, eat sugar and smoke cigarettes.
Like all liberals, Mr. Hari blames the capitalist system. Myspace was the Facebook of 2002 until a better option came along and then, poof, Myspace was gone without pesky govt regulation. Facebook's engagement has plummeted in the USA since 2019 because young people think Facebook is lame, and it will soon go the way of Myspace. That is why Facebook pivoted their resources into the Metaverse. Instagram is slowly losing engagement as well with the shift of users to TikTok and Snapchat. In 10 years all of these popular apps will disappear. It's called capitalism and it works. People get bored and crave something new. What they don't want is some guy in a suit choosing what is best for them.
And lastly, why does Mr. Hari reject the idea of personal responsibility? According to his book, because he has personally failed with his attempts to throttle his lifestyle. He gained weight eating bad foods and blamed the food companies; he's addicted to the dopamine of Twitter and blames the algorithm; he can't focus and feels lonely without his phone and it's Google's fault. No, sir. Mr. Hari, put down your phone and live your life. Not everyone struggles with addiction the same way you do. And more importantly, leave others to make their choices.
What Mr. Hari lacks is self-discipline. Maybe he needs an app for that.
February 24, 2022
Just fantastic. Can't recommend enough.
December 31, 2022
4 1/2 stars
March 17, 2022
This is one of the best examinations of attention across personal, societal, and physiological issues that I have found. Goes beyond the superficial and digs into things like diet, stress, sleep, and pollution. I disagree with the place that the author takes some of these points but the foundation of what’s presented is phenomenal.
What is within is one of the better examinations of the larger societal changes and problems facing us today. And while it’s viewed through the lens of “attention“ it’s really an indictment and a sort of rough roadmap of a whole suite of broad western societal problems.
At times the actual writing is a bit daft. Johann is a clear communicator but an artist he is not. And there are times where an issue is presented the author comes to a conclusion that I’m a bit skeptical of. All that said, this is one of the best organized books I’ve had the pleasure to read in the last year. It’s a fantastic example of structuring your ideas in a way that the audience can receive them.
What is within is one of the better examinations of the larger societal changes and problems facing us today. And while it’s viewed through the lens of “attention“ it’s really an indictment and a sort of rough roadmap of a whole suite of broad western societal problems.
At times the actual writing is a bit daft. Johann is a clear communicator but an artist he is not. And there are times where an issue is presented the author comes to a conclusion that I’m a bit skeptical of. All that said, this is one of the best organized books I’ve had the pleasure to read in the last year. It’s a fantastic example of structuring your ideas in a way that the audience can receive them.
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