Stolen Focus : : why you Can't pay Attention--And how to Think Deeply Again

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Introduction: Walking in Memphis -- Cause One: The Increase in Speed, Switching and Filtering -- Cause Two: The Crippling of our Flow States -- Cause Three: The Rise of Physical and Mental Exhaustion -- Cause Four: The Collapse of Sustained Reading -- Cause Five: The Disruption of Mind-Wandering -- Cause Six: The Rise of Technology That Can Track and Manipulate You (Part One) -- Cause Six: The Rise of Technology That Can Track and Manipulate You (Part Two) -- Cause Seven: The Rise of Cruel Optimism -- The First Glimpses of the Deeper Solution -- Cause Eight: The Surge in Stress and How it is Triggering Vigilance -- The Places That Figured Out How to Reverse the Surge in Speed and Exhaustion -- Causes Nine and Ten: Our Deteriorating Diets and Rising Pollution -- Cause Eleven: The Rise of ADHD and How We are Responding to it -- Cause Twelve: The Confinement of Our Children, Both Physically and Psychologically -- Conclusion: Attention Rebellion.
"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. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding it much harder to focus than he used to. He found that a life of constantly switching from device to device, from tab to tab, is diminishing and depressing. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions-even abandoning his phone for three months-but in the long-term, nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention and to study their scientific findings-and learned that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong. In the U.S., teenagers now focus on a task for only sixty-five seconds on average, and office workers manage only three minutes. We think this inability to focus is a personal flaw, an individual failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: Our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces, and the science shows that these forces have been ramping up for decades-leaving us uniquely vulnerable, when social media arrived, to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. These forces have been so successful that our collapse in attention is behind many of the wider problems society faces. In Stolen Focus, Hari embarks on a thrilling journey, taking readers from veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD, to Silicon Valley dissidents who exposed social media companies' furtive attempts to hack our focus; from a favela in Rio where everyone lost their attention in a particularly catastrophic way, to an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore their workers' attention. In this urgent, deeply researched book, Hari shows that if we understand the twelve true causes of this crisis-from the collapse of sustained reading to the disruption of boredom to rising pollution-we, as individuals and as a society, can finally begin to solve it by staging an "attention rebellion." Finally, we have a way to get our focus back"-- Provided by publisher.

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One of the best nonfiction works - everyone should read submitted by emaelshaikh on August 18, 2022, 4:38pm This is a book everyone should read, because we are all profoundly impacted by the attention epidemic. Great for parents, students, or just any human.

Readily accessible, highly highly recommended submitted by mowjac on June 11, 2023, 7:44pm Concisely written, science made accessible and all of the possibilities grounded in relatable metaphors. Wondering why you can't complete things? Why you and your kids are so anxious? Hari's unwinding of how social media works, how capitalism is making us all exhausted, how we all feel numb peels back the layers using his own experience to highlight attention issues. I feel a click of understanding when he describes what is going on. He doesn't downplay the bigger issues, and also has steps we call can take today.

Great new book! submitted by dave_472 on June 24, 2023, 2:19pm This book was recommended to me by a medical professional, I think a lot of us could learn from it! In regards to concentration, focusing, etc.

Through provoking submitted by karander on July 15, 2023, 12:43pm Fascinating perspective on what’s affected our attention and society. I found it really interesting and have recommended to many friends