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Stolen Focus  explains why our attention spans have been dwindling for decades, how technology accelerates this worrying trend, and what we can do to reclaim our focus and thus our capacity to live meaningful lives.
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780 reads
"When you are unable to pay sustained attention, you can't achieve the things you want to achieve."
-Johann Hari
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877 reads
According to Johann Hari in his book Stolen Focus: Why You Canât Pay Attention , he explains patterns like the fact that half of all young people are texting while driving . The book also sheds a light on why doing so reduces our attention by as much as 37% . Of course, Hari provides some solutions too.
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681 reads
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735 reads
Out of personal dissatisfaction with his ability to focus, Danish professor Sune Lehmann conducted a study about attention. He concluded that, even before the internet, the rise and fall of popular books in the last 200 years indicates that trend cycles are getting shorter. The internet compounds this problem. Between 2013 and 2016, the average duration for which topics trend on Twitter reduced by over 30%, from over 17 to just over 11 hours.
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618 reads
The culprit is the increasing rate at which we can spread information. From letters to the radio to telephones and live TV â the internet is just the tip of the iceberg. This âgreat acceleration ,â as Robert Colvile calls it, lies at the heart of the problem. Where we used to consume the equivalent of about 40 newspapers each day in the 80s, it was about 174 newspapers in 2004, and itâs bound to be a lot more now.
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512 reads
The faster we can spread information, the more information we distribute, and the more rains down on every single one of us on any given day . Unlike the latest hot topic on Twitter, this trend isnât going to go away any time soon, and our brains simply arenât evolving fast enough to cope with it .
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491 reads
We have a saying in Germany: âThe only thing thatâs free in life is death â and even for that, youâll have to pay with your life.â It means that everything comes at a price, even if the price is hidden at first.
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492 reads
Social media is a great example. We donât pay with cash to use services like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, but in that word, âusing,â already lies their true cost: our time and attention. Infinitely scrolling feeds, vain buttons that issue dopamine at a tap via likes, shares, and comments, and algorithms feeding you outrageous stories to keep you âusingâ â itâs all designed to make you addicted on purpose.
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426 reads
To the giants of Silicon Valley, your time is their money, and theyâre doing everything they can to keep you âengaged,â even if itâs to the detriment of your time management, wellbeing, and focus .
In 2020, the Wall Street Journal even broke a story showing Facebook knew full well what it was doing. Quoting an internal presentation, they showed that â[their] algorithms exploit the human brainâs attraction to divisiveness.â Since itâs so profitable, however, theyâve done little to change anything, so itâs up to us to take back whatâs ours.
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390 reads
More information than we can handle, addictive technology, and an entire industry incentivized to keep you doomscrolling for as long as possible: Itâs easy to put on your victim hat when it comes to your loss of deep focus . But we too carry some of the blame.
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435 reads
For one, weâve developed a culture of celebrating multitasking. Since our society is now always chasing the next thing, weâve adopted that same mindset at work. The more boxes we can check off, the better, or so we think. Ultimately, we just end up doing âperformative multitaskingâ â weâre more concerned with looking and feeling busy than actually creating something meaningful .
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373 reads
Of course, multitasking is a myth , a term reserved for computers with multiple processors, not humans with just one brain. So, what can you do? Reject multitasking. Stop celebrating your coworkers for bouncing around between Slack, email, and PowerPoint. Set boundaries by tuning your notifications, and aim to singletask .
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392 reads
A good way to practice this is to get in the state of flow that researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described. Lose yourself in a task, and lose track of time. Thatâs how you know youâre in flow, and any challenge that is not too difficult but also not too boring and feels intrinsically rewarding can trigger it.
Start small. Put the brakes on multitasking, go down fewer social media rabbit holes, and remind yourself that itâs okay to not know everything. Find some time to get into flow, and your power to focus will be back in no time!
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Hari packages the topic well. In outlining the situation as a global attention crisis, he conveys to us the gravity of the situation. He deftly compiles the history, latest developments, and up-to-date research on the subject, and he still manages to sneak in some personal recommendations as to how we can improve. Stolen Focus is a great read for learning to better manage your attention in the 21st century.
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353 reads
The 14-year-old high school student whoâs so busy maintaining all her social media profiles that she barely has time to pay attention in class, the 27-year-old young professional who feels totally overwhelmed at a new job two weeks in, and anyone who feels like they just canât focus the way they used to.
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414 reads
Stolen Focus - Book Summary
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