Why Have We Lost Our Attention Span?

Can we get our 'Focus' back?

Yesterday, we were out to dinner. While we were waiting for them to seat us, I looked around the room. Practically everyone in the restaurant was eating and texting.

Couples were oblivious to each other. Once in a while, a server stopped by their table, but only then did one of them look up and respond. My question to myself was why did they not enjoy each other's company? Why did they find what they were doing on their phone more interesting than the person they were with?

Even when a few looked up and spoke, it was quick, and then they were back in their phones.

Johann Hari, is the author of Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again. He has 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.

This has become an issue for many people, and it isn't just young people.

Hari wrote:

 
"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.

Reviews:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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.

“The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction.”—Adam Grant, author of Think Again

“Read this book to save your mind.”—Susan Cain, author of Quiet

LONGLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times

Definitely a book worth reading!

Johann Hari is the New York Times best-selling author of 'Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs', and one of the top-rated TED talkers of all time.