Psychology & Counseling
![Johann Hari - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_johann_hari.jpg)
Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the 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
WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Post, Mashable, Mindful
In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions-even abandoning his phone for three months-but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention-and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.
We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers' productivity.
Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus-as individuals, and as a society-if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.
"The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction."-Adam Grant, author of Think Again
"Read this book to save your mind."-Susan Cain, author of Quiet
WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Post, Mashable, Mindful
In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions-even abandoning his phone for three months-but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention-and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.
We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers' productivity.
Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus-as individuals, and as a society-if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.
Editorial Reviews
"[A] fresh take on focus and attention . . . You'll learn a lot from this book, and its well-researched data is presented in a highly readable style laced with stories and personal anecdotes. Which is to say, against all odds, it will hold your attention."-The Wall Street Journal
"Where other books about our relationship to technology tend to focus on personal responsibility, stressing the importance of self-control, Stolen Focus takes a step back and examines the ecosystem that created the problem. . . . Hari's writing is incredibly readable."-San Francisco Chronicle
"Big-name websites and apps strive to distract because that's the key to profitability. When we're looking at our screens, these companies make money; when we're not, they don't. . . . It's a call to arms, to be sure, and I'm tempted to tell my Twitter followers about it-but I've deleted the app from my phone."-The Washington Post
"If your New Year's resolution was to be more focused this year, then this is the book for you.[Adam] Grant describes the author as ‘a thoughtful critic of our modern malaise.'"-Inc.
"A gripping analysis of why we've lost the capacity to concentrate, and how we might find it again. Stolen Focus . . . will keep you thinking and rethinking long after you've finished it."-Adam Grant
"Johann Hari writes like a dream. He's both a lyricist and a storyteller-but also an indefatigable investigator of one of the world's greatest problems: the systematic destruction of our attention. Read this book to save your mind."-Susan Cain
"I don't know anyone thinking more deeply, or more holistically, about the crisis of our collective attention than Johann Hari. This book could not be more vital. Please sit with it, and focus."-Naomi Klein
"Superb . . . Stolen Focus is a beautifully researched and argued exploration of the breakdown of humankind's ability to pay attention, told with the pace, sparkle, and energy of the best kind of thriller."-Stephen Fry
"If you want to get your attention and focus back, you need to read this remarkable book. Johann Hari...
"Where other books about our relationship to technology tend to focus on personal responsibility, stressing the importance of self-control, Stolen Focus takes a step back and examines the ecosystem that created the problem. . . . Hari's writing is incredibly readable."-San Francisco Chronicle
"Big-name websites and apps strive to distract because that's the key to profitability. When we're looking at our screens, these companies make money; when we're not, they don't. . . . It's a call to arms, to be sure, and I'm tempted to tell my Twitter followers about it-but I've deleted the app from my phone."-The Washington Post
"If your New Year's resolution was to be more focused this year, then this is the book for you.[Adam] Grant describes the author as ‘a thoughtful critic of our modern malaise.'"-Inc.
"A gripping analysis of why we've lost the capacity to concentrate, and how we might find it again. Stolen Focus . . . will keep you thinking and rethinking long after you've finished it."-Adam Grant
"Johann Hari writes like a dream. He's both a lyricist and a storyteller-but also an indefatigable investigator of one of the world's greatest problems: the systematic destruction of our attention. Read this book to save your mind."-Susan Cain
"I don't know anyone thinking more deeply, or more holistically, about the crisis of our collective attention than Johann Hari. This book could not be more vital. Please sit with it, and focus."-Naomi Klein
"Superb . . . Stolen Focus is a beautifully researched and argued exploration of the breakdown of humankind's ability to pay attention, told with the pace, sparkle, and energy of the best kind of thriller."-Stephen Fry
"If you want to get your attention and focus back, you need to read this remarkable book. Johann Hari...
Readers Top Reviews
SVBSuzieSean H.Dr
The first half of the book is centred around social media and phone use, which really is incredibly interesting and inspired me to use these apps a lot less than I was doing. Hooray! Things go slightly awry however in the second half. Johann interviews a man who says that chemicals are not tested before they are used in the environment - this is untrue (at least in the UK, if this is in the US only it should be made clear). The field of ecotoxicology may be small but it does exist and I have worked in it myself. I have LITERALLY lab-tested chemicals before they are allowed to be used in the environment. After this error I wasn't able to take the book so seriously. Johann moves on to ADHD, which is interesting, but a lot of the information comes from neurotypical people, rather than neurodiverse people themselves. All in all I loved the first half, I have loved Johann's other books, but the second half of this one didn't quite hit the mark.
Joe BatheltSVBSuz
Johann Hari’s book falls into an emerging category of books that target the common narrative that technology is a universal force for good in our lives. This first emerged in the academic literature and has been popularised in recent years in books like Deep Work by Cal Newport, Attention by Casey Schwartz, and The Distracted Mind by Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen. The common theme across those books is that technology is increasingly fragmenting our attention. Predatory algorithms are designed to exploit our basic psychological needs to keep us glued to our screens in an attempt to extract more advertising money. Johann Hari’s book provides a detailed exploration of these ideas, interspersed with his own reflections and experiences. The tone is sometimes a bit too alarmist for my liking, but it may resonate with some readers. The unique aspect of this book is that Johann Hari adds a broader societal perspective. While many other books recommend personal interventions, e.g. putting your phone out of reach to avoid distraction, Hari takes a critical view of this “cruel optimism”. He argues that the business model of big tech companies that make their wealth through advertising undermines any individual effort. Instead, he suggests activism to spark political change that could regulate these companies or bring them under state control. This broader societal perspective added a new dimension to the debate that I had not previously considered. This book is a well-written and well-researched account of the attention economy that I would highly recommend to anyone who has ever wondered why they had just wasted another 2 hours on their phone.
Lisa EJoe Bathelt
The author delves into numerous causes for our dwindling ability to focus. He cites many studies and questions experts in their respective fields. There were things I already knew, some thing I suspected, and some that were downright scary. This was well written.
Steve BerczukSusa
In Stolen focus Johan Hari talks about why it seems harder for us (individually and collectively) to focus than in the past. The book mixes anecdotes of his personal struggles with focus (and attempts to regain it) with information from conversations with commentators and researchers in relevant fields. Stolen Focus discusses a range of issues, ranging from social media to a rise in ADHD diagnoses, and suggests possible causes ranging from the way most social media companies work, to nutrition, to how schools work. I have mixed feelings about the book. Hari makes clear that the lack of attention we struggle with is largely due systemic factors -- mostly focused around profit motives such as social media algorithms, wages, access to health care, food deserts. But he seems to downplay the role of individuals decisions many (though not all) of us can make to improve the situations for ourselves and the community. For the many things that are out of our control the answer might be regulation and/or social action. But Hari seems very dismissive of the benefits of small shifts people can to resist the things that interrupt us. By contrast, Nir Eyal’s Indistractible explains the relationship between internal and external triggers with a focus on things one can do as individuals. The call to larger scale action is valuable, but focusing primarily on large scale change misses the larger cultural issues around why we resist making some changes. I wish that Hari was less dismissive of the the things individuals could do. And for its message, the book seemed a bit long and uneven. If you want a high level picture of the “distraction ecosystem” (my term) this isn’t a bad book to read. But there are better, more concise, books to read to learn how best to address these issues in your life and your community.
Lucy BarrSteve Be
Hari is a gifted writer who kept me engrossed in the storytelling that supported his ideas. This book was recommended to me by a colleague and I didn’t think offhand that I would find it as enjoyable, not to mention as enlightening, as I did. I like how clearly organized the chapter learnings were, and found myself quoting Hari’s research to others. While the end felt too ambitious and thus too scattered, this book will linger in my mind, and I imagine it will shape the way I think of my own capacity to focus as well as those with whom I work. Ironic that Hari did not view this as a self-improvement title! I will certainly follow his work.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter One
Cause One: The Increase in Speed, Switching, and Filtering
I don't understand what you're asking for," the man in Target in Boston kept saying to me. "These are the cheapest phones we got. They have super-slow internet. That's what you want, right?" No, I said. I want a phone that can't access the internet at all. He studied the back of the box, looking confused. "This would be really slow. You could probably get your email but you wouldn't-" Email is still the internet, I said. I am going away for three months, specifically so I can be totally offline.
My friend Imtiaz had already given me his old, broken laptop, one that had lost the ability to get online years before. It looked like it came from the set of the original Star Trek, a remnant from some aborted vision of the future. I was going to use it, I had resolved, to finally write the novel I had been planning for years. Now what I needed was a phone where I could be called in emergencies by the six people I was going to give the number to. I needed it to have no internet option of any kind, so that if I woke up at 3 a.m. and my resolve cracked and I tried to get online, I wouldn't be able to do it, no matter how hard I tried.
When I explained to people what I was planning, I would get one of three responses. The first was just like that of this man in Target: they couldn't seem to process what I was saying. They thought I was saying that I was going to cut back on my internet use. The idea of going offline completely seemed to them so bizarre that I had to explain it again and again. "So you want a phone that can't go online at all?" he said. "Why would you want that?"
The second response-which this man offered next-was a kind of low-level panic on my behalf. "What will you do in an emergency?" he asked. "It doesn't seem right." I asked-what emergency will require me to get online? What's going to happen? I'm not the president of the United States-I don't have to issue orders if Russia invades Ukraine. "Anything," he said. "Anything could happen." I kept explaining to the people my age-I was thirty-nine at the time-that we had spent half our lives without phones, so it shouldn't be so hard to picture returning to the way we had lived for so long. Nobody seemed to find this persuasive.
And the third response was envy. People began to fantasize about what they would do with all the time they spent on their phones if it was all suddenly freed up. They started by listing the number of hours that Apple's Screen Time option told them they spent on their phones every day. For the average American, it's three hours and fifteen minutes. We touch our phones 2,617 times every twenty-four hours. Sometimes they would wistfully mention something they loved and had abandoned-playing the piano, say-and stare off into the distance.
Target had nothing for me. Ironically, I had to go online to order what seemed to be the last remaining cellphone in the United States that can't access the web. It's called the Jitterbug. It's designed for extremely old people, and it doubles as a medical emergency device. I opened the box and smiled at its giant buttons and told myself that there's an added bonus: if I fall over, it will automatically connect me to the nearest hospital.
I laid out on the hotel bed everything I was taking with me. I had gone through all the routine things I normally use my iPhone for, and bought objects to replace each one. So for the first time since I was a teenager, I bought a watch. I got an alarm clock. I dug out my old iPod and loaded it with audiobooks and podcasts, and I ran my finger along its screen, thinking about how futuristic this gadget seemed to me when I bought it twelve years ago; now it looked like something that Noah might have carried onto the Ark. I had Imtiaz's broken laptop-now rendered, effectively, into a 1990s-style word processor-and next to it I had a pile of classic novels I had been meaning to read for decades, with War and Peace at the top.
I took an Uber so I could hand over my iPhone and my MacBook to a friend who lived in Boston. I hesitated before putting them on the table in her house. Quickly, I pushed a button on my phone to summon a car to take me to the ferry terminal, and then I switched it off and walked away from it fast, like it might come running after me. I felt a twinge of panic. I'm not ready for this, I thought. Then somewhere, from the back of my mind, I remembered something the Spanish writer José Ortega y Gasset said: "We cannot put off living until we are ready . . . Life is fired at us point-blank." If you don't do this ...
Cause One: The Increase in Speed, Switching, and Filtering
I don't understand what you're asking for," the man in Target in Boston kept saying to me. "These are the cheapest phones we got. They have super-slow internet. That's what you want, right?" No, I said. I want a phone that can't access the internet at all. He studied the back of the box, looking confused. "This would be really slow. You could probably get your email but you wouldn't-" Email is still the internet, I said. I am going away for three months, specifically so I can be totally offline.
My friend Imtiaz had already given me his old, broken laptop, one that had lost the ability to get online years before. It looked like it came from the set of the original Star Trek, a remnant from some aborted vision of the future. I was going to use it, I had resolved, to finally write the novel I had been planning for years. Now what I needed was a phone where I could be called in emergencies by the six people I was going to give the number to. I needed it to have no internet option of any kind, so that if I woke up at 3 a.m. and my resolve cracked and I tried to get online, I wouldn't be able to do it, no matter how hard I tried.
When I explained to people what I was planning, I would get one of three responses. The first was just like that of this man in Target: they couldn't seem to process what I was saying. They thought I was saying that I was going to cut back on my internet use. The idea of going offline completely seemed to them so bizarre that I had to explain it again and again. "So you want a phone that can't go online at all?" he said. "Why would you want that?"
The second response-which this man offered next-was a kind of low-level panic on my behalf. "What will you do in an emergency?" he asked. "It doesn't seem right." I asked-what emergency will require me to get online? What's going to happen? I'm not the president of the United States-I don't have to issue orders if Russia invades Ukraine. "Anything," he said. "Anything could happen." I kept explaining to the people my age-I was thirty-nine at the time-that we had spent half our lives without phones, so it shouldn't be so hard to picture returning to the way we had lived for so long. Nobody seemed to find this persuasive.
And the third response was envy. People began to fantasize about what they would do with all the time they spent on their phones if it was all suddenly freed up. They started by listing the number of hours that Apple's Screen Time option told them they spent on their phones every day. For the average American, it's three hours and fifteen minutes. We touch our phones 2,617 times every twenty-four hours. Sometimes they would wistfully mention something they loved and had abandoned-playing the piano, say-and stare off into the distance.
Target had nothing for me. Ironically, I had to go online to order what seemed to be the last remaining cellphone in the United States that can't access the web. It's called the Jitterbug. It's designed for extremely old people, and it doubles as a medical emergency device. I opened the box and smiled at its giant buttons and told myself that there's an added bonus: if I fall over, it will automatically connect me to the nearest hospital.
I laid out on the hotel bed everything I was taking with me. I had gone through all the routine things I normally use my iPhone for, and bought objects to replace each one. So for the first time since I was a teenager, I bought a watch. I got an alarm clock. I dug out my old iPod and loaded it with audiobooks and podcasts, and I ran my finger along its screen, thinking about how futuristic this gadget seemed to me when I bought it twelve years ago; now it looked like something that Noah might have carried onto the Ark. I had Imtiaz's broken laptop-now rendered, effectively, into a 1990s-style word processor-and next to it I had a pile of classic novels I had been meaning to read for decades, with War and Peace at the top.
I took an Uber so I could hand over my iPhone and my MacBook to a friend who lived in Boston. I hesitated before putting them on the table in her house. Quickly, I pushed a button on my phone to summon a car to take me to the ferry terminal, and then I switched it off and walked away from it fast, like it might come running after me. I felt a twinge of panic. I'm not ready for this, I thought. Then somewhere, from the back of my mind, I remembered something the Spanish writer José Ortega y Gasset said: "We cannot put off living until we are ready . . . Life is fired at us point-blank." If you don't do this ...
