Stolen Focus

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the 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.

A thrilling and incisive examination of the post-Reconstruction era struggle for and suppression of African American voting rights in the United States. Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction era raised a new question to those in power in the US: Should African Americans, so many of them former slaves, be granted the right to vote?In a bitter partisan fight over the legislature and Constitution, the answer eventually became yes, though only after two constitutional amendments, two Reconstruction Acts, two Civil Rights Acts, three Enforcement Acts, the impeachment of a president, and an army of occupation. Yet, even that was not enough to ensure that African American voices would be heard, or their lives protected. White supremacists loudly and intentionally prevented black Americans from voting -- and they were willing to kill to do so.In this vivid portrait of the systematic suppression of the African American vote for young adults, critically acclaimed author Lawrence Goldstone traces the injustices of the post-Reconstruction era through the eyes of incredible individuals, both heroic and barbaric, and examines the legal cases that made the Supreme Court a partner of white supremacists in the rise of Jim Crow. Though this is a story of America's past, Goldstone brilliantly draws direct links to today's creeping threats to suffrage in this important and, alas, timely book.

In February 1981, Spain was still emerging from Franco's shadow, holding a democratic vote for the new prime minister. On the day of the vote in Parliament, while the session was being filmed by TV cameras, a band of right-wing soldiers burst in with automatic weapons, ordering everyone to get down. Only three men defied the order. For thirty-five minutes, as the cameras rolled, they stayed in their seats. Critically adored novelist Javier Cercas originally set out to write a novel about this pivotal moment, but determined it had already gained an air of myth, or, through the annual broadcast of video clips, had at least acquired the fictional taint of reality television. Cercas turned to nonfiction, and his vivid descriptions of the archival footage frame a narrative that traverses the line between history and art, creating a daring new account of this watershed moment in modern Spanish history. The Anatomy of a Moment caused a sensation upon its publication in Spain, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. The story will be new to many American readers, but the book stands resolutely on its own as a compelling literary inquest of national myth, personal memory, political spectacle, and reality itself.

Buy now to get the main key ideas from Johann Hari's Stolen Focus Is it becoming increasingly harder to keep your attention focused on a single task? If so, you’re not alone. In Stolen Focus (2022), Johann Hari identifies twelve main factors that are contributing to our collective loss of concentration and shortening our attention span. Hari details how all these forces converged into a perfect storm that is stealing our focus. Our sleep declines, we experience mental and physical exhaustion, and we lose interest in slow-paced activities like reading, meditation, and free play as we become hooked on fast-paced social media sites. Surveillance capitalism thrives on keeping our attention captive, but Hari outlines steps we can take to fight back.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was planning on going offline for three months. I was going to use my friend’s old, broken laptop to write the novel I had been planning for years. I needed a phone that could not access the internet of any kind. #2 The most effective way to beat any destructive habit is through pre-commitment. You bind the future version of you so that you don’t have to commit to the temptation of your current state. #3 I had been working nonstop since I was twenty-one. I had taken almost no holidays. I had felt tired for so long that all I knew was how to outrun it. As people began to disembark, I heard the ping of an incoming text message. #4 I wrote my first email in 1993, when I was 19 years old. I didn’t feel any excitement or joy when I sent it, and I didn’t understand why there was such a big deal about this new email thing. I wanted a place that would not stimulate my journalistic curiosity.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the 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.

Summary of Stolen Focus - Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again - A Comprehensive Summary Walking in Memphis Johann Heinz: My godson's obsession with Elvis Presley began when he was nine years old. He asked to know everything about Elvis, and so I jabbered out the rough outline of his inspiring, sad story. Without thinking, I agreed to take him to Graceland one day. When I met Adam, he had dropped out of school and spent almost all his waking hours in front of screens. He struggled to stay with a topic for more than a few minutes without jerking back to a screen or abruptly switching to another topic; he seemed to be whirring at the speed of Snapchat. I'll pay for us to go four thousand miles. But I can't do it if, when we get there, all you're going to do is stare at your phone, he says. "We have to reconnect with something that matters to us." "If you swipe left, you can see the Jungle Room to the left," I told a man and his wife as they looked at their iPads. There's no need for your screen. We're actually here.” “You don't have to see it on your screen,” I said. I was fracturing like they were fracturing. I wondered how I was losing my ability to be present too. “And I hated it,” says author Roxanne Jones. In Paris, nobody looked at the Mona Lisa for more than a few seconds. Activities that require longer forms of focus, like reading, have been in free fall for years. I wondered if the motto for our era should be: “I tried to live, but I got distracted.” Scientist Roy Baumeister says he is losing some of his ability to focus. He used to be able to sit for hours, reading and writing, but now "it seems like my mind jumps around a lot more.” The average American college student spends just 19 seconds a day focused on one thing, compared to an adult working in an office where the median stay-on-focus is three minutes. Here is a Preview of What You Will Get: ⁃ A Detailed Introduction ⁃ A Comprehensive Chapter by Chapter Summary ⁃ Etc Get a copy of this summary and learn about the book.

"Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And, most importantly, how do we get it back? For Stolen Focus, internationally bestselling author Johann Hari went on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons why our teenagers now focus on one task for only 65 seconds, and why office workers on average manage only three minutes. He interviewed the leading experts in the world on attention, and learned that everything we think about this subject is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failing - a flaw in each one of us. It is not. This has been done to all of us by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen. Johann discovered there are twelve deep cases of this crisis, all of which have robbed some of our attention. He shows us how in a thrilling journey that ranges from Silicon Valley dissidents, to a favela in Rio where attention vanished, to an office in New Zealand that found a remarkable way to restore our attention"--Publisher's description.