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.
