## Understanding the Crisis of Attention In my book, "Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again," I delve into a crisis that affects us all: the inability to focus. This isn't a personal failing, but rather a systemic issue that we must confront. We live in an 'attentional pathogenic culture' – an environment where sustained and deep focus is extremely hard to achieve. It's not your fault you can't focus; it's by design. The truth is that you are living in a system that is pouring acid on your attention every day, and then you are being told to blame yourself and to fiddle with your own habits while the world's attention burns. ## The Systematic Causes of Distractibility I investigated 12 distinct causes of our dwindling attention spans, several of which are systematic. One of the most significant causes is the constant bombardment of stimuli from technology. Big tech companies have designed an environment to steal your attention. The algorithms they use are consistently driven by one key principle: to show you things that will keep you looking at your screen. This is not a battle you can win through willpower alone; the whole system requires an overhaul. For instance, the average person spends around 5.4 hours on their phone each day, while 57% of Americans do not read a single book in a typical year. This isn't because people are lazy or not good enough; it's because the system is designed to keep you distracted. Even CEOs of Fortune 500 companies get only twenty-eight uninterrupted minutes a day. ## The Impact on Society and Democracy The lack of focus has profound implications for our society and democracy. Democracy requires the ability of a population to pay attention long enough to identify real problems, distinguish them from fantasies, come up with solutions, and hold their leaders accountable if they fail to deliver them. When attention breaks down, problem-solving breaks down, and we fail to address critical issues like climate change. We live in a culture that is constantly amping us up with stress and stimulation. This environment makes it impossible for us to focus on what truly matters. Take care what technologies you use, because your consciousness will, over time, come to be shaped like those technologies. If we continue to be a society of people who are severely under-slept and overworked, who switch tasks every three minutes, who are tracked and monitored by social-media sites designed to manipulate them, then we will continue to have serious attention problems. ## Personal and Systemic Solutions To regain our focus, we need to make both personal and systemic changes. On a personal level, I've found several strategies helpful. Using pre-commitment tools, like the kSafe, can help stop task-switching. Taking extended times away from social media – I take six months of the year off it – can also be beneficial. Embracing mind-wandering, rather than seeing it as a failure of attention, can be a crucial form of attention in its own right. Ensuring adequate sleep and embracing play and unstructured free time are also essential for sustained focus. However, these personal changes are not enough on their own. We need an "Attention Rebellion" to address the systemic issues. This means challenging the growth machine that drives our constant distraction. I suspect that, in the long run, it will ultimately not be possible to rescue attention and focus in a world dominated by the belief that we need to keep growing and speeding up every year. We must take on this very deep issue if we want to reclaim our attention. ## The Importance of Empathy and Deep Thinking Empathy is one of the most complex forms of attention we have – and the most precious. Many of the most important advances in human history have been advances in empathy. To pay attention in normal ways, you need to feel safe. In situations of low stress and safety, mind-wandering will be a gift, a pleasure, a creative force. In situations of high stress or danger, mind-wandering will be a torment. My time living alone and screen-free in Provincetown for three months allowed me to gain a clearer sense of myself, read books again, think deeply and creatively, sleep better, and ultimately put together this book. It was a period of intense focus and reflection, away from the constant distractions of our modern world. ## The Call to Action We must focus together—or face the fires alone. At the start of the Second World War, the English poet W. H. Auden warned: “We must love one another, or die.” Today, we must focus together to address the crises we face. If we continue down the path we are on, we will be a society that is unable to solve its most pressing problems. You don’t get what you don’t fight for. We need to fight for our attention, for our ability to think deeply and focus on what truly matters. This is not just a personal struggle; it is a societal one. We must demand changes from the systems that govern our lives and from the technologies that shape our consciousness. In the end, it is up to us to reclaim our attention and our ability to focus. It is a battle worth fighting, for the sake of our individual well-being and the health of our society. We must love one another, and we must focus together, or we will face the consequences alone.

Here are the key insights from "Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again" by Johann Hari: ## We Live in an 'Attentional Pathogenic Culture' We are in an environment where sustained and deep focus is extremely hard to achieve, and this is not a personal failing but a systemic issue. ## Systematic Causes of Distractibility The constant bombardment of stimuli from technology, particularly algorithms designed by big tech companies to keep users engaged, is a significant cause of dwindling attention spans. This is not something that can be overcome through individual willpower alone. ## Impact on Society and Democracy The lack of focus has profound implications for society and democracy, as it hampers the ability to identify real problems, distinguish them from fantasies, and hold leaders accountable. This breakdown in attention also hinders addressing critical issues like climate change. ## Personal Solutions Personal strategies to regain focus include using pre-commitment tools to stop task-switching, taking extended breaks from social media, embracing mind-wandering, ensuring adequate sleep, and embracing play and unstructured free time. ## Need for Systemic Change Personal changes are insufficient; a broader "Attention Rebellion" is needed to address systemic issues. This involves challenging the constant growth and speed-up culture that drives distraction. ## Importance of Empathy and Deep Thinking Empathy is a complex and precious form of attention. Deep thinking and mind-wandering are essential in low-stress environments and can be creative forces. High stress and danger, however, can make mind-wandering a torment. ## The Role of Technology Technologies shape our consciousness over time. A society that is severely under-slept, overworked, and constantly tracked and monitored by social media will continue to have serious attention problems. ## Collective Action Required Addressing the attention crisis requires collective action. We must demand changes from the systems and technologies that govern our lives to reclaim our attention and ability to focus. ## Consequences of Inaction If we do not address this crisis, we risk being unable to solve our most pressing problems, leading to severe consequences for individual well-being and societal health. ## The Value of Reflection and Focus Time away from distractions, such as Hari's three-month period in Provincetown, can lead to clearer self-awareness, better sleep, and the ability to think deeply and creatively.

## Your Brain on Digital Steroids: Welcome to the Attention Crisis Ever been to a concert where everyone's watching through their phone screens instead of actually experiencing the music? Or tried to read a book but found yourself checking your phone every three minutes? You're not alone, and spoiler alert - it's not entirely your fault. Welcome to Johann Hari's "Stolen Focus," a book that explains why you can't finish this podcast without checking Instagram at least twice. Hari's journey into our collective attention deficit began at Graceland of all places. There he was, surrounded by Elvis Presley's legendary home with his godson Adam, who had begged to visit. Yet when they arrived, Adam couldn't tear himself away from his phone long enough to appreciate what he'd traveled to see. And he wasn't alone - tourists were more engaged with their iPads than the historical mansion around them. This isn't just happening at tourist attractions. It's your Monday morning meeting where everyone's "multitasking" (translation: checking emails while pretending to listen). It's family dinner where conversation competes with notification pings. It's everywhere, and it's getting worse. Hari's investigation into our vanishing attention spans has resonated with everyone from Emma Watson to Oprah Winfrey. And for good reason - we're experiencing a collective brain fog that feels both personal and universal. The average office worker now focuses on a single task for just three minutes before being interrupted or self-interrupting. College students? A measly 65 seconds before task-switching. But here's the kicker - this isn't just you being weak-willed or undisciplined. We're facing a systemic crisis engineered by forces that profit from our distraction. Think of it like the obesity epidemic - sure, individual choices matter, but when the entire food environment is designed to make you overeat, blaming lack of willpower misses the bigger picture. Similarly, our attention isn't just drifting away - it's being actively stolen by systems designed to capture and monetize our focus. So before you download that meditation app promising to fix your focus in five minutes a day, let's dive into what's really happening to our brains in this digital carnival. Because understanding the heist is the first step to getting your mind back. ## Speed Kills (Your Focus): The Velocity Problem Remember the last time you went camping without cell service? That weird feeling when time seemed to stretch out like taffy? That's what happened to Johann Hari during his digital detox experiment in Provincetown. Without the constant ping-ping-ping of notifications, his brain downshifted from fifth gear to first, and something magical happened: his thoughts actually completed themselves. Here's the uncomfortable truth - our brains evolved to process information at walking pace, not fiber optic speed. When you're bombarded with 85 emails, 121 WhatsApp messages, and an endless scroll of TikTok videos, your cognitive architecture basically throws up its hands and says, "I wasn't built for this, boss!" This isn't just about feeling overwhelmed. When information comes at us too quickly, we enter what researchers call "continuous partial attention" - a state where we're never fully engaged with anything. It's like trying to have six conversations at once at a party - you catch fragments of each but understand none of them deeply. Even if you're reading this right now and think you're fully focused, part of your brain is probably held hostage by the knowledge that unread messages are waiting. That text notification you heard five minutes ago? Yeah, it's still taking up cognitive bandwidth even if you didn't check it. Psychologists call this "attention residue" - when thoughts from previous tasks linger and impair performance on current ones. Copenhagen researcher Sune Lehmann discovered this problem extends beyond individual psychology to society as a whole. His research analyzed millions of tweets and Google searches to quantify our collective attention span. The results? The time we focus on any topic - from political scandals to humanitarian crises - has dramatically shortened. We're collectively drinking from an information fire hose, with no time to process before the next deluge arrives. The solution isn't just willpower but what psychologists call "pre-commitment" - binding yourself against future temptations. Remember how Odysseus had himself tied to the mast to resist the Sirens' song? That's the level of intervention we need. Block websites that distract you. Put your phone in another room while working. Create technology-free zones in your home. Because trying to resist distraction through sheer willpower is like trying to diet while working in a donut shop - technically possible, but unnecessarily difficult. ## Flow: The State We've Forgotten Exists Remember that magical feeling when you're so absorbed in something that time disappears? When you look up from a project and somehow three hours have vanished? That's what psychologists call "flow," and it's basically the opposite of our current distracted existence. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (I'll wait while you try to pronounce that) spent his career studying this state of complete immersion. Through decades of research, he discovered that flow requires specific conditions: a clear goal, immediate feedback on progress, and a challenge that matches your skill level. Most importantly, it demands monotasking - focusing on just one thing. Multitasking isn't just flow's enemy; it's its kryptonite. During his digital detox, Hari experienced profound withdrawal symptoms. Without constant notifications, he felt an emptiness - as if part of his identity had been amputated. Even attempting to read novels felt strange; his mind kept searching for the dopamine hit of a notification. It's like his brain had forgotten how to sustain attention on a single narrative thread. This matters because flow isn't just pleasurable - it's fundamental to human flourishing. People report their highest levels of happiness and fulfillment during flow states. Yet our current technological environment systematically undermines these conditions. Notifications interrupt us constantly. Social media encourages comparison rather than immersion. Our devices fragment our attention into ever-smaller pieces. Here's where things get interesting: Csikszentmihalyi's work offers a powerful counterpoint to B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, which focuses on external rewards and punishments. While Skinner's ideas have shaped much of our digital landscape (think likes, shares, and notifications), Csikszentmihalyi reminds us that humans are intrinsically motivated when engaged in meaningful challenges. We don't need external validation when deeply absorbed in purposeful activity. The implications are profound: to reclaim our attention, we must create environments conducive to flow. This means carving out extended periods for deep work, eliminating distractions, and choosing activities that challenge us appropriately. It also means recognizing that our current technological ecosystem is fundamentally hostile to this way of being. So next time you're about to "quickly check Twitter" while working on something important, remember: you're not just interrupting a task - you're sacrificing a state of being that represents one of the highest forms of human happiness. That tweet can wait. ## Sleep: The Attention Superpower Nobody's Using "I'll sleep when I'm dead" might be the dumbest productivity mantra ever created. It's like saying "I'll put gas in my car when it stops running" - technically possible, but spectacularly inefficient. During his Provincetown digital detox, Hari experienced something most of us haven't felt since childhood - natural tiredness when darkness fell and natural waking with the sunrise. Without screens blasting blue light into his eyeballs until midnight, his body remembered its ancient rhythms. This wasn't just a pleasant side effect - it revealed a fundamental connection between sleep and attention that modern life systematically disrupts. Here's what most productivity gurus won't tell you: no life hack, focus app, or nootropic supplement can compensate for insufficient sleep. Sleep isn't merely rest; it's an active process essential for cognitive function. During sleep, your brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and clears metabolic waste. Without sufficient sleep, your attention fractures, your impulse control weakens, and your focus collapses faster than my motivation at a CrossFit class. Harvard sleep scientist Charles Czeisler has documented how sleep deprivation impairs cognitive performance as severely as alcohol intoxication. After 24 hours without sleep, your cognitive impairment equals that of someone with a blood alcohol level of 0.1% - legally drunk in most states. Yet we celebrate executives who boast about four-hour sleep schedules and glorify "hustle culture" that treats rest as weakness. "But I function fine on six hours!" No, you don't. You just don't remember what it feels like to be fully rested. It's like someone who's been eating fast food their whole life claiming they feel fine - they have no reference point for what "healthy" actually feels like. Our sleep crisis has multiple causes. Artificial light, especially the blue light from screens, disrupts our circadian rhythms by suppressing melatonin production. The 24/7 work culture means we're always "on call," with emails and messages arriving at all hours. Economic pressures force many to work multiple jobs or endure long commutes that eat into sleep time. The consequences extend far beyond feeling tired. Children who don't get enough sleep are frequently misdiagnosed with ADHD, as sleep deprivation mimics its symptoms. Even more troubling, chronic sleep deprivation is linked to serious health conditions including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression. So before you download another productivity app, try this revolutionary attention hack: go to bed. Consistently. At a reasonable hour. With your phone in another room. Your future focused self will thank you. ## Books vs. Screens: The Reading Brain's Last Stand Johann Hari's experience at Tim's Used Books reflects a common modern struggle: the inability to focus on reading without digital interruption. Despite being a writer himself, he found his attention constantly pulled toward his phone - a phenomenon literary critic David Ulin calls "split consciousness." The data is concerning: pleasure reading has declined 30% since 2004, particularly among young adults, while screen time has surged to over ten hours daily for the average American. This shift isn't merely about changing formats; digital reading fundamentally alters how we process information. Cognitive research shows that screen reading leads to lower comprehension and retention than print. Digital readers tend to "word spot" rather than read linearly, and hypertext encourages jumping between sources, fragmenting attention. This matters because deep reading develops crucial skills like empathy, critical thinking, and sustained attention - abilities that weaken with constant digital switching. The solution isn't to reject technology but to intentionally preserve deep reading practices. This could include establishing screen-free reading times, creating dedicated reading spaces, or joining book communities. These efforts protect not just a leisure activity but a cognitive practice that shapes how we think and connect with others. ## The Forgotten Art of Mind-Wandering When's the last time you were genuinely bored? Not the "scrolling through Netflix for 20 minutes unable to decide what to watch" kind of bored, but the "staring out the window with nothing to do" kind? Chances are it's been a while - and that's a problem. During his time in Provincetown without digital distractions, Hari discovered something surprising: his mind began to wander in productive ways. Walking along the beach, he found himself making unexpected connections between ideas, solving problems that had stumped him for months, and experiencing creative insights that seemed to arise from nowhere. This wasn't distraction - it was a different, equally valuable form of attention that most of us have forgotten exists. Neuroscientist Marcus Raichle discovered the brain's "default mode network" in 2001 when he noticed that certain brain regions become more active, not less, when people aren't focused on external tasks. This network plays crucial roles in autobiographical memory, future planning, and meaning-making - essentially, it helps us make sense of our lives and experiences. Mind-wandering serves several vital functions. It helps us process experiences, connecting new information with existing knowledge. It enables creative problem-solving by allowing unusual associations to form. It facilitates "mental time travel" - the ability to learn from past experiences and plan for future scenarios. Without adequate time for mind-wandering, these processes become impaired. Yet modern life systematically suppresses mind-wandering. Whenever we might have a moment of "boredom" - waiting in line, walking down the street, sitting on a bus - we reach for our phones. These potential moments of creative idleness have been colonized by digital distraction. It's like we've installed fluorescent lighting over every corner of our mental landscape, never allowing the soft darkness where ideas germinate. This suppression has consequences beyond lost creativity. Research suggests that mind-wandering can sometimes lead to unhappiness, particularly when it veers into rumination or worry. However, this depends greatly on context - mind-wandering in natural settings or low-stress environments tends to be positive and restorative. The problem isn't mind-wandering itself but the conditions under which it occurs. To reclaim this dimension of attention, we need to create space for unstructured thought. This might mean taking walks without phones, scheduling "boredom" time where we simply sit with our thoughts, or engaging in activities like gardening or cooking that occupy our hands while freeing our minds. By protecting these spaces for mind-wandering, we nurture our capacity for creativity, self-understanding, and meaning-making. So next time you feel the urge to fill every empty moment with content consumption, remember: sometimes the most productive thing you can do is nothing at all. ## The Attention Merchants: Big Tech's Mind Control Game Remember when the internet was supposed to be this amazing tool for human connection and knowledge sharing? Yeah, that was before Silicon Valley figured out they could make more money by turning it into the world's most sophisticated slot machine. When Tristan Harris was studying at Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, he witnessed firsthand how technology companies were being taught to manipulate human psychology. Led by B.J. Fogg, students learned to integrate psychological triggers into code - essentially programming human behavior. This wasn't conspiracy but curriculum; the explicit goal was to design technology that could shape user actions. This approach, rooted in B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, views humans as manipulable through carefully designed reward schedules. Just as Skinner's pigeons could be trained to peck buttons for food pellets, users could be conditioned to check notifications, scroll feeds, and engage with content through intermittent rewards - likes, comments, and other forms of digital validation. After joining Google, Harris became increasingly troubled by how these techniques were being deployed. The metric that mattered wasn't user wellbeing but "engagement" - how much time people spent on platforms and how frequently they returned. This created a fundamental misalignment between company incentives and user interests. What's good for attention capture isn't necessarily good for human flourishing. The mechanisms of attention capture are sophisticated and evolving. Features like infinite scroll eliminate natural stopping points that might prompt reflection. Push notifications create artificial urgency, triggering stress responses that make rational evaluation difficult. Autoplay functions remove decision points, making continued consumption the path of least resistance. Behind these visible features lies an invisible infrastructure of surveillance and prediction. Companies collect vast amounts of data about users - not just explicit information like clicks and searches but implicit signals like how long you hover over content or how quickly you scroll. This data feeds machine learning algorithms that create what Harris calls "voodoo dolls" - digital models of users that predict what will capture their attention. This system doesn't just waste our time - it reshapes our information environment in profound ways. Algorithms optimize for engagement, not truth or social value, leading to the amplification of emotionally triggering content, particularly content that provokes outrage. Research shows that moral and emotional language spreads farther and faster online, especially negative emotions like anger. This creates a media ecosystem that systematically promotes division and extremism. So next time you find yourself in a three-hour TikTok hole or rage-scrolling through political content, remember: that's not an accident. It's the product working exactly as designed. ## Beyond Willpower: Why We Need Collective Solutions Let me guess - you've tried at least three of the following: Screen time limits. Digital detoxes. Productivity apps. Focus timers. Putting your phone in another room. And yet, somehow, you still find yourself doom-scrolling at 1 AM on a work night. This pattern reflects what philosopher Lauren Berlant calls "cruel optimism" - the attachment to solutions that cannot actually address the scale of the problem. It's like trying to solve air pollution by holding your breath. Consider the parallel with obesity. For decades, the focus was on individual willpower and diet plans. Yet obesity rates continued to rise despite an explosion of diet books and programs. We now understand that environmental factors - food deserts, marketing, agricultural subsidies - play crucial roles. Individual choices matter, but they're made within systems designed to promote certain outcomes over others. Similarly, our attention crisis isn't primarily a failure of individual willpower but a predictable response to environments designed to fragment focus. Tech writer Nir Eyal promotes techniques like the "ten-minute rule" (wait ten minutes before giving in to distraction) and "timeboxing" (scheduling every minute of your day). These methods can help at the margins, but they place the entire burden of resistance on individuals fighting trillion-dollar companies whose business models depend on capturing attention. This asymmetry of power is crucial to understand. When you're trying not to check Instagram, you're not just battling your own impulses - you're battling teams of engineers, designers, and data scientists who are paid to ensure you fail. It's like trying to lose weight while living in a house where the refrigerator automatically opens every few minutes, offering your favorite foods. True solutions must address both individual practices and systemic conditions. On the individual level, techniques like digital minimalism, attention management, and creating technology-free spaces can help. But these must be complemented by structural changes: regulation of attention-capturing business models, workplace policies that respect cognitive needs, and educational approaches that cultivate deep focus. The obesity analogy offers hope as well as caution. While individual diets often fail, community-based interventions that change food environments show more promise. Similarly, collective action around attention - workplace policies, school approaches, regulatory frameworks - may succeed where individual efforts struggle. So by all means, use that focus app - but also consider joining efforts to create environments where attention can flourish rather than fracture. Because sometimes the most personal problems require the most collective solutions. ## Reclaiming Our Minds: The Attention Rebellion So where do we go from here? Are we doomed to increasingly fragmented attention spans and diminished cognitive capacities? Not if we fight back. The attention crisis won't be solved through individual willpower alone, but through collective action that addresses its root causes. Three ambitious goals could transform our attention landscape: First, we must confront surveillance capitalism - the business model that profits from capturing and selling our attention. This doesn't mean abandoning technology but changing how it's financed and governed. Options include subscription models that align company incentives with user wellbeing, public ownership of digital infrastructure, and regulation that limits data collection and algorithmic manipulation. Second, we should advocate for a four-day workweek without reduced pay. Andrew Barnes's experiment at Perpetual Guardian in New Zealand demonstrated that shorter workweeks can increase productivity while reducing stress and improving focus. By giving people more time for rest, reflection, and personal pursuits, we create conditions where deep attention can flourish. Third, we must restore children's freedom to play and explore independently. Lenore Skenazy, once labeled "America's Worst Mom" for allowing her nine-year-old son to ride the New York subway alone, has documented how children who once roamed neighborhoods freely now experience constant adult supervision and limited independent play. This shift has profound implications for attention development. Free play builds crucial cognitive capacities, teaching children to regulate their attention and develop intrinsic motivation. These goals may seem utopian, but social movements have achieved similarly ambitious transformations before. The environmental movement has successfully banned harmful substances and created protected natural areas. The labor movement secured weekends and workplace safety standards that once seemed impossible. Organizations already working toward these goals include the Center for Humane Technology, which advocates for ethical technology design; the Four-Day Week Global campaign, which supports workplace experiments with reduced hours; and Let Grow, which promotes children's independence. By supporting these efforts and creating new initiatives, we can begin to build environments where attention flourishes rather than fractures. The stakes couldn't be higher. Our capacity for sustained attention isn't just about personal productivity or wellbeing - it's about our ability to solve complex problems, maintain democratic discourse, and create meaningful lives. In a world facing climate change, political polarization, and technological disruption, we need our full cognitive capacities more than ever. So maybe it's time to put down your phone (after you finish this, of course), look around, and ask: what kind of attention environment do I want to live in? And then start building it, one focused moment at a time.