Stolen Focus Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again

Democracy Awakening, Heather Cox Richardson... I was naming books... Stolen Focus.

So I just did a show on my own podcast with Johan Hari about his new book, Stolen Focus about attention.

Democracy Awakening, Heather Cox Richardson, I was naming books, Stolen Focus.

So I just did a show on my own podcast with Johan Hari about his new book, Stolen Focus about attention.

Johan Harry has this wonderful book Stolen Focus and I believe he's right when he says if we adults clear it out we can regain our attention.

So this was all in my head when I saw Johan Hari's new book, Stolen Focus. Hari's work has always been interesting to me.

And I think one of the things that was most surprising to me was the evidence about mind wandering, which I learned about for Stolen Focus.

Johan Hari, your new book is Stolen Focus.

If you have suffered from depression, do you now find yourself struggling to pay attention? You are not alone.

That was exactly the question I asked myself because it could be a lot happening to myself.

The name of the latest book is Stolen Focus.

It's called Stolen Focus. Why you can't pay attention and how to think deeply again.

There are changes we can all make in our lives. Obviously, I talk about this a lot in the book, Stolen Focus, about this.

Stolen Focus is an amazing somewhat linked sequel in many respects and on many topics to that book.

Anyone who wants to know where to get the audio book, the ebook or the physical book can go to stolenfocusbook.com and on the website you can listen for free to loads of the experts.

It's out right now, it's available in all good bookshops, you can even get it in...

Stolen Focus, why you can't pay attention and how to think deeply again.

I read that in the book. I couldn't believe it. Three minutes.

It's like we're putting rocket fuel into a mini, right? It'll go really fast for five minutes, then it will just stop.

We are not machines. We cannot live by the logic of machines.

Flow begins at the edge of your comfort zone.

The other the other big central problem that was written about in the book Stolen Focus is the advertising driven model because that makes the whole incentive how do we not to how do we satisfy you and make you have a good pleasant like edifying experience how do we keep you here keep you clicking keep you agitated right that's that's the whole ecosystem because it is driven by ad dollars the more time you're there the more emotions like good, bad or indifferent that you're having about the content that you're serving the better it is for sort of the you know capitalist advertising system

His new book that we're going to talk to him about today is about how your attention has been stolen by a variety of actors, not just tech.

I just finished it actually this morning but we wanted to start with the big breaking news with regards to the Supreme Court.

You are looking at a guy who hasn't read a real book in five years but has probably listened to hundreds of books at three and a half speed.

I went to interview one of the leading experts in the world or one of the leading neuroscientists in the world, Professor Earl Miller, he's at MIT and he said to me...

We need to ask if we're living in what he called an attentional pathogenic environment when we're all of us are struggling with this and to deal with that, we've got to change our psychology.

The advertising driven model because that makes the whole incentive how do we not to how do we satisfy you and make you have a good pleasant like edifying experience how do we keep you here keep you clicking keep you agitated right that's that's the whole ecosystem because it is driven by ad dollars the more time you're there the more emotions like good, bad or indifferent that you're having about the content that you're serving the better it is for sort of the you know capitalist advertising system

He has a new book out, previous books he's had chasing the scream about drug war. He had another book about depression and what's causing it and the drugs that are typically used to treat it.

His new book that we're going to talk to him about today is about how your attention has been stolen by a variety of actors, not just tech. A variety of sort of modern cultural factors that will dig into all of that really interesting book.

I just finished it actually this morning but we wanted to start with the big breaking news with regards to the Supreme Court.

You're looking at a guy who hasn't read a real book in five years but has probably listened to hundreds of books at three and a half speed so I'm right there with you.

I love your show so I'm so excited to be here. It really means a lot because I'm a long time fan of your work as well.

There's a new book out about how to reclaim your focus from the fascinating and quick charismatic author, Johann Hari.

check out the band cynic, especially the album focus which came out in 1993 Fucking album sold was 30 years old and I don't know shit about it Unreal they were the first band to successfully mix jazz fusion into technical metal And that album is truly unique the drummer sean reinhardt set the bar extremely high on that record And influenced every prog metal drummer since

Johann is a New York Times bestselling author, journalist and speaker known for his book Stolen Focus, Why You Can't Pay Attention.

for my book stolen focus you know I wrote it for a very personal reason I could feel my own attention was getting worse and each year that passed things that require deep focus that are really important to me reading books watching movies having long conversations with my friends were just getting harder and harder.

There's a book that just came out about three or four months ago. It's fantastic. I think your readers would love this book. It's called stolen focus. And it's written by Johann Hari. He's a journalist, he also wrote an excellent book called chasing the screen about the war against drugs, the war on drugs, and the problems with that. So he seems to have a special interest in brain topics and mental health. So this book, he, he is well researched and he talks about all the harms of screen use, digital use and how it impacts our ability to focus, how it impacts our ability to read literature. Reading is at an all-time low among US adults. People are not reading novels anymore. People's attention spans become very, very short and without a doubt technology has an impact, and he does an excellent deep dive in this book about how this is true.