Stolen Focus Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again
Reviews
I think he lays out the problem convincingly, but not so much the solutions. If I believe that the endless drive towards growth and the lack of new markets to be exploited is leading corporations to pressure us into more consumption in less and less time, and if that's killing our focus and making our lives slip us by faster then it seems to call for a more radical intervention than donating to the approved list of NGO/ non-profits. And if what's needed is a mass "attention-rebellion" i would like to hear more of what that actaully looks like, or what forms it exists in today
enjoyable and interesting. lots of annotations and notes taken while reading. i especially liked how the author examined the problem from many different perspectives and investigated the factors with detail. i do mention the book sometimes, while having a conversation about our “focusing problem” with someone. and i have recommended it to a few people. worth a shot.
A great book! Not everything in here was new to me, but it is still a book I believe everyone should read. While the book focuses on attention, especially it is about so much more. It‘s basically a „what is wrong with society, using focus as a case study “. Turns out, a lot.
Interesting at the beginning when it was all about technology, but it went downhill fast. If you lived through the Facebook parenting groups in the 2010s, you can skip the chapters about kids with ADHD. Same "information", except the FB groups were more entertaining. I have another chapter to go but I honestly don't know if I can bring myself to finish.
a very insightful read!
2.5
Well-researched and made me take lots of notes / reflect on how I use technology.
A very interesting book that explains some causes of inattention in today's world. The way it is told is entertaining and provides a lot of information about it.
4.5 stars. Very little of this information was new to me, although I was surprised at how much material he covered. This is not just about tech companies developing addictive software, although he certainly explains that well. He also talks about pollution, the educational system… 12 chapters, 12 reasons for our lack of focus, so it’s more of a whole life approach. If you’re interested in the broader reasons for why attention has become such a problem, this is an excellent place to start. You can then dive more into the specific area you find most relevant.
This is an excellent read. So many of the bigger challenges in our world have a link to attention. This book illuminates why we have to work on our attention issues first and foremost to be able to tackle bigger challenges such as climate change.
This book and Hooked are great for learning how not to fall into algorithms traps and all the challenges we face now a day.
If I was approaching the topic for the first time this would be a good intro, but most of what the author discusses are things I’ve already encountered and so I mainly skimmed
Didn’t love as much as his other works. Great research as usual.
A must read book for everyone. In this book, Johann talks about how our focus wasn't just lost: it was Stolen. He goes on to list his experiences and how his wake up call came. Then he goes on a journey to find out why is this - why is our focus diminishing, why are we not able to pay attention? The answers are fascinating and eye opening. Once again I would reiterate: everyone should take a look at this book, it changes so much and helps everything make a lot of sense.
I really enjoyed this as an audiobook. The author brings some ideas I haven’t heard before and not just the same old “we are staring at our screens too much” thing. Some of the studies he references are contested by some scientists but raved about by other scientists so you have to realise it’s still early days for some of the research. He is really open about this though and dives into the reasons behind it and the differences in thinking.
This book is urgent and essential reading.
Highlights
Children’s lives have come to be dominated by ideas “that are very radical and new. The idea that kids can’t play outside without this being dangerous—that has never been the case in human history...” It’s an inversion of what every previous human society has thought.
After you’ve adjusted your perspective in this way, seeing this as a debate between whether you are pro-tech or anti-tech is bogus and lets the people who stole your attention off the hook. The real debate is: What tech, designed for what purposes, in whose interests?
There’s no button that says “I want to meet up—who’s nearby and free?” This isn’t technologically tricky.
whenever I would see somebody just sit there for six hours, doing nothing but stare out of the window, I would feel an urge to lean over to them and say, “I’m sorry to disturb you. It’s none of my business, but I just wanted to check—you do realize that you have a limited amount of time in which to be alive, and the clock counting down toward death is constantly ticking, and you’ll never get back these six hours you are spending doing nothing at all? And when you are dead, you’ll be dead forever? You know that, right?”
We internalize the texture of the voices we’re exposed to.
Once I knew this, I understood why, when I felt constantly distracted, I didn’t just feel irritated—I felt diminished. We know, at some level, that when we are not focusing, we are not using one of our greatest capacities. Starved of flow, we become stumps of ourselves, sensing somewhere what we might have been.
This is being done to us all. It is being done by very powerful forces. Those forces include Big Tech, but they also go way beyond them. This is a systemic problem. 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.