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

Johann Hari examines why our ability to pay attention is declining and explores potential solutions. In the United States, teenagers can focus on a single task for only sixty-five seconds, while office workers average three minutes. Hari himself struggled with constant device-switching and tried various self-help approaches, including abandoning his phone for three months, without success. To understand the problem, Hari traveled globally to interview leading experts on human attention. He discovered that the inability to focus is not simply a personal failure of willpower, but rather the result of powerful external forces—particularly corporations seeking to profit from our attention. Hari identifies twelve deep causes of this crisis, ranging from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution. The book introduces readers to Silicon Valley insiders who understand attention manipulation, explores attention loss in unexpected places like a favela in Rio de Janeiro, and examines an office in New Zealand that developed techniques to restore worker productivity. Hari concludes with strategies for reclaiming focus both individually and at a societal level.