Book Review: Stolen Focus by Yohann Hari
Introduction
Initially, I thought this book would be a departure from my usual interests in health and nutrition. However, I soon realized that attention is becoming a crucial issue with direct implications for well-being. While conditions like ADHD are well-known, there are many other factors that influence our ability to focus, and "Stolen Focus" delves deeply into this broader context.
7 Major Takeaways:
Everything in the field of attention and focus is debated (especially when it comes to ADHD). You can find two scientists who study the same thing who will tell you totally different things with conviction
Attention Switching is a major problem. It takes an average of 23 minutes to be able to focus back on something after a distraction. For example I got a text as I was writing this, it then, according to the research, takes 23 minutes for me to be able to focus on this again.
Humans are very single minded and can only produce one, maybe two, thoughts at the same time, therefore multitasking is pretty much impossible, most people who think they are multitasking are just attention switching, meaning they stop one thing and do the other thing without realizing they are not multitasking- Actionable Insight: If you want to do something well, do one thing at a time and focus on it.
No book about attention would be complete without a section on sleep. Research shows that after about 18 hours of being awake, most humans have extreme difficulty focusing and paying attention (pulling an all nighter is counter productive). One study showed that staying up for 18 hours was equivalent to having a blood alcohol level of 0.05. After 21 hours it would be similar to being legally drunk.
One of the main functions of sleep is forming connections and patterns, not sleeping well will inhibit this (which inhibits creativity essentially). Also during sleep deprivation your brain's glucose metabolism does not function the way it should be, hence feeling a bit of brain fog the next day.
The main culprit of attention is technology. As helpful as it may be at times, I am starting to think it’s more bad than good. It’s one of the biggest things in our environment that is affecting our ability to pay attention. 1. Social media companies get paid for every second you spend on their app, so their biggest incentive is to get you as “engaged” as possible for as long as possible. 2. Unlimited scroll, notifications, and ect. These are all ways to get you to spend more time on these apps. They are designed to distract you. They apps are designed to train us to want frequent rewards, switch tasks more frequently, and “frack” you, which means learn what excites you and angers you.
ADHD is one of the most disagreed topics by science. It does seem like 20-30% of ADHD is probably genetic, however the rest is environmental and societal. Personally- my take is that almost no one has “ADHD” but the way our society is structured with school, finances, stress, leads to diagnosis of ADHD. -obviously big pharma has interests here as well as it’s a 10s of billion dollar industry.
Conclussion:
Those are just some of the key takeaways, there were plenty more and this book is well written and worth reading. My big impression is that most of our attention problems come from the way the environment is structured. There are a lot of corporate interests at play (pharma, government, and social media) and they profit off limiting your ability to pay attention.
Amazon link to buy Stolen Focus by Yohann Hari
Stolen Focus by Yohann Hari