Stolen Focus

This book is simply a must-read, for everyone. It totally opens your eyes to how our minds and attention spans are being manipulated and hijacked by those little devices we can't live without. It actually encouraged me to buy an e-ink phone and embark on a digital privacy journey. I've recommended it to many people and had some very interesting discussions with everyone I've talked about it to. It seems that it touches on something we all know deep down, but don't really want to face.

I've stopped using social media due to this book. The way the authos presents the information about Facebook, Google, YouTube and others sunk in like it had not before, on just how these organizations are USING us for monetary gain.
The information that bothers me the most is If you have a group of people in a room trying to make decisions, how can they since no one can pay attention to anything long enough. How do we solve problems then?

This book is a must-read. It covers many reasons why our attention spans have been degrading over the last few decades, a substantial chunk of which is due to corporate social media (personally, I think the jury is still out on whether other forms of social media can be beneficial) If you care about your personal mental health, or global geopolitics, or climate change, I'd strongly suggest reading it. The book covers a lot of ground, includes a lot of research, and has an excellent systemic analysis (instead of the usual individualistic focus of self-help books). It's also an enjoyable read.

I did not find the book's individual facts and arguments unique or novel, but the connections that Hari makes between them add up to a compelling argument and rise to collective action in a surprising and effective way. Attention and the climate are connected crises, he says convincingly. And Facebook, in the extent of Hari's telling, is so much worse than I thought possible.

I was expecting Stolen Focus to predominantly focus on digital focus, and the negative impacts big tech companies have on our attention. That’s definitely a good portion of this book, which was incredibly insightful, but there are many more concepts tied to focus I had never considered which were equally amazing to learn about.

Diet, environment, social factors, economy, politics, and more. Stolen Focus ties relations between the focus crisis to the climate crisis, the obesity crisis, the mental health crisis, and much more. These are all interlinked problems which feed on each other in disastrous ways.

This book is not a “how to reclaim your focus” guide, it’s rather a thorough investigation into how and why focus is so important, and what has happened to it. It gives you the context and understanding required to not just fight back personally, but socially.

Writing-wise, I was thoroughly impressed with the structure of the book. I was consistently captured by the book (ironically) as the author had a great balance of personal anecdotes, storytelling, interviews with dozens of experts, scientific research, and more. I felt the balance of facts, evidence, and story were perfect.

Great read, a must read if we are to reclaim some sanity in this insane world.

I was expecting a remix of the same old tips (using tech to force time off tech/sleeping right/planned sabbaticals) in the hope that they would get through my thick distraction addled skull this time. And you do get that and it's great, worded very kindly and effectively.

What I didn't expect was to also get a manifesto on the need to revolt against a system that is turning us into the worst version of ourselves. Unable to focus, to parse truth from reality, to learn and grow and work together. I'm won over, I want to add to this revolution. It's the most important and difficult revolution that's ever been needed. A revolution to reclaim our very souls from the demon of distraction, so we can even begin to fix the other issues in our lives.

The best argument he has in the book? Imagine Facebook was designed for humans to be their best selves. It used all its engineers to design an app that brought people together, made them healthier and more caring and in touch with each other, what would that look like? It wouldn't even need to be a major change, just the small design changes that would make us all better people. It wouldn't be much, and it would change the world.

It's so true! It's so little and it would make the world a better place! It's completely outrageous it's not that! We've been duped!

Johann Hari skriver ikke så godt som Malcolm Gladwell eller Ronan Farrow, og det kan bli litt mye kronglete formulerte beskrivelser og intellektuell name dropping innimellom (som om ikke jeg nettopp gjorde det samme).Hari kritiseres også for å være unøyaktige med sine kilder, og i 2011 (enda en unøyaktighet) mistet han jobben i The Guardian (enda mer unøyaktighet?) pga. plagialisering.

Diskvalifiserer disse opplysningene det denne boken handler om? Langt i fra! Når det gjelder redelighet, så er 1/4 av boken (unøyaktighetsvarsel) henvisninger til kilder han har brukt i skrivingen av boken, og selv om Morgenbladet og andre klarer å påvise faktuelle feil og forskningsresultater på tynt grunnlag, er det meste som boken bygger på fullt og helt redelig og pålitelig.

Alle disse betenkelighetene tatt i betraktningen, dette er en uhyre viktig bok i den tiden vi lever i. Jeg har selv merket det: Det er ufattelig vanskelig å fokusere og holde oppmerksomheten. Det kom så langt at jeg måtte begynne å legge mobilen i et annet rom, sette av tider til bevisst lesing uforstyrret, timer forsvant til ting jeg ikke ante hva gikk til (joda, jeg vet: Twitter), og generelt følte jeg meg på siden av mitt eget liv i lange perioder av døgnet. Touche, her kommer Johann Hari og beskriver akkurat min opplevelse. Det han også gjør, er å beskrive årsakene til at vi er der vi er, og konsekvensene av det. Blant annet skriver han om hvordan vårt individuelle fokus eller mangel på sådan, tar fra oss evnen til å kollektivt fokusere på de store utfordringene vi lever i nå, og dermed redusere muligheten for å finne en løsning.

Slutten av boken inneholder en konklusjon. Det er fem ting vi må gjøre for å komme oss ut av uføret (eller var det tre?), og jeg er enig i alt sammen. Markedsliberalister vil se blod når de leser rådene, jeg er enig i alt sammen - og det er kanskje derfor jeg liker boken så godt. Birds of a feather osv. Men uansett: Eeeh, nå glemte jeg hva jeg skulle skrive...

This book made me feel so seen. It doesn't have many practical tips, but the depth and readability were excellent and it articulated a lot of things I had been thinking about really well. I'd highly recommend it to anyone.

Johann Hari has managed to write a book which gives a look into some of the causes for what he quite excellently argues is an attention crisis, and how this attention crisis is affecting us as a species. The book has several interesting, intriguing and at times dystopian analyses but manages to end the book in an ultimately speaking hopeful way.

I highly recommend everyone I know to read this book, as it not only gives insight to why we as a species are becoming worse and worse at focusing, thinking deeply and becoming more mindless than mindful, but it also gives a general insight to what this does with us as a society and who it is that seemingly wants it to go this way.

If you are even just partly interested in the social sciences and psychology behind focus, behind social media, behind the ever increasing speeding up of everything in our society or just about why we find it so hard to be able to just sit on the bus without frantically scrolling on our phones, than this book is a must-read.

It is also worth noting that this is not a traditional self help book, like many might think because of the cover and title. It is more an analysis of what has gone wrong, why, how it can be changed, and why individual efforts aren't enough in this situation; while the book does give insight and tips that fit in the self-help genre (many that I'm using and will use as well), the book itself points more towards 'Society needs to change. Now.' than 'You are lazy and need to change.'

There is so much information in this book! The author explores various sides of the topics covered, citing scientific research and interviews. Some topics discussed: the importance of mind wandering, how slowness and mindfulness activities nurture attention, that reading a book is the simplest form of experiencing the flow state, and how the Internet is training us to read information by skipping and jumping from one thing to another, instead of reading in a linear and focused fashion. He also covers some of the debates and controversies around the increase in ADHD diagnoses, what is going on with social media, the importance of sleep, the idea of perpetual economic growth, and some ideas on why we can't focus enough on the climate crisis challenges today. Excellent read, it doesn't try to find a single magical solution. Our ability to focus is complex and it is entangled with technology, mental health, our environment, our economy and our culture.