In 2000, I entered the University of California, Irvine as an assistant professor. Suddenly faced with multiple research projects, courses, committees, grant-writing, and student mentoring, I found myself switching screens and tasks like crazy. But I was also glued to my computer. I began to wonder if this was normal? Trained as a psychologist, I decided to study empirically what was happening to our attention. I began research over two decades on attention and discovered how our attention spans have shrunk over time (to a mere average of 47 seconds). Fast forward, I've continued to study our relationships with our technology, uncovering different types of attention and busting myths associated with focus and productivity.
I wrote
Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity
I have always been a fan of the research of the psychologists Kahneman and Tversky—in fact, I did my dissertation research on the biases we make in decision-making.
Kahneman’s work shows us just how imperfect we humans really are. In everyday life, we make errors in reasoning that seem so intuitively correct. This book describes our different basic systems of thinking and how they can explain why we make errors in our judgments. Kahneman won the Nobel prize for his work on prospect theory, covered in the book.
The phenomenal international bestseller - 2 million copies sold - that will change the way you make decisions
'A lifetime's worth of wisdom' Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics 'There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Thinking, Fast and Slow' Financial Times
Why is there more chance we'll believe something if it's in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? The answer lies in the two ways we make choices: fast,…
I started out my career path as an artist, and when creating art, I regularly got into a state of what is known as flow. Hours would pass before I realized that it was already deep into night and I should be at home.
We think we know what flow is but Csikszentmihalyi tells us what it really is—a combination of the right amount of challenge and skill. Flowdescribes a state when one experiences the ultimate form of creativity—when a person is so immersed in an experience that time doesn’t matter.
Learning why people pursue experiences that can get them into flow is fascinating. Few psychologists have presented such optimistic views of people as Csikszentmihalyi.
“Csikszentmihalyi arrives at an insight that many of us can intuitively grasp, despite our insistent (and culturally supported) denial of this truth. That is, it is not what happens to us that determines our happiness, but the manner in which we make sense of that reality. . . . The manner in which Csikszentmihalyi integrates research on consciousness, personal psychology and spirituality is illuminating.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
The bestselling classic that holds the key to unlocking meaning, creativity, peak performance, and true happiness.
Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an…
There is no better place to start learning about attention than from The Principles of Psychology.
I have always been captivated by the writings and deep insight of William James, known as the father of psychology. This is not a pop science book by any means—it was written in the 19th century, and you’ll see how gorgeous the language is. If you don’t want to plough through all 720 pages, I suggest you start with Chapter VIII on Attention. As James says, “Everyone knows what attention is.” But do we really? You will find some amazing gems in it.
"For the psychologist, standard reading, to all readers, a classic of interpretation." — Psychiatric Quarterly This is the first inexpensive edition of the complete Long Course in Principles of Psychology, one of the great classics of modern Western literature and science and the source of the ripest thoughts of America’s most important philosopher. As such, it should not be confused with the many abridgements that omit key sections. The book presents lucid descriptions of human mental activity, with detailed considerations of the stream of thought, consciousness, time perception, memory, imagination, emotions, reason, abnormal phenomena, and similar topics. In its course…
I started my career in science by responding to a job posting for a research assistant for an information scientist. I did get hired but as I had come from the arts, I had never heard of this field. I soon got up to speed and realized how much we are engulfed in a world of information.
Gleick’s book takes us on a historical tour of the concept of information, starting out with early writing systems, then taking us on a deep dive through Claude Shannon’s information theory, and then on to information in terms of bits and bytes as we know it today.
Winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2012, the world's leading prize for popular science writing.
We live in the information age. But every era of history has had its own information revolution: the invention of writing, the composition of dictionaries, the creation of the charts that made navigation possible, the discovery of the electronic signal, the cracking of the genetic code.
In 'The Information' James Gleick tells the story of how human beings use, transmit and keep what they know. From African talking drums to Wikipedia, from Morse code to the 'bit', it is a fascinating…
When I visited Asian countries of China, Japan, Korea, and Singapore, food was always a highlight. But what also stood out for me was the social nature of eating. I was also struck by the simple gestures of people that indicated politeness and respect. We might think of culture as influencing behavior, but this book argues that culture can penetrate our thinking.
Nisbett contrasts how eastern and western cultures think differently about context, the individual vs. the group, and our relationship to the environment, among other differences.
In our age of the Internet, cultural differences on the surface may be eroding globally but there may be deeper influences of culture on thought that are harder to erase.
An award-winning professor of psychology examines the divergent ways in which eastern and western cultures view the world, offering suggestions about how today's interdependent global cultures may be bridged. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
Attention Span covers over two decades of the author’s scientific research on how human attention has undergone a fundamental shift with the rise of the digital age. Our attention spans have declined significantly over the last two decades down to an average of 47 seconds on any screen. We get exhausted, but we can reframe the goal of achieving nonstop focus when we use our devices to instead strive towards a healthy psychological balance—we can then be more productive. Following our own rhythms of attention can be thought of as the new flow. The book presents an optimistic vision for the future of our attention in the digital age—we have created the technology and can ultimately have control over our attention.
