Will I love Stolen Focus?

I loved this book because it made me confront how fractured my own attention had become without realizing it. While reading, I kept noticing how often I felt the urge to check something else, which made the experience deeply personal. Hari’s writing pushed me to reflect on how distraction is not a personal failure but a systemic condition of modern life. I appreciated how the book encouraged me to slow down and notice what I had been sacrificing in the name of productivity. Long after finishing it, I found myself rethinking how I protect my focus and what kind of… show more.

Investigative journalism has always been the dream. When I was 17, I thought I would change the world, cracking mysteries open one interview at a time like in the movies. Life didn’t quite work out that way, but narrative investigation is still a revered and epitomized medium. 

Stolen Focus embodies this investigative approach. It explores how constantly switching between technologies erodes creativity and offers a call to action to reclaim attention. Technology being so present in our daily lives is still relatively new. I was born in 1990 and grew up with a toe in both worlds, but television… show more.

This book is a collection of brilliant insights about how big tech has stolen our ability to concentrate.

I am very passionate about this topic since I have written a book about the subject and experienced being addicted to social media, YouTube, and other digital distractions and then managed to break free. I read the entire book in a few days, neglecting other things as I just couldn’t stop. It is a page-turner in the truest sense.  

The writing is brilliant, and it was eye-opening to read about Hari’s experiment with a no-tech vacation and how his perspective and life… show more.

The book’s thesis is simple: People dilute their focus through the constant use of their electronic devices, and Hari believes the best way to regain control is to institute daily tech-free breaks where we separate ourselves from attention-sapping influences and commune with the world around us.

You’ll be surprised how the implementation of this simple act will revolutionize not just your focus but your ability to remember and recall things as well. A valuable resource for anyone looking for a simple but effective reset.

This book is a page-turner and very well-written.

It brilliantly weaves together the author's experience with protecting his attention and research about the topic. He covers how our phones have lulled us into thinking about what to do online, such as taking selfies and posting on Instagram, rather than going out there in the world.

The book enlightens the reader about the damaging effects multitasking and interruptions have on our lives. Although this is not a self-help book, the personal experiences Hari shares are very helpful in managing your attention.

Statistics tell us that 47% of the time we are not paying attention.

One would think this is a core skill for work to work but also a core skill for life; to be present in our own lives. I call this being in the driver’s seat of our life and it is getting harder and harder to do with the “pings and the dings” we are driven by.

I think this book is compulsory reading in helping us to regain this important skill and get our lives back on track.

There’s so much beauty to machine learning, AI, and data science, but also a dark side. We created so many of these tools to help connect us, and sadly it’s disconnecting us.

I find that through the pandemic that my own friends have become more distracted than ever due to the work I do for a living.

This book is incredible at refocusing on what matters.

In recent years many of my friends—longtime book lovers—have confided to me that they no longer have the ability to concentrate for long hours digesting a great book.

I was beginning to feel the same way! Journalist Johann Hari noticed the same instincts in himself, and decided to do something about it. In a three-month experiment, he left his phone and the internet behind, and discovered that much of his capacity for long walks, long reading sessions, and uncluttered thinking returned. Then he set out to find out why.

He traveled around the world interviewing various scientists who explained… show more.

When was the last time you deep-dived into a topic for an hour without being distracted by your phone?

This book offers some solid evidence about how we have lost our ability to focus, and why getting it back is so important.

For anyone feeling burn out from the overwhelming amount of information/distraction we receive every day…