Waterstones Stolen Focus
4010 ratings
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Price: £10.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month for January 2023. Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And, most importantly, how do we get it back? For Stolen Focus, internationally bestselling author Johann Hari went on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons why our teenagers now focus on one task for only 65 seconds, and why office workers on average manage only three minutes. He interviewed the leading experts in the world on attention, and learned that everything we think about this subject is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failing - a flaw in each one of us. It is not. This has been done to all of us by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen. Johann discovered there are twelve deep cases of this crisis, all of which have robbed some of our attention. He shows us how in a thrilling journey that ranges from Silicon Valley dissidents, to a favela in Rio where attention vanished, to an office in New Zealand that found a remarkable way to restore our attention. Crucially, he learned how - as individuals, and as a society - we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it.
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9781526620217
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9781526620217
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Author: Tony Frobisher
Rating: 5
Review: I am typing this on a smart phone screen. My focus has been on reading Johann Hari's extensively and well researched book. Once I finish I will inevitably check social media. But as Hari has so carefully explained, we are facing a crisis in attention. We scroll endlessly, mindlessly, we lack focus and an ability to remain on task. Why? Hari lays out the reasons, from big tech to pollution and more and poses questions that should make the reader think. Not only about how they can effect personal changes for the better, but hiw we should view the risks to humanity the longer our attention is deprived and manipulated. A sobering read, but an important book. I will definitely be spending less screen time.
Author: JHStevens
Rating: 3
Review: This book starts off well. It deals with the crisis of concentration, the influence of the internet and social media, deals with the way these models are monetised, and offers useful insights into where we are now. The problem occurs when the author allows his political views to interfere with the narrative, including but not limited to trump, brexit, russia, feminisim etc. His broader societal solutions revolve around the socialist utopias of the four day working week, and the introduction of universal basic income despite the fact that as I understand it virtually every single small scale trial of UBI has failed, and the only large-scale trial (furlough in the UK during COVID - but you may as well dress it up as UBI) has virtually bankrupted the country. His reliance on showing us the "socialist way" has a tendency to alienate any conservative reader, which is a shame as conservatives also suffer from the same issues of concentration. He offers very useful insight into the problems facing society though, and for that reason the book is worth a read. He's inspired me to, for example, read more books, and change my device habits.
