Book Report: Stolen Focus

3. Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again (2022) (1/17/24)

My friend BK Loren, a wonderful writer, recommended this book on FB. She's not much of one for doing that, so I figured her recommendation meant something. Plus, I found the title intriguing, given that I have oodles of time on my hands (being semi-retired/between jobs) and finding it quite difficult to get into a satisfying groove. I'd say a "productive" groove, but productivity per se isn't what I feel I'm missing. After all, is doing a jigsaw puzzle productive? No. But it's valuable—for relaxation, for brain stimulation, for flow, for concentration. For focus.

So I picked this book up, and immediately began having aha moments. Some topics struck home more than others, simply because of who I am (older, fairly well off, without outside time pressures, living in a pretty safe place), but all in all I found it a valuable read. (Caveat: The author tackles topics whose causes are often controversial—ADHD a case in point—and many readers have challenged the book on that basis. For me, most of the topics were either new or freshly presented, with expert commentary I'd not encountered before, so I found it worthwhile. Someone who is already well-read on issues of attention might not. As with everything, context matters.)

The introduction shows us a few scenes around the world—Elvis Presley's mansion in Memphis, the Blue Lagoon of Iceland, the Louvre and Mona Lisa—where people are experiencing immediate reality largely or entirely through screens, whether it's via an iPod tour or trying to "capture" a moment with the phone camera. All too familiar, as in this shot from last New Year's Eve in Paris (unless of course it's a fabricated hoax, which wouldn't surprise me).

Hari identified several major systemic forces that are damaging our ability to focus, to pay attention to the things that matter. One of these is the simple onslaught of stimulation—distractions, yes, but also the demand that we continually switch focus, multitask, and filter vast amounts of information in order to get done what we need to get done. To combat this—and to find what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously defined as "flow"—it is important to strip back to the essentials, but—and this is important—in an expansive way. Flow, as summarized by Hari, comprises three core components: (1) choosing a clearly and narrowly defined goal that is (2) personally meaningful and (3) at the edge of your abilities but not beyond them. Too easy, and you go into autopilot; too hard, and you give up. There is a sweet spot where we can challenge ourselves—and find satisfaction, even joy.

Chapter 3 is devoted to the need for a good night's sleep (something I'm trying to work on, except I seem to have an internal 1 a.m. alarm clock anymore...). Chapter 4 considers the salutary effect of reading a good book, diving deep into a work of fiction and becoming wrapped up in characters and their stories (yes, he focuses on fiction, which can expand empathy, but I find that when I allow myself to relax into a good piece of longform journalism, à la New Yorker, my brain becomes engaged and I feel... wiser?). Chapter 5 celebrates the virtues of daydreaming, allowing your mind to wander. This may seem like the opposite of focus, but in fact mind-wandering allows connections to be made as various parts of the brain make sense of pertinent stimuli, memories, intentions and dreams, rhythms and gaps. Mind-wandering requires a stress-free environment, however; if times are hard, it can become rumination, and that's never good.

Chapters 6 and 7 are both devoted to a single subject: "The Rise of Technology That Can Track and Manipulate You." I, personally, am not especially concerned with the tracking part. Whatever. The manipulation, though—it's very, very subtle, and not just at an individual level, but it's infiltrating all of society, changing our world. It's found in algorithms that feed us (benignly) advertisements on FB or that suggest "new friends" on social media or YouTube videos "you might enjoy." It's found in the bubbles created by Fox"News" or CNN. I might say even the Christmas music that starts to play already before Thanksgiving has passed is part of this trend, subconsciously encouraging us to spend money on presents no one really needs. In these chapters Hari talks to various movers and shakers in Silicon Valley, as well as psychologists and tech developers, to get at just what is being done, and how. It's fascinating. And if the earlier chapters about overstimulation didn't convince me just to put my phone away, these sure did. Not that I'm entirely successful. But I'm trying to at least be more mindful.

Chapter 8 is titled "The Rise of Cruel Optimism (or: Why Individual Changes Are an Important Start, but Not Enough)"—which certainly applies to other major dysfunctions on this planet as well, such as climate change and world hunger. Yes, yes, we can all make changes that are better for everything, but government (a functioning one, anyway), and corporations and technology (not to mention billionaires), all also have it in their power to do a hulluva lot more. In chapter 9, "The First Glimpses of a Deeper Solution," Hari discusses some ways that tech could become not just less invasive but also more supportive of, not to put too fine a point on it, sanity. What's more, we need to continue to have hope, to not fall into despair, but to keep demanding what is right.  That's how women got the right to vote, how dangerous chemicals were outlawed in the 1960s and '70s. It's what Rebecca Solnit writes about in her book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities.

The last few chapters consider the effects of diet and environmental pollution on our attention, and the rise of ADHD. There is an interesting discussion of the importance of free, unsupervised play for our children—which circles back to pushing boundaries, figuring things out, solving problems, even making mistakes. 

In his conclusion, Hari outlines six changes he made during the course of writing this book that have improved his focus and quality of life: (1) "I used pre-commitment to stop switching tasks so much" (this included locking his phone away for long stretches of time during the day); (2) "I have changed the way I respond to my own sense of distraction.... I ask: What could you do now to get into a flow state, and access your mind's own ability to focus deeply?... What would be something meaningful to me that I could do now?... Seeking out flow, I learned, was far more effective than self-punishing shame" for allowing himself to be distracted; (3) "based on what I learned about the way social media is designed to hack our attention spans, I now take six months of the year totally off it" (divided into chunks of two or three months); (4) acting "on what I learned about the importance of mind-wandering..., I make it a point to go for a walk for an hour every day without my phone or anything else that could distract me; (5) "I am strict with myself about getting eight hours [sleep] every night; and (6) "I am very involved in the lives" of children, "playing freely" or observing them play, unsupervised. There are other ways, discussed in the book, that can contribute to better focus—daily meditation or Yoga, a more healthful diet, more actively engaged leisure time. So far, I am working on disengaging from online activities. It's not too hard. Until I forget...

I enjoyed this book, and in the meantime have been listening to various podcasts that treat ancillary topics—the rise of algorithms, the gift of uncertainty, and, yes, attention itself. It's a topic in need of exploration.