Stolen Focus by journalist Johann Hari (author of Lost Connections) makes the case that we have an attention crisis: We’re losing our ability to concentrate. He argues that the crisis is a result of outside forces stealing our focus—not of lazy individuals not trying hard enough to concentrate. Hari outlines the factors creating the crisis and his approach to solving it.
Hari believes we must fix the attention crisis for three reasons: 1) If you’re unable to pay attention, you can’t move forward on your goals. 2) As a society, we can’t confront the challenges we face without focusing on them to see what we need to do and then act. 3) Because the attention crisis is a result of human action, fixing it requires human action.
Published in 2022, Stolen Focus grew from Hari’s own experience of being increasingly unable to focus. He decided to research the problem and how best to deal with it. He read the work of scientists and activists on the subject, and he met some of them to see their experiences first-hand. (Shortform note: In addition to his journalism work, Hari is known for making admitted missteps earlier in his career.)
Hari approaches the problem of focus in a holistic way. Many authors have written about the benefits of, for example, disconnecting from technology. But Hari makes a comprehensive diagnosis of society’s difficulty in concentrating, including everything from our food to the economy, and he proposes societal solutions rather than individual tips and tricks.
This guide will explore Hari’s evidence of the attention crisis: It’s harder to think, find flow, and read. We’ll then discuss seven factors sapping our attention and his three-part solution. We’ll also share suggestions for action based on Hari’s insights, as well as explore perspectives from other authors that complement his ideas.
Many Authors Have Advice on Focusing
Other authors have also tackled our loss of focus. Most give readers science- and experience-based suggestions to more effectively harness your focus. This subgenre includes Deep Work, by Cal Newport, which teaches you how to cut distractions from your work, and Hyperfocus, by Chris Bailey, which helps you manage your attention.
However, Hari’s book is less a productivity handbook than a social and economic critique. Other authors who have approached the subject of attention from this point of view include Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants, and Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing. Wu explains how the US economy depends on controlling your attention 24/7, while Odell shares strategies to resist the business world’s pull on your attention.
Hari argues that an attention crisis is undermining our cognitive ability to do three things: find flow (a state of intense focus), read, and think. This section will explain why each of these activities is becoming harder and what that means.
Flow is our highest form of sustained attention, and Hari argues that the distractions of modern life are destroying it.
Hari believes our increasing difficulty finding flow has roots in the psychological theory of behaviorism. In the 1930s, psychologist B.F. Skinner discovered that you can train animals to do almost anything by giving them a reward. According to Hari, Skinner extended that insight to humans, arguing that we don’t have real freedom of choice. We pay attention to what the environment trains us to pay attention to, and we perform tasks because we crave a reward at the end, not because we want to do them.
Hari argues that Skinner’s theory is the basis of attention-grabbing mechanisms that are ubiquitous in modern life, such as “like” buttons on social media. Every time users post on social media, they’re pursuing the reward of external validation in the form of likes and learning to keep doing it.
In the 1970s, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi rejected the view that we’re solely reward-driven. He focused on positive aspects of the mind and how to nurture them (positive psychology). He studied artists, athletes, and others with strong interests to understand their motivations. According to Hari, the conflict between behaviorism and positive psychology is at the core of modern life. Behaviorist mechanisms rule our lives, but if we fight them we can tap into the creative aspects of our minds.
Through his research, Csikszentmihalyi identified “flow,” a state of complete focus. When you’re in flow, you become engrossed in an activity, lose track of time, and lose yourself in the process, not pursuing any rewards at the end. He identified several features of flow, and Hari highlights three that are core to the experience: 1) To get into flow, you need to devote yourself to only one task. 2) The task must be intrinsically motivating. 3) The task must be just right—not too easy and not too hard. If it’s too easy, your brain won’t devote all its power to the task. If it’s too hard, you’ll become discouraged which will prevent you from reaching flow.
Behaviorism Cannot Foster Creativity
The key difference between behaviorism and flow is the type of motivation that triggers them. Behaviorism is triggered by extrinsic motivation, such as rewards or punishments, while flow is triggered by intrinsic motivation, an internal drive to do or accomplish something.
While both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can get you to complete a task, only intrinsic motivation will get you to tap into your creativity. A study found that college students became less engaged with their projects if they involved financial incentives. The researchers concluded that there are three universal needs that foster intrinsic motivation: competence, autonomy, and psychological relatedness (a desire to feel connected to others).
Behaviorist mechanisms can help individuals achieve competence—this is at the heart of most educational technology—and even get a sense of connection with others through social elements, like social media. But by nudging individuals to do or avoid doing something through rewards and punishments, they sap their autonomy and quash intrinsic motivation.
Although flow is the highest form of focus we can achieve, it’s easily disrupted. Hari argues that the distractions of modern life and our daily routines keep us from reaching flow.
We spend our days fighting off distractions to focus on goals that don’t motivate us, and we decompress by giving in to our preferred distractions. At no point in our day do we purposely engage with a task that will help us reach flow.
Five Ways Society Disrupts Your Flow
There are many ways society makes it hard for you to find flow, besides keeping you distracted. In Flow, Csikszentmihalyi identifies five ways cultures get in the way:
The government or culture makes it difficult to survive, so people don’t have time or energy to develop their skills and interests.
The culture or government creates too much structure in everyday life, so there isn’t time or opportunity for people to seek out meaningful, enjoyable activities.
Societies develop cultural customs that keep people from looking beyond tradition.
People are forced to do things that don’t align with their goals, such as working meaningless jobs, which creates alienation and boredom.
In times of social or economic change, people experience a loss of order or meaning in everyday life, which makes them anxious and distracted from meaningful activities.
Hari argues that reading—the most common flow experience—is also disappearing from people’s lives. We engage less with the complex cognitive task of reading and, as a result, we are changing how we engage with complex topics.
Hari explains that as we read more from screens, we read less from the pages of books, and we ultimately become worse readers. He says more than half of the US population doesn’t read any books over the course of a year. In Britain, so few people buy books that the market for printed novels shrank by 40% between 2008 and 2016.
In addition to pulling us away from books, reading on a screen affects how we interact with books and information when we do read, in three ways:
Hari argues that struggling to read and the attention crisis are mutually reinforcing. The more difficult it is to pay attention, the less we read books; the less we read books, the less we exercise the cognitive skills that help us pay attention.
How Reading Changed in the 19th Century
The idea that our relationship with books has changed isn’t new. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argues that two inventions changed the nature of reading in the 19th century, the first being the telegraph. The telegraph made it possible to communicate short bursts of information across great distances. Over time, the country evolved from a slow, print-centered culture to one that valued speed and quantity of information over relevance.
The development of modern photography also contributed to this new hunger for information to be delivered in quick, easy-to-digest formats. Instead of slogging through a long book about life in another culture, you could glance at a photograph and immediately get a sense of another world, without all the mental effort of reading.
Hari’s final proof of the attention crisis is that we’re struggling to think. Our idea of concentration is being laser-focused on a specific task. However, our minds also need to wander purposefully to make connections and insights, which the constant distractions of modern life impede.
The brain performs three functions when your mind wanders:
Intentional vs. Unintentional Mind-Wandering
In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey differentiates between unintentional and intentional mind-wandering, or “scatterfocus.” Unintentional mind-wandering distracts you from your original intention. But in scatterfocus, you deliberately leave room in your working memory to allow your mind to wander. According to Bailey, when you mind-wander intentionally, you can maximize its short-term and long-term benefits because you remember your insights and connections; if your mind wanders unintentionally, you’re far less likely to remember anything useful.
Bailey suggests two main ways to intentionally mind-wander. First, try a fun task that takes up little working memory, leaving the rest of your working memory free to let your mind wander. Regularly check in to see what you’re thinking about, and jot down any great ideas.
Secondly, schedule time to record your ideas. Bailey recommends scheduling weekly blocks with just your thoughts and a notepad. During this time, don’t think about anything in particular. Instead, write down whatever useful thoughts pop into your head.
After citing his evidence for the attention crisis, Hari explores the reasons or factors contributing to it. This section will discuss seven factors that Hari believes are undermining our ability to focus: the failure to explore ADHD’s underlying causes, the lack of play in children’s lives, sleep deprivation, toxins in our food and environment, distracting technology, information overload, and too much emphasis on personal responsibility to solve attention problems.
The first factor contributing to the attention crisis is how we treat ADHD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which describes children’s inability to concentrate. Hari believes we’re not addressing it effectively. Too often, the reaction to children diagnosed with ADHD is to medicate them instead of addressing the underlying reasons and solving them.
Hari points out that ADHD numbers have climbed over the past few decades. Today, 13% of teenagers in the US have an ADHD diagnosis, and many of them take stimulants to manage it.
While there’s little question ADHD is a real problem for many people, its causes are unclear.
Hari explains that scientists and doctors disagree on basic facts about ADHD. For example, there's no consensus on whether ADHD is a biological condition or if it even exists as a single condition. Many US-based doctors believe that ADHD is genetic and that medication is the appropriate way to treat it. But doctors elsewhere argue that there are deeper causes and that the appropriate treatment would be to make changes in the child’s environment.
Hari says a key change is lowering stress levels around the child. Research shows that people who experience high levels of stress over a sustained period have a hard time focusing. Their brains are constantly scanning their surroundings for danger, which makes it difficult to focus on other tasks, such as work or school.
A decades-long study of the factors that shape people as they grow found that environmental factors, such as a child’s homelife, were stronger predictors of attention problems than were neurological indicators. The more stress there was in a family’s life, the more likely the child was to have difficulty focusing.
(Shortform note: Psychologists say the disruption and resulting stress caused by the Covid-19 pandemic worsened the problems of children with ADHD. The pandemic created immediate, dramatic change in children’s environment, eliminating the structure such children need, as well as socialization and in-school support.)
While scientists don’t agree on the causes of ADHD, most are confident that ADHD medication helps people focus on specific tasks. However, the same medication also helps people who don’t fit the ADHD description. Hari argues that this shows that the medication isn’t fixing any problems, it’s simply stimulating the brain. He questions whether continuing to use these stimulants is worth it when considering their risks:
(Shortform note: In addition to the developmental risks, ADHD medication can have a range of side effects, including problems sleeping, irritability, headaches, moodiness, loss of appetite, nausea, and cardiac risks.)
Children’s Poor Sleep Might Be Causing ADHD
In Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker agrees that a range of other issues underlies children’s difficulty maintaining focus. Considering the rise of ADHD diagnoses in recent years, he claims that over 50% of them are misdiagnoses of other underlying issues. One of those issues, he believes, is sleep disorders resulting from children’s schedules being forced to match adults’ working schedules. To make matters worse, doctors prescribe them amphetamines, which, as we’ve seen, risk the healthy development of children’s brains and bodies, disrupting their sleep further, and making it harder to solve the underlying problem.
Sleep deprivation and stress compound each other. Studies show that not sleeping enough can cause mood swings, stress, and even depression and anxiety.
The second factor contributing to the attention crisis also affects children. Hari believes that how children spend their time contributes to rising levels of difficulty in paying attention.
Both at school and at home, children have too little time and space to play without adult guidance. At home, children have fewer opportunities for unstructured play and outdoor activities. Hari notes that by 2003, only 10% of children had regular access to outdoor play. At school, children spend more time preparing for tests than learning through play or discovery. The No Child Left Behind Act made standardized testing pervasive in US schools. Hari claims that in the four years after its passage there was a 22% increase in attention deficit diagnosis. And schoolwork continues at home, with one study finding that US children spend almost eight more hours a week on homework than 20 years ago.
The Effects of Lifestyle Changes
A lack of play undermines children’s ability to focus in three ways, Hari reports:
1) Exercising less affects concentration. Exercise helps children’s developing brains grow and refine their functions. If children exercise less, their brains have fewer opportunities to develop, which can lead to attention problems.
2) Playing less offers fewer opportunities for learning skills, including managing anxiety. Play helps children develop a range of skills, including problem-solving and learning to manage unpleasant emotions and unexpected results. When children don’t learn to cope, they become more anxious, and research indicates that anxiety makes it more difficult to concentrate.
(Shortform note: Research has shown that, in particular, children benefit from playing outdoors and engaging with nature. Besides increasing children’s physical activity, playing in nature teaches emotional regulation, healthy habits, exploration, and child-initiated learning.)
3) Curbing play stifles intrinsic motivation and the development of mastery. Children learn to concentrate by working on tasks that intrinsically motivate them. That includes tasks that are meaningful to them and not imposed by others or carried out to receive a reward. (Shortform note: In a sense, they learn to focus by finding flow in activities they enjoy.)
Similarly, we improve focus by developing mastery of a skill we’re interested in. If we feel that we’re getting better at something, we work harder to improve our skills. But if we constantly feel that we’re failing, we give up more easily. Hari argues that not enough play and excessive standardized learning hurt children's intrinsic motivation and desire for mastery. Eventually, this makes it harder for them to learn how to focus.
(Shortform note: In his book Mastery, Robert Greene argues that to become a master of a skill you need technical proficiency (being excellent at the skill) and social know-how (being able to garner people’s support around you and the skill you’ve developed). If young people are having trouble focusing to hone their skills and developing the social know-how to interact with others, it follows that they will encounter twice the challenge in developing mastery.)
More Screen Time Hurts Young People
Beyond the effects of children’s lifestyle changes that Hari points out, there’s an even more worrying one: Today’s children and teenagers are less happy. A survey that’s been asking pre-teens and teens since 1975 to describe their daily activities and report on their happiness has found a clear correlation between them. The more time teens spend on screens and less time interacting in person, playing sports, or studying, the more likely they are to be unhappy. Depression and anxiety diagnoses are also higher among young people who spend more time on devices and less time developing social skills in person.
However, a psychologist specializing in generational changes argues against Hari’s assessment that young people have less free time. At least when it comes to high school students, some studies suggest that they are spending less time on homework than two decades ago, leaving them with more free time which they generally fill with technology.
The third factor contributing to the attention crisis is sleep deprivation. Hari believes we’re not getting enough sleep, and it’s diminishing our ability to focus.
Hari argues that sleep deprivation is not an isolated problem. The average sleep time an adult gets each night is an hour less than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. For children, the lost sleep time amounts to an hour and 25 minutes. (Shortform note: The percentage of adults sleeping significantly less than the recommended seven hours a day is so high that the CDC declared it a public health epidemic.)
Hari cites two possible explanations for widespread sleep deprivation:
1) Artificial light. Evolution made humans sensitive to light, but artificial lights interfere with our programming. Earlier humans would rise with the sun and go to sleep by sunset, but they also got a second wind around four in the afternoon, just as the sun began to set. That helped them reach safety or finish tasks before sunset. Now, Hari says, we don’t notice that change in natural light because we rely on artificial lighting. We still get that second wind but later in the evening, when we’re supposed to be getting ready for sleep.
2) Consumer capitalism. Sleep deprivation fuels the economy. Our economy relies on people consuming and producing as much as possible, and that can only happen while they’re awake.
(Shortform note: The availability of artificial light and the changing economy also limit your ability to take an afternoon nap to offset a night of insufficient sleep. Studies show that many societies considered segmented sleep normal before industrial times. People had the opportunity to nap during the day and adjust their sleeping schedule to match seasonal sunlight and temperature changes. However, the pressure of the economy and the ability to use technology to adjust the light and temperature inside buildings made siestas less common.)
According to Hari, sleep deprivation diminishes your cognitive ability in five ways:
1) Your brain can’t make new connections. While you sleep, your brain makes connections among the information you learned during the day. These connections are a source of creativity. When you sleep too little, your brain creates fewer connections and becomes less creative.
2) Your brain can’t store information in its long-term memory. While you sleep, your brain retraces everything you learned during the day. The information moves to long-term storage, where you can access it even after it disappears from your short-term memory. When you don’t sleep enough, your brain doesn’t have time to move information into storage.
3) Your brain can’t cleanse itself. While you sleep, the cerebrospinal fluid cleans your brain and gets rid of the waste that accumulates throughout the day. If you’re not getting enough sleep, the brain doesn’t have time to clean up.
4) Your brain can’t dream. Dreams typically occur during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep and help you process the emotions you felt during the day without triggering stress hormones. But the most intense REM stages usually happen once you’ve been sleeping for seven or eight hours, which many people never get to.
5) Your brain stops paying attention. When you’re tired, you have lapses of less than a second in which you stop registering the information that’s right in front of you. These “attentional blinks” result from part of the brain falling asleep.
Sleep Deprivation’s Effects Are Insidious
Many people are sleep-deprived but don’t notice the negative impact it’s having on their cognitive skills. In Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker explains that sleep deprivation is an insidious problem because when you’re sleep-deprived, you don’t know how poorly you’re performing. And if you’re chronically sleep-deprived, your low performance becomes a new baseline, so you lose perspective. Walker warns that the combination of reduced concentration and an inflated sense of your capabilities in a sleep-deprived state is especially harmful during high-risk activities, like driving.
In addition to impairing cognitive function for the reasons Hari enumerates, chronic sleep deprivation has a host of ill effects on the body—for example, contributing to long-term problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, depression, and depressed immune function.
The fourth factor contributing to the attention crisis also disrupts the normal functions of our brains. According to Hari, toxins disrupt our brain’s chemistry and make it harder to focus.
Being able to pay attention requires your body to perform physical functions, such as supplying energy and nutrients, to support your cognitive processes. There are three ways in which food can harm those functions:
1) It creates an energy roller coaster. The average diet is too high in glucose. This makes you reach energy highs right after eating and sends you on energy slumps as soon as your body finishes processing your meal’s sugar. Throughout the day, as you’re trying to concentrate, your body is riding an energy roller coaster that makes it difficult to sustain your focus.
2) Food lacks the nutrients your brain needs. Most of the food we eat today is highly processed and contains additives that make it shelf-stable but lower its nutritional value. That leaves your brain without all the nutrients it needs for your cognitive functions.
3) Food contains toxins that harm your brain. In 2009, a study found that 70% of children who eliminated preservatives and dyes from their diet saw improvements in their focus. A similar study caused European countries to ban dyes from foods but the US refused to. Hari suggests that this might account for the higher incidence of ADHD in the US.
The Damage Is Reversible
In his book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan sheds light on how the harm our food has done to our brains is reversible. In 1982, an Australian scientist asked 10 formerly bush-dwelling Aborigines to return to their previous lives as hunters and gatherers to see if their health improved. Since moving to civilization years before, they had developed Type 2 diabetes and were at high risk for heart disease. After seven weeks back in their old environment, the researcher tested their blood and found that every aspect of their health had improved.
The results revealed that the negative health outcomes experienced by western populations could be reduced by changes in diet. Specifically, the study suggests that consuming lower levels of sugar can have a positive impact on the body even after a short period and that consuming unprocessed foods that are closer to their origin allows better absorption of nutrients and less absorption of toxins that trigger imbalances in the body.
Hari says toxins in our environment also contribute to the attention crisis, including:
1) Pollution. Air pollution causes inflammation in the brain. Studies link this inflammation to a 15% higher risk of developing dementia and to a higher risk of degenerative diseases in children. Researchers found a direct correlation between children’s difficulty in paying attention and the level of pollution in their communities.
2) BPA. Bisphenol A is present in the plastic lining of 80% of cans. A study found that if you’re exposed to BPA during pregnancy, your child is more likely to develop behavioral problems.
3) Endocrine disruptors. A study found that many of the chemicals present in our environment and everyday products disrupt endocrine (hormonal) signals. This is particularly worrying in the case of children whose bodies and brains are still developing. If their brains don’t develop properly, they’re more likely to have attention problems or other cognitive deficits.
Protect Yourself From Toxins
Although environmental toxins are everywhere, there are still some things you can do to protect yourself:
Exercise regularly to help your body combat the inflammation caused by toxins.
Avoid being around smoke, including cigarette smoke and wood fires.
Get a high-efficiency particulate filter to protect yourself from pollution in your community.
When buying plastic or canned products, check that they’re labeled BPA-free or that there’s a #1, #2, or #4 next to the recycling symbol, which also indicates that they’re BPA-free.
Avoid endocrine disruptors by drinking filtered water instead of bottled water, not microwaving food in plastic containers, and washing produce to get rid of pesticides.
The fifth factor contributing to the attention crisis is technology. Hari argues that the technology we rely on tracks our every move and tailors the content we see in order to keep us hooked.
Hari contends most technology is intentionally designed to distract us—for profit. The business model of most screen-based technology relies on engagement. Every second you’re watching your screen is an advertising second tech companies can sell.
The more engaged you are with technology, the more distracted you are from whatever you’re supposed to be doing. Hari identifies three ways tech disrupts your attention:
1) Designing for interruptions. Technology operates on the insights of behavioral psychology: People crave rewards and they will adjust their behavior to get them. Technology can train you to need whatever reward it can offer so that you stay engaged for as long as possible, or return to it as quickly as possible.
2) Accumulating your metadata. Every time you click on something, you feed information to the website or application you’re using. That information helps the business behind it build an accurate file on who you are and what you’re into. That information tells it what kind of content to show you to keep you glued to your screen. Companies use your data to persuade advertisers to spend money on their site or app because they know who to show ads to. This is known as surveillance capitalism.
3) Making you angry. To keep your eyes on them for as long as possible, apps developed sophisticated algorithms that show you the content they know you’ll respond to. But the negativity bias we all have makes you pay special attention to information that makes you upset or angry. Anger diminishes your ability to pay attention to the quality of ideas you encounter. You default to deciding how the idea makes you feel, rather than critically analyzing its value.
Hari argues that anger also disrupts our ability to see larger commonalities and solve problems collectively as a society. This happens in two ways:
1) Since each individual is receiving input that’s making them angry and is sharing that anger online, you come to believe that everyone is enraged. (Shortform note: Research shows that we also spread anger by mirroring others’ anger or nastiness in texts and social media exchanges; however, we can also stop the spread with positivity and kindness.)
2) At the same time, social media makes it easier for misinformation to spread. That means people are often incensed about incorrect information. The feeling of collective anger and the difficulty in finding the right information makes you vigilant and defensive and makes it harder to have constructive conversations.
(Shortform note: Compounding the difficulty of sorting true from false information, MIT research shows that false information spreads much more quickly and widely—for instance, falsehoods on Twitter are 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth, and they reach the first 1,500 people six times faster.)
Protect Your Focus From Technology
There are strategies to avoid the dangers of technology that Hari lays out above:
1) Anticipate distractions. In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport argues that if you understand how technology works, you can be strategic in how you use it. For example, social media apps are designed to be more addictive than their web versions, so you can delete the apps from your phone and access your accounts from the web browser.
2) Make yourself harder to surveil. Tech’s surveillance capitalism techniques will always be one step ahead, but you can still make their job a little harder. For example, you can use a virtual private network (VPN) to keep your browsing information encrypted, block cookies, and create an alternative email address for websites that require you to give information.
3) Be aware. Next time you find yourself getting angry over something you see online, remember that tech companies know exactly what effect the algorithm is having on you, and they keep it going because they can profit from it. Also, keep in mind that the information that exists online is not required to be truthful, so before you get upset at something you read, do your homework to find out if it’s true.
The sixth factor Hari identifies as contributing to the attention crisis is information overload, which makes it difficult to focus long enough to process what we’re seeing and hearing.
The amount of information available and the speed at which we encounter it are constantly increasing, but our brains can’t keep up. So we jump from one piece of information to the next without focusing. Although we tend to blame the internet for this problem, research shows that our inability to concentrate predates technology.
New topics have become popular more and more quickly since at least the 19th century, and the public has lost interest in them at the same speed. Researchers found that topics on Twitter trended for 17.5 hours in 2013 and only 11.9 hours in 2016. Similarly, data from Google books suggests that topics have been falling in and out of popularity more quickly with each passing decade before the internet set the churn rate at maximum speed.
The amount of information available determines the churn rate. The researchers built a mathematical model to determine what caused topics to quickly gain and lose popularity. They discovered a simple answer: When more information is available, people’s capacity to process it diminishes, and they move on to the next thing more quickly.
This acceleration of information is a problem for two reasons:
1) We can’t grapple with or solve complex problems. Since we’re constantly bombarded with new information we can’t keep up with, we have only a superficial grasp of every topic.
2) People with enough resources will find ways to protect themselves from the onslaught of information, such as taking a break from technology with a “digital detox.” Those with fewer resources will continue to be overwhelmed. (Shortform note: Some critics have characterized digital detoxes and similar strategies as privileges, since many people rely on the internet for their livelihood and can’t afford to log off to support their well-being.)
Our Brains Are on Autopilot Mode
The reason we jump from one piece of information to the next without grappling deeply with any of it might be our natural tendency to default to autopilot mode. In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey explains that, by default, our brains expend our attention in autopilot mode: Instead of choosing what to focus on in advance, we react to triggers that pique our interest.
Autopilot mode kept us alive in ancient times by keeping us alert to changes in our environment. The quicker we noticed danger, the quicker we could react to and avoid it. And the quicker we noticed gratifying things, the faster we could take advantage of them.
However, autopilot mode has one major drawback: It makes us prone to distraction. In autopilot, you automatically react to anything new, potentially dangerous, or gratifying. This inclination makes us susceptible to distraction because usually, the thing we’re trying to focus on is not as new, gratifying, or potentially dangerous as other things in the room.
According to Hari, the acceleration of information is damaging because our brains are unable to process all of it. There are three main reasons for this:
1) Our brain’s filter is overwhelmed by the amount of information it receives. The brain’s prefrontal cortex filters out unnecessary information but it cannot keep up with the current flow of information. (Shortform note: In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey argues that your brain’s capacity for creativity depends on the information it receives. The better the information you accumulate, the better ideas you have, so you should be paying attention to only the highest-quality information.)
2) Our brain operates better at a slower pace. Researchers have found that the faster you read, the less information you understand and the more you gravitate to reading easier material. Conversely, slowing down improves your concentration. People who participate in activities that force them to slow down, such as yoga, increase their ability to focus. That’s because they’re retraining their brains to move at a speed that’s suited to their capabilities. (Shortform note: In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell recommends leveraging technology to slow down the flow of information. For example, watch videos in slow-motion to give your brain enough time to process the information.)
3) Our brain has a limited processing capacity. Hari explains that the human brain can only process one or two thoughts at a time. Yet we expect it to process much more than that, such as when we “multitask.” But the best the human brain can do is jump very quickly from one task to another, reconfiguring itself between tasks and having a negative impact on the quality of all the tasks. (Shortform note: Research suggests that the brain is capable of processing up to 185 billion bits of information in an average lifetime. However, in Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that we rarely reach that capacity because most of our daily activities aren’t very demanding.)
The final factor contributing to the attention crisis is how we’ve attempted to deal with it. Hari believes the solutions put forward for the attention crisis are lacking because they focus on personal responsibility. We’ll explore how the same forces that made it more difficult to concentrate are making individual action seem like the only solution and why it doesn’t work.
As we saw in Factor #5, tech is designed to reel you in and keep you scrolling. And the tech industry’s preferred approach to fixing your attention is encouraging you to have more self-control so you can resist their tactics. That way, Hari argues, they can frame the problem as a lack of discipline on your part, not intentionally manipulative design on their part.
Hari cites author Nir Eyal’s description of the tech industry’s individualistic approach to fixing our focus. Eyal’s two books, Hooked and Indistractible, show how this approach works:
Step 1: Get you hooked on technology. In Hooked, Eyal explains that the central goal of designers and engineers is to get users dependent on the technology they’ve created. To achieve this, they need to create internal triggers—uncomfortable emotions, such as fear or boredom, that make the user need whatever it is the technology can offer. That way, the user develops a habit and needs the app to satisfy that internal trigger again and again. The stronger the habit, the more the company can rely on that user to provide value for a long time.
Step 2: Make you question your habits, not the technology. In Indistractible, Eyal lays out strategies to insulate yourself from the mechanisms technology uses to disrupt your focus. He believes that individuals should critically examine their own habits before going after tech companies. He encourages identifying the personal internal triggers that make you vulnerable to distraction and finding the right strategy to counter them.
Nir Eyal Explains the Difference Between His Books
In an exclusive Q&A with Shortform, Eyal discusses the similarities and differences between Hooked and Indistractible. He dispels the popular interpretation that Indistractible is an antidote to his first book as a trope, although he admits that making the books look and sound similar gives this impression.
He argues that Hooked is about building good habits in customers’ lives. It’s not a guide for tech companies to foster harmful habits. He believes the techniques he shares can be used to make the lives of users better through the habits technology helps them create, such as fitness or spirituality.
Conversely, he claims that Indistractible is about kicking bad habits, regardless of whether technology is the culprit for having them or not. Ultimately, Eyal believes we can take advantage of technology to build good habits and know when to put our devices down so we can get rid of bad habits.
Hari argues that the tech world’s approach to the attention crisis is an example of “cruel optimism.” It’s optimistic because it offers a solution, but cruel because the problem is so much bigger than the solution. According to Hari, cruel optimism accepts that the system can’t change and so it’s worthless to try. But he points out that society has fixed (or at least reduced) systemic problems before. Cruel optimism is a distraction from systemic solutions that can work for more people.
(Shortform note: Lauren Berlant coined the term “cruel optimism” in her book of the same title. One of the examples she cites is the American Dream because it keeps people striving for a certain standard of living when the conditions necessary to achieve that standard are quickly disappearing.)
While Hari agrees there are useful tricks for disciplining your focus, and he practices some himself, he believes they’re not enough. His proposed solution for the attention crisis has two parts: systemic changes around technology, work, and school, and a citizen-led movement.
According to Hari, our model of constant economic growth drives most of the factors contributing to the attention crisis. “Success” under the economic growth model requires companies to get larger and individuals to get richer. To grow, businesses continuously find ways to sell more products, which traps consumers in a pattern of doing more and buying more each year. Hari contends that the stress of a growth-oriented society undermines our ability to focus, and because it’s a societal problem, it requires societal solutions.
He argues that we could shift from constant growth to a steady-state economy. In this new model, we would define success by different values, such as having job security and enough time to pursue goals outside of work. This would require changing how society functions today, including the tech business model, and work and school schedules.
(Shortform note: A transition from a model of economic growth to a steady-state economy might require a mindset shift like the one Simon Sinek advocates for in The Infinite Game. Business leaders would need to stop seeing profit generation as their sole objective. This way, the push for growth could take a back seat to goals such as the health of workers and consumers.)
Hari advocates three systemic changes to address stress and inability to focus:
1) Fewer work hours. Some companies have established four-day work weeks or reduced daily hours without compromising productivity. This has given workers more time to rest and participate in activities that are meaningful to them, helping them feel less stressed and more engaged with their work. However, Hari warns that this change only benefits salaried workers.
(Shortform note: Employees aren’t the only ones who benefit from working fewer hours for the same pay. A study in Sweden found that the patients of nurses who worked six-hour shifts instead of eight-hour shifts had better outcomes, and, even though hospitals had to hire more nurses, they spent less on their workforce thanks to less rotation and burnout among their employees.)
2) More opportunities for children to play. As we’ve seen in Factors #1 and #2, stress and anxiety can lead to children developing attention problems, and one way for them to learn to manage negative emotions is by allowing them more time to play. Hari believes schools should offer more opportunities for students to play and pursue their own interests, and focus less on standardized testing. Outside of school, adults should give children time to play, be curious, and be outdoors instead of in front of screens. (Shortform note: One positive outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic is that many children started enjoying more unstructured playtime. A survey found that they spent around four more hours a week in unstructured activities.)
3) Different technology under different incentives. There are changes that could make technology less disruptive. Hari proposes removing features that intentionally interfere with your attention, such as incessant notifications, and adding features to bring you back to reality, such as slowing down the download speed after you’ve spent a certain amount of time on a website. (Shortform note: The technology Hari is advocating echoes the philosophy of digital minimalism, which asks that digital tools promote your priorities and minimize their harm.)
However, Hari argues that there are no incentives for technology companies to make their products less disruptive. The only way for those incentives to shift is by banning surveillance capitalism or making it illegal to compile people’s data and use it to target their vulnerabilities. This would reform the business model that most tech companies rely on.
Likely Foes of Tech Regulation
To change the way technology works and its underlying incentive structure, reformers might have to face defenders of the status quo. In their book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway explain that science often reveals market failures and suggests regulation as a solution, but defenders of the free market fight against it, including:
1) Free market fundamentalists, who believe that free markets are the only economic system that allows for freedom. They are opposed to regulation, particularly international treaties.
2) Cornucopians or technophiles, who believe that technology will fix all of humanity’s problems. Cornucopianism disregards the fact that technology is not developing quickly enough to solve today’s challenges, and that it can even move us in the opposite direction.
Finally, Hari argues that the attention crisis warrants an “attention rebellion” to galvanize millions of people to pressure governments and businesses to make changes. He believes that sparking this movement requires the following steps:
1) A symbolic moment that raises awareness. At an initial stage, a group of core activists who are well-informed on the attention crisis must stage a symbolic battle against the forces stealing our focus. For example, they might hack social media networks for a day to show people that it’s possible to live without these apps. That symbolic battle would help more people understand the gravity of the situation.
2) A wider movement involving political and social actors. As more people become engaged in the issue, it will be necessary to involve some of them in the political arena so they can influence decision-makers, while others continue to energize normal citizens to become involved and exert pressure on governments and companies.
The initial stages Hari describes coincide with the steps for launching an intervention outlined in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership:
1) Always keep the big picture in mind. Even after you’ve started acting, maintain your diagnostic mindset so you can keep a clear head, continue to look at the situation objectively, and change course if necessary.
2) Assess how widespread the urgency to change is. If only one group is ready to deal with a challenge, your first step will be to make the issue urgent for everyone. You can do this in a variety of ways, such as raising the challenge directly, challenging people, or asking questions. This is where a symbolic awareness-raising moment is necessary.
3) Decide how to frame and state your intervention. Clearly communicate the course of action and why it’s important. It must resonate with other people’s points of view, not yours, and inspire them. Use whatever mix of facts and emotions will connect to your group’s values and find the balance between uninspiring language and fear-mongering. This is where more people join the movement and invite others to join as well.
4) Relinquish control. Once you’ve set off an intervention, let other people discuss and change it. This will encourage others to fill the space you’ve left open and also allow you to assess progress and plan your next step.
5) Use the factions within your team as a proxy for broader factions. As an intervention grows, some people will engage with it and others will resist it. Notice who falls into each group, and predict how broader factions might react to start addressing large-scale resistance.
Hari argues that an attention crisis is undermining our ability to find flow, read, and think. Examine your own experience to see if you find evidence for these difficulties.
Describe the last time you were able to find a state of flow. How long ago was it? How long were you able to sustain your flow? What difficulties did you experience in reaching and maintaining flow?
Describe the last time you finished a physical book. How long ago was it? What difficulties did you experience in keeping your concentration while reading?
Describe the last time you let your mind wander. How long ago was it? What new insights or connections were you able to make? What difficulties did you experience in letting your mind wander?