Out of personal dissatisfaction with his ability to focus, Danish professor Sune Lehmann conducted a study about attention. If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.ĭownload PDF Lesson 1: The internet isn’t the only thing eroding our focus, but it’s declining ever-faster, and that’s a problem. Let’s understand how it happens so we can fight back! When our attention wanes, the quality of our life decreases. If you want to get back your ability to focus, stop celebrating multitasking and practice being in a flow state.Current social media platforms are designed to make you addicted so they can make a profit.Our dwindling attention spans predate the internet, but their decline is accelerating at an alarming rate.Here are three lessons about our collective attention crisis, and what you can do to regain some of your stolen focus: Of course, Hari provides some solutions too. The book also sheds a light on why doing so reduces our attention by as much as 37%. In his book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, he explains patterns like the fact that half of all young people are texting while driving. Needless to say, I’ve been much stricter about phone use during driving ever since - and yet, I still multitask during driving.Īccording to Johann Hari, I’m not alone. Thanks to the multiple driving safety trainings I had undergone, I managed to stabilize the car, but I easily could have landed in the ditch, or worse. In a matter of milliseconds, I instinctively pulled the steering wheel to the left, and the car started skidding. I was fiddling with my iPod, and suddenly, I could feel my right front tire vibrating as it hit the shoulder. I was driving home, the same three-kilometer stretch of road I’d driven hundreds of times before - only this time, I wasn’t focused. I’ll always remember the day multitasking almost cost me my life. 1-Sentence-Summary: Stolen Focus explains why our attention spans have been dwindling for decades, how technology accelerates this worrying trend, and what we can do to reclaim our focus and thus our capacity to live meaningful lives.

Book stolen focus