I've been listening to a book by Johann Hari, the title is listed above. It's fascinating and overwhelming. I'm going to list the chapter titles and then maybe add some thoughts.
Chapter 1: Cause One: The Increase in Speed, Switching and Filtering
Chapter 2: Cause Two: The Crippling of Our Flow States
Chapter 3: Cause Three: The Rise of Physical and Mental Exhaustion
Chapter 4: Cause Four: The Collapse of Sustained Reading
Chapter 5: Cause Five: The Disruption of Mind-Wandering
Chapter 6: Cause Six: The Rise of Technology That Can Track and Manipulate You (Part One)
Chapter 7: Cause Six: The Rise of Technology That Can Track and Manipulate You (Part Two)
Chapter 8: Cause Seven: The Rise of Cruel Optimism
Chapter 9: The First Glimpses of the Deeper Solution
Chapter 10: Cause Eight: The Surge in Stress and How It Is Triggering Vigilance
Chapter 11: The Places That Figured Out How to Reverse the Surge in Speed and Exhaustion
Chapter 12: Causes Nine and Ten: Our Deteriorating Diets and Rising Pollution
Chapter 13: Cause Eleven: The Rise of ADHD and How We Are Responding to it
Chapter 14: Cause Twelve: The Confinement of Our Children, Both Physically and Psychologically
Conclusion: Attention Rebellion
This book is going to stay with me for a long time. There were times that it felt a little hysterical. Other times that I felt very hopeless listening to it. But other times it felt profound and so thought provoking. All the way along I've thought - I should write that down - but I didn't.
Take-aways that I remember:
- alerts - turn as many alerts on your phone off as possible
- social media - their whole reason for being is to keep people online as much as possible
- being distracted by phones causes students test scores/academic performance to decrease dramatically
- ADHD - the rise in diagnosis - what are we doing to children - children have such little freedom, they don't play enough - their diets consist of highly processed food - is there really as high an incidence of adhd or is society set up to destroy the attention of children
- there are things that we can do and responsibility that we can take over our lack of focus, but there are so many things about the way our society works that destroy our focus
The author of the book was encouraging people to find an organization that is working towards societal change in one of the many different areas that he talked about and support the movement. Work towards the change that you want to see. He has a whole website dedicated to the book which I'm putting here so if I want to find it again, I can.
https://stolenfocusbook.com/
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