Issue #19 — Stolen Focus
A book has never felt more appropriate to the moment
After the first half of August was consumed by vacation, the second half was consumed by planning and distraction. It seems fitting that I’m here with a report on a book about what steals our focus.
What I’m Reading: Stolen Focus
Recently, I finished Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again. It was a captivating and convicting read. The Scottish author, Johann Hari, goes to great lengths to research why it seems harder for us (individually and collectively) to focus than in the past. I’m not sure this is an issue for every person of every generation, but I know this is an issue for many people I know.
The book mixes anecdotes of his personal struggles with focus (and attempts to regain it) with information from conversations with researchers in relevant fields. The personal anecdotes come from his own 3-month digital detox on the far reaches of Cape Cod, which sounded delightful and humanizing. The reader hears a lot about this experiment over the first five chapters, whereas, in the later chapters, he addresses some systemic contributors to the attention crisis.
I have included chapter summaries below … hope you check them out! As always, you’re also more than welcome to access my book notes here, which are more detailed.
Chapter 1 — Cause One: The Increase in Speed, Switching, and Filtering — For my money, this is probably the best chapter (unfortunately, it’s the 1st chapter!). He makes a compelling case that many aspects of contemporary life are stifling any pursuit of depth. So, if we want to be deep disciples of Jesus rather than superficial ones (and I hope we do!), we better take notes!
With the rapid expansion of available information and the technology to access it, nearly everything has sped up and worse yet, is accelerating. This is like drinking from a firehose and stifles our capacity for attention and depth.
In the midst of it, we think we can multitask, but research shows that, at best, we can juggle. In other words, we're not doing multiple things at once; we are switching between them. There are three ways that this constant switching erodes our ability to focus:
switch cost effect — every time we switch, our brain has to reconfigure/adjust and something is lost (in terms of both depth and time). This has a surprisingly large effect. For instance, research done at Hewlett-Packard found that switching cost their employees 10 IQ points. ... twice the cost of smoking weed ... i.e., you'd be better off to be stoned at your desk than distracted by technology.
screw-up effect — switching not only causes us to make more errors, but then we spend more time cleaning up errors that otherwise would not have happened
creativity drain — if our brains are given free, undistracted time, they will automatically think back over everything recently absorbed, and the brain will start to draw links between what was learned. But if we do not give our brains the opportunity to follow associative links to new places, we lose out on truly original and creative thoughts.
Not only is switching harming our capacity for depth, but the onslaught of information is also damaging our ability to filter out irrelevant info that is not related to our goals. In other words, we’re (pre)occupied by that stuff that doesn’t matter!
Chapter 2 — Cause Two: The Crippling of Flow States — Most of this second chapter is spent exploring the research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian-American psychologist who is known as “The Father of Flow.” I found the concluding paragraph of this chapter to be particularly helpful:
"… we all have a choice now between two profound forces—fragmentation or flow. Fragmentation makes you smaller, shallower, angrier. Flow makes you bigger, deeper, calmer. Fragmentation shrinks us. Flow expands us. I asked myself: Do you want to be one of BF Skinner's pigeons, atrophying your attention dancing for crude rewards, or Mihaly's painters, able to concentrate because you have found something that really matters?" (62)
I wrote about this a few months ago (here) … I did a 3-day fast because I was so frustrated with fragmentation. I want concentrated time so that I might go deeper and be calmer. Sounds more Christ-like, doesn’t it?
Chapter 3 — Cause Three: The Rise of Physical and Mental Exhaustion — This chapter covers information that most of us are familiar with; namely, that sleep is an active, restorative process that is invaluable. Some people have made dramatic shifts to get more sleep, while most still suffer from sleep deprivation (*raising my hand*).
Chapter 4 — Cause Four: The Collapse of Sustained Reading — This chapter resonates well because I've already been putting measures in place in order to achieve more sustained reading. I understand what is lost when I don’t engage this practice.
I have noticed that many others in my generation now “read” by listening to audiobooks. Not the same (!) because we slow down more when reading a physical book — i.e., we think/reflect in a deeper manner.
Sustained reading is to be contrasted with way we consume ‘bites’ of info on websites and social media. The last two sentences of this section are poignant and probably true of all of us: "I like the person I become when I read a lot of books. I dislike the person I become when I spend a lot of time on social media." (86)
This chapter clearly has implications for “people of the Word.” God delivered revelation to us via a compendium of 66 books. He did not deliver revelation in the era of social media via 140 (or 280) characters at a time.
Chapter 5 — Cause Five: The Disruption of Mind-Wandering — This was probably the most unexpected chapter. At first blush, mind-wandering might seem like something that distracts us from focusing. However, research proves that mind-wandering is essential to long-term sense-making. He presents research from Nathan Spreng and Jonathan Smallwood.
"Some mind-wandering is essential for things to make sense.… The more you let your mind wander, the better you are at having organized, personal goals, being creative, and making patient, long-term decisions. You will be able to do these things better if you let your mind drift, and slowly, unconsciously, makes sense of your life." (96)
In other words, we cannot be constantly consumed with phones, podcasts, media, TV, email, and more. We need time and space to let our minds drift, which helps the brain digest various thoughts and make appropriate associations. In situations of low stress, mind-wandering is a gift and a pleasure and a creative force. We should even allow mind-wandering as part of “quiet time” or devotions. If we fill all the time with Bible and prayer, we might lose some important things that the Holy Spirit can only show us when we stop filling the space! Long walks can be the best time for mind-wandering.
At this point, the book changes focus. Up till now, all the “causes” of our attention problem were of a personal, individual nature. From here on out, he looks at systemic causes—environmental factors that seems to be causes issues:
Chapters 6 & 7 — Cause Six: The Rise of Technology That Can Track and Manipulate You (Parts 1 & 2) — These chapters were pretty dark. They detail how technology is designed to keep our attention rather than something more ethical. For instance, various social media sites could stop and ask the user: "do you still want to be on the site or should we shut down this virtual engagement in favor of something in the real world?" But, you’ll notice these apps never ask that sort of question. Moreover a site like Facebook could compel you to meet up with friends in the real world by asking, "do you want to meet up with friends who are nearby?" But, that is not a feature that’s even offered. Why? Because Facebook’s bottom line is driven by eyeballs on the screen! They don’t want you to put your screen down and go see someone in real life. "Their business model is screen time, not life time." The incentives to create “life” experiences just aren’t there.
In these chapters, he leans heavily on Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, creators of some of the social media technology that keeps us hooked. Both are now outspoken opponents of business models that negatively effecting individual users and all of society. They founded The Center for Humane Technology (click the link!), and if you want to hear them wax eloquently about how we need to change the incentives that drive our use of technology, listen to this 2.5 hour interview about AI with Joe Rogan (and yes, Joe uses some crass language. You’ll be okay. … and no, I do not typically recommend anything involving Joe Rogan.)
Chapter 8 — Cause Seven: The Rise Cruel Optimism — In this chapter, Hari writes about a concept first coined by historian Lauren Berlant: "cruel optimism." This is when you take a really big, problem with deep causes ... and you offer people, in upbeat language, a simplistic individual solution. Unfortunately, "practicing individual restraint—in an unchanged environment—rarely works for long." (154)
Chapter 9 — The First Glimpses of the Deeper Solution — In this chapter, he gets into some practical solutions on the systemic side. Two examples: (1) introduce subscriptions on all social media because then companies have to serve the end user instead of the advertiser. (2) eliminate infinite scroll—i.e., place a limit by only allowing the user to scroll through, say, 100 posts or for 3 minutes.
Chapter 10 — Cause Eight: The Surge in Stress and How It Is Triggering Vigilance — The title kinda says it all. Protracted stress can cause structural changes in the brain with long-term effects, including a loss of helpful attention and an increase in unhelpful and unnecessary vigilance.
Chapter 11 — The Places That Figured Out How to Reverse the Surge in Speed and Exhaustion — This chapter is largely about a company in Australia that discovered that they could cut the work week from 5 days to 4, and still be just as productive and much more rested and happy.
Chapter 12 — Causes Nine and Ten: Our Deteriorating Diets and Rising Pollution — This chapter is kinda like chapter 3. Most of us know that both ultra-processed food and pollution are bad for us. What we might not know is that they are hurting our capacity for attention/focus.
Chapter 13 — Cause Eleven: The Rise of ADHD and How We are Responding to It — This is, without a doubt, the most controversial chapter. If you read online reviews, there are any number of Americans who stopped reading at this chapter and gave the book a negative review. That’s because he strongly questions how America handles ADHD while stressing research and results from other countries. I thought the chapter was fair, but I could be wrong.
Chapter 14 — Cause Twelve: The Confinement of Our Children, Both Physically and Psychologically — Again, the title kinda says it all. This is about the free play movement, which seems to hold a lot of promise. Personally, you can count me as one of the skeptics—at least, of its more extreme forms. More info at "Let Grow."
Conclusion — Attention Rebellion — He wraps it up without any sort of rosy, self-help conclusion that details how he completely conquered his attention issues. Instead, he admits that he’s only made about 15% progress on his lack of attention. He then expresses his desire to create a movement—the Attention Rebellion. It’s not that compelling, but as a Christ-follower, I resonate with his desire to change society because some of the current trends are so unhealthy.
Overall, I thought this was a book worth reading. It’s not perfect and you can get much of the info elsewhere, but it’s a good aggregation of the various data and Hari’s a compelling writer.
Just be aware of this: it’s not a Christian book written by a Christian author. You have to do all the theological interpretation on your own. Personally, I think that’s work worth doing. In fact, it’s work we must do because this “stolen focus” is harming all of us, both at an individual level and as a church. It will be counter-cultural (and perhaps very Kingdom-like) to push against some of the current forces so that we can think deeply again.