A book you really should read!
I'm not in the habit of writing book reviews, but I felt I had to share the impact Johann Hari's remarkable book, Stolen Focus, recently had on me. This is Hari's dramatic and impactful study into the reasons why we struggle to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. And that's all of us – not just Millennials or Gen Z or today's kids, as we might have told ourselves. This is something I have certainly been experiencing. You become too busy to think.
This book starts when he first notices that his Godson seems helplessly addicted to his phone, but later, when it dawns on Hari that his own ability to read a novel has been lost. His resolve to read more books is constantly thwarted by a stubborn inability to get past the first chapter without being distracted by something else. This made me think that's me.
His effort to regain his focus and reset his mind was drastic – locking himself away in a beach house on America's North East coast, armed only with an emergency telephone with no wi-fi capability, a pile of paperbacks and a laptop stripped of its modem on which hewould write the book he'd always wanted to. Every day, he walked to the local shop to buy a daily newspaper and catch up on yesterday's
news, a far cry from the up-to-the-minute rolling news feeds he was used to; addicted to. Every day, he walked, he swam, he thought and he wrote. His "ability to read" took time to return, like he was learning the art afresh, but soon he was devouring novel after novel as greedily as he had as a child.
Much of what Hari had identified as addictions and dependencies in the modern world resonated with me, as I am sure they will with many. My Hari experiment was not nearly as drastic. I couldn't lock myself away for six months on a remote island, but I forced myself into my own one-week disconnect. I deleted all the social media platforms I was on and removed all news apps and notifications from my phone. Oddly it turned out I was more of a new addict than a social media one. I didn't watch any TV, and read the pile of books that had been mounting up on my 'to-read' shelf.
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It was like coming off sugar, but after a couple of days, I found it easier and resolved to carry on. It has changed my life, and I'm committed to locking it in. One of Hari's simplest but most impactful lessons was that everyone could turn off the notifications on their phone. You decide to do that, and you control your phone and social media – it doesn't control you. Mobile phones are the symptoms, not the illness.
I feel a bit of a hypocrite as someone who runs tech businesses, but I also know it's a constant effort to understand your mind. My goal in recent years has been to think without overthinking. I'm more mindful now and resonate with Hari's observation that you can't fix history.
In simple terms, Stolen Focus is all about getting your thoughts straight.
Very few books have an impact like this, so check it out.
Global Director, Growth and Communications, International Canoe Federation
1yI loved this book. Thank you for the recommendation 👍
Director, Optima Site Solutions Ltd
1ySounds great G. I’ll give it a go 👍🏼
Stabstelle Verbundkommunikation Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken bei DZ HYP
1yBy the way, I thought your mobile phone is lost all the time …