Pages: 185

Chapters: 16

Time of Day to Read: Daylight hours

Format: eBook – Libby

First Print: 2022

I got this recommendation from a podcast, I can’t remember which one. When checking another one of his books out from the library, I also picked up this one. I couldn’t put this one down and it didn’t take me long to read.

Johann interviews a wide array of people for this book and gains all sorts of insights into why our generation struggles to focus compared to previous ones. In one of the opening chapters he asks “If I put you in charge of the world, and you wanted to ruin people’s ability to pay attention. What would you do? Probably about what our society is doing now.” This is a pretty sobering statement.

Johann goes into the flow state. This is where you go into a task and it is so engaging that you lose track of time. This can only come when you are monotasking. This therefore lends itself to focusing only on one thing at a time.

Quotes:

• Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced – James Baldwin
• If it’s more enraging, its more engaging – Johann Hari
• Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone – Neale Donald Walsche

This book was an insightful read on why we can’t pay attention and why we doom scroll. It provided some tangible actions that you can put into to practice to help your everyday life. But this book is not going to solve all your attention based problems