The book called 'Stolen Focus' by the British journalist Johann Hari, takes a close look at what’s happening, and what’s happened to our collective attention. Hari argues that we’re all becoming lost in our own lives, which feel more and more like a parade of diversions. And it seems to be getting worse and worse every year.

In Stolen Focus, Hari sets out on a global investigative journey into our shortening attention spans. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews with the world's leading experts on attention problems Stolen Focus moves beyond individual solutions towards a collective understanding of a problem facing us all. Only by first solving the attention crisis Hari argues can we turn to fixing the issues we care about most and sustain the attention to build a better society.

Johann Hari is a writer and journalist. He has written for the New York Times, Le Monde, the Guardian, and other newspapers. He was a columnist for The Independent and the Huffington Post, and has won awards for his war reporting.

Key learnings

It’s not just you – everyone is struggling to focus

Unless you’re living off the grid, you’ve probably noticed that it’s getting increasingly difficult to focus. You’re busy all the time, yet you struggle to actually get anything done.

In 2016, Sune Lehmann was having these exact problems. His capacity for deep focus was dwindling, and he was more susceptible to distractions than ever before. Lehmann is a professor at Denmark’s Technical University – so he didn’t simply dismiss the nagging feeling that his concentration was waning. Instead, he spearheaded a study to find out if there was actually evidence to back up his suspicion.

By analyzing various metrics across online platforms, Lehmann and his team discovered something interesting: In 2013, conversation topics trended on Twitter for an average of 17.5 hours before people lost interest and moved on to a new topic. By 2016, that number had dwindled to 11.6 hours. That’s a six-hour decrease in only three years. The study records similar results across platforms like Google and Reddit as well. In short, the more time we’ve spent in online spaces, the shorter our attention spans have become.

So, is it really just the internet that’s eroding our focus? Well, yes. But also no. See, Lehmann also analyzed every book that’s been uploaded to Google Books between the 1880s and today. And he found that this phenomenon actually predates the internet. With every passing decade, trending topics appear and fade with increasing speed. Lehmann’s study is indicative rather than comprehensive, of course. And measuring these metrics isn’t a definitive way to map our evolving attention spans. But, if we accept the premise that our concentration is suffering, the next question is: Why?

It’s difficult to pinpoint precisely, but a good jumping-off point is what think-tank director Robert Colvile calls “The Great Acceleration.” Essentially, the way we receive information is speeding up. In the nineteenth century, for example, news could take days to travel from place to place. Then, technologies like the telegraph, radio, and television sped up the spread of information. On top of this, our information inputs – the different modes through which we receive information – have multiplied. In 1986, the average Westerner ingested the equivalent of 40 newspapers a day through the various available information inputs. By 2004, that figure had risen to an astonishing 174 newspapers worth of information. Today, that figure is almost certainly much higher. The internet has undeniably supercharged this acceleration. Now, information is not only available to us all the time; it actually intrudes on our lives through the ceaseless pings and notifications coming from our laptops and smartphones.

And our brains just haven’t caught up with this acceleration. Research suggests they never will. Our capacity for focus is an emergent field of study. But research in the area of speed-reading suggests that there’s a finite limit to how quickly we can process information. And, as neuroscientists point out, the cognitive capacity of the human brain has not significantly changed in the last 40,000 years. The amount of information we put into our brains has, however, stratospherically increased. It’s really no wonder we sometimes find it difficult to focus.

Apps and online platforms are addictive by design, not by accident

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – the fact that these apps and other online platforms suck so much of your time isn’t a design flaw. They’re supposed to be addictive. After all, there’s a reason Silicon Valley calls its customers “users.” And where did this design originate? It originated at the Persuasive Technologies Lab at Stanford University. In the early 2000s, the lab asked whether the theories of influential behavioral psychologists could be incorporated into computer code – in other words, it asked whether tech can change human behavior. And the answer to that question was yes tech can change human behavior.

One of the psychologists studied in the lab was B. F. Skinner. Skinner was famous for the experiments he conducted on rats. He’d present a rat with a meaningless task, like pushing a button. But the rat showed no interest in doing this. So Skinner modified the task. Now, every time the rat pressed the button, it would be rewarded with a pellet of food. Rewards would motivate animals, Skinner found, to carry out tasks that had no intrinsic meaning to them. Skinner inspired the creation of other buttons you might recognize: like buttons, share buttons, and comment buttons. Those little hearts and emojis and retweet buttons aren’t design quirks; they’re programming us to use social media in addictive ways by rewarding us for the time we spend on the platforms.

These buttons keep us engaging longer. But they’re only one of the many design elements geared at keeping us online. Here’s another one: the infinite scroll. Back in the early days of the internet, web pages were just that: pages. Sites often comprised multiple pages; when you got to the bottom of one, you clicked through to the next. The bottom of each page offered a built-in pause. If you wanted to keep browsing, you had to actively decide to click ahead.

That is, until Aza Raskin stepped in. Raskin invented the infinite scroll – the endlessly refreshing feed of content that now features on the interface of nearly every social media platform, giving the impression that there is a never-ending supply of content. If likes and shares encourage users to stay online longer, the infinite scroll encourages users to stay online in perpetuity.

Raskin, however, has come to regret his invention. At first, he thought the infinite scroll was elegant and efficient. But he became troubled when he noticed how it was changing online habits – including his own. Noticing that he was spending longer and longer on social media, Raskin started to do the math. He estimates that the infinite scroll induces the average user to spend 50 percent more time on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

The business model of most of these platforms is predicated on time – or, as they call it, engagement. This refers to how much time a user spends interacting with a product. That’s the metric tech companies use to measure their success – not money, but minutes. But money does play a part, too. Because the longer you spend “engaging,” the more chances the companies have to sell advertisements. The more you engage, the more companies track your behavior and build a profile uniquely designed to target you with specific ads. We don’t pay for platforms like Facebook and Instagram with our money. But we do pay with another precious, finite commodity: our attention.

In Silicon Valley, time equals money. The money is theirs. And the time – the attention – is yours.

Algorithms privilege outrage over community

Online platforms erode our focus and exploit one of our most precious resources – our attention – for their own financial gain. But these same platforms can be a force for good, strengthening community and driving collective action.

To better understand this potential, let’s travel to the Complexo do Alemão favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Brazilian government takes a militant approach to this crowded, low-income area, routinely sending in tanks to suppress unrest. And it’s an open secret that the police shoot to kill. When innocent kids get in the way of their bullets, the police plant drugs or weapons on them and claim self-defense.
Raull Santiago lives in Alemão. He also runs the Facebook page “Coletivo Papo Reto,” which collects and disseminates videos of the police shooting innocent people. The page has galvanized many favela-dwellers to rally against their treatment. And it has shifted the tide of public opinion in Brazil, where favelas like Alemão are often reviled. But the situation in Alemão has only gotten worse since the election of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. And here’s the thing: Bolsonaro’s victory, like Coletivo Papo Reto’s success, can also be partly attributed to Facebook. Bolsonaro’s campaign inundated social media with clickbaity, fear-mongering campaigns – and he ended up getting elected.

What connects us can also divide us. Lately, it feels like online platforms have been much more intent on dividing than connecting. And it all has to do with algorithms. The content you see on this infinitely refreshing page isn’t ordered chronologically. It’s arranged by an algorithm that is programmed to feed us content that keeps us scrolling longer. It’s easier to disengage from calm, positive content. But if something strikes us as outrageous or controversial, we tend to keep looking. It’s part of a psychological phenomenon called negativity bias – that is, negative experiences impact us more than positive ones. So it’s in social media’s interest to literally provoke its users.

The algorithm has no ethics. It doesn’t condone or condemn; it just codes. But the people watching it feel, believe, and judge. For some, the more they’re exposed to misinformation, the more normal – even credible – it seems. A 2018 study that analyzed extreme right-wing militants in the US found that the majority of them were initially radicalized on YouTube.

You may not engage with misinformation online. You might put down your phone or close your laptop when you feel outraged by what you see online. You may choose not to spend your attention on provocative content. But this still affects you. See, when online platforms privilege divisive, shocking content, they also corrode our power for collective attention – our ability, as a society, to focus on issues that affect us.

Back in the ’70s, scientists discovered that there was a hole in the Ozone layer. It had been created by a group of chemicals called CFCs, which are commonly used in hairsprays. The scientists issued a warning: if the hole in the ozone grew, we would lose a crucial layer of protection against the sun’s rays. Life on earth as we knew it was at risk. Activists campaigned against the use of CFCs. They persuaded their fellow citizens to join the cause. Eventually, they put enough pressure on governments that the use of CFCs was banned. This is an environmental success story. But the outcome might have been different if we hadn’t focused our collective attention – first on the science, then on the arguments of our fellow citizens, and finally on the group effort of lobbying the governments for a total ban on CFCs. Would we be able to collectively train our focus on a similar issue today? Climate change poses a real and present danger to life on earth. But as a species, we can’t seem to absorb the science – or even agree on whether we should be listening to scientists in the first place.

Social media can be a powerful force for good. But rather than harness this force, platforms like Facebook are intent on exploiting our attention – and, as a consequence, they’re sowing division and controversy.

Recently, Facebook conducted an internal investigation called “Common Ground.” Its aim was to uncover whether the company’s algorithms really did promote controversy and misinformation to keep users engaged. According to the report, the findings were very clear: “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.” Facebook hasn’t done very much about this disturbing finding, however. And neither have we. We’re too busy infinitely scrolling.

Ditch multitasking – recovering focus is about finding flow

It’s easy – and not inaccurate – to blame our shrinking attention spans on our devices and the easy access they offer to an attention-sucking online world. But, like an artfully cropped Instagram snap, that’s not the whole picture. See, there’s a fundamental flaw in the way we frame “focus.”

We live in an accelerating, consumerist society – one that values speed and output. And in this climate, we’re encouraged to “quantify” our attention in terms of what immediate results it yields. Our focus is a resource that allows us to produce, to earn, to tick items off our to-do lists. And that’s where multitasking comes in. The more we can simultaneously achieve, the better our focus is spent. So why not distribute our attention across several tasks at once? Well because, as it turns out, humans are really bad at multitasking. The word “multitask” was coined by computer scientists in the ’60s to describe the function of computers with multiple processors. It was never meant to be applied to humans. After all, we only have one processor: our brain.

When we multitask, we’re not simultaneously performing several tasks at once. We’re switching between them at hyperspeed. And every switch incurs what’s called a “switch-cost” effect. When you switch between tasks – or when you’re interrupted mid-task – your brain needs to recalibrate, which decreases your mental performance. A study commissioned by Hewlett Packard compared a group who worked on a task uninterrupted with a group that was distracted during the course of their task. The study found that members of the distracted group temporarily dropped an average of ten IQ points while they were completing their task.

In a work climate that values multitasking as a sign of peak productivity, distraction is practically encouraged. We’re constantly answering emails, participating in multiple conversations about multiple projects, and working across three or four different computer screens. In fact, in the US, the average white-collar worker spends 40 percent of their time engaging in so-called multitasking.

Luckily, there is an antidote to multitasking – a way of approaching tasks that cultivates deep focus. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi first identified this state, which he called “flow.” You find your flow, Csikszentmihalyi theorized, when you become so absorbed by a task that you lose all sense of your surroundings and are able to access a deep well of internal focus. In flow, your focus becomes deeper and better, and you’re far less susceptible to distractions.

The good news, according to Cskiszentmihalyi, is that everyone can access flow – as long as they meet a few key conditions. 

'The Attention Merchants' is a book written by Tim Wu, author, activist and law professor at Columbia University. Wu is also known for coining the term 'net neutrality'– the idea that the oligopoly that owns our internet infrastructure shouldn’t charge differently for different kinds of data. In his book The Attention Merchants, he targets another kind of corporate domination, the industry that monopolises our attention.

This book is a revelatory look at the rise of the 'attention merchants', the advertising marketeers who influence and control our consumption in ways previously unimagined. An 'attention merchant' is an industrial-scale harvester of human attention, a firm whose business model is the mass capture of attention for resale to advertisers.

In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the 'attention merchants', contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention.

Key learnings

Newspaper advertisements used to be strictly informational until one New York paper change the game forever

Advertising was used to make a fortune on useless medicine and reinforce the British Army during World War 1

It’s not exactly common knowledge, but early in the twentieth century, advertising for commercial over-the-counter medicine, or medicine as it was then known, was revolutionised. This shift was the work of Claude C. Hopkins, an innovative ad man and copywriter, then colloquially referred to as a “scheme man.” For several years, Hopkins wrote ads for Dr. Shoop’s Restorative, a company that sold patent medicine. While there, he came up with a plan for “direct mail” advertising, what we now lovingly call “spam mail.”

In the 1920s, advertising and branding became more methodical

Former FBI agent Robin Dreeke shares his simple toolkit for assessing who you can trust and who you can't. Dreeke has worked for two decades as a behaviour analyst in the FBI, through that experience he has developed a knack for reading people, their intentions, their capabilities, their desires and their fears. This book is a manual to be able to quickly and easily determine who you can trust and who you can't. It helps readers to determine who is likely to deliver on promises and who will disappoint, and when a person is vested in your success versus when they are actively plotting your demise. 

So much of your success, from your career to your family life depends on being able to differentiate between people you can trust and people you can't. This book teaches the subtle behavioural signs the people around you are giving off and how you can read those signs to make better decisions about whom to trust. It teaches you how to gather data that really matters about a person, from the language they use to their past behaviour to their personal appearance. You'll learn to look beyond the obvious to the hidden and reveal the true inner character. This is a how-to-guide to decide which people you should never let go and those you should keep at a distance.

Put your trust in those who believe that they win when you win

You can't trust someone who doesn't trust you

Most of the ways we assess people's reliability are unreliable

One of the best indications of future behaviour is past behaviour

Trustworthy people use simple language and aren't afraid to apologise

Emotionally unstable people have certain traits that you should look out for

'Atomic Habits' looks at how to make positive changes in your life and the easiest way to bring about positive change is to cultivate the right habits. In this book you will discover all about habits, what they are, how you can form them, and crucially, how you can make the best ones stick. Atomic habits is written by James Clear who is an American journalist. Clears reveals exactly how these minuscule changes can grow into such life-altering outcomes. He uncovers a handful of simple life hacks (the forgotten art of Habit Stacking, the unexpected power of the Two Minute Rule, or the trick to entering the Goldilocks Zone), and delves into cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience to explain why they matter.

I haven’t blogged in awhile, actually it’s been 6 months, half a year! I see the bad and good in this. Bad, because there’s a lack of regular meaningful thinking or, optimistically, lack in finding coherency in disjointed meaningful thinking. It could be seen as good because I’ve been reading, watching many things and all this time has given me the opportunity to delve further into what I’ve been reading and watching. I’m starting to see everything as a whole and it’s providing clarity.
Recently I watched two fascinating talks. One was a presentation by Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran, a presentation about “The neurons that shaped civilization”. This presentation triggered another talk that I watched a few days ago by Jeremy Rifkin on "The empathic civilization”. Both talks are not directly related but surprisingly in essence, similar. They both describe a research study conducted in Parma Italy by Rizzolatti and colleagues which lead to the discovery of “mirror neurons”. I found Rifkin’s description of mirror neurons intriguing, and I felt optimistic from hearing about this. I’ve always been at qualms with the notion of whether humans possess good innate biological traits? Are we genetically good (in a moral sense) organisms? I think I share the same philosophy as what Rifkins mentions “Enlightment philosophers” ideologies of humans, which is we are materialistic, self interested, utilitarian and pleasure seekers by nature. I’ve come to this conclusion from Darwinism, evolution, Selfish genes, genetics, neuroscience and pure observation of human behaviour. However, this talk challenged this ideology which is what made it so intriguing.





Rifkin’s talks about in the early 90s in Parma, Italy, scientists were using MRI brain scanning machines on a monkey trying to open a nut. They wanted to observe what neurons light up when the monkey opened the nut. Just by serendipity, a human by accident, enters the laboratory and sees the nut and opens it. The monkey observed the human doing this, they found that the same neurons light up for both human and monkey despite that the monkey was purely observing and not physically experiencing the act of opening a nut. From this Rizzolatti discovered “mirror neurons”. They found all humans, primates are soft wired with these mirror neurons. For example if an individual was experiencing anger, frustration, joy ...etc.... and if another individual was observing these emotions, the same neurons would light up, as if they were experiencing these same emotions. We are all soft-wired to experience another’s plight, as if we are experiencing it ourselves. This suggests we are actually soft-wired not for aggression, violence, self-interest and utilitarianism but we are soft-wired for sociability, attachment, affection and companionship. So our first drive is to actually “belong”. This drive to belong triggers empathic behaviour.

Rifkin’s explains the evolution of empathy:

• Around the age of 2 a child begins to recognise themselves in the mirror.
• Empathy starts to mature once a child can identify themselves, they start to observe others and feel that others share the same feeling. This increases the feeling of “selfhood”.
• Around the age of 8 years of age a child learns about birth and death. They learn where they came from, that they only have one life. That life is fragile, vulnerable and that one day they are going to die. The child learns that every moment is precious; they have their own unique history. This allows the child to experience another’s plight in the same way, that the other person, other creature has one and only life.

Empathy is grounded in the acknowledgment of death and the celebration of life.

• In the past, for Forager hunter societies, communication extended only to local tribe and shouting distance. Everyone on the next mountain was alien to each other and so empathy only extended to blood ties.
• Then there was the great Hydraulic Agricultural civilisations, script allowed us to extend the central nervous system to annihilate time and space and to bring more people together. The differentiation of scales and increasing self-hood lead to the theological consciousness. Consequently, instead of associating with one’s blood ties we began association with religious ties.
• During the 19th century Industrial Revolution, we extend markets now to larger areas and create the idea of the Nation State, allowing us to extend our families based on loyalties based on complex energy communication revolutions that annihilate time and space.

Rifkin’s raises a pivotal question, “Why stop here?” Why would empathy stop at the Nation State identity.

“We have the technology to extend the central nervous system to think viscerally as a family, not just intellectually. Is it possible that the new technology is allowing us to connect our empathy to the human race writ large in a single biosphere?”

“Is it possible we can extend our empathy to the entire human race as an extended family and to our fellow creatures as part of our evolutionary family and to our biosphere common community?”
I’m starting to think perhaps we are homo-empathicus by nature and it has been repressed allowing for secondary drives such as narcissism, materialism, violence and aggression to override.

I had an inkling awhile back that this maybe is correct (blog entry “Sharing is caring??” May 2nd 2010).
“Caring, sharing = acceptance = species compatibility = species survival. But then I dispute that perhaps the need for the survival as a whole species and not just survival of the vessel (i.e. the individual itself) can be altruistic.”
“...perhaps some species wants and desires could be mutually, intrinsically communicated, hence a mutual need of harmonious symbiosis which could be seen as altruistic.”
I think this empathic nature is the key to human evolution. It is “the invisible hand, it’s what allows us to stretch our sensibility with another so we can cohere in larger social units.” It is what will save our species and our planet. We need to rethink human nature and bring out our empathic sociability. Current ideas of human nature have brought about assumptions in which institutions have been created and based upon. These institutions include our educational institutions, business institutions, business practices, governing institutions. I do agree with Rifkin’s, we need to also rethink the institutions of society and start to prepare the groundwork for an empathic civilisation. To empathise is to civilise, and to evolve.

Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran presentation “The neurons that shaped civilization” also describes the discovery of mirror neurons from the research conducted in Parma Italy. Ramachandran talks about ordinary motor neurons which fire when a person does a specific action and that these motor command neurons have been known for some time. However, there are a subset of neurons which fire when looking at somebody else performing an action. It is as though these neurons are adopting this person’s (i.e. person performing the action) point of view, as if it’s performing a virtual reality simulation of the other person’s actions.

These mirror neurons are significant because they involve imitation, emulation. They allow us to mimic complex act, allowing one’s brain to adopt another’s point of view. Go back to 75,000 to 100,000 years and look at human evolution and the rapid skills unique to human beings emerging such as tool use, the creation of fire, language, theory of mind etc...etc... The emergence of a sophisticated neuron system allowed humans to imitate and emulate action and so a sudden accidental discovery of a new skill e.g. the use of fire; instead of the skill dying it was emulated, replicated and it was spread. It is possible that these mirror neurons have perhaps been the cause of these rapid skills, as a result lead to the acceleration of human evolution.

Ramachandran gives an interesting example, “If you remove the arm, you simply anesthetise my arm, so you put an injection into my arm, anesthetise the brachial plexus so the arm is numb and there is no sensations coming in. If I now watch you being touched, I literally feel it in my hand, in other words you have dissolved the barrier between you and other human beings. So I called them Gandhi neurons or empathy neurons. And this is not some abstract metaphorical sense, all that is separating you from him, from the other person is your skin. Remove the skin, you experience that person’s touch in your mind. You’ve dissolved the barrier between you and other human beings. And this is of course the basis of much of Eastern philosophy, that is there is no real independent self, aloof from other human beings, inspecting the world, inspecting other people. You are in fact connected not just via Facebook and the internet, you are quite literally connected by your neurons. There is no real distinctiveness of your consciousness from somebody else’s consciousness.” There are many that share this theory and have mentioned it in a past blog “Sharing is Caring??”;

“...an interview with John Hagelin, PhD Professor of Physics, Director of Institute of Science Technology at Maharishi University of Management. Hagelin mentions that we are fundamentally “waves of vibrations of this underlying unified super string field.” There are many people that share similar theories; there was a quote by Bill Hicks that “we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.”

Ben Stewart describes the earth as a “single living conscious organism” in the movie “Kymatica” (which I highly recommend, there are some things that I'm sceptical about however, it's worth watching because it gets you thinking). I think this description best illustrates this notion however, I wouldn’t limit it to just the earth. I have come to the conclusion that we have to stop seeing everything in classes, categories, distinctions, gender, nationalities, religions, blood ties, creatures, and start seeing everything as a whole organism coexisting in one consciousness. To bring about empathic sociability and come about in seeing one consciousness is the key to harmonious existence.