Stolen Focus
I love books. But when it comes to ‘business’ books, I rarely finish them. Usually I cram the first few chapters then skip to the end. ‘Stolen Focus’ by Johann Hari was a bit different. It was a challenge in itself ‘I bet you won’t read all of me’ – ha! I said, I shall! And I did, and what a journey. Writing this blog is a way of me processing, sorting, and integrating what I learned and hopefully its useful for others too.
- We don’t really know what ‘technology’ is doing to our ability to focus our attention, but the signs seem to be there that like a slow poisoning using a delicious treat – it’s not good.
- One of the reasons we don’t know what’s happening to our focus is that those who are ‘buying it’ have all the data, and they’re not keen on sharing it.
- We can’t take away the delicious treat because there would be a revolt. The delicious treat keeps our attention diverted from the fact that it might be the problem.
- We do know that a lack of focus means we individually and collectively find it much more difficult to solve problems.
- The world is full of problems we aren’t doing very well at solving. In fact we seem to be making them worse.
- Technology is only one aspect – albeit a major one – the other things affecting our focus are the way we’re educating, our working hours and patterns, environmental changes and pollution, the way we’re diagnosing and medicating attention, erosion of proper quality sleep, pumping processed food through our bodies…
- It’s a systemic issue which requires systematic thinking – which requires deep focus and attention.
- We’re told the solution is to take personal accountability.
- There are thousands of people and algorithms whose job it is to design ways to override your logical personal accountability.
- The book was written before AI for the masses – and there’s no doubt that’s going to have an impact on our ability to thinking deeply when it’s doing the thinking for us.
- If we can organise ourselves, if we can connect on important issues, if we can collectively lobby for change – change can happen – as it has before in other important historical moments.
It’s a fantastic book that’s really frightening… And I recognised a lot within it.
- How infinite scroll steals hours of my life – and I only do Facebook and LinkedIn
- How I’ve started to turn to ChatGPT for a quick fix rather than rely on my brain / memory
- How I flit from one shiny thing to another – one task to another, and feel like I’ve achieved nothing
- How easily I’m distracted by the pings of email, chat, IM, WhatsApp, Slack, Teams etc.
Defence against the focus thief’s
As much as the idealistic part of me wants to join the disconnect movement (maybe when I retire…), I also recognise that I’m dependent on various bits of technology for my livelihood and to stay connected to others. Our organisations demand that we embrace and adapt to change (which usually means technology) so the next best step is to try and design a life and a job where there’s a mutual collaboration rather than a takeover and to defend against the focus thief’s – here’s some hints and tips.
- Reframe – it’s very easy in fast-paced, do-it-quicker world to think that you need to be physically ‘producing’ every second of the day. But ‘thinking’ also needs to be on the to-do list and its as valuable as any other deliverable. Reframe to make sure you value that time to knit together thoughts, process learning, read the book, and don’t let other people or things steal it from you.
- Design your job – I was thinking about how little ‘job design’ we seem to do these days, when it should be more popular than ever. I don’t mean org design ‘who reports to who’, but proper ‘how does this job actually work with the technology and processes and interdependencies to make a fulfilling, motivating way to spend time with purpose’. If you’re organisation doesn’t do this for you, you can ‘job craft’ for yourself. Kind of Marie Kondo-ing your job. What brings you joy? What is necessary? And what can you let go of, or utilise technology to help you achieve efficiently?
- Design your day – when are you most alert, most creative, most focused during the day? It differs slightly for each of us and can depend on how we’re fuelling our bodies too. Oh – and multitasking is massive myth. Our brains cannot focus on 2 things at once, they flit rapidly between focusing on each. When we multitask, we do each job worse than focusing on just one, and it takes us longer. Time blocking is the most effective method of focusing on just one thing at a time. That means blocking out time in your diary to complete a task (or bit of thinking) when you’re more difficult to distract or interrupt.
- Think deliberately about your relationship with AI – it’s fun and it’s smart, but it’s only as smart as the internet – which is both a genius and an idiot. Sometimes described as a ‘smart and eager intern’ – decide how you’ll partner with it on those terms. Would you expect your smart intern to make your slide decks look nicer? Yes. Would you expect your smart intern to do all your thinking for you? No. Unless you really enjoy taking the credit for someone else’s work. Would you want your intern to read all your emails and tell you which need responses? Yes please. Would you want your intern to attend meetings on your behalf and speak with your voice without supervision? Tricky. I was on a meeting the other day where 2 people sent their AI to attend. That meeting wasn’t a download, it was a conversation, an opportunity to deep think about a subject. The AI can capture notes for the person who was too busy to attend, but it cannot replicate the thinking connections that were made…
- Think about how you’re fuelling your brain – our brains need a few things to really work properly as engines. Taking a break, taking a walk (especially in nature), balanced eating and hydration and sleep are all necessary for better thinking. Eat Well, Drink Well, Rest Well, Walk a lot, Repeat.
- Limit the distractions – usually it’s our phones that are the worst distractors. They’re like toddlers, constantly clamouring for our attention – ‘read me, like me, compare yourself to this’. But there are settings on your phone that help you calm that irritation and create a nice balance in life. One that’s really working for me on my iPhone is ‘Downtime’. I’ve used that to limit my phone usage between 10pm and 7am. That one setting has reduced my screentime by about 30%. And then I ruthlessly deleted all the Apps I didn’t need and turned off notifications for practically everything else.
In Conclusion?
In wrapping up, “Stolen Focus” is one of those books you keep on thinking about; it’s a wake-up call for us to take back control of our attention. As technology grows and infiltrates every moment of our days, so does its grip on our lives.
Each of us can start with some small, meaningful steps to limit how much technology dictates our day. That might be changing how we multitask, adjusting our phone settings, or simply taking more breaks, each change helps. At the same time, that isn’t going to solve the whole problem. We must remember that there is a lot of time and money being pumped into making us spend more time connected to our tech (so we buy more stuff), and less to each other. There are movements you can join to support more play, less internet addiction, better sleep, ‘slow lives’, but for now my best starting advice is to read this book and take it from there.
