Image: Instagram/curlupclub
The book delves into the fall in human attention span, arguing that our attention hasn’t fallen but is being stolen. Here are 10 takeaways from the book.
Images: Shutterstock
A study found that our attention span has been dwindling since the 1870s.
In 2013, topics trended on Twitter for an average of 17.5 hours, compared to 11.6 hours in 2016 — a six-hour decrease in only three years.
When a person is in the flow of doing something, time slows and they’re entirely focused on doing that thing. However, constant distractions like social media hamper flow.
It involves companies tracking people's online activities to tailor ads and content to get them to buy more and keep them distracted.
Long work hours, screens and medication have been destroying sleep, which leads to a perpetually exhausted population that cannot focus long enough.
Solutions like meditation are band-aid solutions as they place the blame for stress and dwindling focus on the person and exempt society.
Modern-day kids spend the majority of their time in front of screens instead of playing outdoors. This leads to the loss of intrinsic learning and focus.
The five-day workweek, filled with the need to multitask between emails and phone calls, leads to exhaustion. Putting boundaries around working hours can help.
Democracy requires people to pay attention long enough to identify problems, come up with solutions and hold their leaders accountable if they fail to deliver.
Stolen Focus is not a self-help book; it is a wake-up call, drawing our attention to the fact that humanity’s loss of focus is a societal and systematic problem.
Thanks for reading!
See next