January 29, 2022 – Thornbury
It would have been ironic if I didn't finish this but thankfully it was a pretty engaging read. I did put my phone at least a few metres away from me to stop my brain finding excuses of things I needed to look up or buy or browse...
I've noticed a fairly big degradation of my ability to focus. Perhaps it was bad before, but over the last few years, this glowing rectangle seems to offer more mindless self soothing comfort than is perhaps healthy.
And I've noticed it in those I work with too. Whether it's the myth of multitasking or what seems to be pretty blatant procrastination and avoidance, the idea of doing one thing consistently until it's done seems less and less popular.
Johann Hari's last book, Lost Connections, was enjoyable and offered what I felt was an interesting hypothesis about the deeper causes driving anxiety and depression, and this book takes a similar structure. What you won't find here is advice to meditate regularly or Pomodoro your way to productivity: Hari believes that individual action avoids the systemic change that is needed to solve these problems.
Where anxiety and depression were hypothesised to stem from a lack of connection to each other and the world around us, focus issues are a product of an ever accelerating world, both technologically and otherwise. Social media, increasingly poor diets, more protective parenting, and overwork are the primary culprits in Hari's investigation of why we seem restlessly stuck in an endless loop of distraction.
Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin of the Center for Human Technology feature heavily, along with other technologists interested in dismantling the system whose incentives keep us infinitely scrolling at the cost of our own willpower. Most of this is astute, although perhaps now a little unsurprising if you're working in the tech industry or interested in the space.
He eventually discusses ADHD although possibly not as much as you'd expect. I think there's a lot more to explore there, especially in relation to online communities and self diagnosis.
It's well written and thought provoking, if not as novel as I was hoping for.