I recently read Stolen Focus by Johann Hari on a solo trip to St Lucia. It’s not my typical genre- (when reading strictly for pleasure I am usually a mystery/suspense kind of girl!), but I chose it because lately I’ve been struggling with (or rather feeling crushed by) “multitasking” and wondering why and how it has become so difficult for me to calm my mind, silence my racing thoughts and focus on one task, activity or person at a time. I thought it was purely a “me” problem- perhaps a remnant of my PTSD/trauma brain or a result of me ALWAYS having SO much to do, manage and remember that my mind was crushing under the weight of trying to keep up with it all. Of course those thoughts were usually followed by something like “maybe it’s just because I’m not as good of a mother/lawyer/sister/daughter/friend as I think I am” or “if I were smarter or a better human being, this wouldn’t be an issue in my life.” I’ve spent enough time with myself over the past year or so to know that I have a tendency to slip into negative self talk when I am facing a difficult problem or challenge of any kind and that I have to make a conscious choice to change the corrosive narrative in my head, give myself grace and seek a deeper understanding to get over the hump.
Stolen Focus taught me that I AM NOT ALONE. Most of us are suffering from some level of inability to focus and think deeply these days, and it is largely by design. Our devices (phones, iPads, tablets and everything in between) and the social media apps we so frequently access on them were built by some of the most brilliant engineers in Silicon Valley to keep us scrolling and play to our psychological vulnerabilities to fabricate FOMO and panic in our brains every time we put them down. Hari makes a compelling case that our collective lack of attention and abandonment of deep, uninterrupted thought is a global crisis that is not only inhibiting our paths to personal growth, but putting our world at risk of losing its most innovative and impactful minds to the abyss that is IG notifications and email dings. Hari set out on a personal journey to study and conquer the attention problem for himself and I am embarrassed to admit that when he said that the first couple weeks of his summer of disconnection (three months on a beach in Provincetown with zero phone and internet access) felt akin to going through drug withdrawal, I could immediately relate. I don’t know exactly when it happened to me but somewhere along the way I reached the point where putting my phone away for extended periods of time (read anything more than 10 minutes) leaves me feeling like I’m missing something life-alteringly important. For me it’s not necessarily about social media but God forbid it takes me a few hours to get to a work email- as if the sky will literally come crashing down around me if I’m not uber responsive 24-7. It was freeing and reassuring to read that this isn’t just a me thing and that it’s not some character flaw or something I did entirely to myself. The good news is that Hari provides real, actionable steps we can all take to shift ourselves back to center and he makes a highly convincing argument that the future of true creativity, activism and innovation in this world depends on it.