Summary by Nicole Pratt

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After the humbling realization that I have the attention span of a goldfish, I picked up this title to see if I could figure out why.

The answers were commonplace enough. If only I had the mental capacity to put it all together! Stress, greed, bad food, and sheltered childhoods combine to erode our focus. Trying to improve on your own has some value. But it's weak against an economy designed to keep you distracted.

This is a great read, packed with thought-provoking insights. Johann Hari excels at balancing personal stories with hard statistics. He uses them to paint a dramatic picture of our dire situation. When distraction equals dollars, we lose. But Hari gives us some hope, a blueprint for how we can begin to take back our ability to think deeply again. 

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Introduction: Walking in Memphis

Adam is Hari's godson, and he has an addiction to the internet. Hari notices he has one, too…and so does everyone else. He's horrified and feels he must do something to break the spell on Adam. The pair travel to Graceland. But after Hari notices that escaping screens is impossible, the trip ends in failure. 

But it does inspire Hari to investigate what is happening to our attention spans. 

He makes a drastic plan: an internet-free summer. It's a desperate attempt to detox from the digital distractions he assumes have claimed our ability to focus.

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Chapter One: Cause One: The Increase in Speed, Switching, and Filtering

Hari quits the internet for the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts - Provincetown. It's a quiet beach village with one long road running down the middle. Leaving his electronic devices behind with a friend, he rented a cottage for the summer and asked to have the modem removed. There, he has a quiet, simple routine of enjoying the town. Within the first two weeks of his internet-free pilgrimage, he noticed some initial improvements in his ability to focus. Hari attributed it to these three things: 

1. Decreased Speed: Over the past 130 years, time spent discussing information has decreased. With an increase in the amount of information, there is less time to talk about it, which results in the feeling that things are speeding up. With Hari's break from the internet and his self-imposed "information diet," he has less to focus on and more time to focus on it.
2. Task Switching: According to Earl Miller of MIT, multi-tasking is a made-up concept. It's only rapid task-switching. And it comes at a cost. Processing speed, accuracy, creativity, and retention go down. He recommends mono-tasking to attempt to remedy this. Hari could devote more time to his tasks without the internet distracting him. As a result, he could focus on things better.
3. Filtering: Neurology professor Adam Gazaley from UCSF says the brain filters information by importance. These days, lots of noise pollution makes the brain work harder, so its filter doesn't work as well. The result is higher distractibility, as some noise gets through. Provincetown, Massachusetts, is far from the hustle and bustle. Hari undoubtedly benefited from the lower levels of noise pollution. With less background information to filter, Hari's brain could discard unimportant stimuli.

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Chapter Two: Cause Two: The Crippling of Our Flow States

After the first two weeks, Hari hit a rough patch. He craved the social media likes and retweets he was missing. Based on BF Skinner's research, social media is designed to keep you engaged with little mind tricks such as hearts and likes.

Skinner believed that humans could be reprogrammed and thus manipulated in any way using rewards and punishment. Hari felt deflated, knowing he (and the rest of the world) could and had been manipulated this way. He did a lot of reading and came across the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This research helped him out of his funk.

Mihaly's view of human psychology is more favorable than Skinner's. It began with a group of painters Mihaly found intriguing. After spending hours finishing a painting, they would clean up and start again. They spent very little time celebrating the paintings they produced. BF Skinner's theory states humans seek reward and avoid punishment.

Conversely, the painters enjoyed the process more than the reward. He coined this deep immersion and enjoyment of the process' flow.' Mihaly's discovery challenged the contemporary understanding of human motivation.

A flow state embodies more of what it means to be human and isn't limited to how human psychology is viewed under the Skinnerian school of thought. Hari wanted to escape the Skinnerian design. He craved likes and tweets, which drove him to use his phone. He preferred more meaningful pursuits, like writing his novel. The discovery of the flow state motivated Hari to retrain his habits. With time, he achieved both the flow state and progress on his dream of writing his novel.

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Chapter Three: Cause Three: The Rise of Physical and Mental Exhaustion

With each week in Provincetown, the author noticed he felt more rested. He was surprised that he didn't need coffee and was getting better sleep, which also helped his focus. Hari contacted Dr. Charles Czelsier to learn more.

In 1981, Charles Czelsier's lab in Boston observed that lack of sleep impairs focus. Until then, people thought of sleep as a state of being "switched off." Charles has researched sleep for 40 years and warns that people aren't getting enough of it. Forty percent of Americans need to sleep more. The amount we sleep has decreased by 20 percent over the past 100 years. It's ruining our ability to focus.

Lack of sleep affects your ability to pay attention in the following way: one brain part shuts down due to exhaustion while you're awake. Czelsier calls this "local sleep," or attentional blinks. Another sleep researcher, Roxanne Prichard, says this doesn't only apply to sleep-deprived people. The effects of sleep deprivation can start after 18 hours of being awake. Czeisler states that you can accumulate sleep debt, too. Missing a couple of hours of sleep per night for a few weeks can have the same effect as missing an entire night. The author reminds us that 40% of Americans are on the brink of this. 

When sleep-deprived, your body sees this as an emergency. It goes into fight-or-flight. Blood pressure rises. Food cravings increase to provide quick energy, averting the perceived crisis. Memory and creativity suffer because sleep is when your brain is making connections. The effects for adults versus children are the opposite. Adults get sleepy. But as any parent can attest, kids will go into a manic, hyperactive state when tired. 

And our beloved solution to our lack of sleep is only a cover-up. Coffee only helps us feel energized because it temporarily blocks our internal clock. The caffeine wears off, and we crash back to where we would be without the coffee. Three-thirty anyone?

Dr. Sandra Kooij says our Western society is a bit ADHD because of its sleep deprivation. If we all got more sleep, things like impulsivity, mood disorders, obesity, anger, etc. would improve. Because the brain cleans out its toxins while you sleep, if you aren't getting enough rest, your brain can get clogged up. This can make it harder to focus and predispose you to dementia. 

Dreaming also suffers from decreased sleep. Dreaming helps us revisit stressful situations without stress hormones. It can increase our stress tolerance, which improves our focus. According to Roxannes, using drugs to induce sleep is terrible. It throws off the balance of neurotransmitters, and your brain can't clean up as effectively. It's like minor anesthesia and leaves you groggy. 

Lack of sleep is harmful. Yet why do we continue to get less and less?

It's our relationship to physical light. Czelsier states that we have evolved to get a burst of energy in the morning and evening in response to the rising and setting sun. Artificial light late in the evening stimulates our senses and delays our internal clocks.

But it is also related to capitalism. Sleeping less decreases the productive hours available for our economy, affecting both production and consumption. It would be detrimental to our economy if everyone got enough sleep, so there is an incentive for the market to encroach upon that extra time.

If you are like me, this chapter highlighted several potential opportunities for improvement. What are some things a person can do to get better sleep? Charles recommends no artificial light for at least 2 hours before bedtime. Roxanne suggests charging your phone in a different room overnight and keeping your room cool.

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Chapter Four: Cause Four: The Collapse of Sustained Reading

The "American Time Use" survey covered 2004-2017. It reported that reading for pleasure fell 40% for men and 29% for women. Less than half of Americans read for pleasure, and 57% didn't finish a book during a typical year. Mihaly (mentioned earlier in Chapter 2) stated that reading is the simplest form of flow, but we are reading less and less. 

The way we read is changing as well. People reading screens tend to scan. Anne Mangen from the University of Stavanger in Norway says this becomes our default if we do it enough. Reading in this way decreases the pleasure. People also recall less of what they read on a screen, a condition called screen inferiority. 

In the 1960s, Canadian professor Marshall McLuhan introduced a key idea. He explained how TV, a new technology, shaped how we received and viewed information. We began to view things as they would appear on a TV show. Today, we might find ourselves thinking in short blurbs, like tweets. 

Social Media conditions us to say brief things that people agree with. Instagram insists, "Looks matter." Friends watch, and like your edited highlight reel, Facebook would have you believe. The reason why social media makes us feel so disjointed is that this is all false. Reality is the opposite. 

Books say the following: Life is complex. We need time to understand a subject. There is value in narrowing your attention. It's worthwhile to learn about how others live. 

Raymond Mar is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. He found a link between the number of novels a person has read and their empathy level. Reading nonfiction did not affect empathy. But does fiction expand empathy? Or are empathetic people drawn to nonfiction? The results are controversial for this reason. The answer is probably a bit of both.  

Reading fiction is like practicing empathy. Expanding empathy has resulted in some of the most important social advances. One thing points to fiction's potential to develop empathy. Children who read stories have a better ability to pick up the emotions of others. This is more about the parents. They pick the books, and this affects the child. Longer television shows and movies also expand empathy. It's about emerging yourself in another world.

This might not need explaining, but I'll say it anyway: empathy is important because the world is better when people care for one another. 

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Chapter Five: Cause Five: The Disruption of Mind-Wandering

William James, considered the founder of American psychology, compared attention to a spotlight. Experts have agreed for the past 100 years. However, coherent thinking requires other forms of attention as well.

Dr. Marcus Raichle, a neuroscientist at Washington School of Medicine, changed our view of this state of mind in the 1980s. Until then, the convention was that when the mind was not focusing, it was lying dormant. With the development of the PET scan, Raichle and his team discovered that this was not, in fact, the case. 

A part of the brain that is more active during unfocused states of mind. It's called the "default mode network." This spurred research on mind-wandering. The top scholars were Nathan Spreng and Jonathan Smallwood. Spreng is a neurology professor at McGill University in Montreal. Smallwood is a psychology professor from York, England. Together, their work reveals three essential things that occur during mind-wandering.

1. Your mind organizes the information you have acquired to make sense of the world around you. Mind wandering impacts long-term goal-making, organization, and creativity. 
2. Connections are being made in your brain between previously unassociated bits of information. Mind wandering allows your brain to make more associations. This is creativity. 
3. Your mind scans the past to predict the future and help you prepare. 

Mind wandering is not valued in a productivity-focused culture. Because of its powerful ability to help us make new insights, it can give us a creative edge. We should make time for it.

While distracted and task-switching, your brain's default mode network (DFN) can't make connections. We have trouble focusing and don't give ourselves time to let our minds wander, which is deteriorating the quality of our thinking. Our best thinking requires both mind wandering (for connection-making) and spotlight focus.

Interestingly, Professors Dan Gilbert and Dr. Matthew Killingsworth from Harvard found in their 2010 research that mind-wandering is linked to lower happiness. The author asserts this will be the case if an individual is stressed out. A person free of stressors can get the benefits above. But who isn't stressed out today? It's an important counterpoint, and I'm glad the author considers it.

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Chapter Six: Cause Six: The Rise of Technology That Can Track and Manipulate You (Part One)

The author's time in Provincetown drew to a close. As he rejoined his life on the internet, he felt the fragile gains he had made slip away. He didn't feel in control of his ability to stay off the internet. He felt as though there was something larger at play. To learn more about why this might be, he headed for Silicon Valley. 

A former senior Google strategist, James Williams, asserts that digital detoxes aren't enough. Hari meets with Tristan Harris, another former Google engineer, to discuss this further.

Tristan has a background in computer programming at Stanford. He studied under BJ Fogg, an infamous social scientist who teaches how strong, subtle mind control and technology can be used together. Tristan didn't like the idea of social manipulation. Later in his professional life with Google, he saw these lessons put to use. He saw first-hand how programmers intentionally hijack our attention for increased user engagement. Engagement equals money.

But Tristan did what he could to keep his work ethical. And try as he might, he made little impact. After several attempts to correct the situation, Tristan became disillusioned and left Google.

Here, we leave Tristan for now and introduce Aza Raskin. Aza is the son of Jef Raskin, creator of the Apple Macintosh for Steve Jobs. 

Aza is the creator of the code behind the infinite scroll. At the time, he was proud of this. But one day, Aza realized that it resulted in more time spent on the internet, mainly looking at crap. He calculated how much time was being wasted. The figure was to the tune of 200,000 human lifetimes just gone. At least some of this time could have been used to improve humanity. This horrified Aza.

This worsened when he noticed the more time they spend on social media, the nastier they get. Aza tried creating a social media platform that encouraged real, in-person connection. It was unsuccessful because the potential investors were only interested in platform engagement.

Tristan and Aza weren't alone. Many techies were disillusioned. They were speaking out against Silicon Valley's attacks on the human attention span. Figures like Tony Fiddell, co-creator of the iPhone, and Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook's vice-president of growth, have both spoken against these tactics. They drive engagement but harm attention span. Sean Parker, an early investor in Facebook, has done so, too.

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Chapter Seven: Cause Six: The Rise of Technology That Can Track and Manipulate You (Part Two)

You must understand user engagement to understand the heart of technology's problems. Tristan reveals that tech companies use engagement strategies to keep users on their platforms. They do this in two ways.

First, tech companies make money from ad revenue. Other companies market their products on tech platforms. The longer you spend on a given tech platform, the more ads you see. More ads equals more money. 

Second, the more time you spend using a tech product, the more information is collected about you. From this data, a profile is created. Companies can sell this user data to others, which is used to market products more specifically to you. The more accurate the profile is, the more appealing the marketing will be. The result is that you are more likely to buy a given product. 

Tech companies craft this profile with each click on the internet you make (or word you say in your home if you own an Echo or similar device). Think of it as a voodoo doll. With enough pieces of information, this profile can be frighteningly accurate. It can predict products you may be interested in before shopping for them. This business model was coined "surveillance capitalism" by Harvard professor Shoshanna Zuboff. This is how services like Twitter and Facebook remain free, and products like Amazon Echo can be sold cheaply. If you are not paying for the product, you can assume you are the product. 

For this reason, it isn't the smartphone itself that is destroying our attention, but the apps. Websites are distracting by design. Your screen time and their profits are proportional. This is the business model. In a more Utopian internet, you could find platforms that respect your attention. They could use the same mind tricks to support your goals and help you become a better person. But it wouldn't pay as well.

Ultimately, the answer isn't losing the laptop or the cellphone. Technology is too deeply ingrained in our daily lives to turn back now. The path forward is to challenge the design of these products and applications. These products should be designed with the user's best interests in mind, not the bottom line.

Let's learn about some of the mind tricks tech companies use to hijack our attention. The big gun is the algorithm. It's designed to show users things in their feeds that will keep them on the site longer. The algorithm can be designed to show things that will make the user feel any emotion the programmer desires. The emotion in question can vary, but increasing engagement is its constant goal.

With this in mind, let us introduce a psychological concept known as negativity bias. Negativity bias means that people, on average, are more engaged by negative stimuli. It is an observation that people are more affected by negative things than positive ones. If an internet platform wanted to keep you on their website for a longer time, all they would have to do is show you things that make you feel bad/sad/mad. Oh, wait...

This has implications for society as a whole. We are immersing ourselves in negativity with increasing intensity and duration. Anger becomes a habit and colors how we see the world beyond our electronic devices. And you can see this in the increasing polarization in our politics.

There are six ways the engagement business model is damaging our attention:

1. These sites make us crave frequent rewards. The likes and hearts are like little affirming dopamine hits that keep us returning for more. 
2. These apps promote task-switching more frequently by firmly tugging on our attention. Chapter One discussed the adverse effects task-switching has on our attention.
3. These sites will learn what distracts you and purposefully use it against you.
4. Because anger distracts you the most, this will be preferentially shown to you on your feed. By being immersed in angry content more of the time, you will be angrier more often. When you are angry, your "depth of processing" decreases. 
5. You will also feel surrounded by angry people, which will make you hypervigilant. We will learn more about this in Chapter 8.
6. Point six is more subtle. Hari takes his time here. Increased anger will undermine our ability to fight this problem together as a society. To demonstrate how this last point works, he discusses CFCs. CFCs are chemical compounds that harm the ozone layer of our planet's atmosphere. He recounts how collective action in the 1970s created legislation regulating the use of CFCs.

Because of the algorithm's nature, there is a preponderance of fake news. This crowds out more significant authentic news that's less engaging. If we aren't getting essential messages, how do we, as a society, band together to fight for positive change?

Like Facebook, YouTube tends to display increasingly enraging, sensational content. Tristan spoke to Guillaume Chaslot, an engineer at YouTube, to discuss how things are going there. 

YouTube's algorithm recommends something similar to what you just watched to keep you watching more videos. With each sequential video, the degree of fanaticism and extremism will increase. Hari states that the time spent consuming fanatical content is linked to a rise in extremism.

Next, the author takes us to Brazil to visit his friend Raull Santiago. Raull grew up in one of the biggest and poorest favelas in Rio. He shows us what the future could hold for us if the hijacking of our news sources remains unquestioned. 

In Brazil, there is an attitude of open hostility towards people with low incomes. Police will kill poor children with impunity. All they have to say is that they were drug dealers. One day, that same thing happened to Ruall's friend, Fabio. So, Raull set up a Facebook page. People could post videos of police violence. This raised awareness and sparked outrage.

This was occurring during the lead-up to Brazil's presidential election. They had a far-right, hateful candidate named Bolsonaro. He pledged to increase violence against people with low incomes. He was running against a man named Haddadd. At this time, Brazil got most of its news from Facebook and YouTube. A fake news story began to circulate about Haddadd. It accused that he would make poor children gay. As crazy as it sounds, his opposition alleged he would do this by giving penis-teat baby bottles to kindergartners. Many poor people said they couldn't vote for someone who would do this. They could not tell real news from fake news. The real news was about Bolsonaro pledging violence. The fake news was about Haddadd's ploy to make children gay. Bolsonaro was elected. He carried out his pledge to attack Brazil's favelas. 

This (social media) is destroying our sense-making, at a time when we need it the most

"This (social media) is destroying our sense-making, at a time when we need it the most- Tristan argued in front of the US Senate.

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Chapter Eight: Cause Seven: The Rise of Cruel Optimism (or: Why Individual Changes Are an Important Start, but Not Enough)

Nir Eyal, argues against the idea that there is a more significant problem with our relationship with technology and its design. He argues that we are capable and responsible for restraint. Nir was also a student of BJ Fogg and the author of "Hooked" - a book about how to create addicting products. He argues that technology isn't going anywhere. It's not our fault but our responsibility to resist our urges. Since "Hooked," he has also written a book called "Indistractible." It's about how he supposes we resist the urges addicting tech elicits. Eyal explains internal triggers. He also explains the external factors that provoke a desire to use tech. He offers some methods we can try to resist our impulses. He goes on about personal responsibility.

Hari challenges Eyal's argument. Eyal and other tech companies' recommendations are helpful to a degree. But the technologies are designed to addict us. What's more, the solutions they offer to counter this addiction are paltry, and Eyal is cavalier in his offering of them. 

Hari then introduces "cruel optimism." Cruel Optimism, coined by historian Lauren Berlant, is a simplistic solution to a problem with deep-rooted causes. Think obesity, depression, and addiction. The solution is so limited that the average person will likely fail. It is cruel because the person will blame themselves when these efforts fail. They blame themselves rather than the larger system and it is akin to victim blaming. 

To better illustrate this concept, the author applies it to the obesity epidemic. Over the past 50 years, we have seen a rise in seriously overweight people. He attributes this to a change in our culture. It's due to the food supply and the surge of ultra-processed foods. Also, stress levels, promoting stress eating, and the design of our cities, which limit walking and biking. The result has been an average weight gain of 24 pounds per person.

The diet industry is thriving. It offers many flimsy solutions to this monster of a problem. Ninety-five percent of people who lose some of this extra weight regain it within five years. And they blame themselves rather than the larger forces at play. When your diet ends, you are still surrounded by the same conditions that got you fat in the first place. "It's the wider environment that is the cause of this crisis." Hari writes.

We could have made systemic changes when this problem was predicted forty years ago. Instead, we blame individuals. Countries like Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands show the impact systemic changes have. As a result, they have lower obesity rates. 

You can try self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.

We know the programs to limit our screen time, and the cookie safes to lock up our phones, and the resolutions to keep off TikTok. But these weak solutions fall short. "You can try self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you," says Tristan Harris. Big Tech is a money-making machine designed to addict us. So what are these systemic, more substantive things we can do to address the root of the problem?

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Chapter Nine: The First Glimpses of a Deeper Solution

Two questions:

1. What should we do about this invasive tech?
2. How do we get these big companies to do it?

Aza recommends first banning surveillance capitalism, similar to how we have banned lead paint and CFCs. It is "just fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-human" to sell "private data to the highest bidder so they can change your behavior," Aza states.

Companies like Facebook would have to restructure like Microsoft did in 2001. Their business model would change to a subscription or public utility (like the BBC), creating a shift. Tech companies would be incentivized to help you instead of selling your attention to the highest bidder. This model is preferable for users but not as profitable for tech companies. 

Some other things that could change:

• Batching notifications.
• Discouragement of overuse.
• Encouragement of in-person meetings.
• Removing infinite scroll.
• Turning off features that promote political polarization.
• Helping reinforce personal goals:
  • Such as slowing down the website when you've exceeded your usage goal.
  • Connecting you with a gym buddy. 

Nir Eyal challenges that a lot of the science Tristan and Aza are drawing from is wrong. He continues that many of their arguments hark back to the comic book panic of the 1950s. Eyal argues that every generation panics about the minds of the coming children. Our concern about the overuse of the internet is our panic.

There is a larger back-and-forth on this same argument. Many social scientists are involved. No one can agree, and all have studies to support their position. There is no way to know who is "right." Only time will tell. Hari points out that in the future, we will likely see some points where Eyal was right and others where Tristan was correct. But it is riskier to believe Eyal. If Tristan is correct, we have much more to lose, making his view the safer bet.

An internal document was leaked from Facebook. Scientists specifically researched whether its algorithms were promoting extremism. Their findings bluntly stated, "Our recommendation systems grow the (extremism) problem." Facebook dismissed and mocked the findings. They continue to employ practices that promote the growth of Naziism, fascism, and extremism at large. They have shown that they know their actions are harmful to society. But they continue to do them. They won't stop on their own, so they must be stopped. 

How do you stop a bad billion-dollar corporation? 

The solution seems daunting, but Hari reminds us that this power struggle is familiar. He offers the women's rights and gay rights movements as examples. Ordinary people can band together to fight a system. Over time, they can achieve significant change. Tristan and Aza warn that this is the dawn of unregulated surveillance capitalism. As time goes on, it will only become more invasive and persuasive. AI technology is emerging. It can examine how you read and write emails. It uses this to create compelling marketing tools. They can hack your vulnerabilities. Aza alerts, we will feel in charge. But, we will face a "direct attack on our agency and free will." 

Do we let tech continue on its path, knowing what they have done and can do? Or do we unite like the women's and gay rights movements and stand up for ourselves?

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Chapter Ten: Cause Eight: The Surge in Stress and How It Is Triggering Vigilance

There are larger circumstances currently that increase our vulnerability to attention-fracking technologies. 

Hari conducted an opinion poll on attention. It asked people from the UK and the US in 2020 what they thought caused their decrease in attention. Stress was the top result. Significant life changes were the second. Disturbed sleep was the third. Phones came in fourth. 

Hari speaks to Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. She is a Stanford-educated pediatrician who will help us see how stress can hurt our ability to pay attention.

Dr. Harris' mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. In moments of clarity, she taught her daughter to work hard. Nadine also suffered from uncertainty. When she got home, was she getting a nice mom or a "scary mom?" Her work ethic and these early experiences shaped her. They led her to earn pediatrics and public health degrees from top universities. She wanted to help poor children. She set out to do so in Bayview, San Francisco, a neighborhood known for violence and poverty.

At the hospital there, she noticed that children had more attention problems. She wondered if childhood stress caused attention problems. She explained that "hypervigilance" can cause you to focus on likely danger. If you feel in danger a lot, you might have a sustained state of hypervigilance. You might find it hard to focus on less pressing matters, like schoolwork. This could be misdiagnosed as an attention deficit disorder. 

She used the ACE assessment to examine over 1000 children under her care in Bayview. She found that an ACE score of 4+ correlated with a 32.6 times higher rate of attention problems. Researchers like Dr. Nicole Brown and the British Office of National Statistics have had similar findings. They link adverse childhood experiences (ACE) to the development of attention disorders. 

Nadine started exploring better ways to help these children. Medication didn't stop the abuses they regularly faced, and it also didn't improve their ability to concentrate. She found that by helping the families improve their circumstances, the children's grades often improved, too.

Childhood abuse is often severe, and it is more clear how disruptive this can be. But what about mild-moderate stressors? Evidence has demonstrated that short-term mild-moderate stress can improve performance. The problems arise when that mild-moderate stress is protracted. Professor Charles Nunn is an evolutionary anthropologist. He explains that when our bodies undergo long periods of stress, it affects our physiology. We begin to find it hard to relax and sleep because our bodies are designed to stay wired to deliver us to safety. To deal with this insomnia, you must deal with the stress causing it. 

What are the primary causes of stress in the United States?

1. Financial insecurity
2. 6/10 people in the US do not have more than $500 in savings to handle a financial emergency expense. How does this impact our ability to pay attention? Any unexpected cost can be a fight for survival. It makes people hypervigilant. 
3. These financial concerns can have a significant impact on our ability to focus. Sendhil Mullainathan of the University of Chicago showed the effect of a payday on IQ. He studied farm workers in India and found a difference of 13 points before and after harvest. Harvest was when the workers were paid.
4. Olavi Kangas is a professor at the Department of Social Research at the University of Turku. He and Dr. Signe Jauhiainen conducted a study on UBI recipients in 2017 with similar findings. Olavi said that they weren't sure how UBI funds helped attention. But, they supposed that if not worrying about money frees up brain capacity, people can use it on something else.
5. But to be fair, we should also consider the work of Steven Pinker in the book The Angels of Our Better Nature. In this work, he states that the present day is much less violent than the past and is becoming safer. If we add Nadine's findings to Pinker's work, this should suggest that our attention is improving. Hari does offer this for our consideration. But, he argues that it doesn't tip the balance of all the other things our society puts against us.
6. Increasing workloads
7. Since 1969, Ed Deci of the University of Rochester has shown that work time has grown by a month. The Canadian Health Services states that as workloads increase, productivity decreases. They say that the workloads are not sustainable.

Hari turns to two examples in the next chapter to study this further. 

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Chapter Eleven: The Places That Figured Out How to Reverse the Surge in Speed and Exhaustion

A business magazine published the findings of a study in 2018. It found that the average British worker engages with their job for less than three hours daily. Andrew Barnes, the owner of Perpetual Guardian in New Zealand, read this study and reflected on his experience. He had compromised focus while overworking in finance in London. He decided to see if a shortened workweek could maintain productivity at his company. It did, cutting stress by 15% and raising engagement by 30-40%. 

Many companies have tried this experiment all over the place. The findings are similar. When people have more time to rest, they can focus better. But most find this intervention inaccessible. Only 56% of American workers take more than one week of vacation annually. Many people can't make the necessary changes to improve their attention. This is because it's not how our society works now. Corporations are not going to give people more free time voluntarily. They will need to be compelled to do so. 

In 1791, the Industrial Revolution was beginning. Workers in Philadelphia were protesting ten-hour workdays and six-day workweeks. They faced beatdowns and firings, but they did not quit. By 1835, workers were finally given an eight-hour workday and a weekend. It took decades of effort, but a shorter workweek was a goal worth fighting for. 

Workers' rights are fantastic for employees, but organizations are generally hostile to them. Companies and governments in the US and Britain have been responding by attacking and largely destroying unions. This has yielded the "gig economy," as people depend on side jobs to make ends meet. But recently, there has been a push to rebuild unions and demand fundamental rights. 

A shortened work week is great, but companies are not the only opponents we must face to gain more time. We must also fight ourselves. It is culturally ingrained in us to value long hours and glamorize productivity. These changes must be a collective internal shift. 

Not even a considerable force, like a shutdown in a pandemic, can keep us from working. We still clock more hours. It could have freed us from commuting and being at work. But, it added daily work hours - three in the US and 2 in Britain, Spain, and France. This was in the first month and a half of the pandemic. And we are still trying to figure out why. The pandemic showed us another thing about work, though. It showed us that the workweek, as we know it, can change dramatically, and the work can still be done. 

Another effort on the same front is France's "right to disconnect" law. This law was passed in 2016 as a response to the surge in burnout. It came from the growing expectation that workers should always be on call. The law prohibits companies with over 50 employees from contacting workers outside the hours agreed to in their contract. French Workers, though, find actual changes slow in coming. There is little in the way of actual enforcement of the law, but it is a step in the right direction. 

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Chapter Twelve: Causes Nine and Ten: Our Deteriorating Diets and Rising Pollution

For the past two generations, there has been a dramatic change in the food we consume for fuel. We know it harms our physical health, but there has not been as much talk about its impact on our attention. 

Dale Pinnock is a well-known nutritionist in Britain. He explains that the foods we eat today are so different from the natural foods we evolved eating. The body doesn't know how to process these artificial nutrients. By robbing the body of nutrients and exposing it to pollutants, we are not giving the brain what it needs to work well. This impacts our ability to focus. 

Our diet is harming our focus in three ways:

1. First, our habits promote energy spikes and crashes. We encourage unstable blood sugar because of the foods we eat and when. We get a rush soon after we eat, which quickly yields to a dip in sugar levels. This prompts sluggish energy and cravings for more sugar to start the rise and fall again. 
2. The second way the food we consume today harms our attention is a by-product of how we source our food. Most of us get our food from a grocery store. For years, there has been a push to sell food that lasts a long time. The foods sold in supermarkets have been pumped with preservatives and stabilizers. These keep the food from spoiling, but this food loses most of its nutritional value in the process. 
3. Thirdly, there are chemicals in our food that act on us directly, like drugs. In 2007, a study in Britain monitored the behavior of two groups of children after they were given a drink. One group had food dyes, and the other did not. The study found that the children who drank the food dyes were more hyperactive. 

Many European countries have since banned these dyes. But, they remain in US food. The US food also has a higher rate of ADHD. 

Dutch scientists found in 2009 that an elimination diet helped children with attention problems. They followed it for several weeks. Seventy percent saw an average of 50 percent improvement compared to the control group, which did not change its diet. They did the study again on a larger group of children, which yielded similar results. 

Dr. Drew Ramsay, a pioneer in nutritional psychiatry, explains why this is. Your brain can grow only if a wide variety of nutrients are available. These nutrients are most readily available in our diets. Supplementation isn't enough. 

Dale explains that if you look at countries with lower rates of ADHD and dementia, their diets share one thing. They are primarily made up of whole foods. Professor Joel Nigg now provides evidence suggesting that the food your child eats may affect their ADHD.

It is easy to say, eat healthier. But again, there is a more significant problem at play here in our larger society. The food industry has been allowed to pump our food with chemicals. They have big budgets to lobby and advertise. 

Pollutants have the most considerable impact on our attention. They are the most important of all the factors discussed. Barbara Demeneix is an award-winning French scientist. She says we are now surrounded by so many pollutants that "there is no way we can have a normal brain today."

There is no way we can have a normal brain today

Barbara Maher is a professor of environmental science at the University of Lancaster. She says that by living in a polluted city, you are constantly insulting your brain. This insult will eventually lead to damage.

A study in Canada found that those living within 50 meters of a major road were 15% more likely to get dementia. In highly polluted areas, the onset could be as early as childhood. Barcelonian scientist Jordi Sunyer says that pollution correlates negatively with school performance.

These problems seem too big to solve. How could we act in a way that could make any difference?

Hari relates this problem and its solution to our society's lead problems. Lead has long been known as a toxin since ancient Rome. So, when big companies began putting it in things like paint and gasoline, it was no surprise that scientists came out against it. Even so, companies resisted lead-free alternatives for the sake of profits. The Lead industry pushed false research, guaranteeing its safety, funded by Big Lead. 

By the 1970s, research found that Americans had 600 times more lead in their bodies than prehistoric humans. Bruce Lanphear is a professor of health science at Simon Fraser University. He and other scientists found that exposure to lead during pregnancy correlated with an eightfold increase in ADHD. 

Mothers had been warned about lead. But, when their children were exposed, they were gaslit and blamed. They were told they didn't dust enough and that their children had disorders that made them eat lead paint. But Bruce studied this and found that dusting your home had no decreased risk of lead exposure. 

Big Lead pushed a "prove it" narrative. It claimed lead was dangerous and insisted on being allowed to do so during the interim. 

This speaks to something larger in our culture. As an individualistic society, we take the onus for problems that may not belong to us. So, how did Big Lead finally fall? People banded together to demand laws to ban these poisons from common goods. That's when change occurred. 

Barbara Demeneix states that monkeys exposed to the same levels of common pollutants (PCBs) as we are have serious problems. These problems occur in their working memory and brain development. Scientists have found a strong link between BPA and behavior problems. You can use it to predict which children have been exposed to it. 

She adds that hormones guide development from the moment you are conceived. Endocrine disruptors in the environment will hijack this process and lead it astray. This affects your attention. She warns that children are "pre-contaminated" in this way. Some scientists argue against Barbara. They say her arguments are overblown. However, they get their funding from the chemical companies, which hurts their credibility. 

There is no escape from these environmental pollutants on a personal level. When asked about how we can do better as a society, Bruce Lanphear has this to say:

1. We need to vet chemicals more thoroughly on the front end. Right now, there is an innocent until proven guilty approach. This doesn't work well. Scientists don't get enough funding. So, the vetting can't be done quickly enough to prevent harm.
2. We need research on chemicals currently used by scientists who aren't funded by the industry they work in. The harmful chemicals need to be banned through collective action. 

Maher proposes we push for electric cars and more trees. This will significantly reduce many air toxins. 

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Chapter Thirteen: Cause Eleven: The Rise of ADHD and How We Are Responding to It

In 1952, ADHD wasn't included in the DSM. Added in 1968, diagnoses have soared each year from there. Diagnoses have increased by 43 percent from 2003 to 2011 alone. In the US, 13 percent of adolescents are diagnosed with ADHD. Thirty percent of boys in the south now have an ADHD diagnosis. Along with the diagnosis, most get stimulant medications as treatment. 

Most experts believe that some combination of nature and nurture is at play. But scientists argue about how much each of these factors contributes. Stephen Hinshaw, a Stanford psychology professor, says genetics account for 75-80% of ADHD cases. However, the rise in ADHD diagnoses coincided with larger cultural changes. These include decreased outdoor play, increased processed foods, and test-score-focused schooling. 

Dr. Sami Timimi is a leading child psychologist in Britain. He recounts several cases where he identified environmental factors causing his patients' behavioral problems. He addressed those factors and saw marked improvement. Sami argues that ADHD isn't a real diagnosis. It's a group of behaviors that occur together without considering the 'why' of the problem. 

In 1973, Professor Alan Sroufe, a child psychology professor in Minneapolis, began a study. It lasted over 40 years and followed 200 people born into poor families. The researchers wanted to determine what can cause attention problems, among other things. At the onset of the study, Alan thought that genetics was the primary indicator of whether someone would go on to develop ADHD. However, over time, he found that stress in the household was a much better predictor. It was better than a child's neurological status at birth. 

Alan explains why this is likely. Stressed parents aren't available to calm their children. When children aren't soothed enough, they never learn to soothe themselves. This results in sustained stress that wreaks havoc on their ability to focus. He concludes that ADHD is not genetic. It develops in response to our circumstances. 

When social support improves, the ADHD symptoms improve. 

Most experts agree that stimulant medication does improve attention in children over the short term. 

Nadine Ezard is the clinical director of alcohol and drug services at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney. In 2015, there was a spike in meth addictions in Australia. In response, she began giving ADHD medication to meth addicts. She found that it curbed the craving, like providing a nicotine patch to a smoker. 

Sami questioned whether we should give kids "a reasonable proxy for meth." But Nadine had some differences to offer up for consideration. People in recovery get higher doses, and street drugs have contaminates. 

Stimulants stunt children's growth. They also increase the risk of heart problems. 

James Li is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He raises some concerns about the effects of stimulants on the developing brain and says we need to study it better. In animals, the striatum, which deals with the experience of rewards, shrinks. 

Xavier Castellanos is a child and adolescent psychology professor at New York University. He states that stimulant medication only helps with tasks that need repetition, not with learning. 

Eventually, the body develops a tolerance to stimulant medication. When a child reaches the maximum dose, the benefits end.

Dr. Charles Czeisler, a sleep expert at Harvard Medical School we met in Chapter 3, says that a major problem with these drugs is their effect on our sleep. This, in turn, can harm brain development. 

Some people don't even want to raise some of these concerns about the adverse effects of stimulant medication for children with ADHD. They say it's dangerous. Some may not seek medical help due to these concerns. So, they suffer from the condition rather than get the medication's benefits. 

As we mentioned earlier, some studies contribute 75-80% of ADHD cases to genetics. But where are these oft-cited studies?

There are no direct studies from which this figure is derived.

The figure comes from twin studies. It works like this: whenever twins are examined, identical twins are usually both diagnosed with ADHD. The incidence of this is compared with that of fraternal twins. From there, we infer that genetics cause this. We assume the twins have the other contributing variables relatively fixed. But Dr. Jay Joseph, a psychologist from Oakland, California, argues this isn't true. 

Joseph says that science shows that identical twins do not share an environment. People often mistake identical twins for each other. Internally, there can be confusion about their separate identities. Identical twins can frequently feel merged. Some argue that this factor has yet to be considered. It can contribute to the increased incidence of ADHD diagnosis among identical twins, and it is not genetic in origin.

James Li states that the genetic factor in ADHD is small; the environment is always a bigger player. There is a new way of looking at genes to analyze their contribution to ADHD symptoms. It is called SNP heritabilty. These studies place the genetic contribution at around 20-30 percent. James explains it's likely higher. This method only looks at common gene variants. But still, we should not discount genetics. 

Professor Joel Nigg, introduced earlier, explains that genes predispose. Environment activates. He believes in using stimulants in last-ditch cases. They can help in severe cases and improve lives. Yet, he thinks something is happening in these children's environment. It is contributing to their development of ADHD. And he doesn't believe that we should accept it as is. He states, "We can treat these kids --- but sooner or later, we need to figure out why this is happening."

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Chapter Fourteen: The Confinement of Our Children, Both Physically and Psychologically

Modern childhood is novel, different from how it has been done for millennia. Children roaming unsupervised has long been the rule, not the exception. This is called free play, and in 2003, only 10% of parents reported their children doing so regularly. This shift has been so rapid that there is no scientific measure of the impact it might be having.

Lenore Skenazy found herself at the heart of a scandal. She allowed her nine-year-old son to find his way home in New York City, encouraging his independence. Then, she wrote an article about it. People went crazy, and it wasn't what she expected. 

Lenore was all sorts of villainized for this. She challenges that this level of independence was what we adults had growing up. It's as safe or safer for children as it was in the 1960s, so why the fuss?

She found that the social dialogue had changed since then. "Only a bad mom takes her eyes off her kids" is now the collective belief in child-rearing. Lenore believes that we are doing a disservice by keeping children caged as we now do.

Confining children erodes their ability to pay attention. There are five ways this happens:

1. By confining our children, we are keeping them stationary. Exercise improves attention by promoting brain connections (Professor Joel Nigg).
2. Confinement hinders free play. According to Dr. Isabel Behncke, a Chilean play expert, free play helps kids develop social skills, creativity, and a love for life. Children who play freely have more chances for experiences, which build their personalities. Supervised play loses much of its value. It doesn't as readily promote personality-building and problem-solving skills.
3. Lack of play creates more anxiety. If you deprive children of play, you rob them of their ability to cope with the unexpected. This results in anxiety (Professor Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist).
4. Intrinsic motivation: It is easier to focus on something you enjoy doing for the sake of it. Currently, we dictate the course of study for students with little input from them. This robs them of the ability to learn for intrinsic motives. They want to learn because they are interested. They are intrinsically motivated. Without it, learning becomes rote and more challenging.
5. The modern, narrow curriculum hinders the ability to develop. It stops some from feeling good at something. This feeling is termed "mastery." It helps a person to focus.

The No Child Left Behind Act was passed into law in 2002. It bases school funding on test scores, which has led to excess testing in schools today. This was followed by a 22% surge in ADHD diagnoses in the four years after.

We have lost a lot of the time we used to spend playing to time spent on homework. The subject matter of this homework is aimed at improving test scores for school funding. It's not based on what children are interested in or find useful. Today, children spend 7.5 hours more each week on homework than they did 20 years ago, according to a 2004 study. In all these ways, free play promotes attention.

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Unschooling

Unschooling is an approach to childhood education that emphasizes play. It discards the usual school structure. This includes a rigid curriculum and test scores.

Professor Peter Gray is a research psychologist at Boston College. He has followed the unschooling movement and says its participants are likelier to keep learning in college. 

Peter explains that our schooling is new, since 1870. It doesn't reflect how kids have learned for most of history. Before this, children learned by playing freely. This method closely resembles unschooling. 

Finland is a country that is considered more successful in their childhood education policy. They have an educational approach that prioritizes children's learning needs through play. 

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Conclusion: Attention Rebellion 

This is not a self-help book. There is no list of prescriptives to follow to resolve your problems with focusing. Though, there are some things you can and should take upon yourself to help in that direction. 

James Williams, a former Google strategist, has an interesting take on the different forms of attention. He characterizes the various types of attention in three ways. There is spotlight attention, daylight, and starlight.

Spotlight attention is your focus on immediate actions. It is what you are focusing on at the moment.

Daylight attention enables you to access your goals and clarify your definition of success towards them. Losing your daylight focus has the most significant impact on you. If you lose daylight focus, you lose a sense of who you are. As a result, you become shallow and petty.

Finally, there is what Williams calls starlight attention. There are your longer-term goals. He termed this type of attention because when you feel lost, you look up to the stars to understand your direction.

Williams says all three types of attention are being attacked. He likens it to being bombarded by tech as a DDoS attack. Williams says you need space to clarify where you are in your life and what you want. You are constantly being pulled in many directions and distracted. There is no way for you to get this clarity. Your sense of identity suffers as a result.

Hari improves on this list by adding what he calls stadium lights. Stadium lights are our ability to see and hear one another. We use them to work together to reach a shared goal.

Hari clarifies that he continues to struggle despite making six big changes. 

1. Pre-commitment.
   • Hari pre-commits to focus time by locking up his phone in a Ksafe device. He sets a timer and locks his cell phone up to decrease task-switching.
2. Response to distraction
   • Hari has changed his relationship with getting distracted. He responds positively instead of with reproaches. He does so by asking how he can get into a flow state. Drawing from the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he asks himself how he can get into a flow state using the following principles:
     1. Is he working on something meaningful?
     2. Is he working at the edge of his capabilities?
     3. What are some ways he can implement these actions right now?
3. Social media holiday
   • Hari takes social media holidays in chunks for six months off. He announces it. This is so he will look silly if he returns sooner. He has a friend change the password. 
4. Mind wandering
   • Mind wandering is a different type of attention. One that enables you to make connections between pieces of information.
5. Sleep
   • Getting enough quality sleep affects attention in the ways discussed in Chapter 3.
6. Free play
   • As described in Chapter 13, free play helps children develop attention. He applies these principles when he is around his younger family members.

Hari found success in the six areas mentioned above. But he's having trouble cutting out processed foods. He's also struggling to meditate, do yoga, and take time off work. Despite the challenges, he felt overall he was doing well, and then Covid happened:

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Covid and the role of screens and stress on attention 

We have already discussed how stress can affect our ability to concentrate. For many, the COVID-19 pandemic was a trying time. We needed to stay away from others, but we also had to continue our daily activities as best we could. Computers and the internet facilitated this.

The internet kept us employed, connected, and entertained during the pandemic. But there was a problem. It was weird; too much screen time. We could feel it and we didn't like it. According to Naomi Klein, a political writer, the pandemic accelerated tech companies' plans. They wanted to increase their presence on screens in daily life. Covid was an opportunity because we got to see if we wanted this. We have a choice. "We weren't going to have a trial run," according to Klein.

We don't have to accept the tech companies' hidden agenda. They want to hijack our reality and agency with their mind tricks and apps. We can fight back. But to do so, we will need to organize.

Our deep attention is like an orchid. Conditions need to be right for it to bloom to its potential. Too many distractions, stress, little sleep, etc., wear away at our focus. Try as we might, our efforts will only take us so far. The issue at its heart is a systemic one—one that needs collective action. So, where to start?

Hari proposes the following:

1. Banning surveillance capitalism.
2. Introducing four-day workweeks.
3. Re-introducing free play into childhood.

This is all well and good. But how does one go about the creation of a cultural movement? Ben Stewart, former head of communication for Greenpeace UK, had some ideas. He advises to begin with an awareness-raising cultural moment. Stewart advises, "Choose a place that symbolizes a wider struggle and begin a non-violent fight there." He says this helps the broader conversation. From there, encourage focus on the "personal liberation" part of this shift.

This shift will require intervention from inside and outside politics, as well as shifts within ourselves. We will need to take back our minds and societies from tech companies. 

It will be hard, but our society has made significant changes before. It's naive to think that we can do nothing about this. There have been several major shifts in our culture in the past 150 years, such as the gay rights movement, labor unions, and women's suffrage.

But this conversation is incomplete without discussing something bigger. It is at the heart of the problem. Since 1880, the world has been speeding up, and time spent on any topic has decreased. Thomas Hylland Eriksen is a Norwegian professor of social anthropology. He says our economy assumes it should get bigger each year.

There are two ways this can happen. We can either sell to new markets or sell more to existing markets. Our society tends towards the latter. Our markets always look for ways to cram more consumption into the same amount of time. This drives many of our attention problems. It could be stress, long work hours, lack of sleep, bad diets, etc.

But the economy doesn't have to operate this way. Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist at the University of London. He says we can choose different goals and redefine prosperity to anything we value. We will need to address the growth machine. We need to do this to take back attention effectively.

If we don't do it for the attention crisis it is causing, we will need to do it for the sake of the environment. Our consumption at this rate is unsustainable. To do this, we will need to restructure the types of energy we use. And for this, we will need our ability to focus.

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No matter how you slice it, reclaiming our ability to focus is more than fewer distractions or less screen time. It is a matter of life or death.

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