Stolen Focus - by Johan Hari

Finally finished the book - prolly the best of the best over these years, in my opinion.


This book started with a series of the author’s personal struggles to reclaim his own concentration but ended up uncovering bigger psychological and social problems of humanity - a fascinating compilation of his search for truth and genuine compassion for our world.


After interviewing researchers and experts, Hari came to a conclusion that our losing of attention or focus can be attributed to a variety of causes which inevitably are resulted from our economic model or how we view prosperity. Citing from different sources, Hari explains that our prosperity is built on our ability to consume. More and faster is the key to success.


At the psychological level, our IT business flourished by creating technology tools that manipulates human minds, which then cripples our attention capacity and flow process. At a societal level the need to pursue success creates stress to our day-to-day life including a malfunctioned medical system and nutrition industry.


Some of the interesting perspectives Hari cited are the causes of ADHD, where he took the most blames from book reviews. As a teacher, I couldn’t stop turning the pages when he discussed the causes of ADHD. The knowledge we have about ADHD or ADD is too limited, and as the research reveal, some of these experiments could be flawed methodologically and not long term. It is important to keep in mind that environments could be one of the reasons that attributed to children’s hyperactive behaviors.