Learn how your focus is more scattered now and ways to get it back.
Your attention didn’t collapse; it was stolen by big and powerful forces. You haven’t become weak. You’ve been hacked.” – Johann Hari
Brain fog is a common theme in discussions with animal health pros as they envision an end to pandemic interruptions and adjust their 2022 behaviors. Hari shares five key insights and ways to reclaim your brain from his new book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.
Source: Fast Company, February 7, 2022. Link. There are two levels at which we need to respond to this crisis.
- The first is as isolated individuals, by making changes in our own lives and our children’s lives, to protect ourselves from the 12 forces invading our attention.
- We need to force social media companies to adopt a different business model.
INSIGHTS: We noted disturbing data Hari shared that suggests students switch tasks once every 65 seconds. Meanwhile adults in offices tend to remain focused on one thing for just three minutes.
Studies have shown that workers’ IQ dropped by an average of 10 points when they faced frequent “technological distraction” in the form of emails and phone calls.”
There are costs to this decrease in attention span, Hari says, from both an intellectual and a productivity perspective. Also, if you are interrupted, it takes you an average of 23 minutes to get back to the same level of focus you had before you were disturbed.