Friday Feature: Stolen Focus

 Hey, can I talk to you for a sec? A minute? Five minutes? An hour?

At which of those time frames did you start to squirm and formulate excuses to give me a polite "no way!"?

Paying attention -- not just to other people, but to the world around us -- is an important life skill. It's how we learn, how we build memories, and how we connect (among other things). In his book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again, Johann Hari looks at the reasons this important life skill seems to be eroding, and not just in young people. Not surprisingly, he points a finger at technology as a major contributor.

Technology is a life-changer in so many ways. It can be educational, entertaining and (literally) life-saving. Our phones connect us to the world, and the apps we choose can further connect us.

Or further divide us.

I'm listening to Hari's book (read by the author) and finding it fascinating. It's not written by an ivory tower researcher reporting data (although there's plenty of that interspersed in his stories), but by a very real human, struggling to find balance amid the myriad apps, devices, and online resources that are all but inescapable in the 21st century. Hari doesn't hate technology -- quite the opposite -- but he wants to control it, rather than the other way around. 

The irony of listening to this book on my phone has not escaped me, but the choice is intentional. Hearing the author's ideas in his voice is powerful, both in terms of information and connection. It is, in fact, the way I often choose to consume non-fiction and memoir because it personalizes the information in a way that simply reading words on a page does not -- another one of the plusses of technology.

I won't be ditching my technology any time soon and, although I haven't yet finished the book, I doubt that Hari will either. But examining our choices and habits is the first step on the way to making the best decisions we can about the role technology plays in our lives, and exactly how much of our attention we allow it to hijack.