Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention by Johann Hari is out now from Jonathan Ball Publishers.

‘A really important book … Everyone should read it.’ – Philippa Perry

‘A beautifully researched and argued exploration of the breakdown of humankind’s ability to pay attention.’ – Stephen Fry 

Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And, most importantly, how do we get it back?

For Stolen Focus, internationally bestselling author Johann Hari went on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons why our teenagers now focus on one task for only 65 seconds, and why office workers on average manage only three minutes. He interviewed the leading experts in the world on attention, and learned that everything we think about this subject is wrong.

We think our inability to focus is a personal failing – a flaw in each one of us. It is not. This has been done to all of us by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen. Hari discovered there are twelve deep cases of this crisis, all of which have robbed some of our attention. He shows us how in a thrilling journey that ranges from Silicon Valley dissidents, to a favela in Rio where attention vanished, to an office in New Zealand that found a remarkable way to restore our attention.

Crucially, he learned how – as individuals, and as a society – we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it.

About the author

Johann Hari is a writer and journalist. He has written for the New York Times, Le Monde, the Guardian and other newspapers. His TED talks have been viewed over 70 million times, and his work has been praised by a broad range of people, from Oprah to Noam Chomsky to Joe Rogan. He lives in London.

Categories International Non-fiction

Tags Johann Hari Jonathan Ball Publishers New books New releases Stolen Focus