Stolen Focus: Why You Can’’t Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again

 
　　總是買了書，卻靜不下心來讀；下班後的閒暇時刻，習慣頻繁在手機、平板等裝置之間切換，抬頭看一眼電視劇，再低頭回覆幾則訊息；來到觀光景點，總是透過手機鏡頭觀賞景色、尋找最棒的拍照地點，留下照片、打卡、分享，然後離開。
 
　　這也是你的生活嗎？
 
　　研究資料顯示，如今在美國，青少年每次只能持續集中精神65秒，而上班族的平均紀錄則是3分鐘。專注力的大幅減退，對人類的生產效率、智力，都帶來了負面影響。
 
　　和我們大多數人一樣，約翰．海利感覺到越來越無法持續保持專注，無論是思緒或對話，似乎都漸趨碎片化，而這樣的生活方式實在令人疲乏。他嘗試了各種解決方法，包含徹底禁用手機三個月，但最終都徒勞無功。海利於是決定動身訪問相關領域的學者專家們，進一步了解這個現象的起因與解方，在這個過程中他發現，我們所有對這場危機的概念，可能都是錯的。
 
　　我們傾向認為無法專注，是因為個人的意志力不夠堅強，然而真相卻遠比這個想法更令人憂慮：來自外部的力量，盜取了我們的專注力。海利發現，共有12個深層因素導致了這起危機，包含意圖讓我們離不開其產品的大企業、睡眠問題等等，在本書中，他不但剖析原因，更提供了個人與社會能採取的實際行動。(文/博客來編譯)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening--and how to get our attention back.

＂The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction.＂--Adam Grant, author of Think Again

＂Read this book to save your mind.＂--Susan Cain, author of Quiet

WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Post, Mashable, Mindful

In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions--even abandoning his phone for three months--but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention--and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers’ productivity.

Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus--as individuals, and as a society--if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.

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 seventy million times, and his work has been praised by a broad range of people, from Oprah Winfrey to Noam Chomsky to Joe Rogan.