In today’s fast-paced world, being ‘busy’ is something everyone strives for. But as Johann Hari reveals in his book, Stolen Focus, that constant busyness is often just fragmented attention. This is what is preventing the deep, critical thinking required for growth. We’ve lost our ability to focus, and the cost risks everything.

The big problem is that we are not bad at focusing; the big problem is that every digital tool we use is created in a way to diminish our ability to focus. Social media algorithms, and notifications are structurally built to pull you into a state of meaningless doom scrolling. When you doom scroll, what you see changes by the minute. One video you could be learning about NASA’s latest finding, and the next video you see could be celebrities playing with puppies. This is not multitasking, this is task-switching. Research shows it doesn’t just reduce productivity, but it actively lowers your IQ temporarily, burns you out, and makes it virtually impossible to enter a state of true consciousness where creativity can happen.

Reclaiming your focus isn’t about your own willpower, but it’s about limiting the amount of content that you see in a day. The most successful people have to treat their attention as a limited resource that has to be protected at all costs.

However, a complete social media detox in today’s world is super unrealistic, and nearly impossible. What I would recommend, however, to save the future of your attention span, is to block out 60-90 minutes every day social media free. Block out all of your notifications, and do something productive with that time; even if you consider sitting down to watch a movie productive. Anything that you can focus on for those 60-90 minutes straight works perfectly. By doing this, you can eventually rebuild your tolerance for long-form content, and kick the need to doom scroll to the curb.

By taking your time back an hour every day, you will see a difference. It all comes down to what you want from your life. If you want to succeed in your career and social life, it might be worth it to take the risk and detox yourself for a short amount of time each day.

References:

Hari, Johann. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – And How To Think Deeply Again. Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, 2022.