Stolen Focus

So if you check your texts often while trying to work, you aren’t only losing the little bursts of time you spend looking at the texts– you are also losing the time it takes to refocus afterwards, which can be much longer.

For the average American, it’s three hours and fifteen minutes. We touch our phones 2,617 times every twenty- four hours.

At the moment false claims spread on social media far faster than the truth, because of the algorithms that spread outraging material faster and further.

around one in five car accidents is now due to a distracted driver.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this crisis in paying attention has taken place at the same time as the worst crisis of democracy since the 1930s. People who can’t focus will be more drawn to simplistic authoritarian solutions– and less likely to see clearly when they fail.

There’s one key fact, he said, that every human being needs to understand– and everything else he was going to explain flows from that. ‘Your brain can only produce one or two thoughts’ in your conscious mind at once. That’s it. ‘We’re very, very single- minded.’