Why we can’t pay attention | Johann Hari on How to Fix your Focus

This is part 1 of an exclusive How To Academy event. Watch part 2 here: • Multitasking is a myth...
Johann Hari has met 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. But crucially, he has discovered how - as individuals, and as a society - we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it.
Johann Hari is the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions, and Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention. Since he stopped being a columnist for the Independent in 2011, he has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, the Spectator, Politico, Salon and many others. On KZbin, Johann’s videos for TED (‘Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong’, ‘This could be why you’re depressed or anxious’), JRE Clips (‘Depression isn’t a chemical imbalance’, ‘Loneliness in America’, ‘Juarez Drug Cartel Victim’, ‘Materialism doesn’t make you happier’, ‘The solution to the opioid crisis’, ‘Why the war on drugs doesn’t work’, ‘what really causes drug addiction’), Matt D’Avella (The Loneliness Epidemic), Better Chapter (‘Avoid the Trap of Materialism’), FightMediocrity (‘The best mental health advice I’ve ever heard’, How the modern world makes us mentally ill’), Real Time with Bill Maher (Overtime on Obamacare, Charter Schools, the war on drugs), Dear Media Studio (Our brains aren’t broken), The diary of a CEO (how to fix your focus and stop procrastinating, everything you think you know is wrong), Chris Williamson (‘Why you can’t pay attention and focus’) and Dr Rangan Chatterjee (12 main reasons you can’t focus’). In this event, Johann was interviewed by Luke Naylor-Perrott, a producer at How To Academy.