370: Why we’re all so distracted | NYT bestselling author Johann Hari

The mindbodygreen Podcast

mindbodygreen

Alternative Health, Health & Fitness

4.5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Johann Hari: “When you try to do lots of things at once, you do all of them less competently—you make more mistakes, you remember less of what you do, and you're far less creative.” Hari, a New York Times bestselling author, joins mbg co-CEO, Jason Wachob, to discuss how to reclaim your attention span, plus: - The link between sleep & focus (~05:16) - Why multitasking never works (~10:39) - How reading for pleasure retrains your brain (~21:05) - How to eat for attention (~35:54) - Why you shouldn't reply to texts immediately (~39:21) Referenced in the episode: - Hari's book, Stolen Focus. - kSafe. - Freedom app. - A study showing it takes 23 minutes to get back your focus after an interruption. - A study on the switch-cost effect. - A study from Charles Czeisler that sleeping ~5 hours a night impairs attention the same as a blood alcohol level of .1%. - Read more about Hewlett Packard's study on the link between work distractions and IQ. - mbg Podcast episode #79, with Adam Gazzaley, M.D., Ph.D. - Read more about Lenore Skenazy and Let Grow. We have recently introduced our innovative longevity & vitality collection! Visit mindbodygreen.com/longevity and use the code LONGEVITYPOD to get 20% off a one-time or first month subscription purchase of this premium collection, which includes vitamin D3 potency+, cellular beauty+, ultimate multivitamin+, and omega-3 potency+. Enjoy this episode! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: podcast@mindbodygreen.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the MyBuddyGreen podcast. I'm Jason Wachib, founder and co-CEO of MyBuddyGreen and your host.
0:08.0	And now a word from our sponsors at Betterment. Checking the market every day? That's not chill,
0:13.6	but you know what is chill? Betterment. The automated investing app with expert build portfolios
0:19.7	that puts your money to work. Their automated tech makes it easy and simple to get in the market
0:24.8	and stay in the market without checking your phone every day. So you can be the totally chill
0:30.8	investor you've always wanted to be. Betterment. The automated investing app that makes it easy
0:36.8	to be invested. Visit betterment.com to get started. Disclosure. Investing involves risk,
0:43.6	performance is not guaranteed. Yo head Hari is a journalist who's written for the New York Times,
0:52.2	Lamond, the guardian and his TED Talks have been viewed over 70 million times.
0:59.9	His work has been praised from people like Oprah to Joe Rogan, and he is here today to
1:06.1	chat about his very important book titled Stolen Focus. Why you can't pay attention and how to
1:14.8	think deeply again. Yo Han, welcome. Hey Jason, it's good to be with you. I apologize
1:22.1	in advance to your listeners. If I speak too fast, I've drunk enough caffeine to kill a whole
1:27.3	field of cows today. So I'm sorry. All good. I'll segue the title of the book is Stolen Focus.
1:34.3	Why you can't pay attention and how to think deeply again and caffeine can play a role in either
1:38.4	direction. So I'm not normally a caffeine head that badly, but it's in the middle of book promotion.
1:45.2	All good. Well, I love the book. I think it's a really important book and I'm going to start off
1:50.0	with a pretty alarming stat that you have in the book. In the US, teenagers, I was like, wow,
1:56.5	I'm going to read this one slowly. In the US, teenagers can focus on one task for only 65 seconds
2:06.5	at a time and office workers average only three minutes. What I read that I was like, wow,
2:16.0	like in terms of our focus, those are some pretty bad numbers. So I know it's a big question,
2:24.1	but at the highest level, what do you think is driving these alarming numbers in terms of our
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