Be honest, do you find it increasingly hard to keep your attention on something for an extended period of time?

So books, films, even conversations.

Well, this phenomenon is one of the biggest challenges of our times.

People are distracted and frazzled at an ever-increasing

rate, which has numerous negative knock-on effects. And there's no getting away from the fact

that handheld digital devices are having a huge impact. Now, I got a train just a little earlier

today, and while I was waiting on the platform, I looked down it and the vast majority of

people were staring into their phones. And if everyone's doing it, well, what's the big deal?

Well, the big deal is the capacity to pay attention is fundamental to a good life and to performance.

Here is Johann Harri, author of Stolen Focus to explain more.

When I've put out certain messages off the back of those episodes,

criticizing, should we say, the digital impact on our lives,

there are some people who get very twitchy and touchy about it.

And I know that you've had experience of that

too. And to me it seems crazy to deny what, in my opinion, is glaringly obvious. Yeah,

I'm actually very sympathetic to the people who is the initial response to this is to go,

oh, you know, doesn't every generation think this, right?

You can read letters from one monk to another nearly a thousand years ago where one of

them effectively says, oh, mate, my attention ain't what it used to be.

So when I felt for a long time, I felt like my own attention was getting worse,

I knew most of my friends thought their attention was getting worse.

But I responded the way these critics

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