Subtitled “How to control your attention and choose your life”, it follows on from the author’s previous book, “Hooked” which was apparently taken up and followed by all the social media and gaming companies to get users to continue using their products, and teaches us basically how to get unhooked.
It’s clear that although there have always been distractions, both internal and external, and people worrying about how to concentrate on what they need to concentrate on (whether that’s work, their children or their partners), modern technology and especially our always-connected lives have made this worse and harder to deal with. Eyal aims to help us not to let our “attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others” and he has plenty of good, practical tips, once he’s established and convinced us that mind-set is always stronger than physical addiction (e.g. if we think we’re weak and have no self-control, we’ll make that true).
Tips include turning of push notifications, gamifying work and unexciting life admin, telling people in open-plan offices not to disturb you, bringing devices out of the bedroom and creating identity pacts (I am a vegetarian therefore I do not eat meat, as opposed to can’t). These are all key and are also all useful, however there’s nothing that radical here that you couldn’t think of for yourself. I’m aware here that that’s been said about my own self-help book, so I will say it’s useful to have all this stuff in one place, and I’m already the kind of person who plans her day out, so didn’t need the useful help with that aspect particularly. I did however ask not to be distracted the other day, so …
There was some slightly amusing stuff about helping his child to decide for themselves not to have their phone by them after 9pm – this seemed a little too perfect but maybe that’s really how they operate!
Useful if you need some help with distractions: maybe the book telling you precisely what to do will help you do it.
Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for making this available via NetGalley in return for an honest review.
Jan 09, 2020 @ 21:36:02
This is very much a book for the world we live in. I think you’re right, it is useful to have sensible tips all laid out in one place. Yes, people could come up with these things themselves, but they often don’t.
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Jan 10, 2020 @ 06:32:33
Or they forget them or think they don’t need sleep, etc, indeed!
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Jan 10, 2020 @ 04:39:41
Sometimes you just need someone to say what you already know deep down. Yes, we should go to sleep earlier, no, we shouldn’t be rage-tweeting from bed.
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Jan 10, 2020 @ 06:30:52
Yes, this is true, and it’s good having it all in one place.
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Jan 10, 2020 @ 08:49:27
Sounds like there’s not much here you couldn’t get from a few online articles…
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Jan 10, 2020 @ 16:26:50
Indeed, but I guess it’s gathering it into one place and having some of the theory behind it that will help some people. I’m probably not quite the audience: being self-employed and working from home, plus reading as much as I do, I’d be a bit lost if I was easily distracted!
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Jan 10, 2020 @ 11:53:09
Sounds like basic common sense to me, although it’s often useful to be reminded of it as we do forget… ;D
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Jan 10, 2020 @ 16:29:46
Common sense to some of us, maybe not to others, I don’t know. He did well with his last book, so …
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Jan 11, 2020 @ 10:47:39
Books like this are good reminders, the sort of thing I’d dip into once a year, and probably about this time of year to give me a few extra days of good habits before inevitably descending to the haphazard way my life goes, relying on happy accidents as it usually does.
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Jan 12, 2020 @ 14:11:33
You’re right, and amusingly I’ve just picked up the author of my current read making a comment that undermines his concentration that this book warns about!
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Jan 13, 2020 @ 13:57:39
We are going to need more and more books like this, I’m afraid.
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Jan 13, 2020 @ 15:08:43
I guess so, although what new things will they have to say?
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Jan 20, 2020 @ 17:19:44
Good review. I didn’t really learn many new things either, but got good reminders of some things I know I need to do.
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Jan 21, 2020 @ 10:04:22
Thank you, and yes, indeed.
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