Stolen Focus

I'm further into Stolen Focus (affiliate link) and finding it more consistently interesting. (And depressing-- awfully depressing.)

Johann Hari, the author, spent three unplugged months in Provincetown. He took a laptop that couldn't connect to the internet and an emergencies-only phone that couldn't text or browse. He read a lot of books; he took a lot of long walks and let his mind wander. He makes it sound pretty awesome, at least to this particular reader (who is currently fighting a losing battle against her Nonograms addiction).

One of the things he writes about is flow: how happy it makes us, and how fragile it is. This was the very best part of sabbatical, the way that on good days I could dive in deeply and think hard about hard things. It feels pretty hard to recapture that feeling in my ordinary working life. There are too many emails, too much reply-all nonsense, too many knocks on the door. You have heard this lament before but it is one of the most important factors in my job satisfaction: am I putting in enough research time? Generally the answer feels like no. And the less I do it, the more friction there is when I try to get back into it. 

I have some stuff coming up this summer that I hope will help. Gladlyville U sponsors a May writing camp and I just found out that my application was accepted. I'm also doing a well-regarded summer program focused on strengthening writing habits. We shall see how much of a difference that makes.

Hari also writes about the importance of what he calls mind-wandering time. It's a little strange to say I'm feeling a dearth of wool-gathering time, but there used to be more of it -- time on the treadmill, time walking alone to and from work. I haven't read any of the science that looks at what wool-gathering does for cognition, but I absolutely believe it matters. 

So I'm mostly on board with what Hari is saying. He talks a fair amount about the decline of reading, but that feels less relevant for me. I am more curious than convicted about those findings. Query #1: he says we do not read text on the screen with the same kind of focus that we use to read text on the printed page. But I'm pretty sure that I have multiple reading modes on a screen. I absolutely do that hopping-around-finding-the-key-facts thing that he deplores if I'm skimming an article to see whether it deserves my full attention, but I can and do give my full attention to text on a screen. I think over 12 years of heavy Kindle use I've learned to toggle between "book mode" and "link mode." A piece of evidence in support of this contention is that I shifted several years ago to peer-reviewing entirely on a screen. That's probably the most demanding kind of reading I ever do, and I do not feel the need to print out manuscripts to enhance my focus. I'm curious -- for those of you who are also regular Kindle users, do you notice a difference in the quality of your attention?

He also spends time talking about the research of Raymond Mar, who reportedly found that people who read more fiction tend to be more skilled at reading social situations than people who read non-fiction. Hari immediately makes a causal leap, saying the fiction drives the understanding of social skills, and I complained to my family over dinner about the hazards of causal inferencing in observational studies. "What if it's the other way around?" I asked them plaintively. "What if Mar is seeing this association because the people who are interested in relationship nuances are more motivated to read books that talk about something they already like?" (After dinner I finished the chapter and discovered that he does give a nod to the reverse-causality idea, but only a nod. Harrumph.)

One more minor quibble: Hari talks about the decline of reading in a world where it's easier to scroll, but I'm curious about the actual numbers. He says, for instance, that paperback book purchases plummeted by 26% in 2011. For me, that timing raises questions. Elwood gave me my first Kindle in 2010, and by 2011 I had made the leap to reading mostly e-books most of the time. I am sure I bought fewer paperback books that year, but I bought a BOATLOAD of Kindle titles. I am a little skeptical about how well stats on print books reflect actual reading behavior. But I guess if you think reading on a screen isn't really reading, the distinction doesn't matter much.

Tell me what you think: do you read less than you did ten years ago? Print books or e-books or a mix? Is it harder for you to read than it was ten years ago? What would you most want to read if you spent three months by the ocean with no job and no internet?