Johann Hari: Why You Can’t Pay Attention

An inability to focus can feel like a personal failing – a flaw in each one of us. In his acclaimed latest book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again, award-winning writer and journalist Johann Hari posits that our failure to focus is not personal, but a social phenomenon caused by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen.

In this special digital lecture recorded at the Wheeler Centre for the Big Anxiety Festival, Hari will share his discoveries following a three-year journey interviewing leading experts on attention and uncovering the reasons behind our shortening attention spans.

Don’t miss this timely event about how – as individuals, and as a society – we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it.

Presented in partnership with RMIT Culture and UNSW as part of The Big Anxiety

The online bookseller for this event is Readings.

The Big Anxiety festival is the largest mental health and arts festival in the world, and promotes mental health and wellbeing through exciting arts projects that combine science and creativity. The 2022 festival will be held in October in Melbourne.