Topi Kettunen

What I Read in April 2023

Lots of non-fiction for me this month, mainly revolving around attention span. Very interesting topic overall, especially considering the highly technological dopamine filled world we live in today.

Gloria Mark: Attention Span, Adam Alter: Irresistible, Alex Soojung-Kim-Pang: The Distraction Addiction:

I decided to group these together since all three of these books revolved around technology, addiction, distraction and attention span. I’ve read a lot about these subjects so I didn’t necessarily learn too much new, but still, I would say these books were worth a read.

Basically, the key takeaway from these were the fact that modern digital technologies have changed the “structure of our attention”. We use screens more and more using software and products that constantly hinder our attention with constant bombardment of various stimulus from different sources.

But then again, it’s easy to blame technology for this and the culprit for distraction comes already from the state of mind on how you approach your given tasks.

Is the cause of your distraction social media? Maybe email? Maybe some IM app like Slack? Finding the main reason for your own distraction is very beneficial, since when you know that, it’s easy to limit access to it.

Jenny Odell: How to Do Nothing:

Great book on how this overly capitalistic rat-race that most of us are in can be very detrimental to people. Big reason for this was the fact that nowadays people tend to see that every hour of the day is potentially monetisable. So we’re not “allowed” to do nothing anymore. Which is sad. As a practising buddhist, I really like this message. Pausing and engaging with the world can be very beneficial in finding new and interesting meanings in our everyday experiences. There’s no need to be in some sort of constant hustle.