Books like Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again

01

Deep Work

Cal Newport · Self-help

Deep Work is Cal Newport's case that the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task is becoming both rarer and more valuable, and that people who cultivate it will thrive while everyone else stays stuck in shallow busywork.

Shares attention and focus with Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.

02

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

Nir Eyal · Self-help

Indistractable is Nir Eyal's argument that distraction is not a technology problem — it's a psychology problem.

Shares attention and technology with Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.

03

Lost Connections

Johann Hari · Health

Lost Connections is Johann Hari's argument that depression and anxiety are not primarily chemical imbalances in the brain but responses to social and environmental conditions — disconnection from meaningful work, close relationships, the natural world, a secure future, and status that feels deserved.

Both dig into mental health.

04

The Anxious Generation

Jonathan Haidt · Psychology

The Anxious Generation is Jonathan Haidt's argument that a phone-based childhood — shaped above all by smartphones and social media arriving in the early 2010s — has caused a serious and measurable deterioration in the mental health of adolescents in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Both dig into mental health.

05

Hyperfocus

Chris Bailey · Self-help

Hyperfocus is Chris Bailey's second book, narrowing in on the attention piece of his earlier productivity triad.

Shares attention and focus with Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.

06

Digital Minimalism

Cal Newport · Self-help

Digital Minimalism is Cal Newport's argument that most people's relationship with smartphones and social media is not freely chosen but engineered — the product of business models that monetize attention and design interfaces for compulsion rather than value.

Shares attention and technology with Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.

07

The Distracted Mind

Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen · Science

The Distracted Mind brings together two distinct research traditions — cognitive neuroscience and psychology of technology — to explain why modern humans find sustained attention so difficult and what can be done about it.

Shares attention and technology with Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.

08

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr · Science

The Shallows is Nicholas Carr's argument that the internet — and the way we habitually use it, skimming hyperlinked text, watching short videos, checking feeds — is reshaping the neural circuits responsible for deep reading and sustained concentration.

Shares attention and technology with Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.

09

An Unquiet Mind

Kay Redfield Jamison · Psychology

Kay Redfield Jamison is a psychiatrist and professor who has manic-depressive illness.

Both dig into mental health.

10

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

Ethan Kross · Psychology

Humans talk to themselves more or less constantly.

Both dig into attention.

11

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi · Psychology

Flow is Csikszentmihalyi's landmark study of optimal experience — those moments when people are so deeply absorbed in an activity that time warps, self-consciousness disappears, and effort feels effortless.

Both dig into focus.

12

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

Randolph M. Nesse · Psychology

Randolph Nesse spent forty years as a psychiatrist and evolutionary biologist asking a question most of his colleagues found strange: why did natural selection leave us so vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other forms of suffering?

Both dig into mental health.