{"id":17450,"date":"2025-07-15T13:37:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T21:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=17450"},"modified":"2025-11-13T11:18:40","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T19:18:40","slug":"eight-books-on-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/15\/eight-books-on-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight Books on Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m in the middle of the tenth month of my year-long Foundations<\/a> project. This month\u2019s topic is focus<\/a>. I\u2019ll share some personal updates in the next post, but for now I\u2019d like to share some of my takeaways from this month\u2019s reading.<\/p>\n

In case you\u2019re interested, here are the previous nine months\u2019 reading:\u2028<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Fitness<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Productivity<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Money<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Food<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Reading<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Outreach<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Sleep<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Reflection<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. Connection<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The 3-Minute Summary of What I Learned<\/h2>\n

    Focus is the ability to direct your attention according to an intention. This happens both over the span of minutes and seconds, as you concentrate on a task and ignore interruptions, as well as over years and decades, as you consider how to use your finite time here on Earth.<\/p>\n

    On the shortest timescales, what we pay attention to is a competition between top-down and bottom-up influences. Bottom-up circuitry includes interruptions from our sensory environment (you hear a ping on your phone), and from internal impulses (wondering if there\u2019s something fun to look at on your phone). It is both more primitive and more powerful than our top-down, goal-directed attention.<\/p>\n

    Researchers have identified the prefrontal cortex (PFC) as a major contributor to this top-down control over attention. If the PFC is damaged, such as in patients who have undergone a frontal lobotomy, the result is impulsiveness and a lack of self-control. Disruptions in these networks are also thought to underlie attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

    This neural circuitry is late to develop and does not fully mature until adulthood, as the parent of any teenager can attest. It is also susceptible to early degradation in adults, making older adults more susceptible to distraction than their younger peers.<\/p>\n

    Over your lifetime, broader-scale focus may be even more important. We often fail to grapple with our mortality, to consider clear trade-offs in how we should use our limited time. In the end, we should worry less about wasting the minutes and hours than we do about wasting the years.<\/p>\n

    1. The Distracted Mind<\/a> by Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen<\/h2>\n
    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    This is the best popular scientific book I\u2019ve read on how our attention works and why it is currently in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

    Human beings possess an incredible ability to set and plan goals. What we lack, the authors contend, are strong cognitive control abilities to keep our attention on those goals. As such, we\u2019re highly susceptible to environmental distractions and internal impulses that interrupt our tasks.<\/p>\n

    Animal foraging provides a useful analogy to human information gathering. A squirrel deciding whether to stay in a tree depends both on its knowledge of the likely remaining nuts, the nuts likely available in the other tree, as well as the distance it would have to climb to reach that tree.<\/p>\n

    The authors argue that new technology has drastically reduced the \u201cdistance\u201d people must cross between information sources. This, plus escalating boredom and anxiety, causes us to lose interest in our current tasks more quickly, hoping to find the next informational acorn in a digital forest.<\/p>\n

    2. Deep Work<\/a> by Cal Newport<\/h2>\n
    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    Newport argues that focus is becoming more valuable, just as it is becoming more rare. As a result, those who can do deep work are earning a premium in our economy.<\/p>\n

    As new technologies arise, the returns are increasingly going to superstars, those who can effectively work with smart machines, and to capital. Getting into the first two categories depends largely on skill, which in turn depends a great deal on deliberate practice. This requires hard concentration, driving the demand for focus up.<\/p>\n

    At the same time, the supply of focus is getting smaller. Open office environments, incessant emails and social media are dwindling our reservoir of attention. With both increasing demand and reduced supply, this is creating an economic opportunity for those who can focus.<\/p>\n

    3. Make Time<\/a> by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky<\/h2>\n
    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    How do you find time for things? If you\u2019re like most people, you don\u2019t. Life is an endless stream of constant interruptions and assignments. Endless busyness that means anything not screaming for your attention gets ignored.<\/p>\n

    Knapp and Zeratsky don\u2019t offer advice for trimming your to-do list or getting more done. Indeed, getting more things done might even be a trap, as new things magically arrive to fill their place. \u2028\u2028Instead, they argue the key is to pick something and consistently make time for it. Squeeze out the noise and give yourself time to work on something you care about. \u2028\u2028I particularly liked their suggestion of a \u201cdaily highlight,\u201d a key task or project you want to work on the next day that you elevate above your other work. I ended up using this for the keystone habit for the month, as it manages to effectively communicate the value of focus without succumbing to the facile counterargument that you can\u2019t literally focus on only one thing today.\u2028\u2028 Life will always be chaotic and busy. But we should still make time for at least one thing that matters.<\/p>\n

    4. Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder<\/a> edited by Russell Barkley<\/h2>\n
    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    Imagine a disease that impacts children, devastating their studies, socializing and home life. It is almost entirely inherited, with over 80% of the differences in diagnoses owing to genes (around the same amount as human height). Parenting and psychotherapy are of little use.\u2028\u2028Yet, there is a treatment for the disease. Given the right medicine, children perform much better in school, with friends, and at home. The medicine is well-tolerated and has minimal side-effects.<\/p>\n

    How would you feel about treating those kids with the medicine we know works?<\/p>\n

    This is essentially the picture painted by Russel Barkley, one of the world\u2019s foremost researchers of ADHD. He argues that ADHD can be devastating for families, with those who have it struggling for their entire lives, with outcomes only modestly attenuated in adulthood. He argues that the cause is largely genetic and biological (although prenatal factors like viral exposure during pregnancy may also be a contributing cause). And he argues that in contrast to the failed promise of parental counseling and psychotherapy, the drugs here actually do work.<\/p>\n

    I found this textbook fascinating because it was one of the clearest cases of a book with an explicit worldview running so counter to my general intuition, perhaps best exemplified by this recent NY Times<\/em> piece<\/a>, that ADHD is perhaps overdiagnosed and overprescribed (particularly to children).<\/p>\n

    In fact, I found Barkley\u2019s position to be so at odds with the general sentiment I hear from non-experts that I kept asking ChatGPT\/DeepResearch to try to poke holes in various claims. Yet, Barkley\u2019s position emerged mostly unscathed. There may be overdiagnosis\/overprescription at the margin, but for the clear cases of ADHD, the biological nature of the disorder as well as the benefits of pharmaceutical options for treatment seem pretty close to the expert consensus.<\/p>\n

    I take this experience as reaffirming my belief in the value of reading textbooks (unpopular truths don\u2019t make good popular nonfiction), and in the value of defaulting to trusting expert judgement<\/a>, in general.<\/p>\n

    5. Four Thousand Weeks<\/a> by Oliver Burkeman<\/h2>\n
    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    The average human lifespan is around four thousand weeks. What should you do with that time?<\/p>\n

    Burkeman doesn\u2019t answer this exactly, but he does set out some things you shouldn\u2019t do. One is that you shouldn\u2019t expect that you\u2019ll someday be able to \u201cget everything done.\u201d That isn\u2019t going to happen, and freeing yourself from the expectation that it will is liberating.<\/p>\n

    Another expectation to be freed of is the idea that the perfect life is completely free of constraints. The constraints in life\u2014coming from being enmeshed in communities and social ties\u2014are what make life deeply meaningful.<\/p>\n

    Burkeman worries about the instrumentalization of all life\u2019s moments. I enjoyed his description of Rod Stewart\u2019s model train obsession\u2014something so decidedly uncool that, Burkeman reasons, the pop superstar must just like doing it a lot. Shorn of the need to impress, perhaps such pursuits are actually more intrinsically valuable.<\/p>\n

    6. Meditations for Mortals<\/a> by Oliver Burkeman<\/h2>\n
    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    This book takes Burkeman\u2019s ideas from Four Thousand Weeks<\/em> and presents them as daily, bite-sized reflections to think about over the course of a month. A useful companion book to the previous one.<\/p>\n

    7. On Settling<\/a> by Robert E. Goodin<\/h2>\n

    Over the years, I\u2019ve interacted with a certain kind of ambitious young person. This person has a handful of projects they\u2019re eager to begin immediately\u2014they want to learn German, programming, kitesurfing and jujitsu.<\/p>\n

    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    My advice to this person is usually to pick one of those things and work on it for a time. While it\u2019s easy to sustain multiple projects so long as they\u2019re not too hard, the real grit required to make progress tends to require focus.<\/p>\n

    Sadly, this never seems to be the advice they want to hear.<\/p>\n

    I thought of this story when I considered Goodin\u2019s interesting discussion of what it means to settle. Settling involves momentarily putting aside other options to pursue one. Although we tend to think of this as being opposed to striving, Goodin argues the two are necessary complements, for in order to strive on something, we must settle upon an object of our striving.<\/p>\n

    \u2028Focus, and ultimately all striving, requires the ability to say \u201cthis thing is good enough\u201d and sustain your attention on it.<\/p>\n

    8. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying<\/a> by Bronnie Ware<\/h2>\n
    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    While much of my reading this month was centered on focus as concentration, I also wanted to explore the idea of focus as meaningfulness. Ultimately, we\u2019ll evaluate our lives at the end not for how many minutes we spent well or wasted, but for how many years went towards pursuits we did or didn\u2019t value.<\/p>\n

    Ware, who worked in palliative care for a number of years, retells stories of her clients as they reached the end of their life. She suggests five regrets are particularly common:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. I wish I\u2019d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.<\/li>\n
    2. I wish I hadn\u2019t worked so hard.<\/li>\n
    3. I wish I\u2019d had the courage to express my feelings.<\/li>\n
    4. I wish I had stayed in touch with friends.<\/li>\n
    5. I wish I had let myself be happier.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      It\u2019s interesting how much the regrets focus on relationships, particularly in sustaining bonds and being authentic, rather than in achievements.<\/p>\n

      Perhaps the irony of focus, then, is that in emphasizing the \u201cproductive\u201d activities that lead to achievements, we may ultimately neglect the aspects of our lives we\u2019ll truly value in the end.<\/p>\n

      _ _ _<\/p>\n

      P.S. – If you would like to put some of these ideas into practice, you might consider joining Cal Newport and my 3-month long course – Life of Focus<\/a>. We are opening it up for a new session starting Monday, next week. Once the course starts, we will work on improving three different dimensions of focus: practicing deep work, eliminating digital distractions and, finally, applying focus by working on a meaningful project with your new reclaimed time. If that sounds interesting, be sure to join the waiting list by clicking here<\/a> and we will keep you posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I\u2019m in the middle of the tenth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month\u2019s topic is focus. I\u2019ll share some personal updates in the next post, but for now I\u2019d like to share some of my takeaways from this month\u2019s reading. In case you\u2019re interested, here are the previous nine months\u2019 reading:\u2028 The 3-Minute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-personal-development","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEight Books on Focus - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/15\/eight-books-on-focus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Eight Books on Focus - Scott H Young\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m in the middle of the tenth month of my year-long Foundations project. 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