Chapter 3Tools of Our Tools
Throughout my childhood, I struggled to keep focused. When I was 12 years old, a doctor diagnosed me with attention deficit disorder. The challenge took a new shape as I left the confines of academia to enter the workforce in my early 20s. Bursts of extreme focus and a knack for digesting concepts couldn't make up for the dozens of small tasks required to succeed in my first j-o-b. Ever since, I have been fascinated with what causes someone to pay attention or not. Why were there times when focusing seemed as natural to me as breathing and others when I couldn't keep from being distracted if my life depended on it? I wanted to learn: What is attention? How does it work? How can we harness the power of it?
I pored through thousands of hours' worth of the latest research and interviewed leaders in neuroscience, social science, psychology, philosophy, and tech. Using myself—and eventually my company—as the lab rat, I experimented with ways to reduce distraction and improve focus. I spoke with CEOs and managers around the world—all of whom struggled to get their employees (and for many, themselves) to focus on the right things at the right time.
I saw that distraction affected every level of our professional culture. Questions like these haunted everyone, from small business owners to Fortune 100 executives:
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