Zelana Montminy, a behavioural scientist with three jobs, three children and a labradoodle, knows a thing or two about being pulled in all directions. Her new book, Finding Focus – Own Your Attention in an Age of Distraction, aims to help others reclaim their attention in a world that commodifies it.
Montminy recounts a client who was so absorbed in his phone that he barely noticed the world around him. After she encouraged him to put his phone away, he struck up a conversation with a woman at a crossing – and they later married. 'Our most valuable resource isn’t time. It’s attention,' Montminy argues.
'We are in a crisis of distraction,' she says. 'We are constantly task-switching. Our attention has been hijacked in so many ways. And no matter how many hacks we’re doing, we are exhausted. But it’s not from doing too much. It’s from being everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.'
Montminy’s own epiphany came while driving, when she reached for her phone at a red light and missed her son speaking from the back seat. 'I was wearing productivity as a badge of honour,' she realised. Her book, picked by Malcolm Gladwell’s book club, reframes focus not as a productivity tool but as 'an act of emotional resilience'.
