You can learn lots of things about attention. I found it interesting that there are different modes of attention - floodlight, flashlight juggler. All the details of how attention vanishes, where it goes, all the experiments done to understand this is very engaging. Good read, if you want to understand how to get better with your attention.

Too much time is spent getting to the meat of the matter and too little nourishment is presented to make this read worth the time invested. A total disappointment!

My thanks to NetGalley and Harper One for allowing me access to this book which I had hoped would be helpful. The book is scheduled for publication on 10/19/21. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and are freely given.

I don't read too much non-fiction, but this one really drew my interest as I'm interested in attention and focus and improving both. Dr. Jha makes a great case for mindfulness-based attention training, accessibly describing her own research as well as other relevant neuroscience research. Her argument in favor of mindfulness training as a way to strengthen attention is effective because she has tried this approach with people with some of the highest-stress careers that require incredibly strong attention, like deployed military members, first responders, fire-fighters and more. The only thing that wasn't a home run for me about this book is that I personally find mindfulness exercises really challenging unless they are guided, and typically in a guided audio format. I had a hard time engaging in the practices described because I kept having to go back to look at the text to see how to do it. That's more of a personal preference though, and isn't really about the book itself.