Two Sylvias' Weekly Muse: July 13, 2025
Issue 166
Hello, Poets!
Talking to fellow writers and reading emails in our Muse inbox, we have noticed an issue that seems to be plaguing all of us (Two Sylvias included!)—most of us feel like our ability to focus is fraying. We start a writing session and end up scrolling through Facebook or we get lost in a Google search that goes down a rabbit hole. We read the same line three times in a novel before it sinks in. We jot down a great idea for our next poem and then can’t find it under an avalanche of folders, notes, and lists. In Stolen Focus, a book we recently ran across, Johann Hari explores how our attention is being systematically eroded—not just by our phones and laptops, but by the design of the technological world around us. Our inability to maintain our focus puts money in the pockets of big business.
Hari offers a helpful framework for understanding the different ways our attention functions. He breaks it into four forms using the theme of light, and each is important not just for pr…