

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Distracted Mind" by Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here.
What is The Distracted Mind about? What is the negative impact of technology on human brains?
In The Distracted Mind, Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen define the distracted mind and the ways that technology has exacerbated it. They also discuss their proposed strategies for alleviating this condition by taking steps to improve our brain’s cognitive control and by modifying our environment.
Read below for a brief overview of The Distracted Mind.
The Distracted Mind by Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen
With a vast ensemble of screens, such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets, always at our fingertips, technology has infiltrated every aspect of our lives. And although this technological boom has delivered exponentially greater access to information, this access ultimately harms our productivity and ability to fulfill our goals, according to neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley and psychologist Larry D. Rosen. In their 2017 book The Distracted Mind, Gazzaley and Rosen argue that technology has made us significantly more prone to distractions and interruptions, hampering our higher-level cognitive goals and exacerbating what they call “the distracted mind.”
Gazzaley and Rosen’s backgrounds shape different aspects of The Distracted Mind. On one hand, Gazzaley’s experience as the founder of Neuroscape—a neuroscience center exploring the relationship between our brains and technology—informs his discussion of the neural mechanisms underlying the distracted mind. On the other, Rosen’s experience as the author of iDisorder, a best seller distilling years of research on the psychology of technology, proves invaluable in discussing the psychological aspect of technology usage. Additionally, both Gazzaley and Rosen are distinguished academics and have condensed years of their academic work into The Distracted Mind.
The Basics of the Distracted Mind
To begin, we’ll discuss the distracted mind itself to understand Gazzaley and Rosen’s later arguments about technology’s impact on it. In particular, we’ll start by analyzing Gazzaley and Rosen’s definition of the distracted mind as an ingrained vulnerability to distractions and interruptions. Afterward, we’ll discuss their thesis about the origin of this vulnerability—namely, that it arose because our higher-level goals outstripped our cognitive control, the faculties that we use to fulfill these goals.
Defining the Distracted Mind
To understand Gazzaley and Rosen’s later arguments about the distracted mind, it’ll help to understand what the distracted mind is to begin with. Put simply, they define the distracted mind as our susceptibility to interference that hinders our ability to achieve our goals.
At a broad level, Gazzaley and Rosen consider interference to be anything that disrupts your attempt to fulfill a specific goal. For example, imagine that you want to make your morning coffee, so you decide to grind some coffee beans. If, during this process, you receive an email notification that you stop to read, that would be a form of interference.
More narrowly, they assert that interference can come in the form of distractions or interruptions. On the one hand, distractions refer to irrelevant stimuli or information that catch our attention unintentionally. For instance, if you’re driving to work in the morning but have your attention temporarily diverted by a flashy car and miss your exit, that constitutes a distraction.
On the other hand, interruptions are intentional decisions to pursue a secondary goal that detracts from your primary goal. Returning to the previous example, if you consciously decided to stop and grab donuts on your way to work, that would count as an interruption rather than a distraction.
How Cognitive Control Limitations Make Us Susceptible to Interference
Having seen what it means to be vulnerable to interference, we can now discuss the origins of this weakness. Gazzaley and Rosen argue that we’re susceptible to interference because our cognitive control—the group of faculties that allow us to fulfill our goals—has limitations that make us susceptible to interference. To show as much, they examine these three faculties (attention, working memory, and goal management) to highlight their shortcomings.
Technology’s Impact on Interference
Now that we’ve covered what interference is and why we’re so vulnerable to it, we can discuss the ways that technology has exacerbated this vulnerability. More precisely, we’ll examine Gazzaley and Rosen’s argument that the Information Age increased our susceptibility to interference, their explanation for this increase, and finally, their warnings about the harmful effects of this uptick in interference.

———End of Preview———
Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen's "The Distracted Mind" at Shortform.
Here's what you'll find in our full The Distracted Mind summary:
- How technology has made us more prone to distractions and interruptions
- How to modify your environment to reduce distractions and boredom
- How to minimize your susceptibility to interference and improve cognitive control