Engineered Attention: How to Take Back Your Focus in a World Built to Steal It

by Ethan R. Wardell

Your attention is not broken.
It’s behaving exactly as a healthy human mind behaves in an environment engineered to hijack it. From the endless scroll on your phone to open‑plan offices and always‑on group chats, you live inside systems designed to keep you reactive, scattered, and half‑present—because your time and focus have become one of the world’s most valuable commodities.

Engineered Attention pulls back the curtain on how this happens and shows you, step by step, how to design your way out. Blending clear neuroscience with everyday stories, it explains how working memory and cognitive load actually limit what you can pay attention to, why quick rewards and habit loops keep you reaching for your phone, and how the “attention economy” turns your behavior into profit.

Across three parts, you’ll learn to see both the inner and outer machinery of distraction—and then rebuild it in your

Part I – How Attention Really Works
A simple, non‑technical tour of focus, distraction, multitasking, deep work, reward, habit, and cognitive load, grounded in real‑life examples instead of jargon.

Part II – How Our Attention Is Engineered (and Exploited)
How ad‑based business models, persuasive design patterns, and emotionally charged feeds systematically pull your mind off course—at work, at home, and on every screen you touch.

Part III – Engineering Your Own Attention
Practical, small‑step design for your spaces, time, and decluttering physical and digital environments, building focus rituals and deep‑work blocks, and creating “minimum viable” habits that protect your attention even on messy days.


Whether you’re a parent who wants to be more present at the dinner table, a teacher trying to protect students from overload, a knowledge worker drowning in notifications, or a creator who wants to respect your audience’s attention while still reaching them, this book offers a realistic, hopeful path. You won’t be told to quit technology or move to a cabin. Instead, you’ll learn to think like an attention designer—so that more and more of your finite, irreplaceable time is invested where it truly matters, not where someone else’s algorithm decides it should go.

124 pages, Hardcover

Published December 12, 2025

Reviews

[Matthew Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

This particular book has been very helpful for me, as it encouraged me to stop blaming myself for my focusing difficulties and instead find a way to look at the world that is happening around me. The text is easy to read, with no complicated theory. The small suggestions on boundary setting are also very useful. It is no miracle worker, but it's a big help in taking back control of your attention.

[Bogdan Bard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely changed how I think about distraction. Instead of blaming you for a “broken” attention span, it clearly shows how the system is designed to pull you off track and why that’s not your fault. The explanations are easy to follow, the examples feel uncomfortably real, and the advice is practical without being preachy. I loved the idea of becoming an “attention designer” and making small changes that actually protect your focus on normal, chaotic days.

[Simona Tsvetanova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear, thoughtful look at why focus is failing today, with practical ideas to redesign attention without quitting technology.