P.M. Forni on how to avoid daily distractions, preserve our ability to think

P.M. Forni, a Johns Hopkins University professor and co-founder of the Johns Hopkins Civility Project, recently spoke with Baltimore magazine about digital devices and other daily distractions, and the toll they take on our ability to think.

Forni is the author of the 2011 book The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction. "If we agree that life is important, then thinking as we go through it is the basic tribute we owe it," Forni writes. "It also happens to be the golden way to the good life—the kind of life in which happiness blooms."

Why did you write this book? Baltimore magazine author Jane Marion asks. "To address what is for me just about the most urgent of the problems that we will be called to tend to in the next several years," Forni says. "That problem is that our thinking is increasingly becoming rare and shallow. We should realize that this trend is here and reject it before it's too late."