MAGGIE JACKSON

One of the world's leading thinkers on societal change, Maggie offers a startling new lens on some of the urgent challenges of our time, from navigating uncertainty to quelling distraction. Her passion, insight, and ability to marry deep analysis with practical strategy make her a sought-after speaker worldwide.

Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her pioneering writings on social trends. Her acclaimed books include Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure (2023), which was nominated for a National Book Award and named an Amazon Top New Release. Her renowned book Distracted: Reclaiming our Focus in a World of Lost Attention (2nd Ed., 2018) sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of fragmenting our attention.

Named to multiple “Best Books of 2023” lists, Uncertain explores why we should seek not-knowing in this era of angst and flux. Far from miring us in inertia, our uncertainty fuels curiosity, resilience, adaptability and creativity – the cognitive skills we need in a time of angst and flux. A 2024 Nautilus magazine Top 10 Summer Read, Uncertain is an official “must-read” selection of the Next Big Idea Club led by Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Pink, Adam Grant, and Susan Cain. Lauded as “surprising and practical” (Gretchen Rubin), “triumphant” (Dan Pink), and “remarkable and persuasive” (Library Journal), Uncertain is set to appear in multiple languages.

Winner of the 2020 Dorothy Lee Book Award for excellence in technology criticism, Distracted investigates the fate of attention in an era marked by fragmentation, speed, and hyper-connectivity. Widely featured in the global press and used in many college curricula, the modern classic helped inspire Google’s global initiative to promote digital well-being.

A former columnist for The Boston Globe and foreign correspondent for the Associated Press in Europe and Asia, Jackson also has written for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and leading publications around the world. She has appeared widely in the press, including on MSNBC; in The Washington Post and Boston Globe; on NPR’s All Things Considered and On Point shows, and on popular podcasts such as Vox’s Gray Area and Kate Bowler. In 2019, she was a consultant to the primetime ABC special “ScreenTime.”

Jackson is a high-energy keynote speaker and moderator who has given talks at Google (twice), Harvard Business School, the Forbes CMO Summit, Chautauqua, and other corporations, universities, and conferences worldwide. She has won more than a half dozen awards for her writings as well as numerous fellowships and grants. A graduate of Yale and of the London School of Economics (highest honors), Jackson lives in New York City and coastal Rhode Island. 

Speech topics

Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure

Today an onslaught of unknowns fueled by unrest, recession, disaster, and plague drives laments about “these uncertain times” to fever pitch. We fear not-knowing and equate being unsure with paralysis and inefficiency. More than ever, a quick, sure answer seems the ticket to success. But at this historic juncture a rethink is due: the uncertainty that we shun turns out to be the mindset we most need in volatile times. Pioneering journalist and social critic Maggie Jackson takes us behind the scenes of a revolution in cognitive science to reveal uncertainty’s critical role in good thinking, from crisis-problem solving and creativity to superior collaboration. Through stories of a maverick surgeon, a contrarian activist, and a mutiny in space, Jackson details the unexpected secrets to conquering our fears of not-knowing and to harnessing the powers of uncertainty at home and at work. We gain the pathway to the better answer, the hidden nuance, and to the brilliance of an open mind. 

Lost in the Instant: Finding Focus and Connection in an Age of Overload and Distraction

Our attention is embattled as never before, hijacked by “smart” software, undermined by relentless info-streams, and diluted by our own split-focus efforts to keep up with it all. How can we reclaim our focus, wake up to what matters, and once again manage our devices and our days? In this talk from the author who sounded the first warnings of our crisis of distraction, we learn the secrets to rekindling our highest human capacity, the key to good problem-solving, creativity, and human bonds. Drawing on exciting discoveries from the new science of attention, Maggie Jackson reveals what is at risk in this era of always-on connectivity and the secrets to turning data into knowledge and distraction into masterful attention. She offers both a wake-up call and a path forward as we reckon with one of the most pressing problems of our time.

Getting Along Again: An Antidote to Intolerance in a Divided Age

In an era of echo-chamber news, social media flame wars, and rising divisions, how can we respect and value even extreme differences with others? Drawing from an astonishing chapter in US history and the latest in cognitive science, Maggie Jackson tells of a legendary friendship between a KKK leader and a civil rights activist that can help reveal the steps we can take to heal our divisions today. In this talk, we learn the ripple effects across communities of tiny acts of tolerance and discover why opening our gated minds makes us more creative, flexible thinkers in all walks of life. Jackson’s words tell a simple story: of seeing possibility where we least expect it in thought, in others, in the world.

Books

Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure

An unpredictable, changeable world has been with us all along. Liberating ourselves from the ever-alluring but mistaken belief that life could be otherwise offers a startling new vision of human progress and of what it means to know.

In a world that’s growing more terrifyingly unpredictable, the swift certain answer seems just right. But while pursuing the secrets to good thinking in scientific laboratories, operating rooms, corporate boardrooms, and on the frontiers of Artificial Intelligence, award-winning author Maggie Jackson realized that in devaluing uncertainty we have been overlooking the crucial missing link to the higher-order mind. Once largely neglected as a topic of study, the newly discovered gifts of not-knowing now fascinate the greatest cognitive scientists – and offer us a remarkable antidote to the narrow-mindedness of our day.

Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention

In Distracted, journalist Maggie Jackson ponders our increasingly cyber-centric world and fears we're entering a dark age of interruption that will render us unable to think critically, work creatively or cultivate meaningful relationships.

What's Happening to Home: Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age

In our modern world, where technology offers the promise of mobility and flexibility, the lines between work and home become increasingly blurred. In What's Happening To Home? Jackson explores the ever-changing role of home in our lives.

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