ISAAC NEWTON
WE ARE HARDWIRED TO SOLVE Problems. We aren’t, however, hardwired to solve problems amid distractions. But for many of us, perpetual distraction is the essence of our existence. We wake up and immediately power up to overflowing email inboxes, instant messages, Tweets, Facebook updates, uploads, and downloads. We then give our attention over to voicemails and text messages, maybe texting while standing in line at the coffee house, walking down the street, or worse, while dining out, completely tuning out other sensory details around us. At home, the average American spends about twenty-eight hours a week zoning out in front of his television set. Funny, our sophisticated technology is meant to help us solve problems, but it seems to have created many more. Eye contact with your computer screen or cell phone might have its advantages, but at the expense of eye contact from real life people around you? Our digital technology is meant to make us better, faster, and more productive, yet it has, for many of us, made us poorer in the process, separating us from the downtime that has been a sacred element of our existence throughout human history.
According to researchers at University of California, San Diego, the average American is exposed to about thirty-four gigabytes—over one hundred thousand words—of daily information.2 That’s like absorbing Tolstoy’s War and Peace in less than five days. Not that we actually read all this information—it hits us from various directions, all vying for our attention in different forms: billboards, junk mail, television, computer, text messaging, and so on. In comparison, we encounter three times the amount of information today as we did in 1960!3 Think about that for a minute. It wasn’t that long ago that we were licking stamps and envelopes, tethered to corded phone lines, or using a dial-up Internet connection. No doubt, modern technology offers some pretty awesome conveniences. That said, it’s worth looking at how you use it.
Look at how your children use technology as well. According to a widely cited report by the University of Michigan, the average American child today plays outdoors only four minutes a day!4 Compare that to an average of 6.5 hours of screen time daily,5 almost all of which is allocated at the expense of outdoor play that was, until recently, the essence of childhood. Not such a great trade-off when you consider that the American Academy of Pediatrics advocates outdoor play not just to control obesity, but also to advance physical strength and dexterity as well as imagination and cognitive development.
Furthermore, a lack of outdoor activity, says Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, can compromise a child’s value of place, ability to feel awe and wonder, and sense of appreciation and stewardship. While it appears there is no going back to simpler times, there is good news: to my knowledge, every form of digital technology in existence has an off switch! And there are still plenty of trees to climb, trails to hike, and bikes to pedal.
Look, I’m a guy who serves up a blog post every single day, so I don’t want you to misunderstand this message as a wholesale condemnation of technology. I’m all in favor of technological progress. Advancing ideas and making life easier has been a defining component of human life since Day One. The Digital Age is an era of great progress, empowerment, and unlimited potential. It’s mind-blowingly wonderful to look up any topic and have an answer, an image, or a video about it within seconds.
But here’s the catch: the more you consume digital technology, the more it consumes you. You’re clicking (mouse), but things aren’t really clicking (brain). Turns out that the more choices you encounter over the course of a day, especially trivial choices, the more stressed you become.
True, lack of discipline is certainly a factor. But there is also an evolutionary impetus behind our tendency toward distractibility: we are hardwired to be drawn to novel details in our environment, particularly in the primitive areas of the brain that process the basics, such as sight and sound. Whenever you encounter a new stimulus, natural opioids trigger the brain’s reward system by flooding it with a release of dopamine, giving you an immediate rush and priming you to be on the alert. In primal times, this response provided a direct benefit for safety and survival and, should things go horribly wrong, helped to manage pain. In Are We Hardwired?: The Role of Genes in Human Behavior, authors William R. Clark and Michael Grunstein discuss the role dopamine plays:
“We joke about the ‘CrackBerry,’ but the truth is our digital lifestyle truly can become habit-forming.”
It seems highly likely that stimulating dopamine release in the brain, which brings a sense of wellbeing, is also at play in altering the perception of pain. Wounded animals under attack use their opioids to set aside concern about pain in order to focus on escape.
With the demise of the saber-toothed tiger, so too ends our concern of being eaten alive by one. Yet the hardwiring for reacting and coping with such an event is still there. Today, it presents something like this: you hear the ding of a new text message, and the new stimulus diverts your attention. You get a little dopamine rush and it pulls you away from whatever you are doing for a quick glance. Then it happens again. And again. And yet again. With each ding, you receive a little jolt of addictive energy. Sure, we joke about the “CrackBerry,” but the truth is our digital lifestyle truly can become habit-forming. Just ask MIT media scholar Judith Donath, who told Scientific American that digital rewards charge our compulsive behavior, and over time the effect becomes potent and hard to resist.
A 2012 Newsweek article entitled “Is the Web Driving Us Mad?” paints a more ominous picture. It states that constant digital use can actually shrink areas of the brain that are responsible for processing speech, memory, emotion, empathy, concentration, motor control, sensory information, and impulse control by up to twenty percent. Meanwhile, the brain experiences an increase of neurons receptive to speedy processing and instant gratification. Citing peer-reviewed research and neuroimagery scans showing brain similarities between digital addicts and drug addicts, the article proposed that the Internet may not only be making us dumber or lonelier, but also more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders.
“It’s comforting to know that air traffic controllers also take breaks every twenty minutes . . . for twenty minutes!”
Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford University, speculates that one sweeping cost of excess digital stimulation is diminished empathy—what psychologists believe to be one of the most profound defining characteristics of human relationships.6 When the screen comes first, we often don’t have or give enough time and energy to listen, absorb, and appreciate other people’s feelings on an emotional level. Because young people tend to be in a constant mode of stimulation, they are particularly vulnerable.
In late 2010, The New York Times examined digital overstimulation in children in a front-page article called “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction.” Citing brain studies, the article states that periods of rest are critical for the brain to synthesize information, make connections between ideas, and develop a sense of self. It goes on to say that downtime is particularly important for young brains that have trouble focusing and setting priorities, ultimately recommending a digital diet. The experts who weighed in made the following suggestions: (1) balance screen time evenly between entertainment and educational activities, (2) eliminate multitasking options while studying, and (3) adults should act as a role model by setting an example of moderation.
Your brain does not operate in a linear manner like a cell phone battery going from fully charged to drained after a day of heavy use. Your brain craves stimulation and complex intellectual challenges, but it also needs to be frequently rested and refreshed. Scientists use the term sustained attention to describe the ability to focus and produce consistent results on a task over a period of time. One theory suggests that we are unable to sustain attention for longer than twenty minutes on any one thing. When we think we are sustaining attention longer, we are, in effect, repeatedly refocusing on the same thing. Obviously, it helps if we enjoy the activity, are competent at it, have high energy levels, and can operate in a low-stress, distraction-free environment.
But however much we may enjoy our work, we simply can’t be productive 24/7! We require recovery from technology overload, and to some degree, our culture recognizes this. We’ve established customs that promote balance such as coffee breaks and lunch breaks during the workday, weekends to counter the workweek, and vacations away from our daily routines. The good intentions are there, but our brains need more. If you find yourself zoning out while engaged in an activity requiring sustained attention, it’s a clear indication you need more breaks.
We can learn something from Las Vegas card dealers, who typically sustain intense on-the-job focus for forty minutes, followed by a twenty-minute break, and repeat this pattern throughout a shift. It’s comforting to know that air traffic controllers also take breaks every twenty minutes . . . for twenty minutes! Construction workers and other physical laborers, too, are diligent about completely disengaging from the job at break time, removing gear, leaving the immediate area, and resting the brain. When the proverbial evening whistle blows, work ends punctually, no matter what’s happening on the job site.
Contrast these positions with the typical office worker who disregards planned breaks or quitting times as the pressure to complete a project escalates. If you’re working on a computer and your focus wavers, simply stop what you are doing, get up, and walk around for a minute or two. Focus your eyes on distant objects to ease the strain of sustained screen focus (or just close them for a bit), then return to the task at hand.
At least every two hours, take a longer break of five to ten minutes. The way you choose to unplug should be as dissimilar as possible to your work. Go outdoors and access fresh air, open space, and sunlight, and engage in some form of moderate physical activity. If your job is largely inactive, get up and move around over the course of an eight-hour workday as much as possible. Even five minutes of outdoor activity will oxygenate and energize your brain and body, making you more focused and productive when you return to your desk. If you experience a significant energy lull during the workday, try to fit in a twenty-minute nap to recharge.
After work, set boundaries. Remember Mister Rogers? Model him at the end of the day when you walk through the front door. Well, maybe not busting out your rendition of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” but remove your coat and shoes, and change out of your work clothes into more comfortable attire. Put aside your digital gadgets, and allow yourself to completely decompress and immerse into a fresh environment of family, relaxation, and perhaps a hobby. Challenge yourself to disconnect. As a general rule, stay focused at work, but when you come home, stay tuned in there. Try not to skirt it with rationalizations as you fondle your iPhone in one hand, and push your child on the swing with the other.
Before the invention of the printing press in 1440 AD, our context for experiencing current events was, relatively speaking, limited to the goings on within the clan, village, or settlement. Even as recently as the 1990s, before the Internet explosion, our nightly news was primarily national in its scope. Today, in the midst of the global and electronic media, we are each burdened with the fate of Atlas, under the weight of a world beset by incessant perils and calamities that can stretch our emotional dimensions beyond coping limits. In Grok’s day, he could effectively act on the threats to his community and heal beyond its contained tragedies. In our day, the stakes are much higher and the implied community much broader.
Obviously, local, national, and global awareness is pretty much mandatory in order to be an informed and conscientious citizen these days. But, in your efforts to reclaim peace of mind, you would be well advised to find a healthy middle ground between immersing yourself in a constant barrage of bad news and dark emotions, and sticking your head in the sand. C. John Sommerville, author of How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society, notes that our constant exposure to endless threads of instantaneous, disassociated “news” without the natural filters of time and context has the power to leave us overwhelmed and yet still lacking in the event’s larger perspective. We’d do better, he suggests, spending less time staying on top of each trivial update and devoting more time to discussing, reflecting, and thoughtfully acting on the issues in which we feel most personally invested.
Heeding this advice requires realigning your perspective. You have a right, and a responsibility, to respect your emotional limits. The relative peace of this moment for one person is as genuine and meaningful as the tragedy befalling another. The world, we must remember, is more than the sum of its crises. Psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan spells this out in her book Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair, suggesting that we need to make peace with the “inevitable pain of being alive and being humanly connected to others.” Nonetheless, she explains, we must also bring a protective consciousness to our interactions with the world, “cultivating a deep awareness of emotions as in-the-body energies, and of the thoughts that both trigger and subdue them.”
One study of a hundred news broadcasts over a six-month period determined that over half of all stories and total airtime are characterized as VCS programming—an acronym for violence, conflict, and suffering.7 Now, consider that a number of studies show a correlation between viewing disturbing news coverage and experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as severe as if you had endured the event personally. This is no doubt the inevitable outcome of twenty-four-hour news channels that cycle the same stories all day long. One compelling study suggests that watching these events and feeling the anguish of those who are directly experiencing the impact can create feelings of anger, fear, and helplessness.8
Of course, information that you can actually impact, or could involve you, is vastly more important than random news you have no control over. Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan already have their own legal advisors. And while he seems to be far more reasonable and communicative than his father, the North Korean “supreme leader” Kim Jong-un is not likely to take your call any time soon, either. Ya know what I’m sayin’? To determine the appropriate level of your involvement with the news, ask yourself a few questions:
Can I take action and make an impact? Often we obsess more about global nuclear threats than about real suffering inside of our own social circles. If you get wind of strife involving someone you know, reach out and communicate with that person. Show your friend or family member that you care and are willing to help in any way possible. Yes, families deserve space and peace during difficult times, but I believe we use this as a cop-out to avoid uncomfortable communication. You have little to lose by reaching out and offering support—in general, becoming involved in the story.
What do I need to know? A major global event such as 9/11 beckons you to become informed on a deeper level. Major wars, terrorism, and catastrophes have a profound impact on the way we operate as a global society. Sorting through your thoughts and feelings with your family and friends is a way to strengthen these relationship bonds, help manage grief, and generally help make sense of the world.
Is there a lesson of value to absorb? The 1992 Los Angeles Riots, triggered by the “not guilty” Rodney King verdict, hit me hard because the graphic images dominating the evening news were in my hometown. Furthermore, the riots had national significance because they symbolized hot buttons of race relations, police brutality, and controversial jury verdicts. The images of mayhem were indeed salacious, but it was important for every single resident of Los Angeles— and across America—to understand the entire story and ponder carefully how we can “all just get along.”
If you were to shine a light on the way you spend your time, what do you think you might find? One area I recommend taking a closer look at is how much time you devote to gathering information. How much of that precious time can you reclaim for more pleasurable pursuits? What would your day look like if you became a brutally demanding editor and filtered the stream of information that you allow into your world?
Some time ago, I devised a ten-minute drill where I limit myself to focused news and entertainment exposure at the beginning, and again at the end, of my workday. I was fascinated to discover how much high-priority information I could consume in such a seemingly short period. I obtained in those ten minutes more than enough information and diversion to keep me satiated throughout the day, and could comfortably disengage from events not related to my work until the next drill in the evening (again lasting around ten minutes). I had to catch myself a few times during the day, when my focus wandered and I noticed a habitual urge to click to a favorite news or entertainment bookmark. However, the discipline I exerted heightened the pleasure of my information feast in the evening.
One morning, I recorded the duration and specifics of the information I consumed and asked a close friend to do the same. My friend’s experience revealed just how compelling the pull of distraction can be—even when he knew someone was keeping score! Let’s take a look.
MarksDailyApple.com: Read a long-ish guest post (1,322 words) in its final edited form as well as the reader comments.
DrudgeReport.com: Read short article on national health care legislation (355 words).
Huffington Post.com: Read three articles (from Business, Media, and Healthy Living sections) totaling 1,700 words.
Weather.com: Read about a hurricane closing in on the Caribbean (262 words).
Let Them Eat Meat.com:Skimmed a lengthy interview with an ex-vegan, by Denise Minger (6,300 words).
ESPN.com: Read article about NBA player trades (565 words).
Elapsed time: 12 minutes, 41 seconds
Local community newspaper: Read letter to editor (280 words) and comments. Read sports story on local high school athlete (560 words). Read sex scandal story about local business executive (387 words).
LATimes.com: Read a Sports/Business feature about the LA Dodgers’s owner being heavily in debt (2,003 words). Read about the drug bust of Rapper T.I. (280 words; eyes wandered to headline/photo; wasted about 30 seconds).
TMZ.com Celebrity Gossip: Read about Paris Hilton’s drug bust (297 words). Read article about Axl Rose’s concert riot and lawsuit against his former manager (247 words).
MarksDailyApple.com: Read daily post about arthritis (1,617 words) and emailed link to two people with short note.
ZenHabits.com: Read post on “creating stillness” (709 words) and emailed a link to a friend with a short note.
Elapsed Time: 13 minutes, 26 seconds
Following the exercise, my friend sent along these comments:
I’m kind of embarrassed to send this, Mark. I mean, TMZ.com Celebrity Gossip? I couldn’t care less about Paris Hilton and her cocaine purse, which she says isn’t really her purse (but looks exactly like one she’s holding in a photo she uploaded to Twitter a month prior, with the comment: ‘Love my new Chanel purse’). A click took me there—I can’t even remember where I started from—and it honestly took a couple minutes for me to escape from the grips of the ‘excess digital stimulation,’ as you say.
The Los Angeles Times story about the debt problems of Dodgers owner Frank McCourt turned out to be a super long article. I didn’t even care that much and sped through pretty quickly, but I simply wasn’t disciplined enough to fold my cards halfway through the piece. Another waste of time. I also noticed just how salacious and lowbrow even my local community newspaper is. I couldn’t help but finish the executive sex scandal story. I reflected on the previous week of headlines in this local community newspaper—all relating to crime, sex, violence, or just shenanigans—and promptly canceled the subscription I’ve held for more than twenty years. I tried the ten-minute drill again that evening and did much better. In eight minutes, I read stories that were entertaining and meaningful and caught up on all the day’s news, which I ignored per your request without much difficulty during the workday.
When it’s time to open the floodgates of email, voicemail, Facebook, forum posting, web browsing, or digital entertainment options, keep your editor’s hat on. Filter quickly through less important communication and either ignore or offer brief responses. When my friend Timothy Ferris— author of The Four-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich—sends me email, it’s always brief, with an disclaimer under his signature line:
The link takes you to a very short explanation of how emails are often too lengthy to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it. The answer? Treat all email responses like text messages, using short sentences that cut to the chase. It’s ingenious, really. Such responses respect your time as well as the recipient’s.
If you agree that time is one of our greatest assets, choose very carefully who and what is allowed even a tiny nugget of yours. Occasionally watching a YouTube video recommended by a friend only takes a few minutes, and it might even make your day—unfortunately, that can’t be said for every email joke, chain letter, or request that comes your way. And on some occasions, settling into an engaging blog, casually browsing iTunes for new songs, or researching something of interest can be considered quality leisure time. What I’m talking about here is disconnecting from the continual stream of information throughout your day and tightening and narrowing that time into a shorter window.
As the efficiency and convenience of technology continues to escalate, there is a strong temptation to multitask in order to keep pace with hectic modern life. Multitasking has even become a buzzword in job postings—a desirable prerequisite skill for employment candidates. Witness the typical office worker, who in an average hour switches to a different working window on his or her computer screen nearly thirty-seven times! That’s in addition to getting distracted every three minutes with emails, phone calls, the Internet, and other interruptions.
Of course, this constant back and forth makes for a rather disjointed existence. That, researchers say, is the real concern. Met with constant interruption, our thinking becomes scattered and jumbled. At times, we can feel like we’re playing multiple shell games, trying to recall where we were in the midst of each one. Researchers tell us that the persistent intrusions and diversions of this technological multitasking leave our brains fatigued. A Stanford University study showed that media multitaskers are unable to pay attention, control their memory, or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time. In other words, they have a harder time filtering out the irrelevant from the relevant, resulting in the counterproductive effect of slowing them down.
When faced with a deluge of digital information and a lack of downtime to synthesize it intellectually, reflect on it, and make meaning of it, we tax our working memory. Studies have also shown that multitasking compromises learning and impairs memory recall. And this is not just in the work environment. By design, television programs pack in large amounts of information in short bursts, presenting a roller coaster of staccato dialogue, crash-and-burn scenes, and fast-moving images that change every three to four seconds. Moreover, Internet users spend an average of less than a minute on any given website, browsing fast and furiously, completely changing the stimulus with the click of a button. As for text messaging, teenagers are apt to do it all day long, simultaneously carrying on multiple abbreviated “conversations” at a given time.9
Maybe Grok was a bit of a multitasker, too. He’s walking down the path, he’s in search of berries, in search of prey, and on the lookout for predators. He’s looking at the broken twigs, he’s smelling the breeze, maybe picking up whiff s of scat. The difference, however, is that he is exercising habit #4 (be here now), and is completely in the present moment. He is keenly aware of his surroundings, comprised of variables that all have a relationship to the here and now—unlike the accountant with the phone shouldered against his ear discussing dinner plans with his wife while updating last quarter’s financial spreadsheet.
Neuroscientist Gary Aston-Jones of the Medical University of South Carolina theorizes that the more you increase your level of multitasking, the more you potentially harm your ability to do tasks that require intense sustained focus other tasks such as writing, creating art, or performing scientific and mathematical equations.10 What’s more, there is evidence to support that multitaskers aren’t even good at multitasking! MIT neuroscience professor Earl Miller says that we cannot truly multitask, because our brains can only process a single stream of information at a time.11 When we say we are multitasking, we are actually just switching back and forth between tasks with amazing speed, creating the illusion of doing many things at once.
Even worse is multitasking while operating machinery. Seems pretty darn obvious, doesn’t it? But a widely reported study from the Virginia Department of Transportation has found that texting while driving is twenty-three times more likely to result in an accident than driving while paying full attention to the road. Unfortunately, the pull of digital stimulation—chasing that damn high, again—is so strong that 81 percent of drivers admit to cell phone use while driving and 21 percent admit to texting, an activity six times more lethal than drunk driving. Even with sobering stories (such as celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Ryan fatally driving off the edge of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu in 2010, reportedly distracted by texting), we continue to succumb to distraction and make stupid mistakes.
You can probably relate to the blissful feeling of being “in the zone,” totally consumed by the moment as you pursue a challenging task. You’re in a timeless space where your cerebellum—your primal, reactive, sensory brain—synergizes with the concentrated feedback delivered by your neocortex. This is “bottom up” processing, a melding of reasoning and sensing together. You experience this mode when you start sinking putts effortlessly after months of tedious technique lessons directed to your “top down” processing. It’s when you step up and roll three strikes in a row at the company bowling outing after not touching a ball for decades. Here, your neocortex is certainly engaged—sticking your fingers into the ball, approaching the pins and pendulum swinging your arms—but zone experiences like these go beyond mere correct mechanics to access a higher state of functioning.
Writers, composers, and artists are intimately aware of the great gifts a focused and integrated mind can produce. They’re also familiar with how elusive it can be. Legendary novelist, playwright, and screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, The Princess Bride, The Stepford Wives, and many others) was asked in an interview about his formula for success, to which came his deadpan reply: “Get up very early in the morning and work very, very hard.” A photo accompanying the interview shows Goldman in his cramped New York City office, featuring a tattered folding metal chair and a simple desk, a most unlikely command center for one of America’s most successful writers. Goldman explained that he didn’t want to create too comfortable a working environment for fear of distraction!
With some devoted effort, you can become adept at focusing on a single task at a time, too. First, flex your focusing muscles on some easy stuff. Zen out while chopping vegetables, raking leaves, walking the dog, or talking on the phone. Zero in on the flavors you taste in a glass of wine, your morning cup of joe, the sound of a fan, a reflection in a window, and let the rest of the world dissolve into the peripheral pool. The trick is to turn off your internal autopilot and stay completely present through a succession of mundane activities. Single-tasking, you’ll discover, creates space to appreciate nuanced details and find beauty in the moment.
You will begin to see more clearly just how often artificial stimuli can add extra layers of distraction to your daily routine, and how removing those layers for periods of time can make you feel more calm. This is not to say you must sit idly on subway rides home instead of catching up on work or entertainment via mobile technology. What I’m suggesting here is that you notice how your day plays out differently when you carefully manage external stimuli and focus on the moment. At least once a day, try to keep your focusing muscles toned by slowing your pace and single-tasking on a succession of mundane endeavors. By being present for the typically autopiloted activities from time to time, you will fine-tune your focusing powers for your more intellectually complex challenges. At the end of the day, concentrated focus is something to cultivate throughout our lives and something that, in turn, cultivates us.