We're creating a culture of distraction
joekraus.com
joekraus.com
A while ago, could be 3 or so years, I was in my local fish and chip shop. For those who don't know, there are small take away food shops in the UK (and I guess else where) and generally you wander up, order your food, then usually wait a few minutes while your order is put together or cooked. 10 mins or so. (I like the wait because usually it means my food is being cooked fresh.)
Usually I stand to the side waiting, and just gaze around, usually at the world going by out side the window. Normally the customers are not just one off people, but a couples or a pair of friends, or a parent and kids, and so on. You know, a decent variety of however people come. Usually there is a bit of a buzz of conversation and what not.
This time, I looked up, and all 10 or so of the people waiting in the show were literally buried, absorbed in their smart phones, and the shop stood stark silence. The people on their own, the kids, the parents, the couples, the whole damn lot. The only sounds were of the people working in the shop preparing the food.
Usually when the food is cooked, the person behind the counter only needs to mention the beginning of the order and the right person usually snaps in to action to retrieved their food, and leave the shop. This time I noticed it took up to 3 or 4 attempts before the smart phone spell was broken and the person realized their food was ready.
And the weirdest thing was, as they came to, coming out of their smart phone spell, each and every one of them had that look of some one who had just woken up in the morning. Eyes blinking, rubbing eyes, the slow realization of where you are, what you are doing, what comes next, etc.
I found the whole thing incredible creepy.
And since then, I've seen it more and more. In fact, I have even been round people houses or in a pub, where there are a few people meeting up, and I've observed the exact same thing. Oh, add to that, railway stations, bus stops, and so on.
OK, smart phones are very, very useful. Great little devices. But Im not so sure about they way people use them. Seems to me there must be something socially damaging about over use. Its like having the kid who is (exaggerate to show the point time) 24/7 in his/her bedroom on their computer. Now its like that but we can take the computer everywhere. Yeah, we can isolate ourselves anywhere.
So yes, overuse is not healthy. But consider another angle: for me a smartphone can fill useless time like waiting for an appointment, the bus, etc. instead of wasting their time these people text their loved ones, read articles about self employment or check reddit for cat pictures.
Giving someone not the attention they might deserve is indeed rude. But i hope customs will change hopefully to the better and people put their smartphones down when appropriate.
But i don't think it is right other without knowing the context and what they're doing.
Edit: I think i want a better mute button for my phone and a hardware mute button for my laptop. Everything should be hidden besides calls from circa 5 people and the third call from one number. Besides that the OS should not show me any notification, message,etc. not even the notification light should blink and when i check the time on the phone i should not see how many messages i missed
There is no way the trend is going to reverse itself. I try not to be a cynic but on this topic it's impossible for me - what event could trigger a reversal to this behavior?
What would make people prefer people again over digital distractions?
The collapse of society and all of its support. Basically, you'll have to make them useless.
This is not a "trend." Smartphones are still a very new technology and there is a gap between the changes they have made in our lives and the development of proper etiquette.
To trigger a reversal, you have to train people to be engaged, sympathetic, good at body language, and extremely talkative. Basically all the difficult interpersonal things that text chat can't do. Edit: technology isn't standing still, though! Snapchat is adding more personal video content to phones already.
That's where you and I disagree. Given the choice of minimal connections with those you know and fuller connections with those you don't know, I tend to prefer the latter.
Perhaps it helps to think about it like this. Everyone has something interesting about them, and whilst you might not like everyone you meet, you can at least learn something from them. Openness to meeting new people is a very positive thing (in my opinion).
I mean, if someone you barely know wants to make smalltalk, it's generally not okay to tell them to fsck off, even if you'd prefer to be left alone, social norms are generally made by and for extroverts. But being "in phone" and ignoring them works - and if you can use it to connect with the few people you want to connect with, it's a plus.
If small talk annoys you (and I totally understand why it does), consider its function. It's meant to be an ice breaker, not the focus of an entire conversation (unless there's no time for anything else).
Being capable and comfortable in such conversations is very, very useful in life (correlates with all kinds of life 'success' measures), and it can be acquired, and acquiring it requires a lot of such practice. However, even with all that, the preference doesn't change - if you are an introvert, you then can do it very well, but you'd still rather prefer not to do it.
For smalltalk - it's likely that I don't want to break that ice; I don't want more friends - I don't have enough free weekends/evenings to spend with my existing great friends, as we've all grown more busy, gotten families and moved miles apart; starting new relationships would decrease quality of existing ones. I don't want to meet hot girls - I'm happily married. I don't want to get to know a random person - if we meet on business, I'd rather keep that a purely professional relationship. If I'm in a mood to meet people and new experiences, say, while traveling - then great; but if I've spent all my "communications batteries" already today - then unless we're very close, I'd rather not have any unneccessary meaningful communications.
Speaking personally, throughout my life I've had times when I've been extroverted and times when I've been introverted, and I think both are great. Introverts get to enjoy a rich inner life, and extroverts get to enjoy a vibrant outer life, there's something to be said for both, but best of all is not being restricted from experiencing either (easier said than done).
Just to further our discussion, I'm curious to know what you think about the difference between online and offline conversation, for introverts especially. Does one feel easier than the other, and if so, why do you think that is?
I was reflecting for a bit on why it made me feel better to be good at conversations. Maybe its the way society is set up. Or maybe I have genes which are the result of generations of my ancestors being social (which may have a very tangible benefit if you're living in a pre-modern society)
I don't think that's true, in my experience they are sometimes chatting with their friends but mostly compulsively browsing social network content, and that content is the most shallow boring crap you can imagine (pictures of food, funny cat pictures, blah blah, we all know the content I mean).
There was a time when any group of people standing around would usually include at least one person smoking. That time is long past.
Eventually it will be uncool old people with phones and cool young people with .. _something else_.
People realising that addiction to stimulus results, over the years, in lower economic power and less overall happiness?
I don't know if today's phone-addicted teens will end up with lower-paying jobs down the line, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I do think, however, that something can be incredibly useful and worthwhile and still have some negative effects. Everything in moderation and all that. I believe that, in time (many years), people will figure out what these effects are and how to avoid them, just like (to oversimplify) one can enjoy wine without any ill effect.
I think, understanding a new technology does not stop with technical details.
We have to understand want this technology means to other people. The author talks about "real connections with the people around us", but how is a message I send to someone on the other end of the world unreal?
If children send 3000 to 4000 messages a day, if true, you could describe this as a deep investment in communication and connections, but just not according to his definitions.
I grew up in a culture where television was rather 'new'. Whenever we visited people, they would actually turn the television on. On the other hand, in my home culture the tv has been a presence for decades, and somewhere along the way we've decided that it is rude to turn on the tv when you have visitors.
Now I am assuming that the situation in my home culture was similar when tv was new. I'm not at all certain about that.
The article attempted to make the point that such times are not 'useless time', they have a useful purpose.
The social behaviour they generate is interesting on every front. For instance, there's this shopping mall close to the center of the city where I live. On the last floor, there are a bunch of restaurants, a small tobacco shop and the toilets. I go there fairly often, either for the tobacco or to hit the toilet.
Every restaurant has incredibly pushy promoters; the moment you set foot on that floor, these people immediately start handing you flyers, telling you about their restaurant, following you a couple of steps. I do my best to be polite with them; I know they're working on next to no payment, for imbecile bosses who think this is a good sales technique, so I'm never rude with them or anything. I just smile and say "Yeah, maybe some other time".
Sometimes, however, I'm just not in the mood for that. Long days, my own retarded boss, the incredible urge to go to the toilet (for some reason, there's no toilet around the place...), my hurry to get home and, until about a year ago, a lingering depression, simply mean I'm sometimes not up even to the little human interaction I need in order to politely refuse them.
So I just pop up my phone and pretend I'm reading a message or dialing a number. Suddenly, everyone's OK. No one would even dare disturb me. If I pretend I'm talking on the phone, the pushier ones will apologize for disturbing me, but will otherwise eagerly present me their offering. But if I have my eyes buried in it, it's like I'm suddenly invisible. One time, I even had to wait there for one of my friends to arrive, and stood there for at least five or ten minutes. No one even approached me as long as I kept my eyes down. I put the phone in my pocket for like five seconds because I thought I'd lost my wallet -- poof, two chicks appear to invite me to the marvelous restaurant that just opened and has a special offer just for me.
If you don't distract yourself once in awhile, by immersing yourself with something like a smartphone, I imagine it's very easy to get drained out with so much stimulation.
I mean, if we lived in the caveman age, or even the medieval ages where we encountered the same 20 or so people every single day, then yes, there's no need for the smartphone, but in the modern day, I think it's almost necessary to survive mentally. I look at it this way: Humans were not meant to live in highly populated areas where they interact with a thousand strangers every single day.
This is what I'm working on, slowly.
[1] I'm being a hypocrite there as I'm sitting in an ASDA car park on my smartphone at the moment.mm
That said, I really hate this new phenomenon, so my solution to this is to have a smartphone, but no internet. As a result, when I do employ my device as a way to avoid being overstimulated, the 'distraction' is at least of some quality, be it a long-form Instapaper article, a chapter of a book, or a podcast that spends an hour on a single topic.
It's not perfect, and I still put my phone away whenever I can handle my surroundings, but it works.
http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/08/28/iconic-style-meet-...
This was the first time I noticed everyone on their phone, and I felt like I was in the twilight zone. There would be groups of three or four friends sitting in a line, not speaking a single word. Eerie.
And yes, the social norm is and has been to ignore the people around you as much as possible, even more so in East Asian cultures, and more so when it's very crowded. If everyone were talking and socializing, it would be very loud in the subway car.
It changes from culture to culture, but I think it'd be weird if they didn't do something with their time since being talkative or social isn't an option. Instead of carrying around a book or sudoku puzzle everywhere for such situations, people just use their phone.
Little bit of a shameless plug, and I apologize, but I wrote a piece recently about how this phenomenon is starting to have some very interesting effects in public places (supermarkets, for instance):
http://priceonomics.com/are-smartphones-making-us-less-impul...
Everywhere I go, I see the same thing: people's heads buried in their phones. I hear the same thing: the continual pitter-patter of push notifications and texting. It is indeed creepy, but it's the new normal. And I wonder what things will look and sound like when wearable devices become the new normal.
Another link, this time not a plug:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130920094627.ht...
Endless stimulation and distraction -- whether from phones, from idle web surfing, etc. -- might have some really bad consequences for the brain. It turns out that the brain is unable to clear its cache, so to speak, when it's in a state of constant stimulation.
I bet the same would happen if they had a book or magazine and were reading or even just staring off into space and daydreaming or watching TV. Change of context.
3-4 times to get someone's attention for every person, or did it happen once? Could have easily happened if they were reading their Arthur C. Clarke novels as well.
When I finished in 2013 (switched majors and studied in France so 5 years it was) that happened incredibly rarely. It's hard to talk to someone when they have head phones in or are buried in some sort of game and almost every single person had their headphones in.
Even a book I can casually ask what some one is reading when they look up.
No smart phone for me thank you kindly. Even when I hang out with friends I occasionally experience moments where everyone but me is just staring at their phones. Then I wonder why I'm hanging out there. It's weird.
Is that the world we should strive to live in where no one can make connections randomly and without prior introduction?
If you're not busy, and I'm not busy, what's the big deal with talking to someone?
And not only that but is everyones 9,000th run of temple run worth a society of people who have no ability to communicate outside of pre setup social scenarios?
Maybe they don't want to talk to me. I accept that and move on.
It's called taking an extremely small risk for the chance that you can gain a friend or even just have an interesting conversation you'd never have had. Everyone's worth listening to.
The really funny part about your question to me is that you're talking to a stranger over the internet but you're having trouble understanding why you'd want to talk to a person in real life.
Most people truly enjoy talking to people. Most people have anxiety about meeting new people and remembering names and talking to people on the phone. But once they've gotten past the "hello" most people absolutely love to talk. I generally ask questions more than talk myself because I already know how I think and would like to hear other's perspectives.
And how could someone who has lived for decades not have something interesting to say?
It's not only about interesting information though, it's about developing social skills and the ability to interact with others in situations that aren't pre set up. It's about meeting new people. It's about understanding that every person is interesting. It's about realizing no one in the damn Tim Horton's line is doing anything better than making a new friend or having a conversation with someone they've never met whose views might open up a new way of thinking for them. It's about meeting people from other cultures and countries with different customs and life styles. It's about meeting the girl that could be the love of your life one day. In the end it's about living and interacting with the single most interesting thing around you at any given point. Other people. Far more multi-dimensional than any piece of artwork or app on a phone could ever be are the people around you.
You seem to think I was a huge bother to these people but one girl's first kiss ever was me because I said "hello" to her in the Tim Horton's line. She truly enjoyed the experience and while we didn't go much further than that that's a memory neither of us will ever forget. Would it have been better for me to be doing a fantasy draft with the espn app on my phone? Not a chance.
Were there times people didn't want to talk to me? Totally. But the majority of people are very friendly and open to talking to people if you say "hello". You can't be a creep with some pick up line. You have to genuinely be interested in learning more about the person. Then you tend to learn a lot and make new connections.
And again it wasn't something I did every bus ride. But it's nice to have the option every now and again to get a little jittery and say "hello" to someone you don't know. No one has no social anxiety, or at least I don't have zero social anxiety.
Hey as long as you're happy tekalon keep doing what you're doing. But if you're a little lonely, try saying hello to someone on the bus one day ;-).
And always remember, every single person in your life right now was a stranger at one point.
Maybe your friends suck
Maybe you have trouble meeting people when you're not formally introduced is the issue.
I didn't really tend to ask people what they were reading unless they had clearly stopped reading. I guess that was a bad aspect of that post. But when people have headphones on they never take them off at all. People do put books down occasionally and stop reading however.
Which also says something in a way... if the brain can only really do one task at a time[1], and in every down time moment people (and these are the down time moments, after classes or work, or whatever else they were engaged in) they're both listening to music and juggling between a bunch of different apps on their phone... just curious about the implications to the psyche.
[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9525679...
I've seen many signs in restaurants asking patrons not to use the phone while they are waiting. So, I'm guessing it's often enough to be a problem.
Does that answer your question well enough already?
As for the book thing, well, no. A lot of these shops have magazines to read, and people still seem to be able to monitor the out side word.
Remember too the first line of my post.
In fact touch screens on the go are pure hell - I try to take a photo, I touch the wrong part of the screen, use the flashlight, turn it off accidentally, try to edit a note, scroll or edit it in the wrong place, gah!
Made me think about how many times I've been that blinking person who didn't hear their food order, which I dislike but keep doing.
Its like people don't experience life through their own eyes any more. Even though they are right there, they prefer to watch it on their portable small screen.
Other times I just go into sort of dreamworld of mine, I start to think about anything and block external signals, this shields me more from outside world than looking outside window. Of course I need to be pulled out from this state.
I do not have smartphone, tablet and I do not read leaflets, papers while waiting.
Another example - a few years ago there was a huge trend of housewives playing Hidden-image games. It turns out that these games were so simple that people could do them in parallel with other tasks such as being on the phone, but they created a level of 'noise' that kept them from worrying about their lives. It's quasi electronic self-medication.
I've recently noticed that I will often think about and come up with a solution to an issue at work while driving or eating dinner. I suspect this happens because I'm not being distracted by the problem. It also bothers me a little. If I worked in a factory assembling widgets, I would not be able to take my work home. You can't leave your brain at work if your job is mostly mental work.
Stop thinking about thinking, that is one of greatest issues.
A quick but possibly meaningless e-mail response doesn't constitute productivity. The expectation you describe is just one of availability (or working), while ignoring productivity or presenting real solutions.
Just before I got home that evening one of my tires blew. I called the manager I was working for and explained the situation. I was planning on getting the tire replaced first thing. The tire shop didn't have internet, but I had plenty of paper work that didn't require internet, so I could work at the shop. And of course, I would call him as soon as the tire was fixed.
Next morning the storm had settled over our area. I limped to the tire store. It took about 1.5 hours for them to replace the tire (they had to wait on delivery of the tire from their supply house). When they had replaced it I called the manager and let him know I was en route. Unfortunately, a couple of exits down the road a tire related emergency light came on.
So, I turned around and headed back to the shop. En route I saw a large accident happen on the road I had just traversed. As soon as I got to the shop, I called the manager. I explained the current situation, and suggested that I just continue to work from the tire shop and when they were done I could work from home.
Long story short, this "productivity focused" manager insisted (i.e., I would be fired if I did otherwise) that I drive down to the office. I ended up spending 2.5 hours stuck in winter storm traffic, so that I could sit for an hour at a desk in an office to do paperwork that I could have done at home. Of course, I then had to turn around and drive back (thankfully that only took 2 hours).
So instead of 3.5 hours of productivity I got 4.5 of completely wasted drive time for 1 hour of actual work. (Then there's the fact that if I'm on a work roll at home, I tend not to stop, so he would have likely gotten more than just the 3.5 hours of work out of me.) All because his idea of 'work' is that someone in a seat in an office is productive while someone at home can't possible be productive.
I'm now much more punctual about working as close to 40 hours/weekly on the dot as I possibly can (I used to average many more hours). I won't do more than cursory email checks from home. And, I don't care how productive I am when I'm actually at the office. Because clearly all that actually matters is that I'm physically there.
Would you not expect your website to be available all the time? Or running water? Or electricity?
There are certainly some occupations, and some aspects of other occupations, that require a person to be at a very specific place at a very specific time (e.g. emergency room personnel). But there are also many, many jobs that do not inherently have a location and/or temporal requirement for the work to be successfully completed.
So my question to employers is whether it is more important for (a) work to be effectively completed within given time constraints or (b) employees to have a physical presence, particularly when the two are at odds (e.g., storm prevents someone from getting to work location, but the person can effectively work from their current location)?
edited: typo and clarification
This is particularly annoying when it's augmented by unrealistic expectations, like "you're a programmer... you spend all your time on a computer, can't you check your inbox"?
I used to work in a place where this was common practice, especially among the HR and sales drones. They pissed me off so hard that I cracked up and explained one particularly pushy tie-wearer that I only check my mail every hour or so, when I take a break from, you know, work, and if something is more urgent than that, he can come to my office. He obnoxiously explained me that a lot of his work involves remote communication and he can't just go all the way to my office (which was otherwise on the same floor), so I just went like, ok, prioritize or whatever your newspeak language calls it and leave me the fuck alone.
I stubbornly enforced my "one e-mail checking each hour" until the whole department started doing it. To everyone's surprise, things went a lot more smoothly; instead of hurriedly replying some half-thought obvious crap just to show the boss how attentive you are to your work, you could actually take five minutes and explain the guy what he needed to know. Much fewer details slipped and everyone was eventually happier, save for the self-important rookies who thought Skyping and placing phone calls was the substance of their work.
Trust me, you can. I simply ignore emails after 6pm. I will look at them first thing at 8am the next day, but not after 6. If someone presses you on it and they won't take "I have a life" for an answer, just lie and say you didn't see it or that you were at your kid's baseball game. I suspect that the frequency of someone's boss actually getting pissed that they did not respond right away to a 9pm email to be extremely low. In the unlikely occurrence that you actually work in an environment like this, I suggest polishing up the resume, because there are plenty of jobs out there that do not require your brain 24/7.
All that said, there's no way in hell I'm changing this. If something is urgent I will get a text or even a phone call. Everything else is always important but not urgent and people just refuse to think about the difference.
I don't like to check it very often (because it breaks concentration on whatever i'm doing and that annoys me..).
So anyway, the point is, i understand that even if you don't like, or don't want to be distracted, the social pressure makes it hard. Direct social pressure "check your phone i sent the msg FIVE minutes ago!!"
That's around the point when I explain that the phone is for my convenience, not theirs.
Or... That's what I'd like to say anyway..
In reality, I do feel that social pressure to respond -- hell, I even feel guilty if I don't respond at all (which is ridiculous!). The problem is that I sometimes let my "triage" habits from email slip over into my text handling. For instance, I'll receive a text and actually instantly open it, but upon gauging its "importance" in the context of other activities (usually work) I'll mentally file it under "deal with later," and go back to what I'm doing. And, of course, being that text messages don't have anything approaching the organization of email, I usually end up forgetting to ever write people back all together.
I sure wish there was a "mark unread" function for texts on Android.. It'd make me seem a lot less of a anti-social dick.
I think I understand what the author means, but I'm not sure that's quite right. I agree with the main points that the author is making, but I wonder if this "culture of distraction" is really a symptom of an even larger problem. Consider the possibility that many of us are simply highly anxious just about all of the time, and that the distractions presented by wired life are things we seek out for relief on purpose. That is, that the distractions aren't the cause of the anxiety, but a symptom.
Maybe checking in with Twitter over and over again isn't "stimulation," maybe it's more like a narcotic. It helps us block out genuine, serious anxieties about money, jobs, work, family, and the future in general with easily-digested, glittery trivia.
One possible reason to think about the problem this way - although it may sound like a big change in subject at first - is antidepressant sales, which have been climbing for years and now stand at record levels. Clearly, for whatever reason, we've built a way of life for ourselves that leaves a huge percentage of us desperately unhappy and stressed out for an awful lot of the time.
Perhaps the explosion of smartphones and tablets, of portable, pocketable "brain stimulation" is, for many people, a form of self-medication. When you have a moment of downtime, and you have a chance to think about just how screwed you and your family are if your name comes up in this next round of layoffs, you can instead reach in your pocket and check out the latest celebrity scandal. When a free moment strikes and you find yourself wondering what sort of fascist nightmare future-US your children are going to be stuck with, you can instead check out the latest shiny aspirational gadgets.
Regardless of the cause, the "culture of distraction" is still a real phenomenon worth fighting, I think. But maybe we can fight it more successfully if we understand the causes more completely.
Anecdote: I was just playing board games with my friends the other night. After 1.5 hours, I started panicking and feeling anxiety, so I excused myself. It felt wrong I guess, taking that much time off of work/study. Someone else might be outdoing me, right? Heh. I gotta say, I definitely didn't get this a decade ago.
For anyone who feels similar sometimes, it's important to develop methods to bring your mental state to something more manageable. I like to remind myself that even if this is true, the anxiety feelings aren't going to help me "compete" anyways, so might as well be calm and move on.
I just recently changed my habits around this a bit and with hindsight I really agree with the narcotic/self-medication comparison.
Also, Louis CK on smartphones: http://gawker.com/louis-c-k-s-explanation-of-why-he-hates-sm...
Pascal's quote is revealing and shows that this problem is by no means a recent invention. Though I would wager that new technology has made it much, much easier to quickly distract ourselves from idleness.
The older I get the more skeptical I feel about any of my own attitudes that I don't have clear objective evidence for, especially the kind of vague forebodings that motivate this sort of piece. There are entire "hidden worlds" out there, where people are motivated by completely different things. "Ours is a culture of distraction." Which culture? There are so many cultures in the world, and even in the US, and even in Silicon Valley.
Yes, I too see people walking around with their eyes downcast at their phones, consumed by far-away happenings. And it certainly feels like "we" are more disconnected from each other. But these are feelings, and should be treated as an impetus to look more deeply into the fact of the matter, rather than rush to diagnose and treat an ailment which you don't understand on any objective scale. And indeed, the first and best place to start looking is within yourself, and within your own life. Because the flip side to recognizing any kind of pan-cultural doom is living the alternative. That's the really cool thing about culture, is that it is not enforced by law, you can indeed break from it in very meaningful ways.
An article documenting your experience breaking from the culture, with the implicit message that you found something lacking and went on a search to find it, would be far more valuable than subjective analysis. Because, as fun as your subjective analysis is to read, without action it is merely distraction.
I've found that newness is a false signal for value. Just because something is new, we tend to errantly assign extra value to it.
You can combat this by removing the new quality from the item by putting it somewhere where it can "cool down".
For me, I save all the articles I want to read for the weekend. I just email the articles to myself and they go in a special folder and that's where they cool off for a few days.
When you first start doing this, it is surprising how much some articles lose their perceived value over a few days. An article that I was really excited about when I first saw it will often induce a "meh" a few days later.
On the other hand, some articles still retain their value and appeal several days later.
I end up spending far fewer hours a week reading articles because of this method. It also helps to keep me focused since I don't let my mind wander to other topics during my work day.
This also works for other things like movies, tv shows, facebook, etc. If you want to see the true value of something, delay enjoying it until the newness has worn off. It helps reduce what you consume and increases the quality of what you do.
If your goal is to produce more and consume less, then this strategy can really help.
Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell's *Tour of the Hebrides", entry for August 19.
Since I was a kid I was known to quickly get bored, and then read something, annoying teachers. But back then I could sit still at home and make levels for my favourite games hours at end
Now since I got this goddmn.smartphone for professional reasons ( got phone in 2011, but work making smartphone games since 2008) I am getting more and more easily distracted and anxious, there was even a day recently that I spent the whole day looking at Facebook, Wikipedia, Wikis, tvtropes, hn, newspapers, and other random shit, and when it was time to go home, I noticed that I never even opened my IDE :(
The digitally tethered to work thing is a killer. I was very happy not having a smartphone and not having internet access in my home for a couple years recently. To use the internet I would get dressed and go to the apartment building lobby. This arrangement was very productive for me and calmed my mind. When I was in my apartment I had undisturbed focus. But professional demands required I get wired up. I quite dislike it.
Sounds like a personal problem.
A relevant plug: My brother and I are developing a web app to help with this problem of distractedness. It's a to-do list manager that encourages mindfulness by helping you monitor procrastination and training your ability to steadily focus. Launching sometime this fall: http://fleur.io
I am an avid reader who is quite fussy about what he's reading. Everyone around me knows I read a lot, so of course what better present for my birthday than an e-reader, right?
Wrong. I can't use that stuff. It puts me in the Distracted Mode, whereas when I do serious reading, I need to be in the Focused Mode. E-stuff automatically flips on the Distracted switch. You know - the stumbleupon links, the reddit cats, the endless outpouring of youtube video mud. Old school books do the opposite.
Also, meditation is pretty much the polar opposite of twitter-driven thinking.
Things like The Long Now Foundation, and the book called Anathem by Neal Stephenson, are direct reactions and backlashes to the twitterification of the modern mind.
It's a great read: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/creativity/
Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzpX0TLKS9Q
You have just lost. Denying yourself something is not a viable way to avoid it. (Don't think about elephants.)
There are only two solutions here. Either become someone else, change yourself so that you do not crave it any more, or displace it with something else.
If you want to be fit, or at least less flabby, the psychologically viable route is to tell yourself "I am the kind of person who does 50 pushups after getting out of bed in the morning." Or, "I am the kind of person who cooks his own low-carb meals." And then actually become that person.
If you don't want to stare at your phone in a public place, displace that behaviour with something else. "Instead of mindlessly browsing HN, I'll go talk to that cute chick at the end of the bar." Or even just "I will meditate, I will think about nothing but my breathing while waiting for that coffee." Though that might be even weirder than playing with your smartphone.
Anyways, that doesn't have any impact on other people doing the phone thing. It's a lot easier to not be nose-deep in your phone when other people are engaging with you. I find that most people settle into the "trance" based on whether other people are on their phones. The people who start the "trance" are often preoccupied or just plain rude.
Another facet to this is that we just don't know where this is going. Is it a step forwards or backwards. Hard to say that it looks like a good thing, but many of us didn't grow up with it - what will the story be like in 50 years? None of us has a clue, to be honest.
Anyways, I think what it comes down to is the "responsible use" cliche. There are so many constructive things you can do with technology. But here we all are, reading these comments which don't matter and are just random people screaming into the void. Shit.
That's one of the reasons why simply denying yourself won't work. Hence the trick.
It takes no willpower to do pushups for someone who does pushups. That's just who he is. Now, go be that person. Or, pretend you are. I'm sure you've seen some movie where the guy works out every morning? Ocean's Twelve, Fracture, whatever. Pretend to be him.
> It's a lot easier to not be nose-deep in your phone when other people are engaging with you.
You have no control over what other people do. But you have a nearly total control over what you do. Then go engage with someone nose-deep in their phone.
Here's the thing, whatever crazy app they have, it's not that interesting. In fact, the interaction with their phone brings so little value that you don't even need to chat them up, just looking at someone for three seconds will likely grab their attention.
But still, I am not too sure about all this. Obviously if you are with friends or loved ones you should keep the phone in your pocket, but I can't really say for sure that staring out a window while waiting for something is any better than checking Twitter.
It works because the more you avoid doing something, it gets easier to not do it again. If you force yourself not to use the phone for a while (even if by extreme means), it becomes easier to just say no at other times. That is, (it's worth repeating) if the problem is really addiction.
The advertising revenue model gives the media incentives to make lots of cheap, addictive information. They don't have an incentive to make quality information. So we get what we pay for.
I have vowed to spend less time consuming and more time doing. It's hard. I cave in often. But I recommend it.
Faceboook is very superficial interaction. I liken it to people shouting into a crowded room.
It's the fast-food equivalent of information. It's cheap, readily available, seemingly fulfilling, and creating lots of problems later down the road.
> I have vowed to spend less time consuming and more time doing.
Yup. I've taken up hobbies that require making and building stuff in the real world. It's quite amazing what you can accomplish that way.
https://twitter.com/edwarddroste/status/343418176454926337
"Maybe they're trying to catch your latest tweet?" was the reply that I wanted to send, but I didn't want to come off as cheeky to someone I revered.
Is the article not a distraction in itself? Sure enough, I came upon it this morning while I was browsing Twitter from my bed. The article itself is over 2000 words long; some of those words being a transcript from a 15 minute video. Now here I am commenting on it; taking up additional time from my day to formulate these points rather than attending to other things; reinforcing the dissonant relevance and irony of the points that the article is making. This article on distraction is a distraction in itself, and my viewership was predicated on finding it on a distracting service used from a distracting device. I found it and read it because I didn't have anything subjectively better to do at the time.
I'm OK with this.
There is an assumption that those things he laments are functional parts of today's and tomorrow's world. Maybe he's just really boring and people would rather watch a stream of bullshit tweets than discuss the weather with him... because he seems a bit of a malcontent or judgmental.
One person's distraction is another's attention and purpose. It's the outsider watching the 'distracted' trivializing the value of the benefits that the actor is receiving. How smug.
Context is everything. Opinions are nothing. Smartphones only fail at optimizing the bandwidth of purposeful living in so much as those information flows have not been built out.
If people are anxious about the next packet that comes to them, it might be that they feel unsatisfied with the company and activities before them. People aren't being distracted by the devices. They are hunting for higher purpose.
"Remember 2013 when we didn't have those lenses showing continuous news feed? When we didn't have 360° vision camera wired directly to our brain? Back then our attention span was sooo high"
Perhaps though the pendulum will swing back the other way if technology enables us to get too much instant, constant attention?
It stands to reason that the next generation or the one after will take it a step back from smart phones and everything instantly accessible simply because that's what their parents or grandparents thought was cool.
You're already seeing this - hipsters are entranced by the pastoral - city chickens/livestock, city farms, etc.
People underestimate the rate at which social behaviours change. I'm 27 and have younger cousins who have completely different social conventions and understandings in and out of school than what I experienced. Much of that is due to pervasiveness of the net and mobile. It's really bizarre.
> The winning quote: "[sic] surfing the Web is a procrastinator's dream. And people
> who see you doing it might even imagine you're working."
> - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5262229
Being able to recognize that you are being pulled away from your object of focus is the essential first step to reduce both the frequency and length of distractions. This is one of the goals of mindfulness meditation. Personally, I have found that the simple act of being able to catch myself in the midst of a distraction has improved my ability to focus.
After spending time practicing mindfulness, I have developed a wonderful skill of being able to "switch off" a racing mind and pull myself back down to the task at hand (or to simply pull myself out of an anxious state of mind and into a pleasant one). Importantly, practicing this during 15 minutes of daily meditation has enabled me to do this during any of the other ~1000 waking minutes of each day. The first time I noticed myself do this "automatically" outside of meditation, I was amazed that I was able to cultivate such a skill.
If you are interested in a good primer on mindfulness and how to actually go about meditation, I recommend Mindfulness in Plain English.[3] I recommend it whenever the subject comes up and I'm sure very few people read it, but it had enough of an effect on me that I would not want others to miss out.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness_of_breathing
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_monkey
[3] http://www.urbandharma.org/pdf/mindfulness_in_plain_english....
I'm the first to be pissed when people I'm hanging out with start fiddling with their phone but I'm also the first to fiddle with my phone if I have a spare minute waiting for something and there is nobody to offend.
When going out to dinner or a bar, I like the idea of everyone stacking their phones on the table. Everyone time someone can't resist touching their phone they have to shout a round of drinks.
The point about kids is an important one, though. Smartphone-parents do set a bad example for their kids.
Inventor of headphones: Nathaniel Baldwin.
Not only does walking spark creativity, but I've met a lot of new people this way.
[1] http://vowofnow.com [2] http://summonthewarrior.com [3] http://selfexperiments.com
Now imagine a mobile climate-controlled bubble with no noise but whatever you put on the radio or barring that, the constant background of rubber rolling across asphalt, and you get that same effect.
All in all there are different environment which helps thinking. Long walks put your body in long term effort, releases endorphins which helps inspiration, or at least relaxation. Isolation helps too, be it showers, cars, toilets ... whatever works.
There's really, really little traffic, and it's mostly long straight roads.
EDIT: The attention grab isn't because of traffic. I can ride an empty road in the middle of nowhere and the action of pedalling and looking down the road just grabs me.
EDIT: Although the points raised by others about cars providing a nice isolated comfortable environment makes a lot of sense as well. I guess it all depends.
Quick test: it's easier to concentrate for lengths of time listening to the radio when in the car than when walking.
The mistaken assumption is that a person must be "distracted" by one's phone, when that may not be the case at all. Since when was reading a magazine being "distracted", or reading a book being "distracted"? Why is playing a video game considered a distraction?
The facts presented in this article, and the conclusions drawn by this article are orthogonal. Yes, we're bad at multitasking, and yes, people out in the world are buried in their phones more and more, but the connection between multitasking and looking at my phone isn't there.
Besides, why do I have to be particularly good when I'm playing Angry Birds or reading HN? I don't care if I'm performing 10 IQ points or 40% worse than if I were checking my text messages in a park by myself.
The article makes another false assumption that we must always be at our best whenever we do something, which is also untrue. Sure, I could use my slow, deliberate mental system to make all my choices, and I'd be immensely slow but very accurate. Or, I could use my fast, intuitive mental system to make quick, if less accurate decisions that usually get me where I want to be, or in a position I want to be in. I don't need to use my whole brain to hold a conversation with a friend, and I don't need to use my whole brain to wait in line for fish and chips.
There is an anxiety towards seemingly doing nothing, and it's well founded. The author talks about anxiety like it's the enemy, when in reality it's a necessary motivator.