Original subtitles

a few years ago

i began to observe

something in my own behavior

that made me a bit

uncomfortable

and that was that from the moment that i

woke up to the morning the to the end of

the day my life was a series of screens

i started the day with the thing that

woke me up first thing in the morning my

phone and so i sat there in bed watching

various cooking videos on instagram and

bouncing around between a bunch of

different applications but then

it was time to get out of bed and cook

breakfast and so the thing that i

focused then on in addition to the

omelette in the pan was the ipad that

was right next to the oven and then it

was time to do some work and so i went

to a different screen which was attached

to another screen itself all the while

this little

devil on my wrist was tapping and

beeping and blooping and distracting me

as i was trying to get important stuff

done

but there was one

particular offender out of all of these

different devices

that i wasted more time on than anything

else

that was this dastardly thing my phone i

could spend hours on this thing every

single day and so i decided to

essentially for all intents and purposes

get rid of the thing for a month as an

experiment i thought i'm going to live

on this thing for just 30 minutes every

single day at a maximum and so this is

the amount of time i have for maps this

is the amount of time to call my mother

this is the amount of time that i have

for everything that i could possibly

want to do to listen to music to listen

to podcasts and i observed what happened

during this time

it took about a week

to adjust downward into a new lower

level of stimulation but once i did

i noticed that three

curious things

began to happen

first my attention span grew

it was like i could focus on things not

effortlessly but with much more ease

than i could before this experiment

started

in addition to this though as i was

going about the world and especially

when my mind wandered a bit i had more

ideas

that my mind arrived at and on top of

this i had more plans and thoughts about

the future getting rid of one simple

device led to these three effects

why

noticing this a few years back led me on

this

long journey to get to the bottom of

what it takes to focus

in a world of distraction i poured over

hundreds of research papers from front

to back my office i don't know if you've

ever watched one of those crime shows

where somebody's solving a murder and so

they have this big bristol board and

their string attached to papers attached

to memos attached to newspaper clippers

this is like what the state of my office

was i flew out to meet experts around

the world who study focus i conducted

more experiments on myself until the

point i had 25 000 words of research

notes about why this is the case

how does technology influence our

attention and our ability to focus

i want to start

with the attention spans that we have

this is how we pay attention to the

world around us and how much control we

have over our focus

the research around this particular area

is fascinating it turns out that when we

two work in front of a computer

especially when our phone is nearby we

focus on one thing for just 40 seconds

before we switch to doing something else

and when we have things like slack open

as we're doing some work

this lowers to 35

seconds

but the reason that this is the case is

not what we might think after looking at

the research we think the problem

is that our brains are distracted

but after looking at the research this

is what i've come to know as a symptom

for the deeper problem which runs much

more deeply it's the root cause of this

distraction it's not that we're

distracted it's that our brains are over

stimulated

it's that we crave

distraction in the first place our

brains love these tiny little nuggets of

information and social media and email

and these things that we do over the

course of the day there's even a

mechanism in our mind called the novelty

bias

by which our mind rewards us with a hit

of dopamine one of those those wonderful

chem pleasure chemicals the same one

that we get when we uh eat and order a

whole

medium pizza from domino's that you know

the same one that we get when we make

love we get that same stimulation when

we check facebook we get this dopamine

coursing through our mind and so we not

only crave distraction but our mind

rewards us for seeking out and finding

distraction in the first place

so this is the state of our minds today

we're at this hyper-stimulated state

where we bounce around between these

bunch of different objects of attention

that are very very stimulating for our

mind and so i thought okay if the phone

had this impact on my attention span

what if i lowered how stimulated i was

even more still

and so

i you know this feeling that we

experience when we go from being in a

state of high

stimulation into a state of low

stimulation it has a name

that name is called boredom

you know this restlessness that we feel

when we have this super busy week and

then we're lying on the couch on a

sunday afternoon thinking all right what

am i doing now

so i challenged i put out a call to the

readers of my website and i asked them

what is the most

boring thing that you can think of doing

i'm going to make myself bored for an

hour a day for a month and so i did some

stuff that i still

i'm upset about from my readers to this

day day one i read the itunes terms and

conditions for one hour

it's actually shorter and more readable

than you might think day four i waited

on hold with air canada's baggage claims

department it's very easy

this is the trick if you want to make

yourself bored don't call the

reservations department call the baggage

claim people because you're gonna wait

for hours if you ever get through it all

day 19 i counted all the zeros that i

could in the first 10 000 digits of pi

day 24 i watched the

clock tick

tick

for one hour

and 27

other activities this month

geez

i still think back but curiously

i noticed the exact

same effects

as i did during the smartphone

experiment

it took about a week for my mind to

adjust downward into a newer lower level

of stimulation and this maps curiously

on top of research that shows that it

takes our mind about eight days to fully

calm down and rest like when we're on

vacation as an example our vacations

need to be longer than they are today

but i also noticed that my attention

span expanded

i was able to focus even more

effortlessly because

i wasn't surrounded by fewer

distractions but my mind was so much

less stimulated that it did not seek the

distraction in the first place

but the fun part were these ideas and

plans that struck me that didn't before

and the reason that this is the case is

because my mind had a chance to wander

more often

there's a great quote that i love that

you might be familiar with from j.r.r

tolkien where he says that not all those

who wander are lost

and the exact same thing is true it

turns out with regard to our focus with

regard to our attention if you think

back

to when your best most brilliant ideas

strike you you're rarely focused on

something

maybe

this morning you were taking a shower

or maybe some morning in the past and

then your mind had a chance to

connect several of the constellations of

ideas that were swirling around in your

mind to create an idea that would never

have materialized otherwise if you were

focused

on something else

on your phone

for example

this is a mode especially when we do

this deliberately when we deliberately

let our mind wander i call this mode

scatter focus

and the research shows that it lets our

mind come up with ideas it lets our mind

plan because of where our mind wanders

to

this is fascinating

it turns out that when we just let our

attention rest it goes to three main

places we think about the past

we think about the present and we think

about the future but we think about the

past less than we might think only about

12

of the time and often the time we're

recalling ideas

in these thought-wandering episodes

but the present which is a much more

productive place to wander

we want her to think about the present

28 of the time

and so this is you know it's something

as simple as you're typing up an email

and you can't find a way to phrase

something because it's very delicate

maybe it's political you go and walk to

another room you go to another room of

the house of the office the solution

hits you because your mind had a chance

to approach it and prod at that problem

from different directions

but here's the thing

our minds wander to think about the

future more than the past and the

present

combined whenever our mind is wandering

we think about the future 48

of the time this is why when we're

taking a shower we plan out our entire

day

even though it hasn't started yet

right this is called our mind's

prospective bias and it occurs when our

mind wanders

if you're good with math or maths i

should say

not in canada anymore these numbers

don't add up to 100s because the rest of

the time our mind is dull it's blank or

it doesn't have

an idea inside of it that is rooted in

time but whatever it is for you that

lets your mind wander something that's

simple something that doesn't consume

your full attention mine happens to be

something that is not necessarily

stereotypic of

my age and gender demographic but i love

to knit

knitting is one of my favorite hobbies i

knit in planes i knit on trains i knit

in hotel rooms i was knitting in the

hotel room before this event today

because it helps calm you down it helps

settle your nerves and i come up with so

many ideas when i knit i have a notepad

next to me

but whatever it is for you it might be

taking that extra long shower it might

be taking a bath upgrading your shower

to a bath so you can soak not just with

your body but with your ideas as well

it could be simple if you're at work

walking from one room to another in the

office

very simple

change but if you don't use your phone

during that walk

your mind will go to the meeting that

you're about to attend it'll go to the

call that you were just on it'll wander

to the ideas that are circulating and

it'll make you more creative in this way

it could be something as simple as

waiting in line

and just

i don't know waiting in line it could be

getting a massage you know whatever it

is that lets your mind

well i love this picture so much

whatever you love doing ask here's a pro

tip ask your masseuse to let you have a

notepad in the session because ideas

always come to you and you're always

incubating things and so capture them so

you can act upon them later

but i think

after doing this deep dive into the

research

we need to make two

fundamental shifts with regard to how we

think about our attention

we think that we need to fit more in you

know there's all this talk about

hustling

i'm an anti-hustler

i'm one of the laziest people you'll

ever meet and i think that's what gives

me so many ideas to talk and write about

we don't need to fit more in we're doing

enough we're doing too much we're doing

so much that our mind never wanders

anymore it's sad this is when our best

ideas and plans come to us we need more

space

if you look at what

allows traffic to move

down a highway

what allows it to move forward isn't how

fast cars are moving as you might expect

it's how much space exists between

the cars

that allows traffic to move forward

our work and our life are the same way

the second shift

we like to think of distraction as the

enemy of focus

it is not

it is a symptom of why

we find it difficult to focus which is

the fact that our mind is over

stimulated

i have a challenge for you

it's a two-week challenge but it's a

challenge to make your mind a bit less

stimulated and simply notice

what happens to your attention how many

ideas do you get how does your focus

change how many plans do you make so for

two weeks make your mind less stimulated

there are so many great features on

phones on devices that'll let us

eliminate

eliminate a lot of the time we waste on

our devices use those features not only

to become aware of how you spend your

time but how you can spend less so you

have more ideas

have a disconnection ritual every

evening one of my favorite daily rituals

i disconnect from the internet

completely from 8 pm to 8 a.m

my fiance and i we have a weekly

disconnection ritual a technology

sabbath every sunday so we can

disconnect from the digital world and

reconnect with

the physical world the real actual world

rediscover board you don't have to do it

for an hour please don't call air canada

it's just a world of help but rediscover

boredom just for a few minutes lay on

the couch and where does your mind go

and scatter your attention

you'll find some remarkably

fruitful things

in that

attentional zone

if there's one thing

that i have found to be true after doing

this deep dive into this world on how we

focus

it's that the state of our attention is

what determines the state of our lives

if we're distracted in each moment those

moments of distraction and over

stimulation build up and accumulate to

create a life that feels more distracted

and overwhelming like we don't have a

clear direction

but

when we become less stimulated when we

make our mind more calm

we get the benefits of added

productivity and focus and ideas and

creativity but we also live a better

life because of it

thank you so much

you