The Battle for Your Attention

In this episode we dive into the battle for your attention especially in relation to your smartphone. Have you ever seen how many pickups you have per day? Have you wondered about the endless scroll on social media? Why do we have so many notifications? We cover all of this and more in this episode to help you focus better and be more present everyday.

Phone Table Study
The Anxious Generation
Stolen Focus

Transcript

chris: 0:09

All right. So welcome into this week's episode. And in today's episode was prompted by a conversation I recently had with a couple of friends. And over a pint, it was not over a pint. Um, although that would have probably been a better conversation. Had it been a good reference though, I, from Europe loved, loved the pint, but we were talking about, um, Phone usage and how I had recently made some changes in my life with boundaries around phones, um, and technology in general and TV and things like that. And we started talking about, um, their phone usage and it was just amazing to see. The amount of time a that was spent on the phone and the amount of times the phone was being picked up That's one of my favorite stats That the iPhone keeps and then also and I know you read the book I actually haven't read the book, but I read kind of a an article The author was an interview by the author is Jonathan Jonathan height, right? called the anxious generation And this is something that is very near to me as I work with a ton of high school and college aged people. And it is hard to ignore, um, what is going on. That would be an understatement. And so it's definitely something I've looked into because to me it's the, I'm like, I don't know. I can't overlook it because it's affecting your brain. And I work with people's brains inherently. And I think, you know, one of the things I try to teach people how to do is to focus and eliminate distractions and this and that, and yet every stage of their life, there's this device that is set up to capture attention at levels. We've never seen before. And it was just something I was talking about with some friends and, and, and they were closer to my age, right? In their late mid to late twenties. And they had, Oh God, I can't remember the number. I want to remember hundreds of pickups per day

2:28

off the look at mine

chris: 2:29

and the screen time ranging from about six to eight hours, which is just insane. And that's like, not even the part that was insane was that I'm like, Oh, that's normal. Now it wasn't like, Oh, that's a problem. But also at the same time, I'm like, that's a problem. And so anyway, I just kind of wanted to, I know you had just read the book and have some thoughts on it. And I obviously do as well, but to open up, um, the discussion on what do we do? I like, I like the question that he asked. He's like, we had, we didn't know what we were doing, giving teenagers cell phones and kids cell phones. But he's like now it's been long enough. We have data. He's like now we do and we need to change things about it Um, and I really like that kind of framework of the discussion.

3:18

Yeah, I was just looking at my my pickups It looks like I average about 70, which is, which is like in the grand scheme of things, nothing. Well, you know, it's kind of funny. Most of the reason I have to pick up my phone every day is actually, if you look at it during my work days is when it's the highest, usually around a hundred. On days I'm not working, it's like less than 50 because at work, I have to pick up my phone to like sign prescriptions or look at chart, like there's a ton of different things that I can do. We have to use two factor for a lot of stuff which drives me crazy because then I have to have my phone with me. Yes um, but that's Yeah, it's kind of interesting You know one other thing I realized is sometimes they'll count screen time for When i'm like riding my bike or using the bike computer things like that. Yeah, I shouldn't count this for spotify. Yeah. Yeah, so um, so one thing This is kind of unrelated but sort of related one thing that i've loved about having little kids is that Is there like a automatic feedback loop on how often you use your phone? Because if you pull your phone out, they will immediately either start harassing you about it, try to grab it. Talk to you about it. Want to see a picture. And it's so funny when we're with other people who aren't with their kids a lot, they'll pull out their phone subconsciously, start looking at it. And Luca goes over, show me picture, show me picture. So whatever. And then they're stuck showing him pictures for an hour. And I love that because it's like this instantaneous feedback that you brought your phone out and you weren't paying attention. And so it's actually been awesome because I don't even bring my phone most places anymore. Because of that, because I don't even want to have it be something that's a part of our like interactions. And I do see, it's funny, a lot of parents, especially as the kids get past 2 or 3 once they turn 4 or 5 and they can play pretty independently at playgrounds. What do I see? 90 percent of people at the playground that aren't the kids doing. Let me just sit on the bench with their phone. Yeah, it's so interesting. It's so just that's like the thing to do which I think highlights two facts one How just addicting easy how that loop just becomes so subconsciously created, but I think too it shows How bad we are just being still and not having anything to do or just being aware of what's going on Or just being present. It's like we always have to be doing something. Yeah, and the phone I mean, I think it's like Plays into that part of how fast paced our culture has gotten in the, it's just the easiest, most accessible thing that we've ever had to be able to fill that, that space. Yeah.

chris: 6:02

Kyle. There's a couple of great points in there. I love the, because it's true. I've obviously been, he's my nephew, um, and I've had the. Oh crap, I pulled out my phone No No, i'm not using it and I hide it and act like I wasn't but you know that that for you Probably makes you super aware But if you don't have that it is hard to become aware of it and then yes I mean, it's it's this is one of the things that I It does drive It really does actually bother me about society Is how the default is to not look around and engage with other people around you Because that's a little bit part of my personality I really enjoy doing that in social contexts and I almost feel like i'm bothering people if I want to have a conversation With them or something else.

6:52

I think that's part of when you read anxious generation and he has all these charts about Mental health things. I think that's a huge part of it is what's the default at school now? Probably. I don't know. I haven't been in a while, but I can

chris: 7:03

tell you

7:04

the default is probably anytime these kids are alone, they're pulling out their phone. Whereas when we were kids, there were no cell phones. So it's like, what do you do at lunch? Or what do you do at recess? It's like, there aren't people just looking at their phone, sitting on a bench. You

chris: 7:16

interact. It was, it was weird to be sitting by yourself at a, on a bench or a table, but now it would be normalized because you have your phone to distract you. Um, you know, what's interesting, the other part is it's not just when they're alone, it's when they're in groups, right? They still use the phone as a, like, means to communicate, like, to engage with each other. And that's the part I am a little bit fascinated by, of like, what if we took away everyone's phone? And how would that change how you guys interact with each other?

Matt: 7:53

Yeah, the, there's a huge part of the interaction is like, oh, did you see? This thing I show you this thing we talked about for a minute. Oh, did you see this thing? I show you that thing we talked about for a minute back and forth Volleying things that you've seen rather than ideas or questions or thoughts Yeah that originate in your own mind or things you've been thinking about It's someone else's content that you then use as the the conversation starter so

chris: 8:21

I have so many thoughts i'm gonna like I'm, not we're not gonna get to all of them because I have so many of them You But one of the ones that I was thinking about in my own life, kind of what you were talking about is I've actually, I've gone through stages where I was really interacting with a lot of online content and my mind would get so murky. I don't know how else to describe it. We're like, I couldn't figure out what I was actually thinking because there was so many different narratives in my head. And it was, it was difficult. And like being able to actually the less I consume. And this is where reading has been really, I've kind of made the decision of like, if I want to learn, I'm going to read because it's a coherent, cohesive entity that you can like get, you can learn something from, you can, it stimulates thoughts that I can take notes or write about or, or, or whatever. Um, but when it's all of these like choppy bits and pieces of information, it really kind of messes with my mind a little bit. Um, Very, there's very, actually as much intake as there is, there's very little creativity and output that comes from that form of,

9:41

um, of intake, of information. That'll be interesting. I was reading an article about AP lit classes in college, English classes, in the books they choose to read, and how many of the books and the teachers were saying they probably average about half as many books and a lot more of what they do is excerpts or short stories and. I think that is an interesting point and all of this is the content, is it going to shift to all of these really short kind of surface level things or are you going to, because a book is really a deep dive into a singular topic usually, but it takes a lot of patience and persistence and something that kills me at my job is when people come in, in another book if you're interested in this, I should write this down so I remember to put the link to it. Um, but stolen focus by Johan Hari is probably the other book that I would reference for this topic. It's more on the phones in the same idea, but people will come into my office and talk about their job and say, I can't focus. And the first thing I want to ask them is what's going on with your phone or what's going on with your desktop as you're trying to do your job, you know, as it's sitting right next to you, you're constantly looking at it. It's this whole thing of we have basically trained ourself to not be able to focus. And some of that is a lot, not some, a lot of that is environmental in terms of the way that things used to be in terms of how fast you could access information, different topics, different levels of entertainment. This is one of your things. You say the brain is inherently lazy. It's always going to default. The problem is people have figured out how to utilize that laziness to default it to the thing that was most stimulating for five seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds repeatedly versus tasks that are more attention focused, are inherently less dopamine producing, less addictive, less satisfying. Initially generally long term long term more satisfying, but it's hard to push through that initial five, 10, 15, 20 minutes. To get to 30 minutes of reading or finishing a task that you have to do 30 minutes over five days You know 30 minutes each day over five days to get that end product that stimulates that that response So I see so I if I could tell you the number of people that come in to me that are Adults that want ADHD evaluations, you would be blown away And a recent study just came out that I think ADHD in adults has gone from three or 4 percent to 14 or 15, you know, one in seven people that are adults say they've ADHD or been diagnosed it is. And I don't like to exaggerate things. I would say it is a borderline crisis of attention. Just every single conversation I'm having most days is about anxiety. Inattention concentration sleep pretty much every single conversation and those all trace back Probably pretty fundamentally to these things. We're talking.

chris: 13:03

Yeah. Yeah our our brain I can Confidently say our brain was not designed to be In the environment that we have put it in. Um, I would say just one thing for anyone listening to this, like a very, cause this is a, a lot of this is going to be theoretical and it's fun to talk about, but the most practical thing that I've done in my own life, and I know some other people talk about this as well, that you can do to get rid of 90 percent of this problem is to turn off all notifications, except for. Individual text messages. I mean it that is the biggest game changer. I can't believe it When I am sitting next to someone Who their phone keeps lighting up every five seconds from like and it's like some ran Yeah, I mean the instagram obviously is one of them, but it's like random apps that are like It is my and i'm like that the fact that that just Pulled your mind from the conversation we're having I get it irritated by it for one But two it's like it pulls their mind there. They look at it It it just there's never gonna be a flow state of anything with that right

14:15

on one of my favorite studies is they did Conversation quality phone on the table face up phone on the table face down. Uh huh phone out of sight. It's a great study I don't know if I could find it. So I probably won't be able to link it But you could probably Google search and find it eventually. But the important thing to realize is actually conversation quality was equally affected phone up first phone down the phone being on the table because what's going on. You're going to glance at it or you're going to think it buzzed or you're going to think X, Y, Z. So as long as you can see it, and that's one of the main rules that I use. And so that's nice about having kids. Is I don't even keep in my pockets out. I put it in the closet, usually I get home from work or something, somewhere where it's very hard to access because that's how poor we are at impulse controls, even if it's face down, but within sight, it's still going to distract you from the thing you're trying to do. And the problem is, and I think it was Brad Stolberg that talked about some trying to remember, but in one of their books, the problem with distraction is once you are distracted, even if it's just a glance and you don't actually do anything. The time it takes to refocus and get back into the the states you were in Is like 30 seconds a minute for every time you're distracted. Yeah,

chris: 15:35

I heard various numbers on that. But yeah, it's it's significant um, and that was one of the you know, I kind of For those of you that read my time article That was one of the reasons I did it is I felt like it was a distraction Because as soon as I would look at the time usually on my phone It would pull me out of whatever thinking state or flow state or just listening state that I was in Because now i'm my mind goes calculating, you know, if i'm in a session for example, like 13 minutes I need to wrap this up in this amount and it's like I completely lose The train of thought that I was on uh, and it pulls me out just the act of there might not even have been a notification of just Oh, let me pull my phone out real quick to just check the time You Immediately throws me out of that.

16:21

You know a way to fix that So after you brought up that The I don't know what you end up doing with the clock on your phone I changed mine to sanskrit or whatever. It's it's some language. I can't read so I can't tell what time it is on my home screen anymore. It's very free You don't use your phone to check the time anymore Yeah,

chris: 16:40

and and so there's there's definitely things that I at least in our society. I have been I am extreme on In terms of this, but I would say that the most reasonable thing you can do like I said is the notification thing Just get rid of everything except for mute all your group texts You know all that stuff if someone's trying to get in touch with you in the individual texts I think that's fine for to go through. Yeah, I mean Yeah

17:01

I use do not to serve basically. Yeah. And that's the only enforcement I mean, unless it's, I have Shelby, that's my only person that comes, you can set it, right? You can set certain apps, people. I just, I just set it for Shelby basically. Cause that's all I care about.

chris: 17:18

Dude, I'm sorry. This is crazy. I was having a conversation with one of the coaches I work with yesterday and we got in cause we traveled together this weekend for a tournament. We got in at 2 AM and all we were talking about was, man, we can't wait for this night of sleep that we get. And so I asked him about, I was like, how'd you sleep? He goes, Oh, at 4 AM someone texted me. And I was like, What do you mean like that he's like it woke me up i'm like you don't put your phone on do not disturb He's like no. I I don't you know, I I don't do that and i'm like well Like that was it was the most mind boggling He's like well, what if my kids text me or something and I said I told him I was like You know, you can set that right and i'm like we had been up for almost 24 hours Completely exhausted. And he got two hours of sleep. I'm like, how would I

18:12

like because of it? Someone texted him at 4 a. m Yeah, I think I think the the primary issue is Initially, the primary issue was I don't think people realize how powerful it was an anxious generation He does talk about how it does seem like now people realize like oh, okay This is this is something that is going to be an issue something. We need to be very aware of Smart about, I think the hard part is, is it's so addictive that the subconscious loop is so strong that most people, unless you are always thinking about it and setting very strong boundaries of how you avoid it. It just happens. And that's really the, the dangerous part of, of this type of thing, especially social media. Like I am a very strong willed person, but I'm also a very addicted personality. I only have social media on my phone for 10 minutes once a week, usually on Sunday afternoon when I'm just like laying on the couch, watching red zone for a second, because if it's on the phone, I will check it. And that's, and someone like me, who's a pretty disciplined person, pretty successful, like, So you can imagine, and that's like, I'm clearly thinking about these things. So you can imagine for someone who's not thinking about these things, not aware of these things, it's just, can be all, you know, overwhelming consuming type of thing and just be completely unaware of it. Right. So

chris: 19:39

I think I'm going to push back a little bit on your point of everyone's aware of it. No,

19:45

I didn't say everyone, or maybe not. I think people are, I think this conversation though, Is being had more.

chris: 19:52

Yeah. I would agree with that, but I was also surprised, like the thing that stimulated this topic in general was having a conversation with two people that I thought would have been a little bit more understanding and they were like, they told me you need to talk about this because, um, there's people don't understand how much their brain is being hijacked by these things. Right. Um, and you're right. Cause it is so subconscious. One of the things that I've started talking about in my, in my business and my work, like almost like a slogan is I don't think there's a more important time in human history to train your mind than right now, because of, I like to say, your, your mind is always being trained, regardless of whether you're intentionally training it or not. Um, and so we're constantly, we're all training our mind to be, Distracted and short attention span, et cetera, et cetera. Um, through these things. And so that's where the, the intentionality through my work is becomes almost more important.

21:06

My release. That's what I tell people. My favorite thing right now is if someone says they have concentration issues and I always say, well, before you get evaluated for ADHD, even if you have it, I would still recommend you do these things because if you're really interested and you're having a concentration problem, these strategies can probably set you up to still be successful. Even with these struggles and I think right now as of right now I've had zero people ever do the actual so there's an ADHD cognitive behavioral therapy workbook it's basically a concentration workbook and It's just funny to me Because there's such an issue like you're talking about and how important is to train your mind and the people I struggle with it most that come into my office have Generally speaking no desire to actually do any Specific training to help improve it, right And that's the culture around the concentration issues. That's actually most concerning to me. It's like it somehow has become an external, a completely external locus of control thing where, where somehow, like if you have a concentration issue, And you have ADHD. That means you just, there's nothing you can do. And I'm like, how did that become like the way we discuss this?

chris: 22:27

Maybe this is where we have a little bit of overlap because I obviously see some people who either have been diagnosed or at least claim that they have it. Right. That's. Lots of people call almost, I wish I had a, uh, I should start taking a survey. Do you think you have ADHD? I w I would say nine, nine out of 10 people would say yes, that I work with. Um,

22:49

but that goes back to the environment thing, right? Of like. People say Sorry, I had to kill a mosquito Speaking of distraction, dude, that's that's my thing little things like that. Speaking of people that think they have ADHD But

chris: 23:10

what

23:11

were we talking

chris: 23:12

about the external locus of control with ADHD? This is this is amazing I love this the fact that you just this is this is exactly our point A little distraction and you can't this is you can't get your train of thought

23:23

back. It's no it's a thing especially ask shelby how well I like I am, definitely I have a problem. So

chris: 23:31

I let me let me go because while you yeah, I have no idea why because can't

23:34

remember

chris: 23:36

it is It is such a the adhd thing and I feel for people who legitimately have it. Um for one, but it's It is it has become very a very victim mentality of oh, I can't focus because i've aged You

23:51

It's a, and it's kind of like how when we were kids, OCPD, right? Everyone said, Oh, I have OCD. It's kind of like that's become the new OCPD in a way of like, everyone thought, Oh, if I'm a little perfectionistic type, a neurotic, and they would use the word OCD, that's kind of how ADHD has become used colloquially and our language of, Oh, if I can't focus the way I want to focus, Then I have ADHD. And it's like, do you see this environment you're in? The reason you can't focus is because you have a laptop open. You have your phone face up 8, 000 notifications, 8, 000 notifications. You don't really want to do the tasks you're doing. And you've never, you've never trained your mind. Doesn't even know how to have deep focus. So it's not for most of the people I see when I talk to them, I'm like this. And the problem is, and I tell patients, I straight up tell patients this. If you want in 2024, if you want a diagnosis of ADHD. 99 percent of people can go get that diagnosis if they want to. I, and I proved me wrong. Like I, I truly believe that. And the reason for that is not because. Every therapist or psychologist would diagnose them. It's because if you are willing to go to enough psychologists, someone not do their job or just take your money, give you the diagnosis. And that's the issue is yeah. There's a ton of good clinical psychologists that help tease out like, no, you just have the worst work environment ever, or you have uncontrolled anxiety. That's another thing that comes up where your sleep routine is absolutely heinous. Right. There's lots of things that contribute to inattention. But the problem is there's enough people, the sat, the market is so saturated. There's all these online things where the people really don't care. They're just there. Hey, you pay me. I give you this evaluation. You're going, it's half the time. It's a self evaluation, which is ridiculous. And all you, if you ever look at the diagnostic, you guys should go look at the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. Go ask one of your friends, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and see if they meet it. I guarantee you nine out of 10 of your friends will meet it. And that's just the issue, right? It's like. And then what's our, but what's our current treatment paradigm? It's stimulants, not any kind of brain thing like you're talking about. Not any kind of therapy, not any kind of CBT with a workbook, not any kind of group therapy type of thing. It's just, Yeah, medication external locus of control. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a thing. Yeah.

chris: 26:25

Yeah. And this is the way I try to frame it for people with legitimate or at least with the diagnosis. I say, okay, that's going to make it an uphill battle compared to other people that don't have that. But it's still like you said all of the things still help will help all of these non medication Exercises will help and it's yes. It's just going to be a little bit more difficult It's like the way I think about it is like someone who is a little bit genetically predisposed Has a genetic predisposition for like being a little bit overweight, right? You wouldn't just say oh Tough, you know, you're you're just gonna be overweight You It's like, no, yeah, you have some genetics that are going to make it a little bit tough for you. You know, you're gonna have to be really intentional with your nutrition. You can be really intentional with your exercise. Can you still be healthy and fit? Of course. And it's a little bit more difficult than someone who doesn't have that. And that's kind of the way I, I, at least I try to get them to understand that, like, you, you know, to get out of that victim mentality, because that is what everyone says is the first thing is I can't focus. Oh, I have ADHD and it's like a, it's like a helpless response. And yeah, so I,

27:41

um, yes. Well, I think this whole thing to bring this back, the, the real issue Almost goes back to our conversation a couple of weeks ago about how jam packed everyone's life is. It's like, we have this environment that sets us up to be distracted. And then on top of that, we have this, fast paced culture. And then on top of that, we try to jam everything into that and think we're limitless. It's like, what exactly do you expect to happen in that thing? It's like part of the reason everyone thinks they have concentration issues in ADHD is because they're trying to get an unreasonable amount of stuff done. In an unreasonable way all the time with no rest. And it's like, that's, but that's somehow become people's default of how we should function as human beings. So it's, it's a great point to not to acknowledge that it's so just. sideways and in a lot of ways. And there's like so many factors that play into that. And that's the hard thing in primary care is like, what am I going to do? How about three hour discussion with them about all these different things? It's like, no, what ends up happening is they go see a clinical psychologist, they get the diagnosis, and then we're back to this discussion. And it's like, well, do you want to do this? Do you want to start a medication? It's like, I a medication. I mean, I, like I said, a hundred out of a hundred times so far, I think I maybe have one person by the workbook, but I don't even think they did it. So, you know, that's like, that's just the reality of the culture we're into around concentration with it, which I think feeds into it even more a little bit.

chris: 29:15

Yeah. It's what everyone else is doing.

29:17

So. It's uh, it's yeah, I think one counter argument. I know you have to go right now actually Um, so maybe not but one thing just to think about is a counter thing to think about because I don't like to be super one sided And a lot of times this discussion gets super one sided is hey, it's not all about the phones the phones are a symptom and reflect a lot of the Inherent tendencies of humans to be distracted when put into these environments, but it really reflects You Like you were saying how our biology is not built to function in that way. The phone just reflects that back to us like a mirror, but it's also the whole environment of all the things I just said of how we work. How our culture sets up are the expectations of how Limitless we should be how high functioning we should be like all these things play play into. Yeah

chris: 30:10

I I want to I do want to say something on that because there was a book I was reading on What monks medieval monks can teach us about distraction?

30:19

It's it's

chris: 30:22

really a dry book But The thing that I, the, so to save yourself some pain, um, what, what his main point is kind of what you just said is it's not the fact that this is the first time humans have ever felt distracted monks, their whole, one of their main goals was to eliminate distraction and to practice it and they did it through meditations and prayers and things like that. And so this is something humans have been dealing with for thousands of years. It's just now, everything is amplified because of The technology the algorithms we've actually gotten too smart We understand the chemistry of our brain now and people are hijacking it people are um people literally the companies literally hire Psychologists to design these things to capture your attention and take advantage of our archaic hardware um, that's what's important that If if there's actually that was the thing I wanted to get to it took me a while to get there But that was something I wanted people to If you don't understand that, that is what is happening to us. And I want to just like get that out there for people that maybe aren't in the psychological world at all, or that's a multi billion

31:44

dollar industry. Right. What did Twitter just sell for? What did, yeah, that'd just like. Is like multi multi billion dollar industry is capturing attention.

chris: 31:51

They are That is the goal and it is just being I just want everyone to become aware of it I I was talking the conversation I was talking about at the beginning of this that kind of stimulated this I said that's one of my missions right now is to just make people aware of that. That's a good

32:11

way to wrap

chris: 32:12

It's hard. It's hard to change. It is like you said there has to be really strong boundaries around it Um, there's definitely little things you can do that can help But it starts with that, that piece.

32:23

Yeah. Just realizing someone's trying to make a profit off your eyeballs. Yeah. Right. And your brain, where your eyeballs go, your attention, your attention. If you don't realize that every time you open up your phone, which how the notifications are even set up on a variable reward schedule, right? So you don't know when you're going to get one, like all these different aspects, and we can come back to this in a future episode of like. The strategies that are very interesting to talk about, about like how slot machines work and how addiction works and how dopamine works and how that gets amplified and they use all of that. And we can probably come back and just do a fun episode on all of those things because they're really interesting to study. Yeah, but that's what they use is they use all those psychological swap machine

chris: 33:04

thing. Is yeah, they've literally taken the slot machine and put it into

33:11

their app. I talked about that. So I read So instagram purposely, you know that little spinny thing at the top. They purposely let that sit there for a second It's not because it's actually loading so that sits there for a second to to cause you to have an anticipation So that you want like you're like, oh what's coming? It's not because it's actually taking any time It's yeah, which is crazy to me and the endless scroll. That's another one. So the endless scroll was developed You There's lots of good stuff in these in these two books. We were talking about not Chris's book. Don't read Just just get the one point. Yeah Cool. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to chat. We'll probably come back. We should write that down That'd be a fun episode to just do some of the psychological principles of attention in the future Anything else to add before you wrap up? I'm in all good. Cool. Alright, see you guys next time