4 Ways To Cure Your Technological "Distraction Addiction"
You
don't have to purge technology from your life; Alex Soojung-Kim Pang argues
that you can get the Information You Need and the Communication You Want,
Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your
Soul. Here's how.
There’s
a Louis C.K. video that has been making the Internet rounds recently. As a guest on Conan,
the comedian begins by telling Conan O’Brien that he’s not getting his
daughters cell phones. “I think these things are toxic, especially for kids,”
C.K. says, “They don't look at people when they talk to them and they don't
build empathy.” C.K. goes on to talk about how our technologies distract us
from the true range of feelings: “You never feel completely sad or completely
happy. You just feel kind of satisfied with your product. And then you die.”
C.K.’s
technological musings sound like they could have been a riff on Alex
Soojung-Kim Pang’s new book The Distraction Addiction: Getting
the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your
Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul. Though Pang is more pro-tech than C.K.--he believes that our current
technologies can extend our natural abilities and increase our engagement with
the world--he’s concerned that we’re letting the Internet and its many
diversions control us, rather than the other way around. Like C.K., Pang
cautions against the “sybaritic pleasures” of distracting yourself with an
off-hand Tweet or a Facebook binge, because the highest levels of happiness
come from people who are “absorbed in difficult tasks."
Pang gives lots of useful tips to
those of us experiencing technological overload. Here are his four best
suggestions for living a high-tech, non-stress, super productive life. Pang
sums his methods up succinctly: “Connection is inevitable. Distraction is a
choice.”
It’s
easy with social media to forget that there are real, live people behind those
goofy Twitter avatars. “The fact that you’re interacting through technical intermediaries
should not distract you from their humanity,” Pang notes. To make sure you’re
reminded of the humans behind Twitter and Facebook’s cheerful blue design
schemes, Pang suggests “mindful” engagement with social media. Pang writes,
“Tweeting mindfully means knowing your intentions, knowing why you’re online
right now and asking yourself if you’re on for the right reasons … As a
practical matter, this means that if you read something and your first impulse
is to post a sarcastic comment or to blather on, stop and consider why this is
the case.”
While it might get you a bunch of
retweets to write something nasty about Lena Dunham’s Emmy dress, it’s better,
Pang would argue, to think about your motivations for doing so--and perhaps
picturing Dunham herself reading it--before hitting the tweet button.
Pang argues that true multitasking
has gotten a bum rap. Multitasking is not trying to watch a YouTube video while
also writing an email and trying to carry on a conversation with a coworker.
That is switch-tasking, as each of those activities has a different goal. True
multitasking is switching your mind between different parts of a process that
all have the same goal. For example: Dicing tomatoes, then sautéing onions,
then making a marinade, all with the goal of making a delicious meal. A more
tech-based analogy would be toggling between a Word doc, a PDF, and a Google
search while writing a researched-based essay or article. You’re multitasking,
but for a singular purpose.
It’s unrealistic to expect any
modern worker to avoid email entirely. But Pang has great suggestions for
cutting down on unnecessary email checking. He outlines an experiment where,
over the course of a few days, you make note of the number of times you check
mail, how many times you get a new mail alert, and where you check your mail.
You should also tabulate the amount of time you spend reading, answering and
writing emails, how many “truly important messages you get in a day” and “your
attention level and emotional state before and after you check mail.”
After you’ve collected all this
data, start with the way your email makes you feel. “Are there times of day
when it feels most satisfying to check your mail? If there’s a pattern, your
first step is clear. Try a few days where you check your mail only at those
times and no others.” Pang also suggests checking your email on one machine
only--say, your desktop rather than your iPhone or iPad. That way you’ll cut down
on dashed-off responses.
Pang acknowledges that this approach
might not work if you have a job that requires immediate responses to lots of
emails. But for many of us, there will be no blow back from not looking at our
phones while we’re online at the grocery store, or, more importantly, from not
looking at our phones while we’re with our friends or family.
One of the most upsetting terms
Pang’s book introduced me to is “email apnea.” Pang interviews a technology
consultant who discovered that most people hold their breath when they check
their email. Holding our breath, Pang explains, “reflects the anxiety many of
us feel as we check for new messages in our inbox, not knowing what new fires
we’ll have to put out or what problems we’ll have to solve.” It also shows how
our minds, bodies, and computers are very, very deeply entangled. Like a lot of
other problems Pang describes, email apnea can be improved by being mindful of
one’s breath, meditating, and taking breaks from your screens from time to
time. It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach, like a lot of the Internet detoxers tend to
preach. But it can go a lot further in improving your daily quality
of life.
By:
Jessica Grose
http://www.fastcocreate.com/3018102/4-ways-to-cure-your-technological-distraction-addiction?partner=newsletter
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