159: The Struggle to Focus in the Age of Distraction

What happens when our devices, originally meant to enhance our productivity, start chipping away at our ability to focus? Overwhelmed by a ceaseless flood of information, we find ourselves helplessly trailing from one bright, shiny prospect to another. In this week's episode, hosts Lori Vajda and Nola Boea explore this modern paradox in our new segment, Beyond the Cover: Books for Personal and Professional Growth. Our journey begins with Johann Hari's insightful book, "Stolen Focus", that peels back the layers of our growing struggle with concentration in this digital age.

Thanks for listening! Let’s stay connected!

We love hearing your feedback! Leave or speak your message here

If you haven’t already, please connect with us on Facebook!

Business success strategies are in the works. Come have a listen!

By the end of this episode, you'll learn: 

• How big and fast the mountain of information at our fingertips has grown. 
• How technology has changed the way our brains prefer to take in information.
• The one digital invention that keeps us scrolling and scrolling and scrolling....
• How predictive technology can anticipate your next move.
• The affect technology is having on digitally native children.
• Ways to climb out of the rabbit hole and take control of your tech-induced habits.

Key points Lori and Nola are sharing in this episode:

 4:48 Surprising revelations that made Lori's jaw drop.

14:22 The Multi-Tasking Myth

22:48 The addictive side effect of this one tech improvement

28:03 Pavlovian psychology applies to social media

30:17 How tech affects children

35:13 Solutions to Managing Technology Addiction and Improving Focus

44:44 "Stolen Focus" Recommendation 

Resources

Plan, Launch, Grow My Business TOOLKIT - 20 bundled tip-sheets, templates, worksheets, guides and checklists to get you started on your entrepreneurial journey.

Sign up  for “News You Can Use” at Sticky Brand Lab

Subscribe to Lori and Nola's show  on Apple Podcasts,  Audible, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

ConvertKit: Our #1 Favorite Email Marketing Platform   (This is an affiliate link)

Podcast Transcript

Transcript

[00:00:00] Lori: Technology is like having the biggest candy store in the world at your disposal. It's great for connecting with people, doing research and writing, learning, having fun, and organizing your time, tasks, and life. Like all great candy stores, though, there's also a downside. In the case of technology, that adverse effect manifests in the form of our ability, or rather our inability, to focus.

Noticing my own concentration shrinking and at the same time recognizing an increase in my constant switching from device to device and tab to tab, I wondered if other people were having a similar experience. What I discovered blew my mind. Stay tuned friend, because as you're about to hear in this episode, the topic as well as solutions are far more multifaceted and complex than simply implementing tech-free days.

Welcome to Sticky Brand Lab, where we bridge the gap between knowledge and action by providing you with helpful information, tips, and tools from entrepreneurs and other experts, so you can quickly and easily jumpstart your side business. We're your hosts. I'm Lori Vida, and this is my co-host, Nola Boye.

Hi, Nola. 

[00:01:15] Nola: Hey, Lori. Today, listener, Lori and I are introducing a new segment we're calling Beyond the Cover. Books for personal and professional growth to kick off this piece. We're discussing our first book stolen focus by author Johan Hari. As it turns out, Hari spent about three years researching and writing it. He traveled across the globe interviewing top researchers and scientists in their field, all in an attempt to help himself and the reader discover why as a society we're having just such a difficult time focusing or paying any kind of attention these days. To illustrate this, Hari reports that in the U. S., teenagers can focus on one task for only 65 seconds at a time. And for office workers, that average is approximately 3 minutes. Now, I have not read this book, so today I'm going to be interviewing Lori to find out why she wanted to read it, what she discovered, and whether or not she would actually recommend it.

 Before we talk about the book, Lori, what in the world was going on with your life for you to check out a book about stolen focus?

[00:02:27] Lori: That's an interesting question because two things happened at the same time. I was seeing reviews for the book and the book had come out, I think last year. And I also was noticing some peculiar behaviors that I was doing.

For example, I was trying to post about our interviews and things that we were doing on social media. And even though I had streamlined it, I would find that I was getting lost in looking for material, uploading it. Then I was looking through Facebook and I was looking for other material to share. And all of a sudden, something that I thought would take me less than 10 minutes, I was losing chunks of time, like 20 minutes at a time or 30 minutes at a time. I couldn't believe how fast it was happening and recognizing that I was becoming more disorganized. So the other thing that was happening was I was switching all the time and not feeling like I was accomplishing stuff.

[00:03:32] Nola: I can so relate because I will go to post our Sticky Brand Lab audiogram. It should just take a minute to upload, but you know what? There's that little red bell. And oh, I got that dopamine hit. And who said what? And then next thing, 30 minutes has passed and I haven't even posted it yet. Oh yeah, that's not what I'm here for.

[00:03:51] Lori: So the book actually came up in Goodreads for me, because of Kindle and then I went to the library app and I listened to it as we were driving from Texas to Colorado through a good majority of this book. My mouth was hanging open. I was like, Oh my God. He's like talking to me. 

[00:04:14] Nola: Oh my goodness.

[00:04:15] Lori: I thought this was a personal problem and what the book opened up to me was maybe not so much. So I thought it was my lack of control and I just had poor time management skills. So while I was reading how to get focused, I was also looking at applications. That I could use to help me get my projects organized that I was trying to organize and focus on tasks and use the apps that are out there to help with that. And that's a whole ‘nother story, but yeah. 

[00:04:48] Nola: Okay. So you said that you were reading this and your jaw just fell open. What were some of those things that were surprising you so much that you felt your chin on your knees? 

[00:04:58] Lori: One of the things that I think was pretty fascinating was if you looked at how much information is out there, let's say that you had a newspaper or a news magazine that had roughly 85 pages to it. In 1986, if you added up all the amount of resources that you could gather information, and at that time it would primarily be TV and radio and actual reading, it would amount to 84 of those newspapers. So it gives you a sense of how much time you might spend or what amount of resources are there. By 2011, that number had risen to 174 newspapers per day, or the equivalent of reading 15.5 hours. 

[00:05:58] Nola: Wow. Meaning that's how much was available at your fingertips.

[00:06:02] Lori: Correct. 

[00:06:03] Nola: Wow. 

[00:06:04] Lori: I think one of the examples he gives in the book is imagine being at a fire hose of information. You can't swallow all the water that's coming at you, but in our mind, we think this is fantastic. I can research around the world. I can stay connected, give me more, and we don't have the capacity. To deal with that, our brain doesn't allow for us to consume all of that information. So that was one of the things.

Another thing that I wondered is, okay, so we've got all this vast amount of information. I totally understand that you've got social platforms, you've got apps, you've got online magazines. He gives an example of one of the scientists who sees a... picture of Mark Zuckerberg in a room full of people wearing virtual reality headsets. But Mark isn't. And what comes to mind for the scientist is what the future is going to look like. And in his mind, what's going to happen is we're going to have, right now we talk about the 1 percent and the 99%. We're going to have people who understand. The risk that they have to this attention overload, and they're going to find ways to filter or limit that information, whether that's hiring people to disseminate it slowly or give them the cliff notes, but there's going to be a whole other group of people with fewer resources to resist the manipulation, and they're going to be constantly tuned into their computers more and more. And we see that in those futuristic movies. 

[00:07:58] Nola: Yeah. I have started to be very selective about the emails I get, especially the news or even news articles. I have one or two that I go to specifically because it'll give me the cliff notes. Just unbiased. Give me the facts. Give it to me in one line. I'll click if I want to read more, period. I don't want to get sucked into anything now. Will I sometimes still get sucked in? Yeah. But so I try, I'd like to say I'm applying a filter, but not sure how effective it is. 

[00:08:27] Lori: So let me talk to you about that filter. So researchers that looked at speed reading, and I remember my brother taking a class on speed reading and he'll talk to you about speed reading and he's for it and he talked about the need to read faster. So the researchers looked at speed reading and what they found. was when the people who were able to do it, this is people like my brother who aren't professional at it. And then people who are professional, the results were the same. The faster they can read, the less they understand. 

[00:08:59] Nola: That's comprehension. Yeah. 

[00:09:01] Lori: Exactly. Now take that information and apply it to the way we get our information. 

[00:09:07] Nola: We're scanning, scanning. 

[00:09:09] Lori: Exactly. That's exactly right. And so what we're automatically doing without realizing it is that we don't want the time to read an article that's complex or challenging, or that has challenging material. Instead, we're preferring to simplify information, to scan it, or think of it as reading the headlines. We want it in this bite of chunks of information, so we don't understand the depths of some of the challenges that are currently faced, and we Instead, and I'm as guilty of this, I attributed the scanning and reading the headlines to there's so much information out there, you have to pick and choose where you want to focus your attention. And that's true. But again, go back to that fire hose of information coming at you. And now we're teaching our brains to really only prefer the things that are easy so that we can get more information quicker. So it goes back to that image of sitting in front of a computer. You're doing more and more in front of a screen, whether that screen is in your pocket or at your desk, it doesn't matter. It's how often you go to it. And for that reason, the challenge now is we can't get away from it. And what do we do? 

[00:10:36] Nola: Now? Wasn't there studies that have showed that a lot of these platforms have made it so you can't breakaway?

[00:10:45] Lori: Yes. And I think the intention in the developer was to make things easier. And of course, when you make things easier, there's another effect that you don't account for until it's already there. So in the book, Hari really. He breaks things down into 11 causes that the research is showing from talking to the scientists or the web developers that really are negatively impacting our focus and our attention.

This is the part, for me, the first half of the book was the most interesting because it focused a lot on things like multitasking and technology apps, and we don't think about the impact that sleep has or light and technology have. So there's all of these things that for me, the first part of the book addresses. 

In the second half or what I think of as the second half, he then organizes it into other areas that are also affected.

So if you think about these areas, you could think about. Allergies, diet, environmental pollutants. He even talks about the fact that kids don't have free play anymore, at least not alone and outside, and the rise of the diagnosis of ADHD in both children and adults. So one of the things, if you think back to when Google first started, you would do your Google search or any of those search engines, you would put it in. And remember, everybody wanted to get on the first page. So SEO was all and paid ads were all about helping you get on that first page and you'd have to scroll down to the bottom and you'd open up the second page and you'd get a list and you'd open up the third. So it was very time limited. 

Same with social media platforms. You could scroll only so far. And then you'd have to wait for the next page or the next series of posts to come up. So one of the inventions that was done was in the book, he interviews Aza Raskin. That name Raskin might sound familiar, and that's because Jeff Raskin was one of the designers for the first Apple computer. So his son is a computer programmer who revolutionized the way that we can interact with websites and social media. He invented a piece of code called infinite scroll. And so you can scroll through large chunks of information. You never get to the bottom. So from an SEO standpoint, everybody now is on the first page, but from a social media platform, you are losing track of time because you're just scrolling to the next post in the next post.

[00:13:41] Nola: That is addicting. This is actually what I'm getting to. It's addicting.

[00:13:44] Lori: It is. And so Hari identified really three areas that are really affected or having our focus stolen. And social media is one of those. The culture on productivity. We talk about how much work we have to do, and now there's all of this technology to help us project manage it. And then there's technology to help us stay in contact with people online as we're managing it. And all of these things, it's like you have to be able to multitask and do more all at the same time. But the research shows that multitasking actually makes us less productive. And this is where this whole idea of switching tabs or something not coming to me quick enough, and so I'll go work on something else.

And what he found in the research here is we actually can't multifocus. We do not have that brain capacity. Now that's been talked about for a long time, but here's the things that caught my attention that again. Made my mouth drop open.

First of all, when we try to multitask, the results are we're less creative. We can't retain the information that we've got and it takes us longer than before to switch back our focus. So let's say that you're working on something. You get stuck and you think, I'm just going to go work on the next thing. I'll come back to this. It'll be a little bit easier. For me, being in writing, being in the creative, I thought of it as taking a break, resting my mind and moving on to something else and being a little more productive. What he shows is we don't just shut off one and go to the other. There's a lingering effect. So we have to take a deep dive in the next thing. If we go back to the first thing, because we've hit another roadblock, we have to gear up. So basically, think of you running a race, being really far ahead, or my favorite example is, I used to move in and out of traffic to try and get ahead of slow drivers. And then somebody was 

[00:16:13] Nola: Somehow, they'd always ended up catching up with you. 

[00:16:15] Lori: Exactly. And that's the point. That's what he is saying is that you think you're moving ahead, but you actually become the slow driver. And eventually you, it takes you that long to get back up to the same place that I was working so hard to get ahead of. Yeah. So you're losing time. 

[00:16:35] Nola: I can so relate to that because I wear many hats. I remember there's a particular day where I realized I do not desire to multitask because when I am interrupted, it takes me so long to then get my brain wrapped around it and I just had to focus. So I turned off my email. I put my phone on do not disturb. I thought I turned off everything. And still somebody was able to get through to me on zoom. And so the phone on zoom was ringing and I actually answered it and answered their question. They're like, oh, I hope I didn't bother you. And again, it just takes so much time to get focused. And there was so much technology to have to switch off to even try to get there. It was insane. And I still feel that way.

[00:17:20] Lori: And that's the point. We can't switch it all off. There are things that we have to be able to have access to. The solutions aren't no tech or having tech free days because that's not a real solution. You have to find out some other things. 

But let me give you another example that came up because I think it's along the same kind of lines of putting things away, we often hear that how blue light affects us and how the light of our phone, if we get it before bed and you need to put your tech away. This was an interesting piece of research. 

So according to a scientist and Harvard professor, and I don't know if I'm going to be saying his name correctly, but his name is Charles, I'm going to say Czeisler, it's spelled C Z E I S L E R. And he studies sleep. And what he discovered, of course, that this makes sense, that the lack of sleep impacts our ability to pay attention, to concentrate, to achieve more.

So I think I was talking with a friend recently, she teaches at a university and we were talking about pulling all-nighters or you and I talking and you talking about working into the wee hours of the morning in order to get some work done. When you combine that with the lack of sleep, it means that the next day, the things that you were working on or the assignments that the students were working on, they're less able to focus and articulate what they discovered because they have lack of sleep.

So we are all pretty aware of that, but this part I wasn't aware of, and that is that any kind of light whatsoever that comes on so it can be a room light or the morning sun, our brains are geared to be energized. 

[00:19:10] Nola: Okay, that makes complete sense because we have so many little night lights and little red lights and little green lights in our bedroom. That I for a long time could not sleep because we've had to accommodate some medical technology in the room that runs during the night and it has this bright screen. but the screen stays on until you wake up and go through this whole shutdown process. I finally got a night mask. And you know what, if I move in the night and it gets off center and a little bit of that light, the glow of whatever, gets in there, I'm start to wake up. 

I last night woke up in the middle of the night, because I just couldn't sleep with all this light, I got up and I grabbed this thick scarf out of my closet and went over and just draped it over that and I turned the other gizmos around that had green blinking stuff. And it was dark, it was dark and I went so sound asleep. But you're absolutely right. See, and I thought it was just me. I'd heard about the blue light thing. And putting the phone away. But with me, I feel like my eyelids are made out of crepe.

[00:20:25] Lori: But my husband is the same way. So a little bit of light. So first thing in the morning he wakes up, but here's why everyone, whether they wake up from a little light or they need more light to have it happen. Think about the fact that the sun is setting and you go into a room. and you turn on the light or in our case, we're about to do daylight savings time. So it already is getting lighter later and now we're going to set it to try and get earlier. 

But here's why our brains are wired this way and why it's not going to go away. At the end of the day, when we were living more farm When even more primitive than that, we needed the burst of energy in order to fix meals, get ready for bed, do our last things that we would attend to. And you needed to do it while it was still light enough so that danger wasn't knocking at the door. So that burst of energy happens regardless of the light. So when you go to bed, you walk into a room, you have a little nightlight on. It doesn't matter how dim that light is. It's enough to get your brain active. And I think the longevity of how active your brain is probably varies, but it's a minimum because that's how we're wired. 

[00:21:50] Nola: So I have this thing on my phone after a certain point in time, it turns my screen gray. Supposedly keeping that blue light out of my face, but I still find myself watching videos and every now and then I actually turn off the thing because I got to see the colors in that video. I'm really ashamed to say this. Are we actually going to publish this podcast? 

[00:22:09] Lori: I know I'm like, here's my deficits. I'm just going to spew them all out here.

[00:22:15] Nola: But there is something about the scrolling. 

[00:22:17] Lori: There is. And we talked about the infinite scroll, and then I talked about the blue light and technology and the thinking behind that and how our brains are wired.

One of the things that came up that was also fascinating, and this is particular, I think, when it comes to technology and all technology regardless, is that they keep improving it. But while they're improving it. It's also having a side effect or unintentional consequence. So you've got something that's working for you, it makes it easier, the infinite scrolling makes it easier, but the unintentional consequence of that is that you now continue to scroll because it's so natural, it's so easy, and it becomes a habit. So much so, that not only do you reach for your phone at every moment that you might have just been what I refer to as bored because it's no longer downtime. It's like, Oh, I have to wait in traffic. Let me grab my phone. Oh, an idea didn't come to me. Let me grab my phone. Oh, I'm awake. Let me grab my phone. And we get sucked into thinking that if we put on this dimmer light, that's going to be the solution. When in fact, science says not so much. 

One of the other things that happened in here was really the discovery of just how addictive technology has become. So I mentioned earlier that I thought it was me and my lack of self-control, but he goes into talking to all sorts of scientists, all sorts of developers, all sorts of company people who've been like whistleblowers at companies. And one of them that he talked to was a guy whose name is Tristan Harris and Tristan Harris used to work for Google. Now he has started something that he works on as part of the attention economy. So these are things that steal or grab your attention, right? How do you go viral? And what he did is he sent a deck to Google that went viral within the company saying that the technology and the way that it's been developed is very addictive. And that we need to really think about this because now it's an arms race, so to speak, to capture human attention. And we have a moral responsibility as a company to find ways to think about that, to restructure things so that's not the case. 

And I pointed out that this is Google, but you have to think about this from the fact that now we have cookies. You have websites that tell you the cookies are here and you either, if you're in Europe, you can easily reject them all. In the United States, you can select out of, but even still those technologies are there and their purpose. is to show up on another app. 

So I'll give you an example. Recently, my husband was looking for new shoes and he's online doing search for a good pair of tennis shoes. And I see ads for tennis shoes, or in my case, DSW coming up more in ads that are showing up in no matter where I'm scrolling, that is retriggering for your ad, that's what those cookies are designed. They're designed to find out in the household what technology is connected, how it interacts, and then feed it to the other people. Because as a female, I may be going shopping with my husband. 

The other thing that this technology or cookies are able to do is they work predictive method. They're designed to monitor our individual behavior and our group behavior, group meaning your family, behavior, and get so good at it, they can predict what you're likely to search for next. Now, I'm going to give you an example of this. Let's say that you buy a new house. The predictive ability is to anticipate the things that you're more likely to need or purchase as a result of buying a new house. Now you might not think a new car would be in there, but it is. So different things are designed to anticipate that, which is why we often feel like our technology is listening in. And while that capability is there, it's really about getting better at using 

[00:27:06] Nola: Predictive technology. 

[00:27:08] Lori: Exactly. Predictive technology in order to get you to purchase. And here's the thing. Why do they want our data? They want our data to keep us buying and scrolling has that kind of a behavior in which you're likely to buy. You're also likely to buy if you are cooped up in your house or if you are bored or it might be the time of day, it might be a weekend and what your style for searching is, but it's become individualized to that point.

When Harris brought the awareness, technology said, Oh, you're right. This is terrible. We really should look into it. But how has technology paid for? Those ads and people who want to Buy data. And so it's businesses that want to buy data. And it's big businesses that want data. 

So when you think about it from that standpoint, what they found was, and this goes back to the Skinner model. His early psychology research was on the Pavlovian, hit the green button, get a reward, hit the red button, get buzzed. And so it was used to manipulate animals later applied to children. the belief being that these were just blank slates. So if we want to manage behavior of any kind, mind you, we just have to put in these reward and punishment situations. 

That's what we were seeing happening, or that's what the researchers were seeing happening with technology. They were designing ways for you to get more hits, more dopamine. So you're getting this hit. So if you think of social, you think of people liking your page, leaving comments, sharing, that makes sense. If you think of other technology, it is about getting your business or your name up higher in Google searches, getting recognized. If you're an influencer, it's reaching more people. They're all of these mile markers that help you get rewarded for getting more people involved.

But now technology actually reaches out to you to let you know, I get updates on LinkedIn. I get updates that somebody has posted something of interest that I'm connected to, I get updates about it on other social platforms. It's designed to use your excitement and need for validation and reward you for participating.

[00:29:49] Nola: That statement right there, that it's designed to make you seek that validation, does that tie to the early statement about teenagers, how it affects kids, especially teens, and their self-esteem and you hear about online bullying and stuff like that. And I know we're talking about focus, but is there a tie in here?

[00:30:13] Lori: There absolutely is a tie in and the tie in. They've actually seen in young children, like toddler age, an increase in screen time. And what they've noticed in the increase in screen time is, and you may have noticed this yourself, is that when you're watching something, the amount of the story, the length of the story, or the length of that focus of attention, he's going to rob something or they're falling in love. It keeps getting shorter and shorter. So we get a lot of information, we're captivated, but the length of time is shorter and shorter. So you apply that in YouTube or any of the other apps. It's short bursts of information. 

What happens for children is they mimic that behavior. So, their brains are similar capacity, but they don't have experience in focus yet. So, the things that we're noticing for ourselves, the behaviors that are happening in ourselves, we had to reach a point in time to get this way. For kids, this is all learned behavior. They're learning it right from the start.

And so, one of the big areas that has come up in research, again, Hari talks about is the increase in both child diagnosis and that when they begin to look at it in more depth and you have to get into the history, you have to sit down and talk to somebody. You can't just look at the behaviors like somebody saying, Oh, I can't focus and I get overwhelmed and my concentration. You have to look at the behaviors that they're doing. You have to monitor their screen time. You have to ask a variety of questions that most people don't do. They ask, how is it impacted? I can't focus. I find myself getting distracted easily. I go down these rabbit holes. I can't get my assignments done. It's impacting my ability to sleep at night. When you start to put the full picture together, you get to see its impact. But that doesn't usually happen because There's not enough time to do those kinds of in-depth research or questions. And so we're looking for the shortcut. A teacher, a parent. They're looking for, how do I get my kid to focus? But I'm also having a hard time focus. So just give me a pill because we're wanting quick fixes. And those don't exist anymore. 

[00:32:37] Nola: It's scary. But the thing is, you mentioned how we have this almost addiction to technology because of these dopamine hits or whatever it is that's addicting. So when we started this discussion, you admitted that you were having trouble focusing. So have you figured out that you have any particular challenge or distraction that hinders your particular ability to concentrate in your daily work?

[00:33:06] Lori: I think part of my personality. So I believe in lifelong learning. I love learning more. And for me, the getting lost down the research rabbit hole really showed up. So I understood that from technology, the wanting to I let people know about our business and doing social posts. I was watching that happened first thing in the morning, not that I opened my eyes and reached for the phone and did it, but relatively quickly and often before I was getting out of bed. So I was looking at the weather. I was looking at my schedule and then I would quickly say, okay, let me get a post in and then that post would take me down this rabbit hole. So.

[00:33:50] Nola: Before you even put your feet on the floor. 

[00:33:52] Lori: Yeah, because I work remotely. So it was easier to do that. Whereas other people might do exactly where other people might do that during a meeting. I'm doing it first thing in the morning because I wanted to get it off my plate. I thought, Oh, I'll just get our posts out there. I'll do these things. And I was losing time and I couldn't believe how much time I was losing. I'm almost embarrassed to say this. I thought I'm just developing the post. I'm putting it on Instagram. I'm sharing on Facebook. Not even a problem. Just getting it together. I would lose 30 minutes like a snap. It was incredible. Yeah. While I wouldn't say that it was an addiction, what I would say is that I became aware of its impact on my life and I was losing time so I wasn't getting my work done like I wanted to. And that was stirring up some other issues because now I'm feeling anxious or pressured by time. And when that happens, I get irritable. And so one thing begets another. And so for me, I was looking for a solution and the solution that I initially thought of was what is happening? And then the other is what other technology can I use to help me organize my life?

[00:35:09] Nola: So it's funny you should mention solution because I wasn't going to ask you, does this book offer any solutions? Or is it basically, Oh my goodness, this is everything you need to know about technology. 

[00:35:20] Lori: He offers a variety of solutions, but I'm going to give you some top ones that I think are pretty important.

One of the things that he did that started this whole book is he has a whole story of trying to get a flip phone, one that can't connect to the internet because he's going to go to this remote place so that he can basically have no technology. And he talks about the difficulty just being able to do that and how successful or unsuccessful it was for him.

But he discovered that we need to slow down. So even though we have access to all of this technology and we can read and we're trying to skim to determine what we should read and focus our attention on, we also need to take a break. And by taking a break, it would be like reading a real book. You could do it on your technology, but it's different than listening to it and speeding it up so you can get the information quicker. Not, I do. I'll raise my hand. I know I do that. I'm in a book club, but when I am doing business books or specific books that I'm reading for professional development or even for personal growth. I do slow that down. I also highlight or take notes, handwritten notes. 

The point here that he's getting at is practice doing one thing at a time. Practice eating your meal, not in front of a TV or in front of a computer. Practice going to bed without looking at your technology before. So decide that maybe at the end of the day. Uh, your workday, you've looked at your calendar, you know what time you've set your alarm and now you're free to focus on the other things. You don't have to do it every day, but the point that he's making is give yourself breaks. 

Now for me. And for others, he talks about writing things out, not typing them because we actually use a different part of our brain when we handwrite notes versus when we type them out. And science has shown that we're far more likely to remember when we write and not so much when we type. 

And the other thing that he talks about is practicing meditation. And you can do meditation, walking meditation, you can do it quieting, you can do mindful meditation. There's a variety of things or yoga or exercise in general. The point is that you're moving yourself physically away from multitasking. And physically sometimes from technology. 

Now I use my phone to do mindful meditation, but that's the only thing I'm using it at that moment for. And so I am practicing that on a daily basis. So that became the first thing. I did two things here personally that came out of that suggestion. And one of those was I stopped doing social media. Until I can figure out how to manage it better for myself, I decided that focus and attention and concentration and creativity were far more important to me. And so I was going to figure out a different way, or at least work my way back into it with some parameters.

Caveat here. So one of the things that I did do is I perused news items to look for things that I thought would be part of my lifelong learning, something I would be interested in. So I wanted to read a full article. I prioritized that in the morning. This has worked, but what I've since done is flipped and I actually do the meditation first. So, while my brain is still in the quiet place, I allow it to continue that so that I'm practicing focusing by doing mindful meditation. 

[00:39:15] Nola: Okay. So, you start the morning with the meditation while you're still quiet and able to focus a little bit better. You focus on a full article, as opposed to pulling out your phone and spending 30 minutes posting and stuff initially. That sounds so healthy. 

[00:39:33] Lori: The take a break is one thing. The things that I'm talking about here are the habit building. In order to improve our concentration and our focus and grab our attention back. It's not so much, don't do this. It's what will I do instead? How will I learn to use this in a way that is more beneficial to me than being absorbed by it, if you will. So that was one thing. 

In his book, another thing that he talks about is creating distraction-free environments. And the way that I did this is. I actually leave my phone in a different room first thing in the morning. So I can't get the notifications and I turned off the notification sound on the different methods that people could reach me. So they can still come in, but I'm not seeing them. And I started by just lengthening the time. So in the beginning it might've been an hour and then it might've been two hours. And what has happened is that I use that time now to focus and get something accomplished. And then I reward myself by checking my phone or doing something 

else.

[00:40:50] Nola: I'm really inspired and impressed or impressed and inspired. 

[00:40:55] Lori: So the last tip, and I think this is really important here, is we need to grant ourself grace. There's no one right method. And I think he comes up with some ideas and there's others out there. You have to figure out what works for you as an individual, what works for you as a family. The most important thing, though, is first you have to recognize there's a problem. Part of granting yourself grace is recognizing that it's not your lack of willpower. It's designed this way. And the answer to me isn't blaming technology, but it is holding technology far more accountable than we are. Which means we have to educate people. And you had talked about a lawsuit? 

[00:41:37] Nola: Yes. A day ago. Prior to this recording, 33 states were filing together a lawsuit against META for promoting an algorithm. knowing that it was harmful for kids. 

[00:41:48] Lori: First of all, that’s part of what Hari said. He said, we need communities to come together and say, this is not okay in the same way that we set it about other things like the water in Michigan or the pollutants that are out there or lead or anything else. There has to be a level of education that people need to be aware of. So that's part of it.

The answer isn't in suing all of these companies because we have to learn to coexist with technology. But in my mind, there's a difference between really looking at not only ourselves, but future generations. How do we learn to properly use technology rather than being used by technology? And that's where we're at. We don't realize that every time we open up something on the internet, there's a little cookie there grabbing some data and data, every time you think you're using something for free, you're really just feeding this monster. And as you evolve and you age, you're sharing your behavior and how you interact, individually and collectively with all of those things that are out there that are collecting that information about you. And then that feeds into fake news and the whole history of stuff. 

[00:43:15] Nola: This has been fascinating. And I have two questions. Brief ones. First of all, you mentioned all the things that you have started to apply that were recommended in the book. Have you noticed a difference? 

[00:43:27] Lori: Absolutely. I have noticed a difference. Probably the biggest difference was knowing that, okay, there's an impact here. I did not realize I was totally oblivious to just how distracted I was. I could see it. I'm aware. You can be anywhere and people looking at their phone and you're making fun of them. Oh, look, we're all in a bus. Well, we used to be on a bus or train or whatever, reading newspapers. So something having our attention isn't the issue. The issue is not being able to put it down and feeling antsy about it. And so the thing that I'm working on is actually living with not filling up every second with technology. And putting it away and not being tempted when I hear the notification. I started listening to this book a few months ago and putting some of these practices in place. So I've had a little bit, it's not a total new habit, but I've had some awareness happen. So I know that there's a lot more progress that has to happen and I have to figure out how to co-exist. We can't shut off social media as a business forever. I've got to figure that part out, but I also have more understanding than I did previously. 

[00:44:44] Nola: Second question, Stolen Focus by author Johan Hari. Recommend it or not?

[00:44:50] Lori: I absolutely recommend it. It's true that he paints a picture from his perspective and some of the stuff that he talked about later, I wasn't a hundred percent in agreement with it, but keeping that in mind for anybody who is interested in this, it is a very thought-provoking researched book on technology. And its effect on our lives and how it's disrupting our ability to concentrate. And even if you think that's not going to happen to me or that doesn't apply to me, it's applying to your children, your grandchildren, your nieces, your nephews, the next generation of providers, medical professionals, scientists are in those young minds. And so we need to educate ourselves, in order to help set parameters, whether we're in business or in family, or just our individual lifestyle. 

[00:45:48] Nola: Very good. Listener, in our effort to help you become a first-time entrepreneur in the second half of your vibrant life, we hope our discussion of the book Stolen Focus by Johan Hari has prompted you to rethink technology's impact on your life, as well as encouraged you to read or listen to it yourself. Be sure to stick around to the very end of the podcast for a little fun. 

[00:46:10] Lori: If you found the information we've shared helpful and want more tips, tools, and inspiration delivered to your inbox, sign up for News You Can Use over on our website at sticky brand lab. com and remember small steps, big effects, 

[OUT-TAKE]

[00:46:29] Nola: as well as encourage you to read or listen to.

Listen it to. 

[00:46:35] Lori: You're almost done. No, I was 

[00:46:36] Nola: almost done.. Retake.

[00:46:42] Lori: What that was. Yes. Listener. That was a burp. Thank God. It wasn't 

[00:46:46] Nola: even a burp. It was a weird thing in my throat. 

[00:46:49] Lori: Okay. 

[00:46:50] Nola: I'm just going to retake the whole thing. Okay.