The title of this article is "How the internet ruins productivity by design" and maybe it
should be called how the internet ruins your CAPACITY for productivity by design. Anyways.
The age of mental "peak performance" "Peak Performance" is a term that's
being used not only for athletes' physical performance, but for people just trying to
get ahead at their work place, and more so for those working on their entrepreneurial
endeavors. With a lot of popular books like "The Four Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferris,
people are becoming more aware of the fact that doing a 9AM to 5PM job for 40 years is
a shitty deal. One way to get ahead is by using cognitive
enhancers, known as "Smart Drugs" or Nootropics. Nootropics are "are drugs, supplements,
or other substances that improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions,
memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individuals."
In the aggressively competitive world of silicone valley, Nootropics are seen not just as a
pick me up, but sometimes as a necessity. Tim Ferris painted a good picture of the situation
in his interview with CNN Money "Let's just say you're a 24 year old start up co
founder, just got a seed round of funding from a big venture capitalist. and you feel
intense pressure to compete against the half a dozen other companies that are trying to
do the same thing. You're gonna think about what pills and potions you can take because
the difference between completely failing, losing all your money , making a million dollars
and making a billion dollars is right up here"
Some silicone valley folk have gone as far as taking very small doses of Lysergic acid
diethylamide, better known as LSD, or "Acid" to enhance their productivity and creativity
at work. These "Microdoses" of acid are having very profound effects on the user's
output without any hallucinatory distractions.
Now, Most of us aren't at the level of seeking out illegal substances to amp up our game.
For myself and a lot of people I know, it's not so much of "Holy shit I need to write
20,000 lines of code by tomorrow morning or I'm fucked", but something more like "Uh
OK I woke up 45 minutes ago, I'm still in bed looking at reddit. What the hell is wrong
with me?" There are some days where I wonder if I'm hitting even average performance,
much less peak performance.
The internet and our brains It's being suspected that some people's
inability to concentrate or lack of willpower is caused by the internet and the near constant
stream of novel information they're accessing all the time. In Gary Wilson's TEDx Talk
he explains that several studies about "Internet Addiction" and its detriments have been
popping up since 2009. Gary says "So far, all brain research points in only one direction:
Constant novelty at a click can cause addiction". It wasn't until after I saw Gary's talk
that I thought the way I use the internet could be harming my productivity.
Until recently, I was a recruitment consultant in 🎵Sunrise Land🎵 for 3 years. This
was one of the most educational, exciting and competitive times of my life. I met all
kinds of fantastic people, but this environment really makes you start to evaluate yourself
as a person based on how much you can output in as little time as possible. I wanted be
at the top of the scoreboard, and some times I was five times as productive as I ever was
in college, but sometimes I couldn't focus for more than 20 minutes. I was always looking
for the magic pill or trick that could improve my performance, but I didn't know that how
often I checked my Facebook feed could be affecting my performance in a bigger way than
just the time I lost by opening up the app.
Unsurprisingly, this addictive nature is actually designed into most apps. Nir Eyal explains
in his book "Hooked" how many websites, apps, platforms et cetera need to be designed
in such a way that the product is addictive for the user or the company won't have a
competitive edge.
This technique to magnetize users to the content is called "The hook". The hook is an "experience
designed to connect the users problem to a company's solution with enough frequency
to form a habit". The hook has 4 parts- a trigger, an action, a reward and an investment.
All the hooks start with an external trigger like "Click here!" or "Swipe right!"
or an internal trigger. The internal triggers are what is critical to the user of forming
the habit of using the company's service. "Internal triggers are things that tell
us what to do next, but where the information is not contained in the trigger but instead
formed through an association or a memory in the user's brain. So what we do when
we're in a certain place, situation, around particular people, taking part in a routine
and most frequently when we experience certain emotions dictates what we do next. The action
that we turn to with little or no conscious thought. It turns out that the most frequent
internal triggers are these emotions, but not just any emotions but they're specifically
negative emotions. So what we do when we're feeling bored or lonesome or lost or fearful
or uncertain or confused dictates the technology that we turn to next with little or no conscious
thought."
As I wrote out the previous paragraph, I experienced this first hand. I couldn't quite think
of how to phrase one sentence and I felt a slight sense of uneasiness as I struggled
to think of what words to use. Right away I opened a new tab and typed in "reddit.com".
This all happened in under two seconds without any deliberation.
Actions are influenced by triggers, but what constitutes an action? Behavioral scientist
BJ Fogg describes an action as "the simplest behavior in anticipation of a reward," which
for me was a click on reddit, but it could also be a swipe on imgur or imager (whatever
you wanna call it) or tinder, or even a scroll on Facebook or twitter. Pretty simple process
then: A trigger [I feel bored] arises, so I take a simple action [open up reddit] in
anticipation of a reward [a funny image or video].
When discussing human behavior, most of us have an inkling that the neurochemical dopamine
influences our actions. This, for the most part is correct. However, dopamine is widely
misunderstood as the neurochemical that makes you feel good BECAUSE you did something. Actually,
as Standford lecturer Robert Sapolsky explains in this excerpt, dopamine rises in anticipation
of a reward - "Dopamine doesn't go up after the reward, it goes up at this point" Not
only does it rise in anticipation of a reward, but it spikes when you are uncertain of whether
or not you will get the reward. Dr. Sapolsky talks about an experiment in which they had
monkeys pull a lever in anticipation of a reward. When the situation went from 'You
will get a reward after every 3 pulls' to 'maybe you'll get a reward after every
couple pulls' you see a massive spike in dopamine. As he put it, "It does this! it's
one of the biggest rises in dopamine in the brain, short of cocaine."
This is very important because it means that a company's content doesn't even have
to be good to get you to keep coming back. It just has to be designed in a manner that
keeps us anticipating and searching for rewards. For example, take a look at the feed on Facebook.
Is that cute girl from high school posing with a Starbucks cup that interesting? How
about that picture of someone's lunch that comes next? Neither of those probably interest
you, but the new tech article that your best friend posted that comes maybe four posts
down the line. The feed is taking advantage of that spike in dopamine that we experience
due to the anticipation of a possible reward, so we keep scrolling and scrolling, excited
at the possibility that something good will pop up.
"It's addictive, but I'm not addicted" "Addiction" is thrown around in contexts
like "Oh gosh this is so addicting!" all the time. However, hearing someone say "I
need to get treatment for my addiction" has a completely different nuance. Using it
that way would suggest that the "addiction" is affecting their lives and needs to be fixed.
Why people turn to drugs despite the social and legal repercussions is complicated, but
it can boil down to the fact that the users aren't satisfied with their lives. It may
even be that they're not satisfied with the current year, the current month or even
the current moment that they are experiencing. People pursue success in business, fitness
or relationships mainly because they are anticipating some reward – usually a good feeling that
comes with achievement. "But why work towards these types of fulfillment for so long when
you can invest a couple seconds snorting cocaine or taking a pill?" Surely a terrible mindset,
but not completely different from getting the rewarding delicious flavor of a donut
immediately, rather than chasing the great feeling of women complimenting your hard earned
six pack? Or even swiping through a couple profiles on tinder to feel excited when you
see a sexy girl versus investing a couple more minutes to read a chapter of that book
that you like. When you look at it like this, the idea of not just substances, but behaviors
being addicting is more plausible.
How are we to notice that the internet could be affecting us? I mean I've had high speed
internet ever since I was in High School. David Foster Wallace told a joke at his commencement
speech for Kenyon College class of 2005 that went like this: "There are these two young
fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who nods
at them and says 'Morning boys, how's the water?' and the two young fish swim
on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes 'What the
hell is water?' " Gary Wilson also mentions the fish situation in his talk to show how
hard it is to realize how the internet is affecting heavy users. He explained how the
only symptom that did cause internet porn loving men to realize it was having an effect
on them was Erectile Dysfunction. Young men are being diagnosed with and medicated for
ADHD, Social Anxiety Disorder and depression due to symptoms like less interest in day
to day activities, lowered ability to concentrate and eroded willpower. They are going to psychologists
and psychiatrists to treat these symptoms, but don't realize it could be alleviated
by simply changing their behavior.
One study in China shows how Internet Addicts have impaired executive function control ability.
Having an impaired attention control, inhibitory control and ability to "select and successfully
monitor behaviors that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals" would definitely explain
my unfinished to do lists.
If you have enough willpower to right away stop continuously swiping, scrolling and clicking
then great. But for myself and a lot of people, it's not so simple to get out of the habit.
The idea is not to immediately stop using all these platforms, but to pull yourself
out of the 'hook' inherent in their design. There's nothing wrong with taking a 10 minute
break from work when you need to and doing something that you enjoy. When you're unconsciously
spending more time than you intend to, then there's an issue.
Getting out of the hook The good news is that understanding how your
brain is being manipulated by this "hook" was the first step towards avoiding it. In
his TEDMED talk, Judson Brewer describes a two part technique that several smokers have
used to successfully kick their smoking habit. The idea is for the participants to just be
mindful about smoking. "Yea we said go ahead and smoke, just be really curious about what
it's like when you do. And what did they notice? Well here's an example from one of our smokers.
She said "Mindful smoking, smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals. What she
discovered just by being curiously aware when she smoked was that smoking tastes like shit.
She started to be disenchanted with her behavior" The other part of the technique was to be
mindful about what the craving felt like when it came up. They'd crave a cigarette and
then notice their body was a little tense, heart rate maybe sped up a little bit, and
some noticed they were fidgeting in their chair. By simply being mindful about these
aspects, subjects were able to step out of the craving and realize what exactly it was
and let it pass. Next time you feel the urge to check twitter, take a moment to think why
you're doing that. Maybe you're a little bored or frustrated with the task at hand.
Maybe you're hungry so your concentration has waned. Then, think about the experience
of twitter itself. Scrolling through that feed for more than 5 minutes, is it really
engaging you in a fulfilling way? Are you really happy that you're 10 minutes in and
still spending your time scrolling through all those tweets hoping a good one will pop
up? It will take a bit of time and practice, but you'll quickly learn to catch yourself
and reel yourself back in.
Or, You could always Louis C.K.'s method.
"Yea like I've been more deliberate about my life. Uh for instance I'm not on the internet
anymore. I like I quit the internet. I gave my daughter my phone and I said 'Make a restriction
code and lock me out of the internet.' We should end it there, we should just fade to
black.
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