Whatever Happened to Focused Effort...What Was I Talking About?

I went to the grocery store this past week. My 3-yr.old was in the shopping cart playing with the packages of food we would purchase, and my 1-yr. old, fed up with shopping, sat in the child seat of the shopping cart wailing uncontrollably. As we stood in line the 3-yr. old joined the chorus of complaining his younger brother had been the conductor to. I tried to get them quiet. I tried forcefulness. It didn’t work. I next loving encouraged. Nope. I tried entertaining them, funny faces, high fives, the whole works. I think it made it worse. I began to use my trump card of threatening: “When your mother gets home you boys are in for a spanking!” They smugly looked at me and continued their complaining.

Having exhausted all my known resources I turned my attention to the tabloids, which where conveniently placed in eye level, in hopes that my children might quiet down from my inattentiveness. In a short time, I became distracted. As I read the covers of the royal baby bump, and the fact that The National Enquirer found that Donald Trump is a member of both The Black Panthers, and KKK, which I’m sure creates such internal struggles for him, I noticed something. It was quiet. Too quiet. I turned to look at my boys and found them transfixed by the variety of candies adorning the checkout line. Taking advantage of this distraction that had so transfixed them I offered to get them both a sucker, and they would get the said treat if they could make it all the way home without another scream fest. My 3-yr. old, able to comprehend the situation readily agreed. The 1-yr. old simply said “Than ohh” which I took as compliance. As we drove home, in a quiet van I might add, I began to ponder what had just taken place, and how a distraction had not only altered our situation, but the outcome too.

Have you ever gone to the store before with a list? Most of humanity has. If you never have before I would like to know what you do for a living that allows you to not consciously worry about what you are spending money on, and is your company hiring? But aside from that I’m sure the following scenario sounds familiar to most of us. You go to the store with a list: milk, eggs, bread, diapers, etc. After you’ve completed from your list, not deviating one bit you go to check out. While in line you notice your favorite drink in the cooler, or perhaps a new flavor of your favorite gum brand, or a special issue of Time Magazine (my downfall), whatever it is your mind begins to be drawn by that thing; you become distracted from your list. Soon enough before you reach the checkout you have added that Coke Zero Sugar to your cart, or the raspberry bubble gum, or the WWII D-Day Anniversary Edition of Time Magazine, when you have entered the store with no intention of purchasing anything but was on your list. Why? Because the checkout line is designed specifically for this purpose, to distract shoppers from prudence, and to lull us into impulse shopping.

Distractions in and of itself are not a bad thing. In fact, it can often be a profitable experience, for it is in the use of distractions that the mind which has been wrestling with a problem, and has been stalemated against a solution, will be able to sort out an answer when it can be engaged with another subject matter. Such was the case with Albert Einstein, and his theory of relativity. After years of painstakingly wrestling with the same mental problem of light, mass, and acceleration; It was not until one day after having combated with the mental dilemma that he decided to take a nap, thus distracting his mind from the subject matter. It was in this moment of the distraction, unimpeded with constrained thought, that like lightning, a solution finally came to Einstein’s mind, and thus was born the theory of relativity. Thus, was the experience of Einstein and countless others. Distractions can be a beneficial practice, if used prudently, but I fear the world at large has taken the art of distractions and turned it into a profession. Let me explain.

Having been born in the late 80’s I have termed myself as part of the last free-range child generation. What I mean by this is as a kid I, my brother, and our good friend down the street, would be able to play outside for hours unperturbed. We would ride our bikes, fight with swords, and throw around whatever ball we fancied that day. But as we grew older, and more technology became invented that took the world away from the luxury of quiet undisturbed play time. At first it was few that had these cellular devices when we entered high school. An old flip or brick phone if you can recall. But by the time of my graduation almost every student had one, and the new fad was texting. Social media sites where then began to creep into people’s lives. In my college years the smart phones, and tablets came into existence, with streaming media sites to boot. Now as I take my own children to the park to throw around the football or run around the jungle gym I see less kids full-fledged in playing, and more intimately playing. They pause on the monkey bars to check their status update, on sit at the foot of their slide to try to capture another Pikachu. In short, something that once was an invested activity, technological disturbances have turned them into interrupted occurrences.

At least 2 of them are sharing a phone, that counts as social interaction right?

Think about it. I know you have been as guilty to this as myself. Your significant other, or someone you care for is talking to you, and you are engaged in a conversation with them. Then your phone pings and without thinking you pick up the phone, and begin to read the message, interrupting the heart to heart you were just having. Or perhaps you are watching a movie with your kids, and someone sends you a message on Instagram, it makes you laugh, and before you know it you begin a conversation with this person on the phone, completely forgetting the movie you were watching with your kids. I could give countless other examples, but I am sure you get the point. Despite these wonderful devices, and technological advancements that have improved our life, we fail to notice that their overabundance in our lives is begging to reprogram our behavior; in ways, that if looked in terms of human behavior, are not healthy.

As humans we are autonomous creatures. We are beings to act and impose upon the world around us. That is what makes us what we are, a creature of deliberate action and will, who seeks to shape the world around us to our will we harbor, through action. But the contrast to any action is rest, or stagnation. Technology in our pockets has begun to change our primal thinking from act to achieve needs, whether it be food, shelter, or sex, to a pattern of disturbances. Act, and then pause. Take another step and pause once more. Movement, and then pause again. The process is counterintuitive to how our brain thinks. For progress to be made, in the case of food, an animal must be killed, cooked, and eaten. But with phones, tablets, video game console, social media sites, stock exchange apps, streaming services, 24-Hour news cycles we have begun to act upon us towards disturbances in action. Even as I sit here in my designated time for writing each day my Robin Hood app just updated to tell me my SQ stock is up in pre-trading, and I paused my writing time to look at it.

We need only look at the world around us to see the negative effects of this reprogramming. Families gather around the dinner table to have interrupted conversations, that only half are involved in at the time, and the other half on their devices. We find it increasingly difficult for people to focus on a single task for a designated amount of time. Thinking of outcomes for a goal, as a result of invested, and often miserable work, has been replaced with minimal effort but large gains in peoples thinking. People are unable to let go of their phone, and find themselves, even when nothing has changed on their device, picking it up and thumbing it through it again, without even really knowing why they picked it up. In short much of the criticism of the millennial generation can be linked back to this saturation of technology that disrupts as they were developing adolescents, unbeknownst to them the mental reprogramming which was taking place. And as a side note, the next time you begin complaining against millennials think of this for a second: who was it that gave them access to such technology without any caution or regulation? I think you know the answer. So, who is really to blame then for the criticism? I think you know the answer for this one too.

The good news is that reprogramming works both ways. I recall an instance in the company I work while a complete overhaul of their operating system was taking place. It was discovered that one alternation of a program’s parameters to a new method severely altered the operations purpose of the program. As a result, they quickly switched the altered method to the previous one to restore order, much to the relief of my myself and my co-workers. As in all coding, once you identify an error in systems operations, you can go into the very system itself and alter the programming for it to function properly. So too must we do within our own lives to reprogram distraction prone behaviors. First and foremost, we must acknowledge it, in whatever way possible, in my life it is often my wife who is more than happy to point out where I fucked up. Whatever means bring you to the conclusion of your altered behavior doesn’t matter, just that you come to it. God it could even be an accident while attempting to text while driving that brings to your need for pause in considering this distraction behavior, although I hope it is just a friend telling you how you fucked up. After you face the addict in the mirror then you can change.

Anxiety, sleeplessness, inability of focus, have all been linked to technology overindulgence. 

Much research has been done in the last decade of technology’s disturbance of the human behaviors. In fact, some of this research has even led the developers of these tech devices to rethink how their product might help disengage itself from it’s consumers. Google, for instance, unveiled their new tech this week for the upcoming year. One of the several highlighted products was the Pixel 3 phone, which I highly endorse as a personal user. I love that goddamn phone. Of the showcased features I was delighted to see how Google, who admitted to being concerned with the technology’s influence on us, had designed the Pixel 3 with parameters to help with the disruptive tendencies we have discussed today. From the ability of the phone lying face down to shut off all notifications, and sounds, to controls to prohibit usage of certain applications beyond set limitations. But google is not alone in this tech company crusade to improve tech’s imprint on our behavior. Countless others are enacting similar technologies in latest tech. Nintendo for instance, who recently launched the hyper successful Switch, had an accompanying app at launch that allowed parents to place limits on what content is consumed, and the amount of time the content can be consumed.

But one cannot rely wholly upon the developers of our tech to fix our restlessness with it. One has complete compacity to impose upon their own distractive tendencies. One popular method, which I myself have recently adopted, is the use of grayscale. The concept, first championed by tech ethicist Tristian Harris, is for the bright and vibrant colors of display screens to be replaced with the cool shades of gray. The intended result is that our eyes are fixated less upon stimulating colors, which in recent research suggests as a crucial component in restlessness with tech, and we help free ourselves from our programming for disruptive behavior with technology. I have adopted all my tech with this grayscale. My phone, my laptop, my work computer, and as a result I have found my proneness to unnecessary tech checks disappear; and as unintended result the strain on my eyes has been removed as well. For a more in-depth article to the us of grayscale I would suggest The New York Times piece Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone? by Nellie Bowles.

Besides the use of grayscale, one has many options to combat technological disruptions. Maurice Clarett, CEO of The Red Zone, a Columbus based organization that assists people in drug treatments and social reform, has an established basket at home labeled “Family Time”, in which each member of the household must place their phones when they are spending time together. I am acquainted with individuals who have adopted a “dumb phone”, a basic flip or brick phone to remove the problem with distractions from their day entirely. Some people I know will utilize the airplane mode feature on their smart devices when they want to release themselves from tech consumption. Whatever the case is one thing remains constant throughout the battle on distractions, personal initiative. Whether you alter your consumption, or your medium of consumption it doesn’t matter, if you are making strides towards rewiring your internal programming away from distraction tendencies. Ultimately the ball is in your court, do you want control of your life, so you can have constant and focused effort, or do you want to have continually disruptive work? For myself I would choose…was that a squirrel that just ran by?