#so it would only really log my achievements when i hooked up to my ethernet cable. guess it didn't pair any actual dates with them though

[teamhawkeye]

apparently I mastered time travel when i gamed in the past...

[techfeels]

Peace of Mind in the Age of Distraction

Walk down a busy street and you'll see a hundred zombies, each with one aching arm raised in front of their illuminated face. They stagger drunkenly down the road, trying and failing to read something on the screen and walk in a straight line at the same time. Occasionally they'll realise too late that they're about to bump into someone; a half-hearted, mumbled apology (if you’re lucky) to appease the victim of their inconsideration, before getting back to the task at hand. Oblivious to the sights, sounds and smells of the world around them; this one and only present moment, in which they refuse to live.

It wasn’t always like this.

The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 was a seminal moment in the history of technology. Suddenly, the dream of a true pocket computer had become a reality. Untethered from ethernet cables and power cords, we were now able to be connected wherever, whenever. In a few short years, almost everyone you knew had a smartphone of some sort. The benefits of this seismic change are many and varied, but so are the drawbacks. Simply put, the ability and temptation to be constantly connected has begun to have a toxic effect on our minds. Our attention spans have been shortened; our tolerance for being bored is diminished; the constant pings and buzzes distract us, making it hard to focus on anything for very long; we are relentlessly barraged by adverts, and opinions on every conceivable topic; we find it harder to be content, to find peace.

The First Step is Knowing your Enemy

Because of the smartphone boom, hundreds of companies were able to make obscene amounts of money by creating a compelling mobile product. Think of companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Google, and how much the rise of the smartphone benefitted them. Understandably, these companies want to stay as profitable as possible, and are willing to use whatever nefarious tactics are necessary to keep us using their products. All of the big players employ people whose sole responsibility is thinking up new and novel ways of ensuring we spend as much time as possible inside their app/website, because the more time we spend, the more money they make. It's important to realise that they're not interested in your wellbeing, or in helping you achieve what you want to get done. The strategies they employ are informed by research on human psychology - in areas like impulse control and addiction - exploiting the common vulnerabilities that we all share. Every time you do something that you later regret - such as endlessly scrolling through a feed in an almost-comatose-like state, or staying up late binge watching a tv show - there were hundreds, or even thousands, of designers and developers on the other side of the screen, who designed the product in such a way to compel you to do that.

Technology companies are all competing against each other in an 'attention economy' - the metric they all rate themselves by is time on site, which is the amount of time the average user spends using their product. Simply put, the higher this number, the more money they will make. This is usually through selling advertising space, but even companies like Netflix, who have a subscription model (with no adverts), are obsessed with this metric. Why? Because Netflix discovered that the users who spend less time on the site are usually the ones who end up cancelling their subscription. So, to prevent this from happening, they employ tactics to keep you on the site as long as possible - such as autoplaying the next episode in a TV series, and putting the list of shows you're currently watching half way down the page (to ensure you find other content to watch) - keeping you on that hamster wheel of consumption long after you intended to hop off. Netflix don't want casual users, because casual users start to question whether the subscription price is worth it for them; they want addicted users.

Tristan Harris, who used to work for Google as a 'Design Ethicist', wrote an excellent article on this subject, called How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds, and I'd implore you to read through that so you can 'see behind the curtain' from his first-hand experience. He also helped found a movement called Time Well Spent, whose aim is to make technology a little more humane, and a little less invasive. They have some great ideas for how the products we all use could be redesigned with the goal of helping the user efficiently complete their task, rather than keeping them in the app or website for as long as possible. As noble as the idea behind this movement is, I find it hard to believe that many companies are going to incorporate these ethical designs into their products: they will almost certainly be less profitable than using the reprehensible tactics outlined in Harris's article above (more on that later), and users simply aren't demanding change yet. I think of it more like a tug of war: on one side are these multi-billion-dollar companies, using every trick in the book to grab my attention, and on the other side is my peace of mind.

We all need to start looking more closely at some of the design choices that we encounter in the products we use. As an example: read receipts on messages. These are the little check marks/icons/‘read’ text next to a message, which let you know whether someone has read your message. Companies like Facebook, who want you to spend as much time in their app as possible, make this non-optional. You cannot turn it off. Why? Because read receipts change people’s behaviour to make them stay in an app/website longer. If you know that your friend knows you’ve read their message, you will feel a certain amount of social pressure to get back to them in a timely manner, lest you offend them. May as well respond now, right, just in case I forget once I’ve left the app? So you send off a response, and the other person reads it, and feels obligated to reply, and the vicious circle continues. Meanwhile, the money men at Facebook are licking their lips, because their time spent in app key performance indicator (KPI) just went up. Contrastingly, iMessage, a bundled app on iPhones, has read receipts as an optional toggle, set to off by default. This is because Apple doesn’t directly make any money from iMessage, so they don’t really mind how much time you spend in the app. They make their money from selling you a £600 iPhone. In this case they had the user’s interest at heart when they designed the feature, not their bottom line. Once you start to notice such tactics in the apps you use, you will see how you are being used in myriad different ways, and you will start to take action.

One of the worst offenders in this space is Snapchat. One of their tactics is to send a notification to the recipient of a message as soon as the sender starts typing. This practically forces them to complete the message, even if they change their mind. Even more egregious than this, though, is their Snapstreak feature, and the loaded emojis they put next to each contact. Snapstreak is the number of days in a row that contacts have messaged each other, and, because this is a back-and-forth thing, it puts a lot of social reciprocity pressure on users not to let their friend down by breaking the chain. Bloomberg even published an article about the lengths that people will go to in order to keep these streaks going, such as giving friends your password so that they can log in to your account:

Every day for two weeks, Rogers would need to log on to the messaging app and send short picture messages back and forth between her friend’s account and her own. It didn’t matter the subject. It could be pictures of walls, ceilings—anything, really—so long as it kept alive a continuous, daily volley of missives known as a Snapstreak.

Talk about manufacturing addiction. This is especially grating when you consider that Snapchat's demographic skews younger than most - these are young kids they're getting hooked. Snap inc. recently went public as a company - they are worth $20 billion at the time of writing.

A note about this social pressure with regards to messaging: if you're someone who feels they have to respond to (non-time-critical) messages immediately, and that it's rude to keep people waiting, you should rid yourself of this illusion immediately. You should respond when it's convenient for you. You are not beholden to anybody. It is not rude to live life at your own pace. We shouldn't cave to this social pressure that these ruthless, multi-billion-dollar companies have thrust upon us.

So how did things get like this? Are Facebook and Snapchat simply hiring evil geniuses whose sole goal in life is to make everybody miserable? Of course not. The designers at these companies are under pressure from The Business to increase the aforementioned KPIs, which are things like monthly active users and time spent in app. These are the metrics that Wall St. uses to value a tech company, and so that's what's prioritised in the design of their products. And if the designers push back? Well, there is a line of people out the door waiting to fill their shoes. I also think there's a sense of can't see the forest for the trees with some of these toxic design choices. The negative effects are very subtle, and it's likely that a lot of the designers who worked on those features didn't even consider that they would lead to addiction. Harris explained that the reason he left Google was that he 'came up against inertia': creating a user-first design seemed like a luxury, a nice-to-have, that could only be worked on after all the ‘important work’ had been done. The competition is so fierce, and the pace at which the industry moves so fast, that nobody can afford to take a step back and ask these important questions; at least not while each company is under Wall St.'s thumb. Huge institutions like Google are set in their ways, and steering the ship in a different direction is a Herculean challenge - at least until users demand a change, at which point The Business will take note.

Harris likes to compare it to the Organic food movement - before Organic food labels were implemented, the farmers who eschewed pesticides in order to protect the health of their consumers (i.e. who did the right thing) were undercut on price by those who used unsafe pesticides. The consumer would only see two seemingly-identical foods in the supermarket, yet one cost much more than the other - so they'd naturally gravitate towards the cheaper option. It was only when the general public became aware of pesticides, and demanded a change, that the inertia was overcome. Organic food labels were introduced, and consumers could then make an informed decision. Suddenly, every farmer realised how important it was to their business to offer organically-grown crops, and the industry moved forward. Once people are shown what's behind the curtain, they will vote with their wallets - or in this case, their attention. That's what Harris hopes the Time Well Spent movement can be: a badge of approval for products that respect their users' time and wellbeing; something that the general public will care about.

This is why it is so important that we all start to recognise what is going on. The competition is so fierce between these big tech companies, and the sums of money at stake so large, that they will continue using whatever heinous tactics they can until it starts to affect their bottom line. Until their users start to leave, they will not change their ways.

The Effects on the Mind

The worst part about all of this is how subtle and under the radar these effects are: they are so slight, and accumulate over such a long period of time, that it's hard to notice the effect they are having on us. Also, we are often unable to see these changes in ourselves, because we are too close to it - it is much easier to spot it in others. I feel we have a moral obligation to alert our loved ones to the negative effects technology is having on their lives. They're probably not going to like hearing it, but you should tell them all the same. For example, if your friend is constantly checking social media when they're spending time around other people, that is not OK - that is a sign of addiction.

Another aspect that makes it harder to spot the negative effects is the sense of normalcy associated with constantly checking your phone. Just look around you and notice how many people have their faces in them right now. Hell, even the person responsible for the Oscars fiasco was too busy messing with his phone to make sure he'd given the presenter the right envelope. If everyone does it, it can't be that bad, right? Actually, yes it can. Popularity doesn't imply quality, in the same way that most pop music and popular TV programmes are superficial, and lacking in craftsmanship. You shouldn't find any comfort in the idea that we're all going down with the ship, together. You are responsible for your own wellbeing, and you should take that responsibility seriously. Don't accept the status quo.

But the distance between you and the library is usually vast. The distance between you and your smartphone isn’t. Friction vs frictionless. An endless refresh, always with more, optimized just for your interests, right in your hand. And yet, it’s not Wikipedia that we binge on all day.

Craig Mod - How I got my Attention Back

We have become spoiled: we cannot abide feeling bored, even for a second, and unconsciously reach into our pockets at the first sign of an empty moment. This extends beyond just boredom, though - any kind of negative emotion, such as sadness or self-consciousness, and we reach for our mental crutch. We’re starting to get out of touch with our purest emotions, because we don’t give them the time and space to fully form.

We grow less and less patient for reality as it is, especially when it’s boring or uncomfortable. We come to expect more from the world, more rapidly. And because reality can’t live up to our expectations, it reinforces how often we want to turn to our screens. A self-reinforcing feedback loop.

Tristan Harris - Tech Companies Are Designing Your Life — Here’s Why You Should Care

This aversion to boredom helps to explain the terrible power of notifications, and why they are such a popular mechanism for the tech companies to use to get us into their app. Humans have a Pavlovian response to hearing notification sounds: a small amount of dopamine is released into the brain whenever we hear one, the unpredictability of what it could mean forcing us to check as soon as possible. Isn’t it difficult to hear your phone ping and ignore it? And because notifications don't appear on a set schedule, we check for them compulsively hundreds of times a day, craving that chemical kick.

Nir Eyal (that's an alias, his actual name is Lucifer) literally wrote the book on how companies could manipulate human psychology to get people to engage more with their products. It's called Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. From his blog post, Variable Rewards: Want To Hook Users? Drive Them Crazy (yep, I'm afraid that really is the title), he explains:

At the heart of the Hook Model is a powerful cognitive quirk described by B.F. Skinner in the 1950s, called a variable schedule of rewards. Skinner observed that lab mice responded most voraciously to random rewards. The mice would press a lever and sometimes they’d get a small treat, other times a large treat, and other times nothing at all. Unlike the mice that received the same treat every time, the mice that received variable rewards seemed to press the lever compulsively.

[...]

Bizarrely, we perceive this trance-like state as fun. This is because our brains are wired to search endlessly for the next reward, never satisfied. Recent neuroscience has revealed that our dopamine system works not to provide us with rewards for our efforts, but to keep us searching by inducing a semi-stressful response we call desire.

Isn't it horrifying that such books and articles exist? But this is really the crux of the issue: greed wins. The entire industry runs on Venture Capital (VC) money, most of whom are notoriously ruthless in their pursuit of profits. When it's a choice between doing things the right way or the more profitable way, there is only going to be one winner. Despicable people like Eyal, and his counterparts in all the big tech companies and VC firms, make millions of dollars by exploiting weaknesses that we all share. Who cares if I make hundreds of millions of people addicted to checking their phones? I'll be sitting with my feet up in my Silicon Valley mansion.

The variable rewards tactic outlined above, aka 'the slot machine effect', can be witnessed when we do things like update our profile picture on Facebook, or upload a new photo to Instagram. We ourselves think the picture looks good, but how will everyone else respond to it? We never quite know. It's exciting. Like gambling. Am I going to receive zero likes, or twenty? So we press Post. And wait. Soon, the likes start to roll in, bringing a shot of dopamine to the brain each time. Another ping from our phone, like music to our ears. Another red notification dot, the colour chosen specifically to bring about the most emotional response possible. We're hooked.

For many, these likes, retweets, and even the number of emails we receive have become the currency by which we measure ourselves against our peers. They make us feel important, and popular. Teenagers, going through the period of life when one is most insecure and unsure of oneself, are particularly vulnerable to using such metrics to measure their self-worth. Instagram users will often delete photos if they do not receive enough likes. Social media has made us slaves to the approval of others, instead of trusting in our own voice.

Taking Action

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

Herbert Simon (1971)

Distraction is a subtle beast: it's hard to notice when you've become distracted, and its effects on your wellbeing aren't easily perceptible. Experiments have shown, however, that once you have been distracted it takes an average of 25 minutes to return your focus to the original task. Also, once you've been distracted you are more likely to distract yourself from the task in the future.

Ever felt like you've achieved a zen-like focus, or are 'in the zone'? It's impossible to achieve that state if our attention is constantly being fragmented. The good news is that there are a number of simple steps we can take to avoid becoming distracted. Your phone's Do Not Disturb or Aeroplane modes are a must in this case, and I find that physically moving my phone to a different room helps combat the temptation to fiddle, once my mind inevitably wanders from whatever I'm doing. (Again, our intolerance for boredom.) I think we tend to overestimate ourselves in our ability to 'multitask' (there's no such thing really), and don't see the harm in occasionally checking our phone while we read a book, for instance. However, I tend to think this constant fragmentation of attention is quite an issue, and that we would all feel a little more at peace if we got into the habit of focusing on one thing at a time.

People are often uneasy with the idea of turning off notifications, or using Do Not Disturb/Aeroplane Mode, for the fear of missing out. I think this fear is legitimate, but overblown. Most plans are made in advance, rather than spontaneously, so you’re unlikely to miss out on anything. Even if you were to miss out once or twice, is the alternative - living a life where your attention is constantly fragmented - worth it?

I also believe that most people are way too liberal with their notifications settings: you should become militant about which apps you allow to distract you with notifications, and in which ways. For each notification, question how quickly the information needs to be acted upon (if at all), the signal-to-noise ratio in terms of importance, and what the benefit of being notified is. Email, for example, is a format where a response rarely requires immediate action, and a lot of the email we get is impersonal marketing and spam. To take it to an extreme, if 99% of the email you got was spam, would you consider, even for a moment, being notified every time you got an email?

When thinking about what the benefit of a notification is, consider the notifications people get for someone liking their Instagram photo: I struggle to think of any benefit for this being a notification rather than just something you see when you next open the app, other than pure vanity and the aforementioned dopamine hit. It’s not actionable information, it’s purely there to make you feel good. Is that positive feeling worth being distracted over? Divorce your ego from these shallow metrics. If you let your happiness and self-worth be influenced by likes and retweets, it’ll ruin you.

People are carrying around a portable dopamine pump, and kids have basically been carrying it around for the last 10 years.

David Greenfield, quoted in 'Are Teenagers Replacing Drugs With Smartphones?'

Stop trying to use your phone for everything. Save things like reading articles and typing out long replies for when you're at a computer/tablet, which those tasks are better suited to. The smartphone is an amazing device in that it can do so many different things, but that doesn't mean we should use it for all of those things. Use those moments when you would've done something on your phone to take a look around. Or just sit in silence. Stop trying to occupy your mind for every moment of the day. And if you go out somewhere and don't think you'll need your phone, try leaving it behind. You might like it. Incorporating these kinds of positive habits into your life will take time, and you will be constantly fighting against temptation at the beginning, but the benefits are significant: a greater sense of focus, less mental fatigue, higher productivity, a fuller life.

Can you allow your mind to be quiet? Isn't it difficult, because the mind seems to be like a monkey: jumping up and down and jabbering, all the time. Once you've learned to think, you can't stop. And an enormous number of people devote their lives to keeping their minds busy, and feel extremely uncomfortable with silence.

Alan Watts - The Mind

The internet has opened up an overwhelming amount of information for us to consume. The amount of content uploaded every day is staggering: for example, there are 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Take the pressure off yourself when it comes to consuming content. You don't need to read everything. Most of it has little value anyway, and you'll probably forget 90% of what you read. And if you're one of those crazy people who watches videos at 1.5x speed, so that you can consume more and more, just stop. Let go.

Stop watching things you don’t need to watch. Stop listening to things you don’t need to listen to. Stop paying attention to things that do not need attention. Be aware that almost everything being pushed at you falls into those categories. Most importantly, stop going on about all these things to make other people feel the same pressures.

Alex Balk - How To Be A Better Content Consumer

One of the more extreme solutions to the distraction problem - going back to a dumb phone - is appealing to some, but I think I would miss a lot of the utility of the smartphone: carrying a high-quality camera in your pocket is really nice, as is the ability to play music/podcasts and navigate using a maps app. We shouldn't have to go to such excessive measures to regain a little control, we just need to be selective about how we have our smartphone set up, so that we're not constantly fighting against temptation.

With that goal in mind, here are some actions I have taken recently, which I feel have had a positive effect on my life:

• Went through all the apps on my phone and deleted the ones that I rarely use. (You can always reinstall them in the future if you end up needing them.) • Reorganised the apps on my phone so that only the important, regularly-used ones have a place on the (two) home screens. The others went into folders. I left quite a lot of empty space on the home screens, rather than filling them with apps. • Deleted the Facebook (and accompanying Messenger) app from my phone. Now I just check it occasionally on the web, when I’m on my laptop. • Turned off email notifications. I just check it manually once every day or so. • Started putting my phone into Aeroplane Mode before I go to bed, and leaving it in that state until a few hours after I wake up the following day. Not waking up to a barrage of notifications makes a huge difference. • Started regularly putting my phone in Do Not Disturb mode, especially if I’m doing anything that requires focus. • Turned off badge app icons (the little red dot with a number of unread notifications) on every app except for messaging ones. • Started leaving my phone in a different room when I watch a film/TV show. • Began trying to only unlock my phone with a purpose in mind, rather than mindlessly flicking between home screens looking for something to distract me. • Started meditating every day. Learning to focus is a skill you can build up over time.

Some of these might seem extreme, but I feel that desperate times call for desperate measures. I’d rather be aggressive about tackling this problem, and then slowly relent on a few things here and there, than make superficial changes that may or may not have an effect. Like I say, I feel these have all had a positive effect on my life, and they are also sustainable in the long term. We’re fighting a war for our attention. Your most valuable weapon is analytical thinking. Ask yourself some simple questions: what is this doing for me? Would I be better off without it? If not, would I be better off adjusting the way I use it? Thoughtless, impulse-based actions are what got us into this mess in the first place. It’s time to start using that grey matter again, and paying close attention to how we feel.

One thing I would like to incorporate into my life, but am yet to, is the idea of bookending my day with internet-free and screen-free time. Waking up in the morning would be a lot more peaceful without the fragmentation of attention caused by technology, and using screens before bedtime has been shown to negatively affect sleep. Also, you're unlikely to miss any important notifications at these times of day. It seems like an excellent habit to have.

There is a qualitative and quantitative difference between a day that begins with a little exercise, a book, meditation, a good meal, a thoughtful walk, and the start of a day that begins with a smartphone in bed.

Craig Mod - How I got my Attention Back

The Future

Throughout the history of technology, computing devices have become more and more personal over time. The first computers took up an entire room, then they fit on a desk, then they could be tucked under an arm and carried with you. Phones became pocketable, and now smartwatches have enabled us to literally strap technology to our bodies. Augmented- and virtual-reality headsets are starting to gain traction, and our relationship to artificially-intelligent assistants like Siri will become more conversational and intimate over time. Some enterprising people, dubbed 'biohackers', have even started to experiment with inserting things like magnets and near-field communication (NFC) chips into their bodies. This trend is going to continue over time: it seems inevitable that, as chips get ever smaller, contact lenses that can record video will be invented, as well as chips that can accurately measure vital signs like blood glucose level, to name but two.

We need to start taking action to equip ourselves for this changing landscape. If we accept the status quo, as people seem to be doing with smartphones nowadays, we are going to let technology increasingly take over our lives. Today, 50% of teenagers admit to having an addiction to their mobile devices. Over time, as technology becomes ever more immersive, the level of addiction will only rise. We need to become more attuned to how it is creating compulsive behaviours in us, how it is affecting our mood, and the way it changes how we interact with other people. When we can start to connect the dots, we will become motivated to change our behaviour.

Technology should be seen as a tool, a 'bicycle for our minds', not a burden or a crutch. We are each responsible for our own relationship with the technology we use, and we need to wake up to what an important responsibility that is.