The Attention Diet: Be More Focused

[Music] oh I'm sorry I didn't see you there I was sucked into the [ __ ] vortex of my social media at one minute okay if you're like me your life is constantly interrupted by [ __ ] like this constantly checking your emails arguing with some [ __ ] idiot on Twitter it's crazy it feels like we're all constantly distracted all our attention is being pulled in 20 different directions all at the same time Google recently said that more information was created in the last two years than the rest of human history combined there's just more stuff being published out there being talked about out there then you or I could ever keep track of and ever know and in some sense as I feel like our brains have kind of hid their maximum capacity like we're always bumping up against the ceiling of our mental Ram and I've got a theory about this and I call the theory the attention diet he looked back in the 1950s and 60s for the first time in human history we were able to produce more food than we actually needed to survive suddenly people if you wanted to go out and eat 10,000 calories well [ __ ] it you could do it and something interesting happen around the same time is that people realize that when giving them an infinite amount of food that they can eat it's hard to stop yourself so people started getting fat they started getting heart disease diabetes went through the roof by the 1970s or so there emerged a fitness movement because behind the 70s and 80s people realize oh wait you can't just eat whatever the hell you want all day every day I think we're approaching a similar point with our attention and so the same way that people back in the 50s and 60s went a little bit crazy and started eating cheeseburgers for lunch every day I think we've gone a little bit crazy and we're eating the mental equivalent of cheeseburgers every day we sit here and scroll through the junk food for our minds all day every day and we're just now starting to realize the same way that we have to manage our physical nutrition we have to start being very deliberate about what we put into our minds by what we expose ourselves to throughout the day oh wait hold on and so I've come up with this thing called the attention diet and it's it's pretty simple there are three parts to it the first part is cut out all the stuff that is not enhancing your life that's not helping you in some way to find nutritional resources of information and connection and in third be very deliberate about how you use technology so step one cut out all the [ __ ] this is actually in my opinion the most fun step because we all follow those people online we all read websites that we ask ourselves what the [ __ ] am i doing like why am I doing this this isn't pleasant this doesn't make me happy I'm not learning anything now is the time to go through and cut all of that [ __ ] out probably the most helpful thing I did all of last year I purged my friends and followers list I went through my Facebook and my Twitter and I look every single person I asked myself is this a person I care about is this a person that I'm learning from or that is enhancing my life in some way and if it was not a clear and easy yes I unfollowed them you just have to be [ __ ] merciless about who you unfollow everybody's got that crazy uncle who thinks that like vaccines or a world conspiracy to like brainwash us or whatever it's like unfollow that [ __ ] I mean you could stay friends with them just like unfollow them just like mute him on all of your stuff don't get sucked into it anymore same thing goes for news and media stories take a very hard look at where you're getting your information ask how biased it is ask how important it is 90% of the news media that we consume is just not that relevant or important than the long run what I find is that when you get rid of all the extra garbage you actually start enjoying using these things again it's not a compulsive thing that you feel like you have to check every 10 minutes it she becomes like a nice relaxing thing to do before dinner one day and then you you read it for 15 minutes and then you're done like that's the beauty of it when you want to follow like 80% of the people you're following there's not much to read each day like you scroll a few times and now you're back you're back to the [ __ ] you saw yesterday so it's beautiful it forces you to get off your phone point number to seek out nutritious forms of information I mean long form content things that take at least 10 or 20 minutes to watch or read things that require a lot of research and thought put into them don't read like the stupid fluff pieces that show up that are churned out like five times a day on some news media website like find the [ __ ] that you know the guy spent three or four months researching that stuff to write that out that's what you should be filling your attention with every chance you get and finally number three be very deliberate about how you use your technology the way I like to do this is to actually set up things in my environment that like disallow certain behaviors so for instance on my work computer I have all social media block gaming websites block video stream services blocked like you can't open that [ __ ] can't restart the computer you can't put in a password I give myself 30 minutes of break time per day and that's it I use a program called focus for Mac OS they're a bunch of different programs that do this there's one called freedom there's one called cold turkey they're great you can get them for your phone you can program them to only allow a certain amount of time on each website if you only want to be on Instagram for 15 minutes a day you can set that up start using this software to manage your own usage you know I don't I don't even have social media apps available on my phone directly I make it so that I have to go to the website which is a total pain in the ass but it's a pain in the ass for a good reason so I don't actually [ __ ] do it because look if I go out and buy like two gallons of ice cream and leave it in my fridge of course I'm gonna eat it like the best way to not eat crap is to not buy crap and put it in my fridge if you only have access to healthy sources of information then you end up spending your time consuming healthy sources of information another thing that's really good to do start setting rules about your phone I don't bring my phone into my office I leave it in my bathroom because you got to use it when you take a [ __ ] you remove the opportunity to even be tempted in the first place you don't even like willpower doesn't even come into the equation because the temptations not there in the first place my wife and I no phones in the bedroom although we break that rule sometimes but still it's a good thing to aspire to if we're watching a movie no phones during a movie and if you want to get really really hardcore this is some hardcore [ __ ] I all I know one guy who does this but you can actually you can buy these these things that you put in your electrical outlets and you they have timers on them and you can set them up so that the electrical outlet only works certain times a day and so what my friend did is he set it up to his Wi-Fi router and so his Wi-Fi router turns off at 10 o'clock every single night I'm kind of getting the shakes just thinking about that that's like the ultramarathon of the attention diet that's like the guy who's like oh he only eats raw vegan does a thousand push-ups everyday that's only for like the true nut jobs out there and let's talk about socializing because one of my most important rules is that if I'm out socializing I don't pull out my phone unless it's really important I don't sit there I don't [ __ ] check email and [ __ ] while somebody's talking to me we need to establish a new social etiquette around this stuff smartphones are like the new cigarettes it's bad enough that I'm destroying my own attention right now trying to talk to you but I'm also [ __ ] up your attention too like it's like secondhand attention smoke if I'm sitting here talking to you like this because you can't focus on me if I'm talking into my phone or if I'm paying attention to my phone attention is is this very it's a scarce resource it's something that needs to be practiced and managed within ourselves and it's also something that affects other people if my attention is all [ __ ] up it's gonna mess up your attention as well nobody likes hanging out with somebody who's always distracted all the time because it makes us feel distracted all the time get your own [ __ ] in order and then maybe your friends will want to hang out with you again it's really basic get conscious about the media you're consuming get conscious about the apps you're using there's a lot of research out there that shows that attention spans have been dwindling over the last 20 years and there's all sorts of negative side effects that come from that lack of attention span you know if we're not able to focus for more than two or three seconds at a time we actually lose a mental ability to handle a lot of different tasks and have the discipline to see projects through to the end so exercise your attention span treat it like a muscle you know it's like the same way we have to consciously get out of the house and be physically active we need to consciously start training our minds to be more attention early active summers coming start paying attention to your attentional waistline get your attentional fitness in order start using the attention diet and if you need me I'll be on Instagram [Music] funny cat picture [Laughter] [Music] Wow [ __ ] cold

Channel: Mark Manson

Views: 258,397

Keywords: digital addiction, mark manson, markmanson, self-development, self knowledge, self development, self improvement, self improvement motivation, self development motivation, self development tips, life, life choices, life advice, emotions, emotional intelligence, self care, habits, identity, psychology, life stages, digital detox, information age, digital addiction infomercial, digital addiction 20/20 abc news, digital addiction documentary, Digital addictions are drowning us

Id: QllKrUi_fy4

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2020