Mission 5: Technology Vs. Your Brain
What is technology doing to us? We look for some timeless advice…
Dear timeless peeps,
The average millenial checks their phone 157 times per day.
- That’s once every 6 minutes (counting your waking hours).
- In other words — that is fucking humongous.
First off — I’m totally guilty myself. Until recently, I didn’t really think about it — FOMO? The need for confirmation? …. Was it even a problem?
Apparently, it is a problem. And we’re just starting to explore the science behind it. At least that’s what I read in The Distracted Mind, an amazing 360-degree view of technology and the influence it has on our brains.
Let’s get Timeless
Although it might not feel like a true “Timeless” topic, we can apply our usual methodology here:
- Delve into the depths of the internet (is that ironic??) — Look for pieces of great advice
- Rate each other’s contributions — Use “the wisdom of the community”
- Get a little smarter along the way
I believe this might become one of the most important topics of our time (“smartphones are the new cigarettes?”). So I would LOVE for you to contribute to our knowledge. If you have an interesting piece — the Upload page is only one click away…
PS: My apologies if this post is a little gloomier than others. I’m still quite a positivo about the future, but we should never put on blinders! Enjoy nonetheless…
My 5 Timeless Pieces — Technology vs. Your Brain:
- Addiction to Technology is Ruining Lives
Simon Sinek (2016), 4min watch
The starting point. Simon Sinek explains passionately (& with some scientific backing) why notifications, likes & messages should be viewed as an addiction. A wake up call. - Amusing Ourselves to Death
Stuart McMillen (2012), 3min read
A comic — of all things — but not an ordinary one. Again, this doesn’t really offer any solutions — but it does sketch the historical context quite well. The views of two awesome books (Brave New World and 1984) are compared, to see in which world we actually ended up… - The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen (and Weapons of Mass Distraction)
Tim Ferriss (2007), 5min read
Here’s Tim again! I absolutely love the insight on attention vs. time.
“Did I have time to check e-mail and voicemail? Sure. It might take 10 minutes. Did I have the attention to risk fishing for crises in those 10 minutes? Not at all.” - Why You Should Stop Reading News
Farnam Street (2013), 5min read
Media fasting — something I’ve been practicing lately. It’s really hard, because we all have a deep-rooted need to be “an informed citizen”. This article points to a couple of plain truths: Most news is not important — Most news is not relevant to your life and not actionable — Most news today is not even well informed. The choice is up to you. - Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
FightMediocrity (2015), 13min watch
This video-book-review actually offers a rather positive outlook. Nir Eyal is a leading researcher on building “addictive” products. His techniques have been used to perfection by Instagram, Snapchat & the like. (e.g. the cycle of trigger — action -reward — investment). He now challenges us to use the same methods to build stuff that is actually good for us.
Some Medicine — in the form of more apps ;-)
Just to add some actionable stuff in — I’ve been using the following applications to get more feeling with where I’m spending my digital time. Awareness is the first step.
- Moment app (Smartphone — simply tracks how much active time you spent on your phone)
- Rescuetime (Desktop — tracks laptop time on different applications, Outlook vs. Excel vs. Youtube vs. ….)
Up to you now!
More than any other topic we’ve crossed so far, we really need some solid advice on this one. Anything that helps in dealing with the high-paced 24/7 information-overload society of today: it could be helpful!!
- Read & Rate. Open one of the pieces on Technology Vs. Your Brain page. Rate it and help us filter out “the gems”.
- Upload stuff.
Adios?
Most certainly not. I know I let you guys down last week — media fasting and so on ;-).
Next week you will receive an overview of all the shit we discovered in Timeless Mission 5!
Your fellow Timeless geeks,
Gilles & Thomas
Why Timeless?
As you may know, we’re trying to find and preserve truly valuable content on the web. The first blog post gives some more context on the idea of an open database of “wisdom”. In short: we’re trying to separate the signal from the noise on the web. We’re not looking for the next hype or trend; we’re looking for principles that can be applied in many different circumstances.
Gameplan
First and most crucial step: find the wisdom. On today’s over-crowded internet, ruled by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other hype-machines… this could prove hard enough.
Here’s the plan:
- Every week, I start things off with my 5 personal favorites on a certain theme.
Productivity, Decision Making, Health, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Relationships, … y mucho más! - If you have great material on this subject, you can upload it into the database. Sharing is caring!
- We check out each other’s favorites and rate them on their timeless value.
- Subject by subject, we build up “hit-lists” of wisdom to preserve and expand.
- Maybe most importantly, we all learn a shit ton of each other in the process.
