Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, put your
Speaker 1: head back in the clouds and shut your mouth. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren vocle Bond. I'm Joe McCormick. Hi, Joe.
Speaker 1: You know, I had something happened to me last week.
Speaker 1: That's not the first time it's happened, and it's always
Speaker 1: a brand new frustration every time. But I had a
Speaker 1: couple of those work days. Sorry, you got an email
Speaker 1: their job. Hold on, let me answer it for you now. No,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, hold on, there you go. You know,
Speaker 1: I had, like I had several days last week where
Speaker 1: I had a to do list of things I needed
Speaker 1: to research and write, and you know, you all know
Speaker 1: the kind of work we do around here, and I
Speaker 1: was busy all day. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I realized I had crossed almost nothing off of my
Speaker 1: to do list, and in fact, had added things to
Speaker 1: my to do list. So to do list got longer,
Speaker 1: a few, very few things were clicked off, and yet
Speaker 1: you felt like your entire day was pretty much taken
Speaker 1: up with work. Yeah, so how did that work? What happened? Well?
Speaker 1: I realized looking back through my email that, oh, I
Speaker 1: just spent most of the these days answering emails, reading emails,
Speaker 1: answering emails, and responding to messages and notifications on our
Speaker 1: social media accounts. So, in other words, every time you
Speaker 1: would start to get to tackle one of the tests
Speaker 1: on your to do list, something else would pop up
Speaker 1: interrupt you, and you would take time away from that
Speaker 1: task to attend to whatever that might be. Bingo. I'm
Speaker 1: sure y'all have days like this too. Yeah, most days
Speaker 1: honestly called week days. Yeah, it's great. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that you can do once you're finally
Speaker 1: done with work for the day is get your work done. Yes.
Speaker 1: I frequently go home and get that research done that
Speaker 1: I was meaning to do all day, but instead hatings
Speaker 1: and answered some Twitter comments. If you've ever watched those
Speaker 1: foward Thinking videos that are set in an office, and
Speaker 1: you wonder, gosh, I wonder when he wrote those, the
Speaker 1: answer is five am, the same day they were shot,
Speaker 1: and they're shot at nine am. So that's it's true
Speaker 1: for me too. Yeah. So, as it turns out, there's
Speaker 1: some great things I love about the Internet, y'all. One
Speaker 1: of the things, yeah, Well, for one thing, it employs me. So, uh,
Speaker 1: don't look a gift towards in the mouth, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, right as a man, That's right. I'm a
Speaker 1: made man on the internet, digital hit man. When I became,
Speaker 1: you know, a gigabit capo, it was a special day.
Speaker 1: All all my life, I wanted to be a wise guy. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: there are great things about the Internet, and I will
Speaker 1: tell you one of them. I have. I have so
Speaker 1: I don't live in the same town where I went
Speaker 1: to college. I went to college under grad school in
Speaker 1: different towns, and I don't live in those towns. And
Speaker 1: social media and the internet helps me keep up with
Speaker 1: friends of mine that I very likely otherwise would not
Speaker 1: have been able to keep up with. That's great. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely familiar with the concept of making friends
Speaker 1: while in college, but I appreciate what you're saying. No,
Speaker 1: that that is one of the things we love about
Speaker 1: the Internet is that it allows us this connectivity to
Speaker 1: friends and family, whether they are nearby or they move
Speaker 1: far away. I mean, I've got friends who are working
Speaker 1: in Korea right now, and I can keep up with
Speaker 1: their lives on a regular basis. It's it's not as
Speaker 1: infrequent as a letter every few months or a few
Speaker 1: years for example. Yeah, in the old days, even if
Speaker 1: you had wanted to keep up with them on a
Speaker 1: day to day basis, it would have been physically possible
Speaker 1: due to the speed of mail carriers. And you know,
Speaker 1: existing you could all you could be living a day
Speaker 1: to day basis, but you'd each be like a month behind. Right,
Speaker 1: You're like, well, this is what happened on Tuesday of
Speaker 1: last month to my friend. Uh. And we can also
Speaker 1: use social graphs in social networks to discover connections that
Speaker 1: we didn't know existed before. I even at even as
Speaker 1: old as I am and as much as I've been
Speaker 1: on social networking, it still amazes me when I noticed
Speaker 1: that one of my friends from one circle and a
Speaker 1: friend from a totally different circle know each other, because
Speaker 1: to me, they don't exist in that same universe. Right,
Speaker 1: you've got you've got this one. It's just all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, You're like, what you guys had a map?
Speaker 1: How is Superman hanging with thor when did that happen? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I keep promising myself that someday I'm going to stop
Speaker 1: being surprised when I make a new friend on Facebook
Speaker 1: and they're already friends with like eighty seven of my friends,
Speaker 1: right right. Also, I've I've used that metric to kind
Speaker 1: of decide whether not except friend requests. There was so
Speaker 1: and so since you a friend request, you have one
Speaker 1: friend in common, I ain't gonna happen. I mean, how
Speaker 1: good is that friend? Am I? Right? Well? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that has to be a remarkably good friend for
Speaker 1: me to accept that friend request. But no that we
Speaker 1: can also just keep informed of important events and inform
Speaker 1: other people of important events in our lives invite them
Speaker 1: to stuff. Using this approach, you, you and we have
Speaker 1: a support system that's very easy to tap into when
Speaker 1: we need it. Uh. You can argue about whether or
Speaker 1: not the support is as valuable as what you would
Speaker 1: get if you were to have face to face encounters,
Speaker 1: but it does matter that. You know, if you're feeling
Speaker 1: like overwhelmed or upset, and you go onto a social
Speaker 1: networking site and you make an honest statement, say, guys,
Speaker 1: I I'm kind of in the in the weeds here,
Speaker 1: can you help having a rough day? I either need
Speaker 1: some suggestions or some kitten videos. Ya kitten videos. It's
Speaker 1: like that's like number one prescribed solution to every problem.
Speaker 1: I suggest that I have I keep my kitting videos
Speaker 1: away from internet. Hit Man, You're on the list, Joe,
Speaker 1: So uh At any rate, Um, those are some good
Speaker 1: things about the Internet. We have this this immediacy, this
Speaker 1: connection with so many people, and including people that we
Speaker 1: don't have a real world connection to. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: made friends through various forums and groups and even things
Speaker 1: like just social networks like Facebook or Twitter. I've I've
Speaker 1: or through chat rooms associated with other shows. I mean,
Speaker 1: I made real friends that way, and that would not
Speaker 1: have been possible without the Internet. But there's some other
Speaker 1: things about the Internet that are more problematic, one of
Speaker 1: those being that perhaps these interactions we have online aren't
Speaker 1: as deep or meaningful in some way, or complex in
Speaker 1: some way as were real world interactions. Although that really
Speaker 1: kind of comes down to a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: like it feels this way, so it must be this way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Getting a precise answer to that particular question is is difficult,
Speaker 1: just because defining the quality of a given relationship is
Speaker 1: really difficult. You've got all these factors to to contend
Speaker 1: with you the type of relationship, if it's a romantic
Speaker 1: or friendship or acquaintance, whether it's a static relationship, or
Speaker 1: whether it's actively changing the demographics of the people in question,
Speaker 1: their their age, their education, their sex, their gender, their
Speaker 1: marital status, their income, the quality of their other relationships,
Speaker 1: and and so on. So there have been a bunch
Speaker 1: of scholarly surveys done, but the only sweeping conclusion that
Speaker 1: they come to is that you get out of online
Speaker 1: relationships what you put in to online relationships well, and
Speaker 1: that people who are more comfortable with technology will have
Speaker 1: higher quality online relationships, so it'll be more of more
Speaker 1: of an analog to what the real world relation and
Speaker 1: ship would be for those people. Whereas for people who
Speaker 1: might lack that that level of savvy, they may feel
Speaker 1: like the uh, the interactions they have are trivial or
Speaker 1: not meaningful. Um is really interesting to me because if
Speaker 1: you do the search on this and you're not looking
Speaker 1: at the scholarly stuff, you see a lot of just
Speaker 1: kind of armchair psychology. Yeah, like social media is destroying
Speaker 1: our ability to have real world relationships. Think of the children,
Speaker 1: how will the children possibly communication now? I will admit
Speaker 1: that I like to use the internet to um to
Speaker 1: skip certain mundane interactions, things like using Amazon to buy
Speaker 1: stuff instead of going to a store. But that's really
Speaker 1: more because I'm lazy and less that I want to
Speaker 1: avoid real world interactions. UM. So there's that to be said.
Speaker 1: And also the another downside to online communication is that,
Speaker 1: like we said in our Tone Analyzer episode, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: difficult to communicate nearly because we're limited in the level
Speaker 1: of communication we can have with someone else. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: if you're using as many smiley faces and uh little
Speaker 1: icons of of martini glasses as you have to. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: of course, in the real world, we can have body language.
Speaker 1: You can have your your the tone of your voice,
Speaker 1: the pacing of what you're saying, so people know what
Speaker 1: you're stressing versus not stressing. You know whether or not
Speaker 1: you're you're making very rude gestures while you're saying something,
Speaker 1: if you're making eye contact or not making All of
Speaker 1: these things play into the communication we have with someone
Speaker 1: else in the real world. Uh. In an online setting,
Speaker 1: you lose a lot of that, So it can be
Speaker 1: easy to send a message that can easily be misinterpreted. Um.
Speaker 1: And someone might end up taking it the wrong way
Speaker 1: and getting their feelings hurt or being confused by the message.
Speaker 1: Um So dealing with that gets a little exhausting. But
Speaker 1: the really big problem with all this online communication is
Speaker 1: the one that Joe was talking about at the top
Speaker 1: of the show, the fact that we now have all
Speaker 1: these different channels through which communication can come to us,
Speaker 1: that there are lots of potential ways that we can
Speaker 1: be interrupted throughout the day, and we're inventing new ones
Speaker 1: every single day. Not just not just new platforms like
Speaker 1: new versions of Twitter or Facebook, but new ways that
Speaker 1: those can annoy us, Like a device you wear on
Speaker 1: your wrist or even your face that will and you know,
Speaker 1: let you know, whatever physically move when you've got a message,
Speaker 1: it will vibrate and thus get your attention and pull
Speaker 1: it away from whatever it was you were doing in
Speaker 1: the first place, to say, hey, Joe, Bob, just like
Speaker 1: this barbecue joint, you should know about that. You know,
Speaker 1: I want to take this a step further and and
Speaker 1: just speak about an anecdotal experience. I don't have research
Speaker 1: to back this up. And maybe you'll will say if
Speaker 1: you agree, all right, I think that just having the
Speaker 1: the devices through which notifications can be delivered present, even
Speaker 1: if you are not currently getting notifications, can be a distraction.
Speaker 1: So if I'm reading a book, I will get a
Speaker 1: much better experience of reading that book if I put
Speaker 1: my phone in my computer at the other end of
Speaker 1: the house in a different room. What's a book. I
Speaker 1: was just noticing this the other day. I was having
Speaker 1: a wonderful experience reading a great book, and I realized,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm so glad I don't have my laptop
Speaker 1: sitting next to me. So, I mean, I fully agree.
Speaker 1: I have a whole podcast I do with two other people.
Speaker 1: It's not a how stuff works podcast, but it's a
Speaker 1: podcast I do where one of the things we try
Speaker 1: and do is watch movies with no distractions present because
Speaker 1: we both well, we both we all three, I just
Speaker 1: don't count Eric Sandy. Now, we all three agree that
Speaker 1: we have seen our attention spans diminish over time, and
Speaker 1: we often have distractions present when we're watching something at home,
Speaker 1: like a laptops open, or our smartphone or tablet is nearby.
Speaker 1: Sometimes all three, sometimes all three, and we know that
Speaker 1: we're not paying full attention to the actual story. That's
Speaker 1: unfolding on the screen. And therefore you can even have
Speaker 1: a conversation about a movie you quote unquote saw and
Speaker 1: have no memory of stuff that happened in that movie
Speaker 1: because you weren't really paying attention. You don't you didn't
Speaker 1: commit it to memory because you weren't really focusing on it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and that's not just anecdotal. Research shows that
Speaker 1: we are genuinely bad at multitasking. Yes. Oh. One study
Speaker 1: out of the University of Utah published indicated that, in fact,
Speaker 1: the more confident participants were in their multitasking abilities, the
Speaker 1: worst they were at multitasking. Here's the thing is that
Speaker 1: I know I'm terrible at multitasking. Guess what, I'm terrible
Speaker 1: at multi tasking. That's anecdotal. Another from Stanford in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine showed that we perform worse on every task
Speaker 1: we're doing when we multitask. And for a statistical example
Speaker 1: of that, I turned to yet another study, this one
Speaker 1: out of Carnegie Melon, also in two thousand nine, which
Speaker 1: used m ri I to measure participants brain activity in
Speaker 1: the parietal lobe, which is the one associated with spatial processing,
Speaker 1: while they were steering a vehicle along a virtual road.
Speaker 1: And so while the while the participants were concurrently listening
Speaker 1: to sentences being read out loud, their spatial brain activity
Speaker 1: decreased by thirty seven percent. That's not terrifying at all. So,
Speaker 1: so that's at least one example in which we are
Speaker 1: more than a third handicapped by trying to do more
Speaker 1: than one thing at once. Yeah, and so this plays
Speaker 1: into the the purpose why we even are doing the show,
Speaker 1: Like we we wanted to talk about how all these
Speaker 1: notifications and interruptions and demands and our attention can decrease
Speaker 1: the quality of whatever task we're performing or attempting to
Speaker 1: perform at that time. But we also wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about how at least one group of researchers is trying
Speaker 1: to decrease that effect on us, and they're doing it
Speaker 1: through technology. Amazing technology. Yeah, so the answer to the
Speaker 1: problem of technology having too many ways to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us is more technology. Yes. Uh so again
Speaker 1: they the study ends up or not the study, but
Speaker 1: rather the proposal the approach that they're talking. Let me guess, Yeah,
Speaker 1: every time you're about to try to multitask with different
Speaker 1: technology devices, a robot on a like tank tread with
Speaker 1: chainsaw bursts out of the wall, runs at you, says,
Speaker 1: don't do that an excellent guests not. I think that
Speaker 1: would be very very calming and non distracting. I think
Speaker 1: that that would really help me get tied right back
Speaker 1: into what I was doing in the first point. It's
Speaker 1: actually a special pair of glasses you wear, and every
Speaker 1: time you attempt to multitask, spikes embed into your temples
Speaker 1: and then scramble right behind your eyeballs. No, that doesn't
Speaker 1: happen either. In neither case does that happen for for
Speaker 1: some reason that that the researchers it toughs University decided
Speaker 1: to do eyeball impalement or chain sourbucks. Right, So we're
Speaker 1: just throwing some extra ideas out there. If this other
Speaker 1: version doesn't pan out, well tell me about propose. Okay.
Speaker 1: So they started with that premise that the interruptions that
Speaker 1: we experience in life, as Joe was mentioning at the
Speaker 1: top of the episode, can really hurt productivity and they
Speaker 1: increase our anxiety levels because we we have this increased
Speaker 1: feel a feeling that we're never going to complete the
Speaker 1: stuff we need to complete. And like Joe was saying,
Speaker 1: sometimes we're not even able to identify why that's the
Speaker 1: case in the moment. It's only after we reflect that
Speaker 1: we realize, oh, I was doing I was wondering why
Speaker 1: I was feeling so busy, but yet I wasn't getting
Speaker 1: anything done. So this is you know that that contributes
Speaker 1: to our anxiety, and they so, how can we decrease
Speaker 1: that and increase our productivity and limited interruptions so that
Speaker 1: we get notifications. But we only get the notifications when
Speaker 1: our brain is ready to receive notifications, in other words,
Speaker 1: when we're not trying to focus on some other task.
Speaker 1: Which is kind of tricky, right, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: tell your smartphone, hey, when I'm actually reading this research
Speaker 1: about notifications, don't buzz in my pocket. Well, just plug
Speaker 1: your smartphone straight into your brain through your and then
Speaker 1: just have your smartphone say no, wait, he's busy. Folks
Speaker 1: at home. I don't know if you've heard. Jonathan's gotten
Speaker 1: like several notifications since we've been in here. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I'm a popular guy. What can I say? I have
Speaker 1: not looked at them. I just keep my phone in
Speaker 1: my pocket. But I was checking Facebook like four seconds ago.
Speaker 1: I do see that I have a notification. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: lie I have a notification on Facebook. I haven't looked
Speaker 1: at yet, but that little number one and the notification
Speaker 1: is bothering me. Um, so the paper show is judging us.
Speaker 1: So no, no, I mean no, I'm looking at Twitter
Speaker 1: right now. So we're all guilty of it. Guys, if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this podcast and you're also have Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter, open, shut that down, come on, show some respect,
Speaker 1: laundry like a normal personast do something that doesn't require
Speaker 1: any sort of concentration, so so melodious voices can wash
Speaker 1: over you. The paper that the team published actually cited
Speaker 1: a study by Bailey and Constant in which people had
Speaker 1: to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, and the results are just
Speaker 1: in line with the same studies that Lauren was mentioning earlier.
Speaker 1: The participants reported higher levels of anxiety, they committed twice
Speaker 1: as many errors, plus took twenty five percent longer to
Speaker 1: complete a primary task than they would if they were
Speaker 1: allowed uninterrupted time to work on a single task, if
Speaker 1: they had down time to do this instead of being
Speaker 1: bombarded by other tasks. So how does this technology work
Speaker 1: that makes us, you know, sane by limiting the notifications
Speaker 1: to times when we can handle them. Well, the first
Speaker 1: thing they had to do was figure out how were
Speaker 1: they going to measure brain activity to figure out when
Speaker 1: we're focusing on something versus when we're done with a task,
Speaker 1: because they had determined that the in between time for
Speaker 1: tasks would be the ideal moment to send notifications because
Speaker 1: you save them up and send them in yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you're like, oh, I can handle this now, and
Speaker 1: then when you're done you can move on to the
Speaker 1: next task. Well, it seems like one option they have
Speaker 1: would be E E G. Yeah, but those do have
Speaker 1: a downside in that movement can create false data like
Speaker 1: errors in the data, so positives. Yeah, so it may
Speaker 1: be that if you're typing, you know, not even like
Speaker 1: moving moving, not like necessarily doing you know, jumping jacks
Speaker 1: or something. If you're typing, just the typing alone could
Speaker 1: create enough movement to create false positive and then it
Speaker 1: would it would not be able to set the threshold
Speaker 1: for when you are actually focusing on a task versus
Speaker 1: when you are kind of in a down mode. Okay,
Speaker 1: so electron cephalography is out yep. So instead they decided
Speaker 1: to look at functional near infrared spectroscopy the nurse. So
Speaker 1: this is where you're going to think we're saying snarf
Speaker 1: because it just sounds similar. So the nurse from now on,
Speaker 1: we're we're all temporarily pinky from pinky in the brain.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, it's it's it's very similar to narf. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the technology uses infrared light to scan for brain activity,
Speaker 1: and infrared infrared light can penetrate bone and other tissue,
Speaker 1: including neural tissue, to a depth of three centimeters in
Speaker 1: case you were wondering, because that's how this works. But
Speaker 1: it's absorbed and scattered by hemoglobin, and hemoglobin's optical properties
Speaker 1: depend upon whether or not it's oxygenated or deoxygenated. So
Speaker 1: using two different wavelengths of for red light and measuring
Speaker 1: with a detector which ones are coming back to that
Speaker 1: sensor can tell you about the blood flow in the brain,
Speaker 1: which in turn tells you about brain activity because I
Speaker 1: would imagine that more blood flow equals more brain activity. Yes, specifically,
Speaker 1: more oxygenated blood flow will tell you, hey, this person
Speaker 1: is really concentrating because the blood flow indicates that they
Speaker 1: need to think about something. Now, the paper points out
Speaker 1: that this finnurse technology isn't ideal for all applications because
Speaker 1: it takes several seconds for changes in blood flow to
Speaker 1: actually reach the brain. So you when you start to
Speaker 1: concentrate on a task, it takes a couple of seconds
Speaker 1: for the blood flow to uh to accommodate that, and
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to use the same technology as
Speaker 1: a means of controlling like a robot necessarily, at least
Speaker 1: not not without lag, because there it would take a
Speaker 1: couple of seconds before it detected that increase of blood
Speaker 1: flow for it to be able to send a command,
Speaker 1: and that would get rustrating. We've all experienced lag in
Speaker 1: some way. That's never fun. It's the worst usually, especially
Speaker 1: if you're online and you're trying to play a game
Speaker 1: of Halo and you know you're you're already handicapped by
Speaker 1: being in our cases Jonathan or Laura, Yeah, where we
Speaker 1: have we have the handicap of being us. And then
Speaker 1: you know, you get a sniper gun and you line
Speaker 1: up on somebody and you're sure they're right in front
Speaker 1: of you, but in truth, they've already moved four feet
Speaker 1: to the left because you're lagging. Not fun, I mean,
Speaker 1: lagging is having a delay is worse than having nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it. It's more frustrating if your computer continues to
Speaker 1: work but it's very slow, then if it just crashes
Speaker 1: and stuff. Absolutely true, So finners would not be good
Speaker 1: for that. But finnurs is fine for monitoring brain states,
Speaker 1: general brain states because it doesn't need to have that
Speaker 1: immediacy for it to detect when you are focusing versus
Speaker 1: when you have completed something. Um. Also, it's not sensitive
Speaker 1: to movement, as e G. Technology can be. So studies
Speaker 1: have shown that the sensors can be used on people
Speaker 1: who are engaged in activities that require a lot of movement,
Speaker 1: including things like jogging, with quote only slightly higher error
Speaker 1: rates than a traditional clinical device end quote. So uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's ideal for that kind of of application. And
Speaker 1: you could create such a device and attach it to
Speaker 1: something else, like a wearable like specifically like Google glass,
Speaker 1: because obviously you have to wear it on your head
Speaker 1: for it to detect neural activity because that's where it happens.
Speaker 1: So you would need to put some sort of wearable
Speaker 1: device on your head to be able to detect this
Speaker 1: blood flow. So I'm sorry, Jonathan, you're like blowing my
Speaker 1: elbow mind. I'm sorry, sorry, I can tell you where
Speaker 1: I keep my brain, at least according to my wife,
Speaker 1: but it's the family podcast. So um, at any rate,
Speaker 1: you would probably attach to this to something like Google Glass,
Speaker 1: which would give you those notifications and and that's a
Speaker 1: great example anyway, because it's got a screen that's right there, like,
Speaker 1: it's just incredibly accessible to get those interruptions that would
Speaker 1: cause you some anxiety and stress and decrease your productivity.
Speaker 1: So uh. You They then created software, because that's the
Speaker 1: hardware side, to do the detection, but now they have
Speaker 1: to create the software that actually interprets the data that's
Speaker 1: collected by the device. And the software they call filter
Speaker 1: p h y l t e R. So Filter takes
Speaker 1: the the nurse data and then tries to interpret whether
Speaker 1: or not that means you are concentrating on a task
Speaker 1: or you are not concentrating. So uh. In general, the
Speaker 1: strategy is filter will restrict notifications of low importance from
Speaker 1: going to you immediately and hold back until your brain
Speaker 1: activity indicates you are no longer focusing. Then it releases
Speaker 1: those notifications. So if you're really focusing on studying, and
Speaker 1: then you take a break and like, all right, I
Speaker 1: need to rest. That's when those less important notifications would
Speaker 1: come to you. Yeah, and since not all of our
Speaker 1: brains are actually the same, uh, that they came up
Speaker 1: with a way to account for that too. Right. It
Speaker 1: might be that if I'm focusing really hard, I have
Speaker 1: a certain amount of blood flow in my brain that
Speaker 1: is equivalent to Lauren just taking it easy, because my
Speaker 1: ability to focus is so pathetic that it's like Lauren
Speaker 1: at rest. But you know, so if we're both using
Speaker 1: the same device, it wouldn't know that I was focusing
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, Jonathan's just taking it easy. Here's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of notifications. So what we need is uh,
Speaker 1: the learning algorithm on the back end to say, all right,
Speaker 1: this is what it looks like when Jonathan is concentrating
Speaker 1: versus this is what it looks like when Lauren is concentrating,
Speaker 1: and it looks you know, you have to train it,
Speaker 1: just like with any learning algorithm. We've talked about this
Speaker 1: so much on the in past Forward Thinking podcasts, So, uh,
Speaker 1: the way they would train this is you would do
Speaker 1: simulations of stuff that would require you to focus, uh,
Speaker 1: and simulations of stuff that would be like low workload
Speaker 1: moments when you aren't required to really focus your attention,
Speaker 1: and the learning algorithm starts to pick up on those patterns,
Speaker 1: and then it can extrapolate from the data in real
Speaker 1: world situations whether or not you're focusing with pretty good
Speaker 1: degree of accuracy once it's gone through that training. So
Speaker 1: it also relies on another thing, and it relies on
Speaker 1: the notifications themselves having some sort of meta data attached
Speaker 1: to them to let the actual software no which notifications
Speaker 1: are really important, which ones are kind of important but
Speaker 1: can wait, and which ones are not important and can
Speaker 1: be archived essentially, And I assume that you can set
Speaker 1: these filters yourself, like say, uh, always let through calls
Speaker 1: from my wife. I think it probably would depend upon
Speaker 1: specifically the platform or the device that this is attached to.
Speaker 1: I think exactly what you're saying, because you know, we've
Speaker 1: got a lot of platforms like Gmail that allows us
Speaker 1: to do this, right, It already automatically sorts things into well,
Speaker 1: this goes into your priority inbox, this goes into your
Speaker 1: social inbox, this goes into promotions inbox, and you can
Speaker 1: set up other filters. I'm sure a lot of that
Speaker 1: is uh, possible for users to indicate, and the idea
Speaker 1: being that you would anything that has a high importance,
Speaker 1: like an always send level of importance means that it
Speaker 1: will come to you even if it's an interruption, which
Speaker 1: is important for certain events like if someone needs to
Speaker 1: get in touch with you because of an emergency, then
Speaker 1: obviously you want that notification to come through. Uh. Then
Speaker 1: there's the the never interrupt messages, that never send messages.
Speaker 1: Those would just go to an archive where you could
Speaker 1: go seek it out on purpose, like if I logged
Speaker 1: into my Gmail account to look at my mail, then
Speaker 1: I could see the ones that were there, but they
Speaker 1: wouldn't interrupt me. And then there would be the adaptive
Speaker 1: ones that would be withheld until you reach those points
Speaker 1: of the day where you're not focusing on a task,
Speaker 1: and that's when the adaptive ones would get sent through.
Speaker 1: So not very different from the way we do things now.
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty interesting approach to solving this problem
Speaker 1: of let's let's just let's to get rid of notifications.
Speaker 1: Let's just have a way to save the notifications for
Speaker 1: the times when we're able to deal with them, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just flooding us all throughout the day. I
Speaker 1: think that's a pretty neat approach, a pretty neat solution,
Speaker 1: and we should specify that this is not a product
Speaker 1: that is like ready for consumer purchase yet. This is
Speaker 1: a concept design. Yeah, it's it's essentially something that's being developed.
Speaker 1: Whether it will ever become a product that you can
Speaker 1: go out and purchase, I don't know. For one, thing
Speaker 1: requires you wear something on your head so that puts
Speaker 1: infrared waves into your brain. Yeah, steps of three centimeters.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of those deals where like, is
Speaker 1: it going to be built into a product in such
Speaker 1: a way that people won't feel self conscious about wearing
Speaker 1: it when they are working. I suppose if you are
Speaker 1: maybe studying in a dorm room and you have this
Speaker 1: thing on, then that's one thing. But if you're in
Speaker 1: an office like we are, we're trying to get research done. Uh,
Speaker 1: can you imagine all the photos that come out the
Speaker 1: videos that are being done where like people are people
Speaker 1: would be watching a video from how stuff works where
Speaker 1: the office is in the background. I'm wondering why everyone's
Speaker 1: wearing these tinfoil pyramids on their heads. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that if you actually put it into something like headphones,
Speaker 1: because frequently headphones are what I put on whether or
Speaker 1: not big secret here, you guys, whether or not I'm
Speaker 1: actually listening to anything as my que to leave me
Speaker 1: the heck alone. When I'm sitting in the office trying
Speaker 1: to get worked. I do the same thing with earbuds.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately they're not as visible so as effective. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got like big obnoxious green things, so like the
Speaker 1: Princess Leah Bun style sort of stuff. So yeah, they Yes,
Speaker 1: our previous company was very nice and getting us all large,
Speaker 1: obnoxiously colored, very excellent headphones which I broke. Mine were
Speaker 1: broken when I got him out of the box. I mine.
Speaker 1: Mine were working until I broke them. So now I
Speaker 1: have your Lauren, I want to apologize for all the
Speaker 1: times I've tried to talk to you when you had
Speaker 1: your your your heads on your heads, your heads on
Speaker 1: my head. Yeah, you always had pertinent things to say
Speaker 1: to me that they were always important. You. You were
Speaker 1: never like, hey, look at this picture of my dog,
Speaker 1: which is not what you sound like, by the way,
Speaker 1: about going to be honest, Lauren sits across from me,
Speaker 1: and I'm an extrovert, so it is necessary for her
Speaker 1: to put up a barrier so that I don't consistently
Speaker 1: bother her. But it's okay, Lauren, because I know how
Speaker 1: you feel, because Josh Clark sits next to me. So anyway,
Speaker 1: as I was saying, uh, one of the interesting questions
Speaker 1: we have is Josh Clark is more likely to slurp
Speaker 1: soup at you than talk to you. That's so not true.
Speaker 1: You just don't hear like every day that he is
Speaker 1: here and I am here. He's he Actually, this is
Speaker 1: a little peek behind the curtain. His art is not
Speaker 1: necessarily to say anything to me. It's to sit back
Speaker 1: in his chair and stare directly into the side of
Speaker 1: my head for minutes at a time if I let him,
Speaker 1: until I turn and look at him, and then he
Speaker 1: just kind of gives me a half smirk and then
Speaker 1: turns back to his world in his strictly controlling game.
Speaker 1: Is really good. He Well, you gotta remember he was
Speaker 1: hired like just a few months after I was, so
Speaker 1: he and him in with that. That stuff goes way back. Anyway,
Speaker 1: That's enough of that. So one thing we thought we'd
Speaker 1: turned the conversation too, is putting this this technology aside,
Speaker 1: whether or not it ever becomes available to the general consumer.
Speaker 1: Will we ever get to a point where it won't
Speaker 1: matter because we will just have adapted to this world
Speaker 1: of constant notifications and interruptions. Yeah, and brains are really plastic.
Speaker 1: We have an amazing capacity as human people to adapt
Speaker 1: to new situations. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, okay, So
Speaker 1: here's the thing I would say, are we talking about
Speaker 1: actually our our bodies evolving, like biological evolution changing our
Speaker 1: brains because that I don't know. It seems to me
Speaker 1: unless there is a selection pressure that is killing people
Speaker 1: or preventing them from having children if they can't handle
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. It's so much of
Speaker 1: an evolution thing as it is. Because keep in mind,
Speaker 1: this is so complex. It's both nature and nurture that
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, with the nature part being the experience.
Speaker 1: Like if if you some pot yeah, yeah, I absolutely understand.
Speaker 1: It's a combination. I mean, like, if you're talking about
Speaker 1: changing what our brains are naturally capable of, I don't
Speaker 1: know about that. I don't know about naturally capable of.
Speaker 1: I think more of the brains are shaped simply through
Speaker 1: the experience. So in other words, in other words, if
Speaker 1: if you from the moment you are consuming media, this
Speaker 1: is the way things work for you, then it's on
Speaker 1: on an iPhone and from that moment, yeah, you get
Speaker 1: constant interruptions, then it may be a very different experience
Speaker 1: for you versus somebody who was alive before the web
Speaker 1: was a thing and didn't have all these various interruptions
Speaker 1: that could potentially distract someone from a task. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know that answer. It's probably too early to really say,
Speaker 1: but we do know, like as of right now, that multitasking,
Speaker 1: except for a very tiny percentage of the population, is
Speaker 1: something that we're just not good at, not at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: said something something like two percent of the population is
Speaker 1: the most recent number of supertaskers. Supertaskers, and if you
Speaker 1: think you're probably you're probably extra bad. Yeah. The more
Speaker 1: you think you're part of that two percent, the less
Speaker 1: likely it's true. I imagine multitasking, Well, I guess what
Speaker 1: this would be. It would be a specific case of
Speaker 1: the Dunning Kruger effect, right, specifically for multitasking competent Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So another adaptation we might see is just a shorter
Speaker 1: attention span. Though this is a very difficult thing to really,
Speaker 1: you know, nailed down. But according to the National Center
Speaker 1: for Biotechnology Information, which is part of the U s
Speaker 1: National Library of Medicine, our attention spans have been on
Speaker 1: the decline for a while. Yeah, back in two thousand
Speaker 1: it was twelve seconds, and what's eight point to five seconds?
Speaker 1: Was seconds attention spans? What were we just talking about?
Speaker 1: Is that what you're gonna ask? Alright, so short term
Speaker 1: memory obviously also on the decline. Um according to the
Speaker 1: National Center for Biotechnology Information, our attention spans are getting worse.
Speaker 1: So we're having problems actually doing this focusing thing in
Speaker 1: the first place, that after eight point to five seconds,
Speaker 1: we have this issue with our attention spans. I thought
Speaker 1: it was funny because I kept seeing figures like this
Speaker 1: without any attribution to the source, and some of the numbers, yes,
Speaker 1: some of the numbers were ridiculous, and it made me think, like,
Speaker 1: I need to see if there actually is a reliable
Speaker 1: source out there that that cites this, because all of
Speaker 1: the articles I was seeing or info graphics, some of
Speaker 1: them were miles wrong. Some of them said twelve minutes
Speaker 1: attention span, not seconds, but minutes, and had dropped down
Speaker 1: to five seconds. And that's not what the h and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, how is that possible? And this is a
Speaker 1: side note about how you should always check for sources
Speaker 1: and if you don't find any Google into, you do
Speaker 1: until you do. And that's exactly what I was doing too.
Speaker 1: I kept going back because all the sources I was
Speaker 1: finding were listicals and things like that are or info
Speaker 1: graphics and uh. When I was trying to track down
Speaker 1: the data, I finally found it UM with information on
Speaker 1: this this uh this government US government center. And even then,
Speaker 1: we can't draw any firm conclusions about why attention spans
Speaker 1: have been on the decline or even I don't even
Speaker 1: know what metrics they used or how they went about
Speaker 1: measuring it. I don't know enough to feel like this
Speaker 1: number is meaningful without seeing the actual studies and how
Speaker 1: it was measured. Um, you know, it's an interesting possible fact.
Speaker 1: I found some other interesting research. There was a report
Speaker 1: out of Ohio State University in twelve that indicated that
Speaker 1: we still feel good about multitasking even when we're less
Speaker 1: productive because of it. I I didn't read the full thing,
Speaker 1: so so I can't tell you in what way we
Speaker 1: find kicking in. Yeah, like like like, why we find
Speaker 1: it emotionally fulfilling, but but apparently some significant number of
Speaker 1: participants in their study do. My guests would be purely
Speaker 1: a guess, But it's not that we find it emotionally fulfilling,
Speaker 1: but that we find it it's like we we punched
Speaker 1: the cloth, you know, we put our time in. Like
Speaker 1: when you do some multitasking, you feel like, well, I've
Speaker 1: earned some relaxing, which is kind of silly because if
Speaker 1: you were to focus on single tasks for most of
Speaker 1: us anyway, yeah, you would be finished way earlier. But
Speaker 1: you don't judge the merits of your labors by what
Speaker 1: you've objectively produced. You judge it by how much work.
Speaker 1: It was harrowing it was from point A to point B, right,
Speaker 1: And since we are more stressed out while we're multitasking,
Speaker 1: we're like, man, I was so stressed out today. I
Speaker 1: must have done some stuff. Right, I didn't get anything done,
Speaker 1: but I sure felt like I was in trouble. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like we broke some new ground today. Guys, Um, well,
Speaker 1: this was really interesting. And again it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you know, it's I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: operated under the assumption that I was good at multitasking.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever felt like I was confident
Speaker 1: or competent at that um so it's interesting to me
Speaker 1: to think that people had really overestimated their ability to
Speaker 1: do that sort of stuff. Let's end this episode with
Speaker 1: some personal, anecdotally only supported tips, and I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: one of mine in addition to what I said earlier. So,
Speaker 1: if you want to concentrate on a book or something,
Speaker 1: put all your notifications supplying devices in a different room.
Speaker 1: The other one is close tabs. You've got your browser open,
Speaker 1: you're trying to get some work done. I think I've
Speaker 1: discovered that it's actually easier to get work done if
Speaker 1: you close a bunch of those other tabs, even if
Speaker 1: you're going to use them, just save them for later,
Speaker 1: close them, Lauren. Any tips, Well, if if I'm really
Speaker 1: trying to very much concentrate on something, I'll just put
Speaker 1: my phone in airplane mode, even even if I like
Speaker 1: need for security blanket type reasons to have it next
Speaker 1: to me, because I don't know about you guys, but
Speaker 1: I get a little bit itchy when I'm not in
Speaker 1: personal contact with my cell phone. But but yeah, just
Speaker 1: just put it in airplane mode, nothing will come through.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful or akin to shutting down extra tab, turn
Speaker 1: off your email, like close that program. Yeah, depending on
Speaker 1: if you can get away with that, we sure for
Speaker 1: for short periods of time. That the the the writer
Speaker 1: Jane Epsenson, I think I'm saying that correctly. Yeah, who
Speaker 1: who is a writer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
Speaker 1: is currently working on a whole bunch of different projects,
Speaker 1: has these, uh these these Twitter uh runs sprints, attention
Speaker 1: sprints where she gets on Twitter and she's like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go on an attention sprint for an hour,
Speaker 1: shut down all of the things, concentrate only on this
Speaker 1: one task, uh and and encourages other people to do
Speaker 1: it too. And I think that that's a fun, you know,
Speaker 1: crowd crowdsource responsibility kind of way of going about good tips.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I mean, it depends on if people in
Speaker 1: your workplace demand instant responses to email all the time.
Speaker 1: If they do, you might want to try and figure
Speaker 1: out a way that that doesn't dominate the culture of
Speaker 1: your workplace, because it really is helpful if you can
Speaker 1: batch your email. I say that as somebody who doesn't
Speaker 1: do that most of the time. Yeah, well, again, those
Speaker 1: notifications pop up and it's really hard to just you know,
Speaker 1: not look at the corner of your screen to see
Speaker 1: what the subject matter of that email is or or
Speaker 1: from whom it arrived, because you know, there's certain names
Speaker 1: that when they pop up, you're like, yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: we gotta figure out a time to have this meeting
Speaker 1: where we're going to talk about what we're gonna do
Speaker 1: at the meeting. Yeah, and we'll have that meeting about
Speaker 1: how to have fewer meetings. What's my favorite meeting? My
Speaker 1: My tip is if you really want to pay very
Speaker 1: close attention to some form of entertainment, you should start
Speaker 1: a podcast. And I'm a co host on it, and
Speaker 1: we will come up with some ridiculous gimmick to make
Speaker 1: that the central premise for the existence of that podcast.
Speaker 1: And that will help because it really helped me watch
Speaker 1: really terrible movies online. So uh, you know, it works.
Speaker 1: I mean, anecdotally, I only have so many hours in
Speaker 1: the day though, So first comfort served, we're big on
Speaker 1: the anecdotes today. Yeah, well, we we already had our
Speaker 1: podcast where we talked about the really rigorous scientific studies.
Speaker 1: So now we can go anecdote city. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: this was actually a lot of fun to talk about,
Speaker 1: and we've got lots of ideas for future episodes. But
Speaker 1: we always want to hear from you, guys, and we
Speaker 1: want to hear about your experiences. Maybe you have tips
Speaker 1: that you would like us to share on future podcasts
Speaker 1: about ways to really concentrate and cut down these these
Speaker 1: these distractions. Yeah, send them in, Jonathan, How can they
Speaker 1: send them in? They can send us an email that
Speaker 1: addresses FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or
Speaker 1: drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook. At Twitter
Speaker 1: we are FW thinking, and on Facebook just search fw thinking.
Speaker 1: We'll pop right up and you can leave us a
Speaker 1: message there and we will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this topic in the future of technology,
Speaker 1: I'll visit forward Thinking dot Com Problems, brought to you
Speaker 1: by Toyota. Let's go Places,