Speaker 1: Pushkin. One of the greatest lies our minds tell us
Speaker 1: is that we're soaking up everything we see in here.
Speaker 1: But that's simply not true. Our ability to pay attention
Speaker 1: to the world around us is much more limited than
Speaker 1: we think. We're missing out on way more than we realize. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you again for helping me into the study. X.
Speaker 1: So you're going to be doing a classic experiment in
Speaker 1: psychology where you're going to be counting the number of
Speaker 1: basketball passes. I'm testing some of the students in my
Speaker 1: residential college at Yale on an experiment that's now become
Speaker 1: famous in the history of modern psychology. There's a decent
Speaker 1: chance you may have taken a version of it yourself.
Speaker 1: So there's gonna be six players, three people on the
Speaker 1: white team and three people on a black team, and
Speaker 1: your task is you have to count the number of
Speaker 1: passes that the people on the white team. Make makes sense, Yeah, okay, one, two, three, four.
Speaker 1: Since the teams are chriss crossing and the two balls
Speaker 1: are constantly moving, there's a lot to keep track of.
Speaker 1: Even so, most students are able to count the passes
Speaker 1: pretty accurately. Fourteen fifteen, awesome, that's correct. But counting the
Speaker 1: number of passes isn't really the point of the study.
Speaker 1: Did you also notice anything else that was weird in
Speaker 1: the video? I don't think so. Did you happen to
Speaker 1: see a big grilla walk into the scene? No, no,
Speaker 1: no way, I'll replay it again. Something very unexpected happens
Speaker 1: in the middle of this video. A large man in
Speaker 1: a guerrilla suit walks in and beats his chest. Now,
Speaker 1: even though the gorilla walks right through the middle of
Speaker 1: the frame, many people simply report not seeing it. Did
Speaker 1: you see a huge grilla walk in the middle of
Speaker 1: the pass? In fact, when researchers Dan Simon and Chris
Speaker 1: Shabri originally ran the study, more than half of the
Speaker 1: subjects failed to spot something right in front of their eyes.
Speaker 1: O God, I you believe Simon's and Shabri christen this
Speaker 1: phenomenon inattentional blindness, we're actually blind to anything we're not
Speaker 1: actively paying attention to. When you focus on the people
Speaker 1: passing the ball, you're simply unable to see a huge
Speaker 1: gorilla even when you're looking right at it. Our minds
Speaker 1: make us believe that we see everything we look at,
Speaker 1: but that's just not true and the things we don't
Speaker 1: notice matter for our happiness more than we think. Our
Speaker 1: minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy.
Speaker 1: But what if our minds are wrong? What if our
Speaker 1: minds are lying to us, leading us away from what
Speaker 1: will really make us happy. The good news is that
Speaker 1: understanding the science of the mind can point us all
Speaker 1: back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab with doctor Laurie Sanders. I guess the joy of
Speaker 1: doing science is when we discover things that are like,
Speaker 1: really surprising and counterintuitive about how our own minds work.
Speaker 1: And you're more likely to be surprised about processes in
Speaker 1: the mind that we don't have conscious access to. This
Speaker 1: is my colleague Brian Schell. He's a professor of psychology
Speaker 1: and cognitive science here at Yale. Brian studies the surprising
Speaker 1: limits of our attentional abilities. There's just way too much
Speaker 1: information coming in through our eyes at any given moment
Speaker 1: to fully process even most of it, much less all
Speaker 1: of it. We assume that the mere act of looking
Speaker 1: at something means we'll be able to perceive it. That say,
Speaker 1: if I'm looking at a computer screen, I'll naturally be
Speaker 1: able to see all the stuff that happens on the screen.
Speaker 1: But one of the most shocking discoveries of this research
Speaker 1: is that that is not true. That in some cases,
Speaker 1: you can completely fail to be consciously aware of something
Speaker 1: that's right in front of you if you are not
Speaker 1: paying attention to it. And Brian's work on an attentional
Speaker 1: blindness has shown that we're missing gorillas all over the place.
Speaker 1: His lab uses a slightly different version of the gorilla experiment.
Speaker 1: Instead of basketball players, Brian has people track a group
Speaker 1: of black and white circles and squares moving across a
Speaker 1: computer screen. The gorilla in this case is just a
Speaker 1: bright red cross. And so this bright red cross has
Speaker 1: a completely different color, a completely different shape, a completely
Speaker 1: different type of motion trajectory, and it literally passes across
Speaker 1: the entire screen and moves right in front of your eyes.
Speaker 1: But despite the fact that the red cross is totally
Speaker 1: different from the other shapes, around thirty percent of people
Speaker 1: failed to see it, even when they're looking directly at
Speaker 1: the screen. Our window on the world is only that
Speaker 1: which we attend to, and that is just a brute
Speaker 1: fact of human nature. We all have things that make
Speaker 1: us happy in life. A delicious meal, a sunny spring day,
Speaker 1: rain drops on roses, whiskers on kittens. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: lots of good stuff out there, but the limits of
Speaker 1: our attention mean that our favorite thing can only influence
Speaker 1: our mood if we notice them. I mean, when was
Speaker 1: the last time you took a second to look up
Speaker 1: at the blue sky and the trees, or really stop
Speaker 1: to pay attention to your partner's smile, or notice the
Speaker 1: warmth of your coffee cup. Research shows that all these
Speaker 1: little times were not paying attention can have a big
Speaker 1: impact on our well being. Psychologist Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel
Speaker 1: Gilbert showed this in a clever study. They had their
Speaker 1: subjects download an app that contacted them at random times
Speaker 1: and ask three questions, what are you doing right now?
Speaker 1: Are you paying attention to what you're doing? And third,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling? They found that what people were
Speaker 1: doing only had a small impact on what they were feeling.
Speaker 1: What really mattered was whether people were paying attention. And
Speaker 1: that's important. If we want to fully enjoy all the
Speaker 1: good things in life, we actually have to notice them.
Speaker 1: We need to make sure we're saving some of our
Speaker 1: limited attention for the stuff that really matters. But if
Speaker 1: we really want to use our attention to become happier,
Speaker 1: there's something else we need to come to terms with,
Speaker 1: and that's that it's really, really hard to recognize just
Speaker 1: how bad our attention is. And that's because we tend
Speaker 1: not to notice what we're not noticing. Philosophers sometimes call
Speaker 1: this the refrigerator light illusion. The idea is, how would
Speaker 1: you know if the light in your refrigerator is off
Speaker 1: when the door is not open. Everybody has intuitions that
Speaker 1: tell them that, of course, if a gorilla walked in
Speaker 1: front of me, I would notice it. But those intuitions
Speaker 1: are wrong. And if our brains are wrong about seeing
Speaker 1: a huge gorilla walking directly across a screen, imagine all
Speaker 1: the less salient, feel good gorillas we don't realize we're
Speaker 1: missing on a daily basis, all the smiles we don't notice,
Speaker 1: or the taste of a yummy lunch we didn't realize
Speaker 1: we ignored because something else grabbed our attention. But these
Speaker 1: days it's not just our limited minds that are causing
Speaker 1: the problem. We've also added something else to our daily
Speaker 1: routine that makes our usually bad attention much much worse.
Speaker 1: Welcome that world. It's two thousand. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 1: An Apple CEO, Steve Jobs is addressing the crowd at
Speaker 1: the Macworld convention. We're going to make some history together today.
Speaker 1: He pauses and takes a sip of water. He seems
Speaker 1: to be psyching himself up for something important. Every once
Speaker 1: in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. Well,
Speaker 1: today we're introducing three revolutionary products of this class, an iPod,
Speaker 1: a phone, and an Internet communicator. Are you getting it?
Speaker 1: These are not three separate devices. This is one device.
Speaker 1: Apple didn't just reinvent the phone that day. Their innovation
Speaker 1: was an attentional game changer, one that's brought a host
Speaker 1: of changes to all of our lives, ones that even
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs couldn't foresee. Take, for example, one seemingly irrelevant
Speaker 1: economic indicator, chewing gum purchases. Since the iPhone came out,
Speaker 1: chewing gum sales have dropped by double digits. Now, you
Speaker 1: might think that this could be for a couple of reasons,
Speaker 1: like maybe people are turning to breathmans or something. So
Speaker 1: what's going on? Well, some scholars have argued that the
Speaker 1: shift in purchasing behavior reflects less of a change in
Speaker 1: our preferences and more of a change in our behavior,
Speaker 1: specifically how we're spending our time in the spot we'd
Speaker 1: normally be buying gum the checkout line, and that's where
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs comes in. We're no longer tempted by all
Speaker 1: those impulse buys because we simply don't see them anymore.
Speaker 1: One study found that sixty two percent of people pulled
Speaker 1: out a device while waiting in line, and more than
Speaker 1: eighty percent of those people whip that device out in
Speaker 1: less than twenty seconds. With our eyeball stuck to our screens,
Speaker 1: we simply don't notice the other tempting stuff in the
Speaker 1: checkout aisle. But could our phones be causing us to
Speaker 1: miss stuff that's even more important than a pack of gum.
Speaker 1: Brian used his Red Cross study to find out. So,
Speaker 1: with a bunch of undergrads here a Yale, we repeated
Speaker 1: this experiment, but we had half of the subject's talk
Speaker 1: on a cell phone, and it was wonderfully awkward. We
Speaker 1: just told them to talk to the research assistant on
Speaker 1: the other end of the line and you know, find
Speaker 1: out who they are, what their interests are, etc. But
Speaker 1: we told them point blank, look don't let talking on
Speaker 1: a cell phone impact your performance on this tracking task.
Speaker 1: Brian found that subjects did fine. People were just as
Speaker 1: good at tracking the movement of the white and black
Speaker 1: shapes when they talked on the phone as when there
Speaker 1: was no phone in sight. But of course that's not
Speaker 1: what we were interested in. What we really cared about
Speaker 1: is how many of them noticed this red cross our
Speaker 1: gorilla in this case, so when they were not talking
Speaker 1: on a cell phone, seventy percent of people saw the
Speaker 1: red cross. About thirty percent of people were inattentionally blind.
Speaker 1: With exactly the same displays. When they were talking on
Speaker 1: the cell phone and trying not to let it affect
Speaker 1: their performance, ninety percent of people missed the red cross.
Speaker 1: Only ten percent of people saw it. Brian found that
Speaker 1: using a cell phone dramatically increases the rate of an
Speaker 1: attentional blindness. I mean, his subjects miss ninety percent of
Speaker 1: the gorillas that cross their paths. Nine With over three
Speaker 1: billion smartphones and pockets all over the world, just think
Speaker 1: of all the things that are going unnoticed. When we
Speaker 1: get back from the break, we'll talk more about all
Speaker 1: the unforeseen consequences of these missed guerrillas. Because even though
Speaker 1: we don't notice the effect our phones are having on
Speaker 1: our attention, these missed moments might matter for our happiness
Speaker 1: more than we think phones are useful, you know, ironically,
Speaker 1: because of that value, they also provide a very, very
Speaker 1: potent source of distraction that I do think vastly exceeds
Speaker 1: anything else that we've ever seen in human history. The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab will be right back. About ninety five percent
Speaker 1: of people report having used their smartphone during their most
Speaker 1: recent social gathering. Perhaps more surprisingly, about ten percent of
Speaker 1: people report having used their smartphone at least once during sex.
Speaker 1: So these devices seem to really penetrate a broad array
Speaker 1: of social interactions. I'm talking to Liz Done, longtime friend
Speaker 1: of the Happiness Lab and professor of psychology at the
Speaker 1: University of British Columbia. When smartphones first started appearing in
Speaker 1: everybody's hands, I got curious about how they were influencing
Speaker 1: the benefits that we get out of everyday social interactions. Now,
Speaker 1: you might think Liz started her studies with all the
Speaker 1: really egregious cases of phones messing with social interactions. Well,
Speaker 1: my college students at Yale sometimes call fubbing the idea
Speaker 1: of fubbing. The combination of like snubbing and phone is
Speaker 1: that you are not paying attention to the other people
Speaker 1: around you, and maybe in a way that feels sort
Speaker 1: of hurtful and upsetting to them because you are paying
Speaker 1: attention to your phone. But Liz is actually more worried
Speaker 1: about all the less hurtful ways we use our phone.
Speaker 1: She was concerned about what the mere act of having
Speaker 1: your phone around does to your attention, like when you
Speaker 1: stick your phone on the table at dinner. We were
Speaker 1: able to get a local restaurant to let us come
Speaker 1: in and basically take over one of their tables for
Speaker 1: many months, and so we would have people come in
Speaker 1: and have dinner with their friends or family. I mean,
Speaker 1: the deal was, you know, we'll pick up the bill
Speaker 1: if you fill out some surveys for us, and then basically,
Speaker 1: by the flip of a coin, they're assigned to either
Speaker 1: have their phones out and available during the meal or
Speaker 1: to put them away, and then we just leave them
Speaker 1: alone and let them do their thing, you know, have
Speaker 1: their meal with their friends and family, and then at
Speaker 1: the end of the meal, we ask them to just report,
Speaker 1: for example, how much they enjoyed this time, how connected
Speaker 1: they felt to their friends and family and so forth.
Speaker 1: And what we see is that when phones are out
Speaker 1: and available, they experienced significantly less enjoyment compared to when
Speaker 1: phones are simply put away. Liza's experiment is just one
Speaker 1: of a growing number of studies showing that the mere
Speaker 1: presence of phones can negatively impact lots of different events.
Speaker 1: Other researchers tested the impact of a simple notification buzz.
Speaker 1: In their study, participants got a free massage. The only
Speaker 1: caveat was that they had to place their cell phone
Speaker 1: on a nearby table and not check it until the
Speaker 1: massage was over. Half of the participants got a call
Speaker 1: during the massage, while the other half didn't. Afterwards, they
Speaker 1: all rated their experience on a nine point scale what happened,
Speaker 1: while those who heard their cell phone vibrate had enjoyment
Speaker 1: ratings that were significantly lower even when they didn't look
Speaker 1: at their phone. Researchers saw similar effects when the enjoyable
Speaker 1: event was watching a movie, we're playing a game of
Speaker 1: Mario Kart. I find these results absolutely crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: we all kind of know that it's a bad idea
Speaker 1: to pull out our phones and start using them in
Speaker 1: the middle of some social interaction. But lots of us
Speaker 1: have our phones sitting around us all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: mine is usually by my side when I'm working, or
Speaker 1: watching a movie, or even at dinner. I always thought
Speaker 1: that if it was faced down, that I was fine.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that my phone's mere presence could
Speaker 1: be systematically reducing my enjoyment. But in some sense, of
Speaker 1: course I didn't. As we saw before, our brains simply
Speaker 1: can't notice the many things we don't notice, and that
Speaker 1: means we have no idea how much our phones are
Speaker 1: stealing our attention. Well we see in our data is
Speaker 1: that when people have access to their phones, they do
Speaker 1: report feelings significantly more distracted. You know, this at least
Speaker 1: provides us with some evidence that part of the reason
Speaker 1: that phones are undermining enjoyment in the social setting is
Speaker 1: that they're kind of pulling us out of the moment
Speaker 1: a little bit, making us feel a little more distracted,
Speaker 1: a little less focused on the present, and that is
Speaker 1: kind of chipping away at our enjoyment. Liz us that
Speaker 1: our phones are taking us out of moments that are
Speaker 1: even more important than a simple dinner. She's found that
Speaker 1: phones can affect the connection we experience with our kids.
Speaker 1: In this study, we went out to a science museum
Speaker 1: in Vancouver called Science World. We recruited parents and we
Speaker 1: randomly assign them either to use their phones a lot
Speaker 1: or to try to minimize their phone use, and then
Speaker 1: we let them just go do their whole science museum thing,
Speaker 1: and then at least thirty minutes later, we asked them
Speaker 1: to complete a survey and tell us how they had
Speaker 1: been feeling during their Science World visit. And what we
Speaker 1: see there is that parents feel substantially more distracted when
Speaker 1: they're using their phones a lot compared to when they're
Speaker 1: minimizing phone use, and they also end up feeling a
Speaker 1: lower sense of social connection in particular. And I think
Speaker 1: that's really interesting because you know, here are these devices
Speaker 1: that have been intentionally built to connect us with other people,
Speaker 1: and yet in the context of this sort of positive,
Speaker 1: everyday situation of visiting a museum with your kids, you
Speaker 1: pull it out more, use it more, and you end
Speaker 1: up feeling less socially connected because you're missing out on
Speaker 1: these opportunities for connection that are kind of right there
Speaker 1: in front of you. Liz has experienced this effect firsthand.
Speaker 1: I take my six year old all over there all
Speaker 1: the time, and like, you know, you can watch him
Speaker 1: learn about gravity and like have all of these really
Speaker 1: nice experiences, you know. At the same time, It's not
Speaker 1: like I say to myself, Oh, I'm going to like
Speaker 1: stop paying attention to my child and spend the next
Speaker 1: twenty five minutes like learning what's going on with people
Speaker 1: I haven't talked to since high school. Like I don't
Speaker 1: make that plan, but I like look at my phone
Speaker 1: for one second for to you know, check in with
Speaker 1: somebody real quick about something, and then I see this
Speaker 1: other thing on Facebook and get kind of stucked in.
Speaker 1: We know we've had distraction for a really long time, right,
Speaker 1: there's lots of stuff that distracts us. Why our phones
Speaker 1: worse than most of the other stuff we've seen in
Speaker 1: human history. I think phones are worse for two reasons.
Speaker 1: And it's like this magical combination of portability and just
Speaker 1: like incredibly rich and endless opportunities for information and entertainment
Speaker 1: that they provide. Let's think for a second about all
Speaker 1: this information and entertainment. On the other side of your
Speaker 1: phone is the entire library of Alexandria, every film archive,
Speaker 1: nearly every song ever recorded, infinite news sites, magazines, podcasts, quotes, maps,
Speaker 1: celebrity gossip and recipes, a shopping cart for every department
Speaker 1: store in the world, all the emails you received since
Speaker 1: two twelve, infinite swipes on potential romantic partners, and thousands
Speaker 1: upon thousands of funny cat videos plus porn. I mean,
Speaker 1: never in the history of our species have we had
Speaker 1: immediate access to so much exciting, addictive stuff. If you
Speaker 1: had a giant wheelbarrow and you pushed it all around
Speaker 1: with you and took it all out of dinner, like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'd be just as distracted by that as
Speaker 1: by your phone. It's just that people wouldn't have done that, right, So,
Speaker 1: because it's so portable, it's easy to pull out this
Speaker 1: phone even in social settings, even when you're right in
Speaker 1: the middle of talking to somebody, you know, let me
Speaker 1: just grab my wheelbarrow of like, distractions would not have
Speaker 1: been a normal or acceptable thing to do. And Lize's
Speaker 1: finding that a lot of what's being lost is social.
Speaker 1: If you've listened to other episodes of the Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: you've heard that social connection, even with strangers, is a
Speaker 1: key part of our well being. But Liz's finding that
Speaker 1: phones are causing us to lose more of those important
Speaker 1: social moments than we realize. We basically just stuck strangers
Speaker 1: together in a room for about ten minutes, kind of
Speaker 1: like a mock waiting room, and either we took their
Speaker 1: phones away or left them with their phones, and then
Speaker 1: we videotape them and code their facial expressions. And what
Speaker 1: we see is that when people are sitting there with
Speaker 1: a stranger in a room for ten minutes in the
Speaker 1: absence of phones, they smile quite a bit at that
Speaker 1: other person, and they almost always interact with that other person.
Speaker 1: You let both people hang on to their phones, and
Speaker 1: what you see is a lot more people choosing not
Speaker 1: to interact at all, and you see about thirty percent
Speaker 1: less smiling between strangers. I just want to pause here
Speaker 1: so we can take this in thirty percent less smiling
Speaker 1: thirty percent. I mean, what have you multiplied that thirty
Speaker 1: percent from one person in a waiting room to all
Speaker 1: the people in the world walking around looking at their phones.
Speaker 1: What is the scale of all this phone use doing
Speaker 1: to basic social connection in our society. I think it's
Speaker 1: so easy to overlook because what we think about is like, oh,
Speaker 1: because I'm on my phone. You know, I found out
Speaker 1: about this funny thing somebody posted on Facebook, and like,
Speaker 1: I managed to send a quick text to my mom
Speaker 1: and all of that, and we have no idea, like
Speaker 1: how many friendly smiles with strangers just didn't happen as
Speaker 1: a result of what we were doing on our phone.
Speaker 1: It's just a part of this broader tendency to overlo
Speaker 1: opportunity costs, where we don't realize what we're missing out
Speaker 1: on as a result of what we're actually doing. So
Speaker 1: what can we do to fix all this? We'll turn
Speaker 1: to some practical strategies for improving your attentional hygiene when
Speaker 1: the happiness slide returns in a moment. I think everyone
Speaker 1: who's listening to this probably has the experience of looking
Speaker 1: down and noticing their phone on their hand and not
Speaker 1: really having any idea why it's there, or what they're
Speaker 1: doing on it, or why they're in Instagram at that moment.
Speaker 1: I'm talking to the person the New York Times called
Speaker 1: the Maria Condo of Brains. I am Katherine Price. I'm
Speaker 1: a freelance science journalist and the author of How to
Speaker 1: Break Up With Your Phone. Before Katherine wrote an entire
Speaker 1: manifesto about taming our smartphone addiction. She too was seduced
Speaker 1: by all the amazing things our phones do for us.
Speaker 1: I had been involved in a home renovation project and
Speaker 1: had been spending a lot of time on eBay. There's
Speaker 1: notion that smartphones of revolutionized shopping, but Catherine was about
Speaker 1: to come face to face with the price we paid
Speaker 1: for that revolution. I had had a baby around that time,
Speaker 1: and I had a number of evenings where I would
Speaker 1: be with her in the middle of the night and
Speaker 1: I'd noticed that she was looking at me, and I
Speaker 1: would be looking down at my phone, and more specifically,
Speaker 1: I was often looking at door knobs on eBay, which
Speaker 1: was like particularly ridiculous because by that point we finished
Speaker 1: the renovation project and I didn't need to be doing
Speaker 1: that at all. But anyway, when I noticed this happening,
Speaker 1: I kind of had this out of body experience where
Speaker 1: I saw the scene as if it would appear to
Speaker 1: in an outsider, and it really disturbed me, this vision
Speaker 1: of this baby looking up at her mother, and her
Speaker 1: mother looking down at this glowing screen. And I also
Speaker 1: remembered from something from my science journalism past, which is
Speaker 1: that baby's eyes can only focus about two feet in
Speaker 1: front of their faces, and that's specifically so that they
Speaker 1: can bond emotionally with the person who's holding them. So
Speaker 1: I found that to be deeply disturbing as well as
Speaker 1: that she's got this evolutionary design that's there to facilitate
Speaker 1: our connection, and here I am looking at eBay. So
Speaker 1: that's the moment when I realized, Oh, I really want
Speaker 1: to work on my own relationship. Catherine started working on
Speaker 1: that relationship with some common sense phone hacks, like shutting
Speaker 1: off her notifications and making her phone more boring looking
Speaker 1: by turning the display to gray scale. She even went
Speaker 1: one step further to delete the apps she found especially tempting.
Speaker 1: Think about the ones that you feel compulsively drawn to
Speaker 1: and then you kind of enjoy, but then you feel
Speaker 1: gross afterwards. That's the easiest way to tell is just
Speaker 1: tune into your own emotions before, during, and after using them.
Speaker 1: And you basically want to have your home screen only
Speaker 1: contain tools you don't want temptations, And for that I
Speaker 1: really do recommend people approach this with a spirit of experimentation,
Speaker 1: recognizing you can always reinstall things and readjust your settings
Speaker 1: back to where they were, but see what it's like
Speaker 1: to just delete some of your most problematic apps from
Speaker 1: your phone for a day. See what it feels like.
Speaker 1: But Catherine argues that the most effective strategy for fixing
Speaker 1: our relationship with our phones involve some advice that many
Speaker 1: of us haven't heard. She thinks we need to cultivate
Speaker 1: a completely new attitude towards our phone use, one of mindfulness.
Speaker 1: We need to take the time to notice how our
Speaker 1: phones are making us feel. Now we've talked about the
Speaker 1: power of mindfulness and other episodes on this podcast, and
Speaker 1: that's because there's tons of research showing that becoming more
Speaker 1: mindful generally can be a big booster shop for well being.
Speaker 1: But Catherine contends that we can use the same strategy
Speaker 1: to develop a healthier relationship with our devices, one that
Speaker 1: can protect our fragile attention. It's a lot easier to
Speaker 1: change a habit if deep down inside of you, you
Speaker 1: just don't want to engage with the habit anymore. And
Speaker 1: there were a fascinating series of studies done by the
Speaker 1: Sky Judson Brewer where he basically trained a group of
Speaker 1: smokers in a mindfulness based technique where they were basically
Speaker 1: just supposed to notice what it was like to smoke
Speaker 1: a cigarette, to notice what a craving felt like. Don't
Speaker 1: fight it, just kind of notice. Notice what happens if
Speaker 1: you do indulge in it, Notice how it feels if
Speaker 1: you don't, notice how long last if you just kind
Speaker 1: of observe it. And he found that the mindfulness based
Speaker 1: group quit at twice the rate of the control group,
Speaker 1: and then in the long run, they were five times
Speaker 1: as successful in sticking with the quitting. And when he
Speaker 1: spoke to the participants about what had happened, he heard
Speaker 1: these really interesting comments from people along the lines of
Speaker 1: One woman said, I really had never tasted a cigarette before,
Speaker 1: and once I tasted it and really experienced it, I realized,
Speaker 1: I thought this is disgusting, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a smoker. Like a smoker trying to really taste
Speaker 1: a cigarette. Catherine decided to examine why her phone had
Speaker 1: such a powerful hold on her. There's interesting reasons that
Speaker 1: we reach for our phones. They're like little security blankets.
Speaker 1: And the more you understand your motivations, what your brain
Speaker 1: is after when you reach for your phone, the easier
Speaker 1: it will be to come up with alternatives to present
Speaker 1: your brain with so that you can choose to do
Speaker 1: something else instead. To help us become a bit more mindful,
Speaker 1: Catherine recommends using the acronym www, which stands for what for?
Speaker 1: Why now? What else? What for? Like what did you
Speaker 1: pick up your phone for? Did you actually have any purpose?
Speaker 1: And no judgment? I mean like there's no right answer here,
Speaker 1: just why did you pick it up? Then the why now?
Speaker 1: Is it the emotional or the situational question like what
Speaker 1: was the trigger that caused you to do it in
Speaker 1: this second? Were you feeling socially anxious? Is it just
Speaker 1: an habitual thing? And then the last question is what else?
Speaker 1: So what else could you do in that moment? What
Speaker 1: do you actually want to spend more time and attention on?
Speaker 1: What are some things that you used to enjoy when
Speaker 1: you were a kid that you supposedly don't have time
Speaker 1: for now, or that you want to learn but you
Speaker 1: don't have time for. Catherine cautions that this process might
Speaker 1: take a while. She even recommends doing a personal experiment
Speaker 1: like this for at least thirty days. You actually have
Speaker 1: to take some time to retrain your quote unquote muscle
Speaker 1: of attention so that you can get it strong again.
Speaker 1: But Catherine has seen firsthand that putting in the work
Speaker 1: to regain your attention is worth it. Attention is like money.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's fine, and people are constantly trying to
Speaker 1: get it from you. And I would say that our
Speaker 1: attention and time are even more valuable than money, because
Speaker 1: even if someone does convince you to buy some stupid
Speaker 1: thing like you can make more money, you won't get
Speaker 1: that money back, but you can still get more money.
Speaker 1: You can't get any more time, and you can't get
Speaker 1: any more of your attention back. So we should be
Speaker 1: very very careful with how and where and when we
Speaker 1: spend it. In the last few years, Catherine has perfected
Speaker 1: her own attentional spending by completely transforming her relationship with
Speaker 1: her phone. Nowadays, she keeps her devices shut off and
Speaker 1: far away through most of her family social life. But
Speaker 1: the biggest improvement to Catherine's happiness came from repeatedly asking
Speaker 1: herself that last www question, what else could she be doing?
Speaker 1: Rather than spending time on her phone. After some soul searching,
Speaker 1: Catherine realized that she'd rather be devoting her limited attention
Speaker 1: to music. She'd played the piano since she was a child,
Speaker 1: but never had time to practice, and she'd always wanted
Speaker 1: to learn other instruments too. Having freed up all the
Speaker 1: time and attention she wasted on her phone, she could
Speaker 1: finally commit to this personal goal. I started taking this
Speaker 1: adult guitar class. It was like byob We got together
Speaker 1: Wednesday nights and learned chords. I just started taking percussion.
Speaker 1: Last night was my first class as I now I'm
Speaker 1: doing guitar and percussion. I've started playing music with some
Speaker 1: of the people from my class out of class, and
Speaker 1: I finally feel, after living in Philadelphia for eight years,
Speaker 1: that I have a community. I mean, this has happened
Speaker 1: in the past six months and it's all through music.
Speaker 1: And the reintroduction of music into my life is a
Speaker 1: direct result of re examining my relationship with my phone.
Speaker 1: For me, this has been a really amazing experience. I
Speaker 1: never could have anticipated how many ways my life would
Speaker 1: change as a result of this project. And I feel
Speaker 1: like concentrating on my phone and putting so much focus
Speaker 1: on my relationship with it really has made me a
Speaker 1: better mother, maybe a better partner, made a better friend,
Speaker 1: you know, you name it, and so grateful for that.
Speaker 1: Making this episode has caused me to take a good
Speaker 1: hard look at what I'm spending my attention on. As
Speaker 1: my friends can probably tell you, I've always been a
Speaker 1: little addicted to my phone, but I didn't realize until
Speaker 1: now just how much it was sapping my attention and
Speaker 1: my joy even when I'm not really using it. And so,
Speaker 1: inspired by Catherine's advice, I've started to try to become
Speaker 1: more mindful about why I'm turning to my phone, and
Speaker 1: I've started to think more about all the opportunity costs
Speaker 1: of my phone use. What happiness grillis am I missing
Speaker 1: without even realizing it? What else could I be paying
Speaker 1: attention to instead. I've started to notice that using my
Speaker 1: phone in public prevents me from the short moments of
Speaker 1: connection that often make my day. A quick colo or
Speaker 1: ketchup on the street that I would have squandered because
Speaker 1: I was staring at my email, or that deep chat
Speaker 1: with my husband that I'd be more involved with if
Speaker 1: my iPhone wasn't unconsciously tempting me from the other side
Speaker 1: of the table, or the taste of my morning coffee,
Speaker 1: which I often ignore in favor of a quick social
Speaker 1: media click. I hope this episode has caused you to
Speaker 1: think a bit more about all the gorillas you might
Speaker 1: be missing in life without even realizing it, so you
Speaker 1: can start using your phone only for the things that
Speaker 1: are really worth your attention, the stuff that actually brings
Speaker 1: you joy, like calling a good friend or the occasional
Speaker 1: cat video, or even clicking on your favorite podcast app
Speaker 1: to hear the next episode of The Happiness Lab with
Speaker 1: Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co written and
Speaker 1: produced by Ryan Dilley. Our original music was composed by
Speaker 1: Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by Evan Viola.
Speaker 1: Pete Naton also helped with production. Joseph Friedman checked our
Speaker 1: facts and our editing was done by Sophie Crane mckibbon.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to mil LaBelle, Carl Migliori, Heather Faine, Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and me, Doctor Laurie Santos.