https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0qq9R__XiQ Your brain can’t keep up with the sensory overload of modern life.
Working memory is like a scratchpad, and everything we do costs us expenditure (ATP) and it’s really easy to “go in the red” for this bank account.
Don’t spend too much of your attention. The brain operates within a fixed energy limit.
The mental bandwidth is very small and one should be careful to not flood the working memory. It can only hold so much information.
There’s change everywhere bidding for out attention. Sometimes this is “forced viewing”
Dopamine reward: there are two pleasure circuits, one related to wanting and reward and the other related to pleasure.
The former is hard to satiate (hedonistic treadmill) while the latter is harder to satiate. Studies show that the anxiety levels in our brains rise minute by minute when we’re not on our phones, this is similar to real addictions (drugs/alcohol).
Sleep is our biggest competitor - Reed Hastings of Netflix
How to reclaim our attention?
- Turn your phone off: People are nomophobic (fear of being away from phones) these days and have trained themselves like Pavlov’s dogs.
- If you can’t put it down turn down the contrast, picture and brightness - that reduces then degres of stimulation. Short wavelength light or blue light is to prevented too (thus the best way is to just put the phone down altogether)
- Prioritize good sleep! Regular hours for going to bed and waking up. There is no such thing as catching up on sleep - it really is the most important activity of your day and you shohuld prioritize.A strategy Cytowic gives for cramming is to SLEEP first and cram at like 5am in the morning.Don’t get into things that get your adreanaline up late in night - this deals with self control and emotional intelligence. If you have an argument to reply to - wait till the morning,
- Socialize.Go outside and talk to real peope.
- Take deliberate breaks. Look into the concept of “niksen” - the concept of doing nothing. Something to practice is sitting in silence.