Can we outsmart our own lives?
In a world where technology is reshaping our brains, implementing concepts like flow, habit-building and mind-wandering can be a game-changer.
Here’s a fun fact: the rise of the digital era has flooded us with endless sources of distraction and a compulsive addiction to our gadgets and their ‘treasure trove’ of notifications, emails, apps, and versatile content.
Today, we use our smartphones to write emails, shop, read the news, listen to music, stream videos, engage in social media, order food, navigate cities, and basically not miss out on anything that’s happening in the virtual realm.
Life as we know it happens parallelly with the digital world, technology has become omnipresent and omni-accessible, and mobile phones are an essential part of everyday life; just picture the immensity of it — there are over 5 billion unique mobile users in the world.
The 2018 Global Digital report by We Are Social and Hootsuite also states that there are now more than 3 billion active social media users around the world.
The data is clear. With well over half of the world’s population now online, we can quickly create a mental map of how fast the digital landscape is growing.
What’s fascinating though is that technology isn’t just a separate entity, ‘operating’ on its own. Studies show that the amazing advancements in technological functionality and instant access to the digital world have considerably changed the way we work and live, and tech’s impact goes beyond productivity and lifestyle to ultimately rewire our brains and the way we think, behave, and how we use our emotional and cognitive skills.
And here’s another fun fact: our smartphones are becoming an extension of us and studies show it. In a Deloitte’s Global Mobile Consumer Survey: U.S. edition report, we learn that Americans are viewing their smartphones more often than ever before, on average 52 times per day, while youth between the ages of 18 and 24 check their phones even more — 86 times a day.
It’s old news that by spending countless hours behind screens and having instant access to devices, we start making poor decisions about how to allocate our time, but adding to the slew of tech’s negative side-effects is also nomophobia (no-mobile-phone-phobia), term coined during a 2010 study by the UK Post Office, which means the fear of being without a mobile device, or beyond mobile phone contact. Needless to say that when we are separated from our smartphone, we quickly start feeling anxious, get completely distracted and even forget how to get bored.
In a world that’s deeply shaped by tech, we are sadly no longer able to sit quietly with our thoughts and, instead, constantly reach for our phones to suppress that strange feeling of having nothing to do.
Likewise, technology causes FOMO, the fear of missing out, the ruling condition of our generation, but also FOBO, which stands for both the fear of being outcompeted and the fear of better options.
On one hand, there’s no need to argue tech’s promises; we know it can help us build businesses, share knowledge, improve and even save lives. But on the other hand, we know that used in excess, it can literally reshape the way we think and live. Indeed, our obsessive interest with all-things digital can quickly make its presence in the way we focus, interact with peers, think deeply and experience life.
Of course, to live better, we could aim to turn off this digital noise, but that’s easier said than done, considering how greatly plagued we are by the pervasiveness of FOMO.
In this respect, philosophy and psychology have their fair share of theories.
Regarding FOMO, The School of Life, a global organisation dedicated to developing emotional intelligence, highlights that:
Today, on top of FOMO and FOBO, we can’t help feeling overwhelmed by our own choices, conflicted about what we should do with our lives, and fearful of wasted opportunities.
Having said this, I can’t help thinking about the Ancient Greek idea that living well is dependent upon learning positive habits and emotional skills to better navigate through life.
To achieve “eudaimonia”, by which the Greeks meant “flourishing” or “the good life”, we could tap on Stoicism, philosophy famously practiced by famous figures like Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, which asserts that we don’t control and cannot rely on external events, and what we can do is focus on ourselves and our responses to certain situations.
Some key components of Stoicism are practicing mindfulness, building resilient minds through techniques such as deep focus in chaotic situations, not falling prey to consumerism by striving to want less and becoming more satisfied with what we currently have.
Similarly, another philosopher from Ancient Greece from whom we can learn plenty about the art of happiness is Epicurus, whose philosophy can teach us how to bring our attention to the present moment, limit our desires to what is easy to get, and not increase our needs with artificially stimulated desires.
Recently, I wrote an article which zoomed in on the self and how the concept of self-knowledge, which enables us to understand the world and ourselves better, accept other points of view, and exchange information in a way that stops being delivered solely through our subjective lens. In the case of technology, self-knowledge would be a powerful tool that will help us set boundaries to achieve more.
It’s only obvious that in this day and age when our minds function under the helm of technology, we should find ways to maximize all these resources to build better lives — combining human creativity, empathy and the art of questioning with machine learning, speed, and smart algorithms to unlock our fullest potential.
Another bold idea is that if we live our lives trying to be physically healthy, exercising our bodies to get fit, why aren’t we attempting to regularly exercise the mind in order to live better lives and, ultimately, gain an extra ounce of wisdom?
This idea was first coined by The School of Life, which argues that “in an ideal Philosophers’ Gym of the future, instead of thinking that we need to work on our abs, we might decide we need to work on our envy or on our confidence, our frustration or our capacities for gratitude.”
I love this idea because it perfectly mirrors the idea of a traditional gym, with its routines, techniques and machines.
The School of Life’s article states that:
Another compelling research in neuroscience and experimental psychology is mind-wandering, the study of spontaneous or task-unrelated thoughts.
In a recent study, mind-wandering was found to boost people’s creativity beyond the positive effects of their reading ability or fluid intelligence, the general ability to solve problems or puzzles.
According to the Let Your Mind Wander article in Psychology Today, “mind-wandering is only beneficial when it occurs during that time when your mind is trying to solve the solution.”
While mind-wandering can be associated with wasting time, a psychological study shows that:
Whether or not this works for everyone, it’s still important to let go of tech’s strings so that we can start empowering ourselves, building a stronger brain muscle and redefining the way we live.
A powerful psychological concept we could also consider is building positive habits or breaking negative ones through the ‘habit loop’ process.
In The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg delves into theories that can help individuals deconstruct pesky habits like smoking and procrastination. Similarly, the author sheds light on organizations’ habits such as the ‘latte habit loop’ devised by Starbucks for its baristas and even social movements like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama.
The book highlights scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed and focuses on the habit loop, a three-part neurological loop that governs any habit, consisting a cue, a routine, and a reward.
According to the book, the science of habit-forming can be used to transform people, companies, social movements, and helps achieve success by understanding how habits work.
Also, if we are going to strive to concentrate better, another useful concept is flow.
During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life.
In the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience written by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author describes what makes an experience genuinely satisfying or what it is like to be in the state of flow. According to the psychologist, flow is a state of consciousness which can be achieved on an individual path, providing optimal performance.
Csikszentmihalyi lists a number of facts which accompany an experience of flow:
Ideally, as human beings living in a fast-paced digital world, we should start investing more in our emotional and cognitive skills by building a storehouse of concepts like flow, mind-wandering, mindfulness, habit building, and stoicism to strengthen our mental muscle and bolster positive behaviour in the hope that we can reach our maximum potential and diminish the damage technology can create when not used in an optimal way.
Can we outsmart our own lives?
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