00:00:00
you're not being present in your life
00:00:01
you're being present at all johan hari
00:00:04
he's been on a journey to understand
00:00:06
attention and why we seem to have so
00:00:09
little of it these days i know
00:00:11
something's really wrong but i don't
00:00:12
know what it is
00:00:14
and that's when i thought are we having
00:00:15
an attention and focus crisis if we are
00:00:17
why is it happening and most importantly
00:00:19
what can we do to get our brains back if
00:00:21
you've got all these smart engineers and
00:00:22
they've got one incentive how do i take
00:00:25
stephen's attention the absolute most i
00:00:27
can we need an attention movement to
00:00:29
reclaim our minds if our goal is as a
00:00:32
country to be a country that's
00:00:33
innovative my god a country of people
00:00:35
who can think is going to be innovative
00:00:36
country of adult people flicking between
00:00:38
whatsapp snapchat and tick tock ain't
00:00:41
going to be a place full of innovation
00:00:42
do you want your child to be able to
00:00:44
focus do you want your child to be able
00:00:45
to read books do you want your child to
00:00:47
be able to think deeply of course you do
00:00:49
okay we've got to fix the society and
00:00:51
culture to give them those things and we
00:00:53
absolutely can change them
00:00:55
quick one can you do me a favor if
00:00:57
you're listening to this and hit the
00:00:58
subscribe button the follow button
00:01:00
wherever you're listening to this
00:01:01
podcast thank you so much today
00:01:04
one of my favorite ever guests on this
00:01:06
podcast returns
00:01:08
and they return with a completely
00:01:10
different conversation for you
00:01:12
johan hari
00:01:14
what he wrote about mental health and
00:01:16
the causes of depression and anxiety and
00:01:18
meaningful connection
00:01:20
changed my life it's probably the number
00:01:22
one book i recommend and you've heard me
00:01:23
recommend on this podcast the book lost
00:01:26
connections but over the last several
00:01:28
years johan's been on a completely
00:01:30
different journey he's been on a journey
00:01:33
to understand attention and why we seem
00:01:36
to have so little of it these days but
00:01:38
why it's so fundamentally important for
00:01:40
our happiness our success and everything
00:01:43
in between we all know we're a
00:01:45
generation that are glued to our screens
00:01:48
and our phone
00:01:49
but what is the cost what is the cost of
00:01:51
things that actually matter how do we
00:01:54
change it why should we change it johan
00:01:56
went on that journey
00:01:58
the most remarkable entertaining
00:02:00
hilarious journey and he's unbelievable
00:02:03
maybe the best ever on this podcast
00:02:05
storyteller you're gonna absolutely love
00:02:08
this conversation and
00:02:10
entertainment aside
00:02:12
it might just change your life
00:02:14
so without further ado i'm stephen
00:02:16
bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo
00:02:18
i hope nobody's listening but if you are
00:02:21
then please keep this to yourself
00:02:24
[Music]
00:02:30
johan
00:02:31
first and foremost thank you for coming
00:02:33
back i it just dawned on me that you
00:02:34
visited here more than any other guest
00:02:37
you now have the record as three times
00:02:39
we've had i mean i'm officially the king
00:02:40
of your you're the king of my podcast
00:02:42
and my my first question to you is i
00:02:44
know how talented you are at writing and
00:02:46
how
00:02:47
um you could basically write about
00:02:50
anything if you wanted to because your
00:02:51
books have been so successful you're a
00:02:53
very very well acclaimed um author
00:02:55
so my first question is
00:02:57
and this is the question i asked myself
00:02:59
when i received your book from your
00:03:01
publisher is why did you decide to write
00:03:04
about attention when you could have
00:03:06
spent your life writing about anything
00:03:09
you know for years i had this feeling
00:03:12
like when i walked around in my friends
00:03:14
in myself
00:03:16
something was going badly wrong with our
00:03:18
ability to focus and pay attention and
00:03:19
every now and then i would see small
00:03:20
studies that seem to suggest this was
00:03:22
true there's a study of american college
00:03:24
students that found that now they only
00:03:27
focus on average on any one thing for 65
00:03:29
seconds there's a study of office
00:03:31
workers that found on average now office
00:03:34
workers only focus on one task for three
00:03:36
minutes
00:03:37
but i thought
00:03:39
people have always felt their attention
00:03:40
is getting worse right what happens as
00:03:42
you get older
00:03:43
you know your attention deteriorates and
00:03:45
you mistake your own deterioration for
00:03:47
the deterioration of the world around
00:03:48
you right you can read stories of monks
00:03:51
in the middle ages uh letters they wrote
00:03:52
to each other saying oh my attention
00:03:54
isn't what it used to be i'm worried
00:03:55
about this right so i just thought uh
00:03:57
everyone thinks this and then there was
00:03:58
a it was a moment that for me i thought
00:04:02
i do think there's something deeper
00:04:03
happening here
00:04:05
when he was nine my godson adam
00:04:08
developed this brief but really
00:04:09
freakishly intense obsession with elvis
00:04:11
i never found out why he must have seen
00:04:12
him on on youtube or the telly or
00:04:14
something and he he didn't know
00:04:16
that like elvis impersonation has become
00:04:18
this cheesy thing so he did it with this
00:04:20
totally like heart catching sincerity he
00:04:22
would sing viva las vegas and suspicious
00:04:25
minds and and all the kind of elvis
00:04:27
classics
00:04:28
and um
00:04:29
he kept getting me to tell him the story
00:04:31
of elvis that elvis is born in this
00:04:33
little town called tupelo in mississippi
00:04:36
and one of the poorest places in america
00:04:38
he's born and his twin brother died as
00:04:42
he was being born and as he was a little
00:04:44
boy his mother told him that if he
00:04:46
looked at the moon and he sang his
00:04:48
little brother could hear him so that's
00:04:49
why he became one of the reasons he
00:04:51
became such a great singer so i was
00:04:53
telling my god son this story and what
00:04:56
and i
00:04:57
obviously told him that elvis became
00:04:58
really famous and bought this palace
00:05:00
that he called graceland and one day i
00:05:02
was tucking tucking him in
00:05:04
and he said to me looked at me very
00:05:06
intensely and he said johann
00:05:07
will you take me to graceland one day
00:05:10
and i said yeah sure in the way you do
00:05:11
with little children you're just like
00:05:12
you know they're never gonna forget it
00:05:14
the next day and he said no do you
00:05:15
really promise will you take me to
00:05:17
graceland
00:05:18
and i said yeah i promise you
00:05:21
i didn't think about it again for 10
00:05:22
years until really everything had gone
00:05:25
wrong
00:05:26
so by the time adam was 19
00:05:29
he dropped out of school when he was 15
00:05:31
and he was
00:05:33
just spent he seemed to spend just all
00:05:35
his time alternating between his ipad
00:05:38
his laptop and his phone
00:05:40
and he seemed to live in this kind of
00:05:41
blur
00:05:42
of whatsapp and youtube and porn
00:05:46
and
00:05:46
it was like he had fragmented as a
00:05:48
person
00:05:49
it was like he was kind of whirring at
00:05:51
the speed of snapchat right you couldn't
00:05:53
have a conversation with him lasted more
00:05:54
than a few minutes he was very
00:05:56
intelligent decent not good person
00:05:59
but it was like nothing could gain any
00:06:00
friction in his mind and one day we were
00:06:03
sitting on my sofa
00:06:06
and i was looking at him doing this and
00:06:07
i was thinking god in the decade that
00:06:08
you've become a man
00:06:10
this has happened to so many people i
00:06:12
know okay this is the extreme end of the
00:06:14
spectrum but i could feel it happening
00:06:15
to myself right
00:06:17
things that require deep focus like
00:06:19
reading a book obviously i still do that
00:06:20
a huge amount but it felt like with
00:06:22
every year that passed that was more and
00:06:24
more like running up a down escalator
00:06:26
right some people can still get to the
00:06:27
top but and the escalator is getting
00:06:28
faster right
00:06:30
and i was looking at him and i thought i
00:06:31
have to break this routine i can't bear
00:06:33
to see this happen to him i can't bear
00:06:35
to feel this happened to myself and i
00:06:36
suddenly remembered when he'd been a
00:06:38
little boy and i said you know what
00:06:39
let's go to graceland
00:06:41
and he looked at me like what are you
00:06:42
talking about he didn't even remember
00:06:44
this elvis obsession and i was like no
00:06:46
i'll take you to graceland let's go
00:06:47
let's just leave but i'll take you on
00:06:49
one condition
00:06:51
which is that when we go there you leave
00:06:52
your phone in the hotel when we go out
00:06:54
right
00:06:55
because i can't take you there and just
00:06:57
you be looking at your phone the whole
00:06:58
time
00:06:59
so two weeks later we flew we went to
00:07:01
new orleans first but we left from
00:07:02
heathrow and we and we we flew out to
00:07:04
the south and when you arrive at the
00:07:06
gates of graceland now this is
00:07:08
pre-covered i imagine it's worse now but
00:07:10
when you arrive at the gates of
00:07:11
graceland there isn't a physical guide
00:07:13
to show you around anymore what happens
00:07:15
is they give you an ipad
00:07:16
and you put in uh little uh earphones
00:07:19
and the ipad shows you around so you
00:07:21
look at the ipad and it says go left and
00:07:22
then there's an actor telling you like
00:07:24
in this room and it explains all these
00:07:25
things and in each room you're in
00:07:28
there's like a representation of that
00:07:29
room on the ipad
00:07:31
so what happens is people walk around
00:07:33
graceland staring at their ipad right
00:07:36
so i'm walking around
00:07:38
surrounded by this kind of united
00:07:40
nations of blank-faced people from like
00:07:41
korea and canada and everywhere else and
00:07:44
no one is looking at the thing they've
00:07:46
traveled
00:07:47
to see right
00:07:48
and i'm getting more and more like tense
00:07:50
as i'm watching this and i'm trying to
00:07:52
make eye contact with someone to go like
00:07:53
oh you know
00:07:55
someone i'm waiting for someone else to
00:07:56
look up and go look we're the people who
00:07:57
traveled 3000 miles and actually looked
00:07:59
at the thing we traveled to
00:08:01
and finally i did make eye contact with
00:08:02
a guy and i smiled and i was about to
00:08:04
say exactly what i just said and then i
00:08:06
realized he'd only taken the earphones
00:08:08
out and put down the ipad so he could
00:08:10
take out his phone and take a selfie
00:08:12
and i was feeling more and more tense
00:08:14
and finally we got to the jungle room
00:08:16
which was elvis favorite room in
00:08:17
graceland it's just a kind of fake
00:08:20
jungle with loads of fake plants
00:08:22
and there's this couple next to me
00:08:25
and the man turned to his wife and said
00:08:27
honey look this is amazing
00:08:29
if you swipe left you can see the jungle
00:08:31
room to the left and if you swipe right
00:08:33
you can see the jungle room to the right
00:08:35
she goes oh wow and so she's swiping
00:08:37
left and right on her ipad and i look at
00:08:39
this guy and i said
00:08:40
right but sir there's an old-fashioned
00:08:42
form of swiping you can do
00:08:44
it's called turning your head because
00:08:46
we're actually in the jungle room right
00:08:48
you don't need to look at a digital
00:08:49
representation of it we're literally
00:08:51
here look it's in front of you and of
00:08:53
course this couple thought i was insane
00:08:55
not possibly not unreasonably and they
00:08:58
they walked off
00:08:59
and i turned to my godson to kind of
00:09:01
bond with him and laugh about isn't this
00:09:02
mad and he was just standing in a corner
00:09:05
looking at snapchat from because the
00:09:06
minute we le we landed he just was on
00:09:10
his phone constantly i remember when i
00:09:12
said to him i thought you said you
00:09:13
weren't going to use your phone he said
00:09:15
oh i thought you meant i won't take
00:09:16
phone calls i can't not use social media
00:09:18
right and it was he said it was a kind
00:09:20
of baffled sincerity as if i was asking
00:09:23
him to hold his breath or something i
00:09:25
got really angry and i said to him you
00:09:27
know you're frightened of missing out
00:09:29
but what this is doing is it's
00:09:30
guaranteeing you miss out you're not
00:09:32
being present in your life you're being
00:09:34
present
00:09:35
at all and he kind of stormed off again
00:09:37
not unreasonably i was being a bit angry
00:09:40
and so i stomped around graceland on my
00:09:41
own for a while and then that night i
00:09:43
found out we were staying in the
00:09:44
heartbreak hotel which is across the
00:09:45
street from graceland and i found him
00:09:47
there's a swimming pool that's shaped
00:09:49
like a guitar where they play all these
00:09:51
songs in a constant loop and i saw him
00:09:52
sitting there looking at his phone and i
00:09:54
went up to him
00:09:56
and i realized like a lot of anger my
00:09:59
anger at him was really angry at myself
00:10:00
i could feel these pressures happening
00:10:02
to me
00:10:03
i could feel my own attention and focus
00:10:04
fragmenting
00:10:06
and he just looked at his phone and said
00:10:08
i know something's really wrong
00:10:10
but i don't know what it is
00:10:11
and that's when i thought okay i need to
00:10:13
look into
00:10:15
are we having an attention and focus
00:10:16
crisis if we are why is it happening and
00:10:18
most importantly what can we do to get
00:10:20
our brains back
00:10:21
and what did you discover in terms of
00:10:23
the stats facts and figures around the
00:10:25
attention crisis is it a real thing
00:10:28
is it is it happening and and link to
00:10:30
that i guess what is the
00:10:32
what are we losing because of the
00:10:34
attention crisis
00:10:35
yeah so i ended up traveling all over
00:10:37
the world i interviewed 250 of the
00:10:39
leading experts in the world about
00:10:40
attention and focus and i went to just
00:10:42
places that have been really differently
00:10:44
affected by this so from moscow to miami
00:10:48
from a favela islamic in rio de janeiro
00:10:51
where attention had collapsed in a
00:10:52
particularly disastrous way to an office
00:10:55
in new zealand where they discovered
00:10:56
this amazing way to restore people's
00:10:58
attention and what i learned is so the
00:11:00
best way we could know if attention has
00:11:02
collapsed would be if for the last 150
00:11:04
years
00:11:05
every year scientists are given the same
00:11:07
kind of attention test to people and
00:11:09
then we'd be able to track it that way
00:11:10
no one did that so that that we don't
00:11:12
know that but i do think there's another
00:11:14
way we can reasonably conclude that this
00:11:16
is a real crisis so there's scientific
00:11:19
evidence for 12 different factors that
00:11:21
affect attention and focus but either
00:11:23
boost it or trash it
00:11:25
and there's good evidence that a lot of
00:11:27
these factors have been rising
00:11:30
throughout your lifetime and my lifetime
00:11:32
so i think it's fair to conclude
00:11:34
therefore that we are facing a real
00:11:36
crisis and there's various pieces of
00:11:38
evidence that do show collectively our
00:11:40
attention span really is shrinking so
00:11:43
and i think that leads to um we've got
00:11:46
to understand what's happening to us in
00:11:48
a very different way because when i felt
00:11:50
my attention fraying
00:11:52
my main response was to go into
00:11:55
you know just self-criticism just go
00:11:57
you're weak you're lazy you're not good
00:11:58
enough why aren't you strong enough to
00:11:59
resist these forms of distraction and
00:12:01
actually when you know that this is
00:12:02
happening to almost all of us
00:12:04
or in fact these factors are bearing on
00:12:06
all of us right they're affecting some
00:12:07
of us differently that made me realize
00:12:09
you've got to think about this in it in
00:12:10
a different way so there's a guy i went
00:12:12
to interview one of the leading experts
00:12:13
on children's attention problems in the
00:12:15
world a guy named professor joel nigg
00:12:17
who's uh in portland and oregon
00:12:20
and he said to me look think about
00:12:21
obesity right if you look at a beach
00:12:24
a photograph of a beach in britain in
00:12:26
1970 or in the us anywhere
00:12:30
everyone is by our standards either slim
00:12:33
or buff there's nobody who's what we
00:12:35
think of as fat right no one it's really
00:12:38
weird and it's not that fat people just
00:12:39
stayed at home right
00:12:41
what happened is if you look at 1970
00:12:43
there was almost no obesity in the
00:12:44
western world and then certain
00:12:47
absolutely crucial changes happened in
00:12:48
the way we live right our food supply
00:12:51
change people used to eat fresh and
00:12:53
nutritious food we moved to heavily
00:12:55
processed and ultra processed food which
00:12:57
affects your body in a very different
00:12:59
way and our city's completely changed so
00:13:01
you used to be able to bike and walk
00:13:04
to work to the places you wanted to go
00:13:06
in a lot of our cities that's now
00:13:07
impossible and as a result of these two
00:13:09
big changes and some other ones actually
00:13:11
stress right the more stressed you are
00:13:13
the more you want it comforting as a
00:13:14
result of these big changes obesity
00:13:17
exploded so it's not that individuals
00:13:19
got like weak or whatever we might
00:13:21
whatever the stigmatizing these people
00:13:22
say about overweight people
00:13:24
and
00:13:25
what professor nick said is something
00:13:27
very similar is happening with attention
00:13:29
there are changes in the way we live
00:13:31
that are pouring acid on everyone's
00:13:34
ability to pay attention
00:13:36
um the way he put it the kind of
00:13:37
technical term is that we have a an
00:13:39
attentional pathogenic culture a culture
00:13:42
in which it is very hard for all of us
00:13:44
to form and sustain deep focus this is
00:13:47
why um activities that require deep
00:13:50
forms of focus like reading a book have
00:13:51
just fallen off a cliff right in the
00:13:53
last 20 years
00:13:54
so what we've got to do is there's two
00:13:56
levels of response one is there are
00:13:58
individual responses there are changes
00:14:00
we can all make in our lives obviously i
00:14:02
talk about this a lot in the book stolen
00:14:04
focus about this there are changes we
00:14:05
can all make in our lives
00:14:08
there are also
00:14:10
big changes we need to make as a society
00:14:12
so we need to come together and demand
00:14:14
changes in the society that would make
00:14:16
it possible for us to make a lot of
00:14:17
these positive changes we want to make
00:14:18
so these two layers i mean i know
00:14:20
there's a lot there to um but okay so if
00:14:22
we were to agree that um attention has
00:14:25
decayed
00:14:26
what i really want to know is um like so
00:14:28
what what what is the cost to my life
00:14:31
outside of the fact that i might not
00:14:32
have as engaging relationships is there
00:14:34
any other cost to my productivity to
00:14:37
anything else that really really matters
00:14:38
to me yeah this is such an important
00:14:40
question i think there's two sort of
00:14:42
levels we need to think about it the
00:14:44
first is as an individual
00:14:46
if you can't focus and pay attention
00:14:48
your ability to achieve your goals
00:14:50
across the board diminishes right so you
00:14:54
want to set up a business you want to
00:14:55
write a book you want to learn how to
00:14:56
play the guitar
00:14:58
all of those things become much harder
00:15:00
if you can't focus and pay attention if
00:15:02
you're constantly pulled away by the you
00:15:04
know pings in your phone well let's say
00:15:06
you want to be a good parent
00:15:07
if you're constantly pulled away from
00:15:09
that if you're constantly distracted
00:15:11
your ability to do that so any goal you
00:15:13
have in your life
00:15:15
is diminished if you can't pay attention
00:15:18
and so that's the personal layer there's
00:15:20
also just a collective and social layer
00:15:22
if you live in a society where people
00:15:24
can't pay attention if you're surrounded
00:15:26
by people who can't pay attention our
00:15:28
ability to solve our collective problems
00:15:30
and we're facing a lot of collective
00:15:32
problems at the moment also breaks down
00:15:34
so attention is crucial for achieving
00:15:36
goals and problem solving and to me
00:15:39
those are the two of the most important
00:15:40
things in life right and you went to the
00:15:42
other one just being present with people
00:15:44
right you know if you can't be present
00:15:47
with people if you think about my godson
00:15:49
you can't form the deepest relationships
00:15:52
you have if most of us think about if i
00:15:54
said to you you know what's a moment
00:15:55
that's been deeply meaningful to you in
00:15:57
your life
00:15:58
it'll be a moment but very likely when
00:16:00
you are paying attention and other
00:16:01
people are paying attention to you right
00:16:03
it's a moment of shared focus a moment
00:16:05
of meaning
00:16:07
um we can't do that if we can't pay
00:16:08
attention so you become a sort of
00:16:11
stump of yourself there's a you know you
00:16:13
can sense that you might have been more
00:16:15
it chokes off growth and there's there's
00:16:17
kind of
00:16:18
there's a few ways of thinking about
00:16:20
this
00:16:21
there's an amazing expert on attention
00:16:23
called dr james williams who interviewed
00:16:24
in moscow it's a former google engineer
00:16:27
who said that there's a few kind of
00:16:29
different types of attention that we see
00:16:31
and we seem to be losing all of them so
00:16:33
the first type of attention is called
00:16:35
your spotlight right so let's say
00:16:36
there's a fridge in the corner of this
00:16:37
room let's say uh i want to go and get
00:16:40
two drinks from that and bring it to the
00:16:42
people in the other room right so my
00:16:44
spotlight i've got an immediate task go
00:16:46
and get the drinks take them to the
00:16:46
people in the other room now if i'm
00:16:48
constantly interrupted if i'm constantly
00:16:49
checking my text i might get to the
00:16:50
fridge get a little text forget why did
00:16:52
i go there again the guys in the room
00:16:54
are saying where the hell's johan why
00:16:55
has he not brought us this stuff so your
00:16:56
spotlight is your ability to home in on
00:17:00
an immediate task right
00:17:02
that is obvious we can all see how
00:17:04
that's being disrupted i can talk more
00:17:05
about that if you like
00:17:06
then there's what he calls your
00:17:08
starlight which is your more medium-term
00:17:10
goals so a medium-term goal might be you
00:17:13
know a goal that you obviously had a few
00:17:14
years ago i want to start a business
00:17:16
right that's a medium term goal it's
00:17:18
called starlight because when you're not
00:17:19
sure where you are you look up at the
00:17:20
stars and you're like oh you orientate
00:17:22
yourself by the stars right
00:17:24
that is being disrupted if your life is
00:17:26
full of distractions if your
00:17:29
consciousness is hijacked by really
00:17:31
petty goals or goals that are someone
00:17:33
else's goals like social media
00:17:36
you you can't you lose you begin to lose
00:17:39
your ability to formulate it's not just
00:17:41
you can't achieve the short-term tasks
00:17:43
you lose your ability to achieve your
00:17:44
longer-term tasks and the third form is
00:17:46
what james calls dr williams calls your
00:17:49
daylight which is how do you even know
00:17:51
that you want to set up a business how
00:17:53
do you even know what it means to be a
00:17:55
good dad how do you know what it means
00:17:56
to have a good life right
00:17:59
for to be able to see clearly a room has
00:18:01
to be flooded with daylight
00:18:03
and it's not just that we're losing our
00:18:05
short-term attention it's not just that
00:18:06
we're losing our medium-term attention
00:18:08
when those things happen
00:18:10
you you have less ability to make sense
00:18:12
of your own life you know he compared it
00:18:15
to on the internet a denial of service
00:18:17
attack where when someone wants to take
00:18:19
down a website they get you know many
00:18:20
thousands of computers to log on
00:18:22
simultaneously and the computer crashes
00:18:24
it's like we're experiencing that we're
00:18:26
so overloaded that your sense of like
00:18:28
who am i what do i want to do if you're
00:18:30
if your life is atrophied into 65 second
00:18:33
and three-minute chunks
00:18:35
how do you build a sense of where you
00:18:36
want to go and who you want to be you
00:18:38
begin to feel lost in your own life and
00:18:39
i think you can see that happening to
00:18:41
lots of people i certainly can and as
00:18:44
you were saying do you feel that for
00:18:45
yourselves oh 100
00:18:47
and as you were saying that i was
00:18:48
reflecting on um how difficult i find it
00:18:51
to just sit with my girlfriend and just
00:18:54
like pay attention and just try and
00:18:57
connect with her like how has your day
00:18:58
been without devices and screens and
00:19:01
there was a there was a big change we
00:19:03
made together where we kind of made a
00:19:04
rule that we would exclude devices from
00:19:07
certain parts of our life so we don't
00:19:08
have them in the bedroom if we're in if
00:19:09
we're in bed together we don't have
00:19:10
devices in there and um there'll be some
00:19:13
times where we commit to putting the
00:19:15
phones away and doing something
00:19:16
sometimes for seven hours so it'll be
00:19:18
like she'll say to me i want to do this
00:19:20
special type of dance that i've never
00:19:22
done before right
00:19:23
so put the phones away and as i'm doing
00:19:26
it especially at the start as we're
00:19:28
doing this like there's called contact
00:19:29
dance you wanted to do with me where you
00:19:31
always maintain one point of contact
00:19:34
i was just thinking about my phone and
00:19:36
then
00:19:36
you know i think we get into hour five
00:19:39
and six and i'm still thinking about my
00:19:40
phone and it's funny because i'm not
00:19:42
being present i'm not i'm actually kind
00:19:44
of like
00:19:45
complying with what she wants to do so
00:19:47
that i can get back to my phone and i
00:19:49
find that really really sad and it's
00:19:50
actually i can see how it would
00:19:51
jeopardize the chance of a really
00:19:53
meaningful connection in modern
00:19:55
relationships where you're never really
00:19:57
connected i think a lot of relationships
00:19:58
are actually more connected on social
00:20:00
media than they are in
00:20:02
in real life and i wonder if that's had
00:20:04
an adverse effect on the success of
00:20:05
relationships
00:20:06
this uh this this absence of focus and
00:20:09
attention
00:20:10
i think there's so many important things
00:20:12
in what you just said so what you've um
00:20:15
built for you and your girlfriend there
00:20:16
your first response is a good first
00:20:19
response which is um for an individual
00:20:21
level there's big collective ones as
00:20:23
well but an individual level a good
00:20:24
response is what's called pre-commitment
00:20:26
so what you do is you said you and your
00:20:28
girlfriend say we're gonna put our phone
00:20:30
away for seven hours right so you say it
00:20:32
in advance and there's a woman called
00:20:34
professor molly crockett at yale
00:20:36
university where i interviewed as kind
00:20:37
of expert on pre-commitment so
00:20:39
pre-commitment is we all know
00:20:41
there's all sorts of things you want to
00:20:42
do
00:20:43
that you know you might crack and give
00:20:45
in later and not achieve them right so i
00:20:48
don't want to eat any pringles right
00:20:49
because they make me even fatter than i
00:20:51
am right so the best form of
00:20:53
pre-commitment is when i go to the
00:20:54
supermarket don't buy the pringles right
00:20:56
because i buy the pringles and tell
00:20:58
myself i'll just have fun i'll have five
00:20:59
tonight and of course you get to 2am you
00:21:01
wake up you're [ __ ] chugging them
00:21:02
like homer simpson right so the one
00:21:05
point pre-commitment there is a don't
00:21:07
buy the pringles b
00:21:09
tell everyone you're not going to buy
00:21:10
the pringles because even just
00:21:11
articulating your goal out loud makes
00:21:14
you more likely to achieve it so you've
00:21:15
got one form of pre-commitment there
00:21:17
right you've said okay we're going to
00:21:18
say to each other we've got seven hours
00:21:20
now we're going to put the phone away
00:21:22
so that's a really good model of
00:21:24
pre-commitment but also
00:21:26
you've got to one of the challenges with
00:21:28
that which is your you know your you you
00:21:30
feel like your consciousness has been
00:21:31
hijacked by by these technologies and it
00:21:34
was really interesting researching this
00:21:36
because a lot of people when i say i've
00:21:37
done a book about attention and focus
00:21:39
they say oh you've written a book about
00:21:40
tech actually texts only about 20 of
00:21:43
what's going on i think although it's a
00:21:45
very important 20
00:21:47
and and it was really interesting
00:21:49
researching this because
00:21:50
actually
00:21:52
it's not
00:21:53
most of the problem is not inherent to
00:21:55
the technology
00:21:56
it's the result of something else which
00:21:58
is actually more fixable because you and
00:22:01
me we're not going to give away our
00:22:02
phones nor nor should we right we're not
00:22:04
going to abandon this technology
00:22:06
we could make the technology work for
00:22:08
our attention rather than against it so
00:22:10
i spent a lot of time in silicon valley
00:22:12
interviewing the people a lot of the
00:22:14
people who designed the world in which
00:22:15
we now live right
00:22:17
and really feel bad about it and
00:22:20
they are they have all the problems that
00:22:21
you me and everyone watching have
00:22:23
there's a really james williams the
00:22:24
google engineer who i just mentioned
00:22:26
there was an incredible moment when he
00:22:28
spoke at a tech conference so he's
00:22:29
speaking entirely to really influential
00:22:31
designers who are making the stuff that
00:22:33
we're all using and he said to them
00:22:36
is there anyone here in the audience
00:22:39
who wants to live in the world that
00:22:40
we're creating put up your hand
00:22:43
and not one of them did
00:22:44
another one of them tristan harris an
00:22:46
amazing
00:22:47
dissident in silicon valley who also
00:22:49
worked for google he worked on the gmail
00:22:51
team
00:22:52
when they were designing gmail and you
00:22:54
know spreading it to the whole world and
00:22:56
one day he was in the googleplex and one
00:22:58
of his colleagues said i've got an idea
00:23:00
because they were trying to figure out
00:23:01
figure out how to get more and more
00:23:02
people to use gmail more so one day i
00:23:05
had an idea he just said why don't we
00:23:06
make it
00:23:07
so that every time someone gets an email
00:23:09
their phone vibrates and everyone in the
00:23:11
team said that's a good idea
00:23:13
and tristan
00:23:15
a week later was walking around san
00:23:16
francisco
00:23:18
and just heard these vibrations
00:23:19
everywhere
00:23:21
and thought
00:23:22
[ __ ] we did that
00:23:24
and that's happening
00:23:25
everywhere within a few months he did
00:23:27
calculation
00:23:28
there were 11 billion distractions
00:23:31
every day being caused by his company
00:23:33
right so these people are really open to
00:23:36
there's a big obviously a big debate
00:23:38
about this
00:23:40
but there was a moment and there's lots
00:23:41
of things to say about it and lots of
00:23:43
techniques these social companies use to
00:23:45
maximally hijack your attention and we
00:23:47
can talk about those techniques and i
00:23:48
think there's loads we need to learn
00:23:50
about that but actually to me the most
00:23:52
important thing the root of this is to
00:23:54
understand that social media doesn't
00:23:55
have to work that way and the moment
00:23:57
that really helped me to understand it i
00:23:58
was really struggling with getting my
00:23:59
head around that if i open facebook
00:24:01
it'll tell me all sorts of things it'll
00:24:02
say oh it's you you make rob's birthday
00:24:05
today um this is something you said five
00:24:07
years ago
00:24:08
there's been a terrorist attack and look
00:24:10
these people have marked themselves as
00:24:11
safe i don't tell you all sorts of
00:24:12
things
00:24:13
what it won't do is something that
00:24:15
actually lots of people would really
00:24:16
love there's no button on facebook that
00:24:18
says
00:24:20
i'd like to meet up with my mates who's
00:24:22
free now who's nearby and available
00:24:24
right now that's technologically
00:24:26
unbelievably easy facebook could design
00:24:28
that in an hour right that would be
00:24:30
really popular i'm sure everyone
00:24:31
listening thinks yeah that'd be a really
00:24:32
handy thing to have um it doesn't exist
00:24:36
why does the market not provide it if
00:24:38
you follow the chain
00:24:40
from why the market doesn't provide it i
00:24:41
think you begin to understand some of
00:24:43
the ways our attention are being invaded
00:24:45
and how we can get it back
00:24:47
so when you open facebook facebook makes
00:24:50
money in two ways
00:24:52
first way is very obvious you see ads we
00:24:54
all understand how that works the second
00:24:56
way is much more valuable to facebook
00:24:59
everything you do on facebook everything
00:25:00
you like everything you dislike
00:25:02
everything you message to people is
00:25:04
scanned and sorted by their ai
00:25:06
technology
00:25:08
to build a profile of you right so let's
00:25:09
say that you like kylie minogue and
00:25:12
donald trump and you message your mum
00:25:14
going i've just bought a load of nappies
00:25:16
right okay so the ai is figuring out
00:25:17
okay this person is probably gay no
00:25:19
disrespect to heterosexual fans of kylie
00:25:20
probably out there this person's gay
00:25:23
they're quite right-wing and they've got
00:25:25
a baby because why would they be
00:25:26
messaging about nappies right so think
00:25:28
about thousands and thousands of data
00:25:30
points like that it's building up a very
00:25:32
complicated and detailed profile of you
00:25:35
which it then sells to advertisers so
00:25:37
they can target you because if you're if
00:25:38
you're
00:25:40
making nappies you don't want to send an
00:25:41
ad to me i don't have any children
00:25:42
you've wasted your money you want to
00:25:44
target your advertising so facebook is
00:25:46
making money
00:25:47
every moment you open it facebook makes
00:25:49
money through those two revenue streams
00:25:51
and every time you put
00:25:53
the facebook app down or you shut your
00:25:55
phone off
00:25:56
facebook loses money right or they don't
00:25:58
make the money they would make if you
00:26:00
carried on scrolling right that's it
00:26:01
that's their business model it's simply
00:26:03
that
00:26:04
once you understand that
00:26:06
you can see why there's no button that
00:26:07
says who's available and wants to meet
00:26:09
up now because if you push that button
00:26:11
and it said oh joe's around the corner
00:26:12
i'll go for a coffee with joe
00:26:14
you and joe would sit opposite each
00:26:16
other and talk to each other right well
00:26:18
then you're not on facebook they're
00:26:19
losing money their entire business model
00:26:22
as sean parker who was one of the first
00:26:23
investors in facebook said
00:26:25
our whole business model was to hack
00:26:27
people's attention we knew we were doing
00:26:30
it and we did it anyway so they have the
00:26:31
most sophisticated engineers in the
00:26:33
world
00:26:34
specifically working to figure out
00:26:36
maximally how to hack your attention but
00:26:39
the thing that blew my mind about this
00:26:41
because you can get into okay you talk
00:26:42
about that and
00:26:43
very often this is framed as
00:26:45
oh okay so is this an anti-tech or pro
00:26:48
are we pro-tech or anti-tech are we
00:26:50
it's completely wrong way to think about
00:26:52
it the question is not are you pro-tech
00:26:54
or anti-tech the question is what tech
00:26:57
working in whose interests right
00:27:00
because that business model which is
00:27:01
designed has to be about fracking your
00:27:04
attention that's that's the only way it
00:27:06
can work
00:27:07
is not the only business model for these
00:27:09
companies right so let's say acer asking
00:27:12
one of the who designed key aspects of
00:27:14
the internet that we now use amazing guy
00:27:17
said to me we should just ban that
00:27:19
business model right a business model
00:27:21
that is based on tracking you
00:27:22
surveilling you invading your attention
00:27:25
and selling that attention to the
00:27:26
highest bidder that is just an
00:27:28
inhuman way of doing it it's like lead
00:27:29
in pain
00:27:30
ban it so i said well what to all these
00:27:32
people what happens the day after we ban
00:27:34
it right so what do i open facebook and
00:27:36
it just says sorry close
00:27:39
no what would happen is all these
00:27:40
companies would have to move to other
00:27:41
business models which already exist so
00:27:43
one model might be subscription you know
00:27:45
like netflix we don't know how
00:27:46
subscription works or it might be that
00:27:48
we choose to own it together somewhere
00:27:50
beneath where we're sitting there's a
00:27:52
sewer right we own that sewer you and me
00:27:54
as taxpayers own that sewer together
00:27:56
because when we didn't have sewers we
00:27:58
had [ __ ] in the street and we got
00:27:59
cholera and people died and then
00:28:00
together we built the sewers and
00:28:02
together we own and maintain the sewers
00:28:04
because it's important for all of us now
00:28:05
it might be we want to say just like we
00:28:07
own the sewer pipes together we might
00:28:09
want to own the information pipes
00:28:11
together because at the moment we're
00:28:12
getting the equivalent of cholera for
00:28:14
our attention right but the key thing
00:28:16
about that is when you move to these
00:28:17
different models
00:28:18
instead of you being the product right
00:28:21
today you're not the customer of
00:28:23
facebook you're the product they sell to
00:28:24
advertisers
00:28:26
if we move to those different business
00:28:27
models suddenly you're the person they
00:28:29
want to please right if you want to pay
00:28:31
attention they could start des
00:28:33
redesigning facebook in all sort of ways
00:28:35
sorts of ways very practical ways i can
00:28:37
tell you about lots of them
00:28:39
that are designed not to hack your
00:28:40
attention but are designed to heal your
00:28:42
attention and designed to make your life
00:28:44
better she looks really interesting so
00:28:46
obviously my background is social media
00:28:48
so um been
00:28:50
knee deep in this industry for a long
00:28:51
long time and in 2019 mark zuckerberg
00:28:54
wrote a letter where he said he posted
00:28:56
on his facebook saying um we've done
00:28:59
some studies we've spoken to some people
00:29:01
and we've discovered that the timeline
00:29:04
is bad for you it's net negative
00:29:05
predominantly because of these highly
00:29:07
addictive very short viral videos i'm
00:29:10
gonna put my hands up that was part of
00:29:12
the company i built business model we
00:29:14
were we built we had huge huge facebook
00:29:16
pages some of which had tens of millions
00:29:18
of followers and we knew that if we
00:29:20
wanted a ton of views which would result
00:29:21
in a ton of followers we had to post
00:29:23
very very short highly engaging short
00:29:26
videos facebook that year
00:29:29
changed the timeline they killed that
00:29:31
bit that part of our business model
00:29:32
where these like super addictive viral
00:29:34
videos would no longer work and in their
00:29:36
little statement they said the things
00:29:37
that will now work are any content that
00:29:40
gets people to basically just have
00:29:41
conversation with each other so we then
00:29:43
tested that and buzzfeed tested that as
00:29:45
well buzzfeed posted some things and
00:29:47
discovered that if your post is dis
00:29:49
discussion worthy it will now do better
00:29:52
and so is facebook were apparently
00:29:53
trying to do the right thing
00:29:55
um
00:29:56
which cost them that year their revenues
00:29:58
i believe went down that year their
00:29:59
stock price definitely did and they
00:30:01
pointed to listen we made these changes
00:30:02
to our to our timeline
00:30:04
our news feed to try and make it more
00:30:05
healthy
00:30:06
something else emerged
00:30:08
and that thing which is now the dominant
00:30:10
force is called tick-tock and tick-tock
00:30:14
took the place of short addictive as
00:30:17
[ __ ] you don't even know your scrolling
00:30:19
videos and the way that i know it from
00:30:21
my social media background that tiktok
00:30:23
have fully owned that space is simple on
00:30:26
my tic toc now say i have a hundred
00:30:27
thousand followers a video can get 1 000
00:30:30
views or a million views the variance of
00:30:33
viewership is extreme what that means is
00:30:36
they are the algorithm is just taking
00:30:39
the most addictive things and saying
00:30:41
[ __ ] everything else it's like i'm not
00:30:43
gonna show your followers or the the
00:30:45
discovery feed the thing you posted that
00:30:47
wasn't addictive i'm just gonna grab the
00:30:49
viral stuff
00:30:50
that's super short and put that in the
00:30:52
feed so now i was talking to some of my
00:30:55
colleagues today fortunately i don't
00:30:56
actually use tik tok like i don't use it
00:30:58
myself i have a tick tock but i don't
00:31:00
use it myself to engage with friends and
00:31:02
every single one of my friends some of
00:31:04
them are sat in this room now some of
00:31:05
them are downstairs they describe their
00:31:07
relationship with tick-tock as like
00:31:09
as if it's heroin like i've never heard
00:31:11
a social network described in such a way
00:31:13
my friend dash who's like 35
00:31:15
he goes i'll just touch the app and he
00:31:18
goes an hour's gone and he's like i've
00:31:20
never seen anything like it so if
00:31:22
facebook change
00:31:24
my point here is that some i've seen how
00:31:26
someone else who just doesn't give a
00:31:28
[ __ ] will come and occupy that space
00:31:31
make a billion dollars and
00:31:33
um and run off and so i'm like oh you
00:31:36
know but this is why we you're totally
00:31:37
right this is why we need to look at the
00:31:39
business model for social media and
00:31:40
whether we allow or not of course
00:31:42
think about lead paint again right so
00:31:44
presumably there was a market leader in
00:31:45
lead paint in the 70s
00:31:48
and let's say the responsible paint just
00:31:50
would go you this individual company
00:31:52
needs to stop manufacturing lead paint
00:31:54
of course someone else would have just
00:31:55
come along and made lead paint that's
00:31:56
not the solution
00:31:57
solution is to say no no one can put
00:31:59
lead in paint right which is not to say
00:32:01
there can't be social media that
00:32:02
absolutely can social media has lots of
00:32:04
great things about it but it's about
00:32:06
saying do you have a business model that
00:32:08
is designed about maximally invading
00:32:10
people's attention
00:32:12
or do you have a business model
00:32:14
that's about uh giving people what they
00:32:16
want most people do not what like you're
00:32:18
saying your friends they push the button
00:32:20
and it's gone for now most people don't
00:32:21
want that right most tick tock users i
00:32:23
think about my nieces using tick tock
00:32:25
all the time she doesn't want that
00:32:26
either so at the moment we have a model
00:32:28
that's about hacking people and giving
00:32:30
them what they don't want to sell them
00:32:32
to advertisers when you get rid of that
00:32:34
business model which they won't do
00:32:35
spontaneously we have to make them do it
00:32:37
right
00:32:38
that it produces a completely different
00:32:40
dynamic i so i'm keen so you put your i
00:32:43
read in the book you basically put your
00:32:44
phone in a box and then
00:32:46
escaped to the phone you must have been
00:32:48
more productive than ever because of
00:32:49
this thing that people described called
00:32:51
being in the flow state right i imagine
00:32:52
if i'm distraction free then i'll be in
00:32:54
that flow state longer i i heard about
00:32:56
this concept of a flow state maybe about
00:32:58
a year or two ago and then i i could i
00:33:01
could relate to it because i've had
00:33:02
those moments in my work or when i'm
00:33:04
doing a certain activity specifically
00:33:06
more like monotonous activities or
00:33:08
repetitive activities where you get into
00:33:10
that state of flow where you're almost
00:33:11
doing it without thinking what is flow
00:33:14
and
00:33:15
how do you find it and what is the power
00:33:17
of being in one's flow state so a flow
00:33:20
state
00:33:21
is when you're everyone listening will
00:33:22
have experienced at some point in their
00:33:24
life a flow state is when you're doing
00:33:26
something that's really meaningful to
00:33:27
you and you really get into it
00:33:30
and your sense of time falls away your
00:33:32
sense of ego falls away and your
00:33:34
attention to it just feels effortless
00:33:37
right so one rock climber put it
00:33:40
it's like you get into flowing rock
00:33:41
climbing when you feel like you are the
00:33:43
rock you're climbing right so we all
00:33:46
will have had moments of flow in our
00:33:47
lives what's really important about flow
00:33:49
in relation to attention
00:33:51
is this is a power this is a capacity
00:33:53
that all human beings have
00:33:55
and it's a capacity
00:33:56
where
00:33:57
you can pay attention to something
00:33:59
deeply but it doesn't feel like an
00:34:01
effort right it's not like studying for
00:34:02
an exam where you're like
00:34:04
okay so napoleon was born there okay you
00:34:06
know you can you can pay attention that
00:34:08
way but that's an effort
00:34:09
flow is like a gusher of attention that
00:34:12
is inside all of us that that we can pay
00:34:15
so obviously mahali spent
00:34:17
professor chick sent me high he sent
00:34:19
spent 40 years of his life more than
00:34:21
actually 50 years of his life studying
00:34:23
flow states
00:34:24
how do they happen how do we maintain
00:34:26
them what ruins them
00:34:29
and and
00:34:30
he discovered lots of amazing things
00:34:31
about it he discovered that actually
00:34:32
flow states are really essential for
00:34:35
having a good life for feeling competent
00:34:37
for for good mental health
00:34:40
and he discovered he made lots of
00:34:41
discoveries but for me there were three
00:34:43
really important things he discovered
00:34:44
about how to get into a flow
00:34:46
state firstly you have to choose one
00:34:50
goal if you're trying to do lots of
00:34:51
things at the same time you will not get
00:34:53
into flow i can explain why later
00:34:56
that's really important you have to
00:34:58
choose one thing right
00:35:00
the second thing you have to do
00:35:03
is you have to choose a goal that is
00:35:04
meaningful to you if it's not meaningful
00:35:06
you'll never get into flow on it for me
00:35:08
it would be writing right but everyone
00:35:09
will have something
00:35:11
and thirdly
00:35:12
you need to choose something that is
00:35:15
ideally at the edge of your abilities so
00:35:17
let's say you're a rock climber let's
00:35:19
say you're a medium talent rock climber
00:35:21
right if you just clamber over garden
00:35:22
wall
00:35:23
you're not going to get into a state of
00:35:25
flow equally if you suddenly try and
00:35:27
climb mount kilimanjaro it's going to be
00:35:29
overwhelming you're also not going to
00:35:30
get into a state of flow what you want
00:35:32
to do is choose something that's a
00:35:34
little bit harder
00:35:36
than the thing the time you did last
00:35:37
time right so flow begins at the edge of
00:35:40
your abilities so you want those those
00:35:43
three things one clear goal it's got to
00:35:45
be meaningful to you and it's got to be
00:35:47
the edge of your abilities if you do
00:35:49
that you
00:35:51
there's no guarantee but you max
00:35:52
massively increase your chance of
00:35:54
getting into flow which is this form of
00:35:57
deep meaningful attention but mahali
00:35:59
also made a discovery he discovered this
00:36:01
in the late 80s
00:36:02
the um
00:36:04
there's something that absolutely
00:36:05
consistently ruins flow which is being
00:36:07
interrupted being distracted right just
00:36:09
kills flow dead which kills the deepest
00:36:12
form of attention and i think we're
00:36:13
really living
00:36:15
and mahali thought that we're really
00:36:16
living with a crisis of flow states now
00:36:19
what is the harm of interruption i i
00:36:22
read in your book about the the decaying
00:36:24
creativity and the time it takes to get
00:36:26
back into the task once you've done it
00:36:27
but is there a more sort of
00:36:29
um
00:36:30
consequential so if you want to
00:36:32
understand and this might sound when i
00:36:33
first describe it like a small effect
00:36:35
i'm going to explain how big it is
00:36:36
afterwards because don't feel big when
00:36:38
you're doing it so i went to interview
00:36:40
one of the leading neuroscientists in
00:36:41
the world of my name professor earl
00:36:42
miller who's mit the massachusetts
00:36:44
institute of technology
00:36:46
and professor miller said to me
00:36:48
you have to understand one crucial thing
00:36:49
about your brain my brain everyone's
00:36:51
brains
00:36:52
you can only think consciously about one
00:36:54
thing at a time
00:36:56
this is just a fundamental limitation of
00:36:58
the human brain human brain hasn't
00:37:00
changed in 40 000 years ain't going to
00:37:01
change any time soon you can only think
00:37:04
about one thing at a time
00:37:05
but we have fallen for a mass delusion
00:37:08
so the average teenager according to a
00:37:09
study by professor larry rosen believes
00:37:12
they can now follow seven forms of media
00:37:14
at the same time
00:37:15
so what happens when you believe you're
00:37:18
you're you're doing lots of things at
00:37:20
once so they get people into labs they
00:37:22
get them to do think they're doing lots
00:37:24
of things at once and see what happens
00:37:26
and it turns out
00:37:28
there are four
00:37:30
really big costs that happen
00:37:32
so the first is what's called the switch
00:37:35
cost effect
00:37:36
so let's say my phone is outside this
00:37:38
room but let's say i have my phone in my
00:37:40
pocket right let's say you were just
00:37:41
talking you spoke for a minute or two
00:37:43
what you said was really interesting
00:37:44
let's imagine that i had just taken out
00:37:46
my phone and glanced at my text messages
00:37:48
for a few seconds while you were doing
00:37:49
that right
00:37:50
kind of thing that happens all the time
00:37:52
you think oh i've just taken two seconds
00:37:54
and i'll
00:37:55
in that moment i have to refocus my
00:37:57
brain oh
00:37:58
um jess texted me oh right so that must
00:38:01
mean that her
00:38:02
mum needs to oh right okay you've got it
00:38:04
and then i have to re-focus on you wait
00:38:05
what was stephen just saying again
00:38:07
seems like a small effect it's not i'll
00:38:08
talk about how much it is in a minute
00:38:10
the the second uh cost it it brings in
00:38:14
is you start to make mistakes when
00:38:16
you're switching between things it
00:38:18
massively increases your error rate so
00:38:20
say that i'm i don't know doing my tax
00:38:21
return and i look at my text and i go
00:38:24
back to my tax return i'm much more
00:38:25
likely to make mistakes and that means i
00:38:26
have to go back and correct my mistakes
00:38:29
the third effect is on your memory so to
00:38:32
translate your experiences into memories
00:38:34
it takes mental effort right takes a
00:38:36
certain amount of brain power if your
00:38:38
brain is instead just jammed up with all
00:38:41
this switching
00:38:42
the evidence shows you're significantly
00:38:44
less likely to just remember what
00:38:45
happened you're less likely to remember
00:38:46
any of it and the the third effect is on
00:38:49
your creativity so
00:38:51
when you just have time to think
00:38:53
your brain naturally wanders and it will
00:38:56
roam over you know things people have
00:38:58
said to you in your life moments you've
00:39:00
had
00:39:01
things you've read a whole range of
00:39:03
things and it will start to make
00:39:04
connections between those things that's
00:39:06
actually what creativity is it's when
00:39:08
two ideas that have never been put
00:39:09
together go together and pop right you
00:39:11
know that's much better than me
00:39:12
but when your brain is jammed up with
00:39:14
switching
00:39:16
it just doesn't get the space to do that
00:39:17
right and i've heard that i'm thinking
00:39:20
speaking to president miller who's an
00:39:21
amazing man and just thinking
00:39:23
all right i get that but that's quite
00:39:25
small right when i looked at the studies
00:39:27
i was quite struck hewlett-packard you
00:39:29
know the people who make printers well
00:39:30
they're [ __ ] printers that always jam
00:39:32
in my experience but anyway
00:39:33
hewlett-packard did a quite small
00:39:35
experiment with their workers
00:39:37
so they split them into two groups and
00:39:39
the first group was told
00:39:41
just do whatever task you've got to do
00:39:42
today and you're not going to be
00:39:43
interrupted and the second group was
00:39:45
told just do your tasks today and they
00:39:46
were interrupted with emails and texts
00:39:48
right what was described as a heavy
00:39:50
amount of emails and texts
00:39:51
and then they just tested their iq
00:39:54
after either not being distracted or
00:39:56
being distracted what they found is the
00:39:59
people who have been distracted
00:40:01
tested are having 10 iq points lower
00:40:04
than the people who had not been
00:40:05
distracted right because it makes you
00:40:07
less intelligent constantly switching
00:40:09
the strain of that makes you less
00:40:11
intelligent and to give you a sense of
00:40:12
what 10 iq points means
00:40:14
if you and me smoke to spliff now
00:40:16
together
00:40:17
our iq would drop by about five points
00:40:20
so it's double just being heavily
00:40:22
interrupted it has double the effect on
00:40:24
your intelligence and attention as
00:40:26
getting stoned so you would be better
00:40:28
off sitting at your desk doing one thing
00:40:31
and smoking a spliff then sitting at
00:40:33
your desk not smoking a spliff and being
00:40:34
interrupted all the time there's a guy
00:40:36
called professor michael posner at the
00:40:37
university of oregon who found that if
00:40:39
you are distracted and pulled away
00:40:42
it takes you 20 and go back to the task
00:40:44
you were doing originally it takes you
00:40:46
23 minutes to get back to the same level
00:40:48
of focus as you had before right so
00:40:50
we're all our focus is being stolen the
00:40:52
book is called stolen focus for this
00:40:54
reason our focus is being stolen by
00:40:57
these forces that's just one of the
00:40:58
twelve there's loads of them but
00:41:00
we've got to understand this
00:41:02
and the other point i guess so you write
00:41:04
about in this book which is i was
00:41:06
surprised you linked to attention
00:41:07
because it wasn't an obvious link to me
00:41:08
was about
00:41:10
sleep
00:41:10
and and the decay in
00:41:13
um our sleeping
00:41:16
health over
00:41:17
decades and you you write that we're
00:41:20
sleeping less than ever before and we're
00:41:22
having worse sleep than ever before my
00:41:24
sleep is fairly good but it i think it's
00:41:26
decaying i'd say it's decaying um i
00:41:29
sleep with my phone in my bed first
00:41:31
thing i do when i wake up in the morning
00:41:32
i'm actually as i'm opening my eyes i'm
00:41:35
thinking about where i need to put my
00:41:36
hand to get the phone
00:41:38
like i'm visualizing where i think i
00:41:40
left it and my brain always knows my
00:41:42
brain's like it's over by your right
00:41:43
your right ear yeah yeah it always knows
00:41:45
where it is and then i wake up i look at
00:41:47
what's that
00:41:50
100 notifications 100 things um
00:41:53
what's the you know what's the cost of
00:41:55
this type of behavior which i think a
00:41:57
lot of people will resonate for and what
00:41:59
is the like macro trend in sleep health
00:42:02
yeah this is one of the 12 causes i
00:42:03
write about in in stolen focus that
00:42:05
really
00:42:06
uh the evidence was quite shocking
00:42:08
actually so i interviewed lots of
00:42:09
experts but i interviewed arguably the
00:42:11
leading expert in the world on sleep a
00:42:13
man named dr charles seisler who's at
00:42:14
harvard medical school he's taught
00:42:16
everyone from the boston red sox to the
00:42:18
secret service about about sleep
00:42:21
and he started to make this breakthrough
00:42:23
in 1981 so he
00:42:25
when charles was a medical school he was
00:42:27
taught
00:42:28
that um
00:42:30
basically when you're asleep your brain
00:42:32
is just inert it's not doing much so he
00:42:33
starts doing this research nothing to do
00:42:35
with sleep it was it's not really
00:42:37
doesn't matter what it's about but it
00:42:38
was about the time of day that the body
00:42:40
releases a particular hormone and to
00:42:42
study that he had to keep people awake
00:42:44
in a lab right for quite long periods of
00:42:46
time so he's working with them and he's
00:42:48
got all sorts of techniques for keeping
00:42:49
them awake like attention techniques and
00:42:51
he was just immediately struck when he's
00:42:53
doing this
00:42:54
how quickly and how dramatically
00:42:57
people's attention and ability to think
00:42:59
deteriorated as they stayed awake longer
00:43:01
if you're awake for 19 hours it doesn't
00:43:04
feel like very long
00:43:05
your attention and ability to think is
00:43:07
the same as if you were legally drunk
00:43:09
right so your your attention things that
00:43:11
would take
00:43:12
a fraction of a second when you're
00:43:15
refreshed and alert he was discovering
00:43:17
if you were awake for just a day we're
00:43:19
taking 12 seconds a staggering increase
00:43:21
in your ability to think so you start to
00:43:23
think oh i should study sleep i should
00:43:25
look into this and he began to do
00:43:27
a series of hugely groundbreaking
00:43:29
research on sleep what he did is he
00:43:31
pioneered putting together two bits of
00:43:32
technology there's a kind of technology
00:43:34
that can scan your eyes to see what
00:43:36
you're looking at and obviously there's
00:43:37
pet scans and things that can scan your
00:43:39
brain and see what's happening in your
00:43:40
brain
00:43:41
so he put this together
00:43:43
and he looked at people who were tired
00:43:45
not that tired but tired
00:43:47
um to see what they were looking at and
00:43:49
what was happening in their brain as
00:43:50
they looked at it and what he discovered
00:43:52
is that you when you're tired you could
00:43:54
appear to be awake
00:43:55
as awake as you and me seem now you can
00:43:57
be looking at people you can be talking
00:43:59
but parts of your brain have literally
00:44:01
gone to sleep it's called local sleep
00:44:03
because it's local to one part of the
00:44:05
brain right
00:44:06
which is kind of mind-blowing this helps
00:44:08
to explain why attention degrades
00:44:12
so rapidly when you're asleep and i was
00:44:14
trying why is that what's going on there
00:44:17
i mean it's also important to bear in
00:44:18
mind this is one of the ways we know
00:44:20
attention has got worse there's good
00:44:22
evidence that sleep has dramatically
00:44:24
deteriorated we sleep on average an hour
00:44:26
less
00:44:27
than people did in 1942 and children
00:44:30
sleep 80 minutes a night less than they
00:44:32
did a century ago so it's a staggering
00:44:35
there's been a 20 decline in adult sleep
00:44:36
in the last century incredible figures
00:44:39
and when you look at them they're kind
00:44:40
of mind-blowing um only 15 percent of
00:44:43
people wake up feeling refreshed so i
00:44:45
wanted to understand why is this right
00:44:47
what why does sleep affect our attention
00:44:49
so much one of people are interviewed
00:44:50
about this and looked at her research
00:44:52
very carefully it's an amazing woman
00:44:53
called professor roxanne prichard who's
00:44:55
at the university of minneapolis where i
00:44:57
interviewed her she explained to me when
00:44:59
you don't sleep your body interprets it
00:45:02
as an emergency it says something's
00:45:05
really wrong here right
00:45:07
he's not sleeping why isn't he sleeping
00:45:09
so it has all sorts of physiological and
00:45:11
psychological effects it raises your
00:45:13
heart rate it makes you crave more sugar
00:45:16
and fast food because it'll release
00:45:17
glucose quickly
00:45:18
it makes your heart beat faster and it
00:45:21
shuts down a lot of the creative parts
00:45:23
of your brain a lot of the more fertile
00:45:24
parts of your brain it's like it's an
00:45:25
emergency you haven't got time to worry
00:45:27
about that you know but what's happening
00:45:29
is lots of us effectively live in a
00:45:31
bodily emergency 23 percent of british
00:45:34
people sleep for five hours a night on
00:45:35
average staggering figures
00:45:38
and the reason this is important is
00:45:39
partly the bodily emergency and it's
00:45:41
partly
00:45:42
that what dr seisler had been taught at
00:45:44
medical school much earlier was wrong
00:45:47
sleep is not a passive process sleep is
00:45:50
an incredibly active process the way
00:45:52
roxanne put it to me professor prashad
00:45:55
is when you're sleeping you're repairing
00:45:58
your brain is rinsed with a a watery
00:46:01
fluid that carries away metabolic waste
00:46:03
it takes it down to your liver and gets
00:46:04
rid of it your brain repairs itself in
00:46:07
sleep the longer you sleep the better
00:46:09
and deeper the repairs are i mean there
00:46:11
are lots of other things that happen in
00:46:12
sleep that i talk about in the book as
00:46:13
well and we're not we're giving
00:46:15
ourselves time to repair we're not
00:46:17
giving ourselves time to rest and as a
00:46:20
result we're going around groggy
00:46:23
our brain isn't functioning to its full
00:46:25
potential so i'm saying to dr seisler
00:46:27
you know okay so we know that sleep's
00:46:29
got worse we know that sleep is crucial
00:46:31
for attention
00:46:32
um does that mean it is true to say that
00:46:35
we have got an attention crisis and he
00:46:37
said even if nothing else to change in
00:46:39
society and this is only one of the
00:46:40
twelve changes even if nothing else to
00:46:43
change in society that alone would be a
00:46:45
guarantee that we had an attention
00:46:46
crisis
00:46:47
so what do we do about it i i'm that
00:46:49
person i'm the
00:46:51
pathetic
00:46:52
um
00:46:53
i have pathetic sleeping habits for sure
00:46:55
for sure um so what can i do about it
00:46:58
you know removing my phone from the
00:46:59
bedroom aside the government or society
00:47:02
collectively deciding that
00:47:03
um we should they should impose better
00:47:06
professional
00:47:08
laws so that people aren't as
00:47:10
interrupted you know when they could be
00:47:11
sleeping etc what else can i do on a
00:47:13
real practical level so yeah at a
00:47:15
personal level there's plenty of
00:47:16
pre-commitment you can do so i would
00:47:17
recommend that you get a case save do
00:47:19
you know about them oh is that like a
00:47:20
safe that my phone goes in yeah so
00:47:22
basically it's a plastic safe with a lid
00:47:24
at the top you take the lid off you put
00:47:26
your phone in it you turn the dial at
00:47:27
the top and it'll lock away your phone
00:47:30
for anything you set it to between five
00:47:31
minutes and a week and if there's like a
00:47:33
fire or something you could easily smash
00:47:34
it but then you have to buy another
00:47:35
iphone and buy another case safe right
00:47:37
um so i would say an hour before you go
00:47:39
to bed put your phone in the case safe
00:47:42
and and then you can't again it's
00:47:44
pre-commitment you're binding yourself
00:47:46
so that when you're lying there in bed
00:47:47
and your mind's racing like oh [ __ ] i
00:47:49
forgot that email
00:47:50
too late you can't check it that's what
00:47:52
i do massively improve my sleep so it's
00:47:55
partly that that's one of the individual
00:47:57
changes there's also big tips and this
00:47:59
is one thing i recommend to you so i
00:48:01
went to new zealand to meet a guy called
00:48:03
andrew barnes so andrew uh grew up here
00:48:05
in london
00:48:06
and in the 80s he in 1987 he worked in
00:48:10
the city of london the financial
00:48:11
district uh just as the whole thing was
00:48:14
deregulated so the whole thing blows up
00:48:17
you know you've probably seen on the
00:48:18
news these images of like men in suits
00:48:21
and lots of hairspray like shouting at
00:48:23
each other buy buy sell cell and he was
00:48:26
one of those guys right and in that
00:48:28
world uh he was a young guy then
00:48:31
in in that world
00:48:33
you
00:48:34
you know this is the word language they
00:48:35
would have used it's not my language you
00:48:37
were a fool if you came to work later
00:48:39
than 7 30 in the morning and you were a
00:48:40
[ __ ] if you left before 7 30 at night
00:48:42
right so for half the year andrew never
00:48:45
saw the sun because he would had you
00:48:47
know leave at six o'clock in the morning
00:48:49
in the dark and he would get home at
00:48:50
nine o'clock in the morning and at nine
00:48:51
o'clock at night in the dark he didn't
00:48:53
have a good relationship with his
00:48:54
children he had to build that as an
00:48:55
adult this thing just consumed him
00:48:58
and he didn't like it
00:49:00
and wisely he quit
00:49:03
and he went to live in australia and
00:49:04
then new zealand and he became a very
00:49:05
successful businessman there and one day
00:49:07
in 2018 andrew was on a plane and he was
00:49:10
reading a business magazine
00:49:11
and he saw these quite shocking figures
00:49:13
which are accurate that basically they'd
00:49:15
done productivity research and they
00:49:16
discovered the average worker
00:49:19
sits at their desk for eight hours a day
00:49:20
says pre-coded obviously sits at their
00:49:22
desk eight hours a day but they are
00:49:23
actually only concentrating on their
00:49:25
work for three hours a day right which
00:49:27
are amazing figures right bad for
00:49:29
everyone bad for the worker their life
00:49:30
is passing them by bad for the employer
00:49:32
you know they're not getting good value
00:49:34
out of their employees and andrew did
00:49:36
this
00:49:37
andrew remembered this these moments
00:49:40
when he was working in the city and he
00:49:41
was exhausted and run down and he wasn't
00:49:44
having a life and he thought maybe my
00:49:46
workers are just really tired maybe
00:49:48
that's part of what's going on so he had
00:49:49
this this idea just came to him he said
00:49:52
if i
00:49:53
said the company's gonna move to a four
00:49:55
day week instead of a five day week for
00:49:57
exactly the same amount of money
00:49:59
and in return let's say my work is
00:50:01
matched this three hours a day
00:50:03
in return if my workers just did 45
00:50:06
minutes more every day of actually
00:50:08
concentrating
00:50:10
because they were better rested and so
00:50:11
on that would make up that then we'd be
00:50:13
in the same place for four hours four
00:50:14
days a week versus five so
00:50:17
andrew organized a conference call
00:50:19
he had uh
00:50:20
everyone on it
00:50:22
and he said
00:50:23
from now on i'm gonna pay you all the
00:50:24
same but we're gonna move to four days a
00:50:26
week we're gonna try it for three months
00:50:27
and see if it works if it works we'll
00:50:29
carry on doing it um andrew's head of hr
00:50:31
literally fell over it's like what is
00:50:33
this right and people even the people
00:50:35
who were gonna be the beneficiaries and
00:50:36
they were all the beneficiaries but even
00:50:37
the kind of lower level staff were like
00:50:39
is this a trick what's what's going on
00:50:41
how is this going to work so they spent
00:50:43
a few months preparing it actually made
00:50:45
them all think about productivity more
00:50:47
how are we going to make ourselves more
00:50:48
productive they came up with all sorts
00:50:50
of strategies some of them really simple
00:50:52
things like you know everyone has a
00:50:53
little pot on their desk you can put a
00:50:55
white flag in it when you've got the
00:50:56
white flag that means you don't want to
00:50:57
be interrupted things like that
00:51:00
and they tried it and uh
00:51:03
i interviewed everyone who worked in
00:51:04
their office in rotorua and this
00:51:06
experiment was studied by dr helen
00:51:08
delaney who's at the university of
00:51:10
auckland business school
00:51:12
and what they found is the company
00:51:14
achieved more in four days than they had
00:51:16
in five right productivity massively
00:51:19
went up stress massively went down
00:51:21
social media use at work massively went
00:51:23
down and it was fascinating talking to
00:51:24
the staff there about what they did one
00:51:26
of the things they did is they just
00:51:27
slept more some of them didn't take five
00:51:30
days i didn't take four days what they
00:51:31
did is they did five days but they did
00:51:32
six hours a day instead of eight hours a
00:51:34
day they slept more
00:51:37
they rested more
00:51:39
they were able to switch their brains
00:51:40
off from work which if you're going and
00:51:42
going and going is very very hard to do
00:51:46
and i remember interviewing them
00:51:46
thinking can this be true actually lots
00:51:48
of places have done these experiments
00:51:50
with four day weeks and a lot of tech
00:51:52
companies are offering it now as an
00:51:53
inducement but a lot of places did these
00:51:55
experiments
00:51:57
so microsoft in japan went to a four day
00:51:59
week their productivity went up by 40
00:52:02
toyota and gothenburg moved all their
00:52:04
mechanics to a six-hour day and they
00:52:06
produced a hundred and fourteen percent
00:52:08
more in in six hours than they had in
00:52:10
eight profits went up by 25
00:52:13
in a way it sounded too good to be true
00:52:14
right and i went to interview this guy
00:52:16
uh professor jeffrey pfeffer who's at
00:52:18
the university of stanford who's an
00:52:20
expert one of the leading experts in the
00:52:21
world on organizational behavior i was
00:52:23
saying well
00:52:24
how can that be
00:52:25
and he said look
00:52:27
it's not difficult ask any sports team
00:52:30
do you want your team to go onto the
00:52:31
pitch exhausted worn out
00:52:34
no
00:52:35
every sports fan wants their team to go
00:52:37
onto the pitch well rested well slept
00:52:40
you know so that experiment again we
00:52:43
won't always think about it at these two
00:52:44
levels what can individuals do there's a
00:52:46
lot
00:52:47
and there's the collective level where
00:52:48
we can make it possible for people to
00:52:50
make more personal changes
00:52:53
quick one
00:52:54
i can't talk about huel enough in my
00:52:55
life especially right now and it's
00:52:57
really interesting because what we tend
00:52:58
to see at this time of year
00:53:00
is the first thing that goes is our diet
00:53:03
quickly followed by our fitness and we
00:53:04
see that in the data across multiple
00:53:06
surveys people in the fourth quarter of
00:53:08
the year start indulging a little bit
00:53:10
more which is totally fine and they
00:53:12
start exercising a little bit less which
00:53:14
is totally fine
00:53:16
however a really useful crutch during
00:53:18
this period where the seasons have
00:53:20
changed and we're starting to behave a
00:53:21
little bit differently is making sure
00:53:23
your fridge is stocked with things that
00:53:24
are nutritionally complete healthy and
00:53:26
that are going to be convenient for you
00:53:27
to consume without compromising your
00:53:30
health and that is where ladies and
00:53:31
gentlemen
00:53:32
huel comes in and they now have four
00:53:35
brand new flavors they have the salted
00:53:37
caramel flavor absolutely love they have
00:53:40
the cinnamon swell flavor the number one
00:53:42
new flavor in my opinion which is really
00:53:43
surprising iced coffee caramel
00:53:46
and they have the strawberries and cream
00:53:47
flavor if you're going to try any of the
00:53:49
new flavors please do try the cinnamon
00:53:51
swirl and let me know what you think
00:53:52
it's an absolutely unexpected champion
00:53:53
of the new flavors
00:53:55
writers you're a writer that's one thing
00:53:57
you talk about you talk about why
00:53:59
reading is important and there's been a
00:54:01
macro decay in our reading and i
00:54:04
as i read that i thought why why
00:54:06
why is reading so important what role
00:54:09
does reading play we all consume
00:54:11
information digitally now why do we need
00:54:13
to go back to reading stuff
00:54:15
i think there's a few reasons um
00:54:18
and it's not again not a snooty
00:54:20
thing at all
00:54:22
so you're absolutely right that reading
00:54:23
is mass reading books has massively
00:54:25
declined um
00:54:26
57 of americans now never read a book in
00:54:29
any given year it's the first time in
00:54:30
the history of the american republic
00:54:31
that's the case we're
00:54:33
we're still a bit better than that in
00:54:34
britain but not not by much
00:54:36
and there's several people who really
00:54:37
helped me to understand this
00:54:40
and what that what that's doing to us
00:54:41
that's partly a symptom
00:54:43
of our declining attention and partly a
00:54:45
cause of it and i took a bit about how
00:54:47
saying to be a woman called professor
00:54:49
anne mangan is at stavanger university
00:54:50
in norway who's a professor of literacy
00:54:53
and probably the leading expert in the
00:54:54
world on on these questions
00:54:57
and she explained lots of things but
00:54:58
there's one very simple one you can do
00:54:59
studies have been loads of studies
00:55:01
showing this now
00:55:02
so you get group people you split them
00:55:04
randomly into two
00:55:05
the first group let's say you could do
00:55:06
it with my book you give one group of
00:55:08
people my book on the ipad like your
00:55:10
ipad there
00:55:11
and the other group you give the
00:55:12
physical book right and then you go back
00:55:14
to them a week a month a year later and
00:55:16
you just ask them questions about the
00:55:18
book
00:55:19
and it turns out
00:55:20
invariably the people who've read it on
00:55:23
the screen remember significantly less
00:55:25
and understand significantly less of
00:55:26
what they read this is a very well
00:55:28
proven effect it's called screen
00:55:29
inferiority it's such a big effect if
00:55:32
you take a ten-year-old child it's the
00:55:34
equivalent of two-thirds of their
00:55:36
progress in reading in a year
00:55:38
is lost when they're reading on a screen
00:55:40
it's that's how that's how much it
00:55:41
diminishes our ability to think
00:55:43
and it seems to be there's lots of
00:55:45
there's a big debate about why
00:55:47
but when you read let's say um you know
00:55:49
we opened
00:55:51
the bbc news site now and you me read
00:55:53
the same story when we read on a screen
00:55:56
what we tend to do is read in a sort of
00:55:59
skimming zed pattern you sort of skim
00:56:01
key words right
00:56:04
um
00:56:05
when you read a book generally we read
00:56:07
linearly we read from left to right you
00:56:09
know and you keep going
00:56:11
but part of the problem is if you spend
00:56:13
too much time reading on screens when
00:56:15
you read a book you start doing that
00:56:16
when you read books and it screws with
00:56:18
your ability to read books but the truth
00:56:20
is i think it's something more subtle
00:56:22
right so this marshall mcluhan was this
00:56:24
kind of professor in the 60s who said
00:56:26
this famous thing that i never
00:56:27
understood for years he said the medium
00:56:30
is the message right and what what he
00:56:31
meant was
00:56:33
when a new medium comes along he was
00:56:35
talking about television so a new way of
00:56:37
telling stories and thinking about the
00:56:38
world comes along
00:56:40
you know you could tell on your
00:56:41
television and you can watch the wire or
00:56:43
wheel of fortune or anything in between
00:56:44
right
00:56:46
the medium of television itself has a
00:56:48
message in it right irrespective of the
00:56:51
show you're watching on the television
00:56:53
so the medium of television the messages
00:56:54
the world is very fast it's all
00:56:57
happening at the same time
00:56:59
we can all think about things you get
00:57:00
from watching tv the way you feel if you
00:57:02
and i love tv things you feel when you
00:57:03
when you watch tv
00:57:06
but i think
00:57:07
there's a medium in the message of
00:57:10
social media right so think about
00:57:12
twitter
00:57:14
when you open twitter it doesn't matter
00:57:16
if you're donald trump bernie sanders or
00:57:18
i know bubba the love sponge right
00:57:20
there is a message you are absorbing
00:57:22
about how the world should be i would
00:57:24
say the message is firstly the world
00:57:27
should be interpreted and thought about
00:57:29
very quickly right
00:57:31
quick quick quick it should be
00:57:33
interpreted very briefly anything worth
00:57:35
saying can be said in very short little
00:57:37
bursts it's binary
00:57:39
exactly and what matters
00:57:42
the thing that is most important is
00:57:43
whether people immediately agree with
00:57:45
this very fast very short thing you've
00:57:48
said right that is the message hidden in
00:57:49
the medium of twitter right think about
00:57:51
instagram what's the message hidden in
00:57:53
the medium of instagram it's
00:57:55
um
00:57:56
what really matters is whether you look
00:57:58
good
00:57:58
and whether people like how you look
00:58:00
right that's it that's the message
00:58:02
what's the message in facebook
00:58:04
the message is okay friendship which is
00:58:07
the most precious human thing
00:58:09
friendship is looking at other people's
00:58:12
photographs of their life that you
00:58:13
should narrate your life to your friends
00:58:15
through images
00:58:17
and crave their likes and that that's
00:58:19
what friendship is mutually watching
00:58:21
each other's
00:58:22
carefully collected paparazzi images of
00:58:24
each other and liking them now
00:58:28
i think all those messages are wrong
00:58:31
that is a terrible way to live your life
00:58:33
right it is not true that life should be
00:58:35
interpreted quickly
00:58:38
actually if people immediately agree
00:58:40
with what you're saying
00:58:41
what you're saying probably didn't need
00:58:43
to be said at all right um yeah i like
00:58:46
pretty people instagram fine okay but if
00:58:48
that's the thing that you overweight
00:58:50
your life towards something's really
00:58:52
going wrong and friendship a true
00:58:54
friendship is nothing like a facebook
00:58:55
friendship but think about the message
00:58:58
the reason i say this in relation to
00:58:59
reading is think about the message in
00:59:01
the book right the printed book what
00:59:03
does a printed book say to you firstly
00:59:05
the world is complicated
00:59:07
and you might want to take a good bit of
00:59:09
time to think about one thing
00:59:12
secondly
00:59:13
it says
00:59:14
um you should slow down
00:59:16
slow down look at this thing that will
00:59:19
be saying the same thing 100 years from
00:59:21
now as it says right now right
00:59:23
and and thirdly it says
00:59:25
you might want to spend time thinking
00:59:27
about the inner lives of other people
00:59:30
because the inner lives of other people
00:59:31
are really interesting and you'll find
00:59:33
that they're like you in some ways and
00:59:34
unlike you in others right
00:59:36
so i would say take care what
00:59:38
technologies you absorb because over
00:59:41
time
00:59:42
your consciousness will come to resemble
00:59:44
those technologies you know you want to
00:59:46
have a life of meaning and purpose where
00:59:48
you engage with complex things where you
00:59:49
showed empathy where you showed love
00:59:51
these are not these are things that the
00:59:53
current model of social media absolutely
00:59:55
militates against and the books
00:59:58
help with they don't they're not the
00:59:59
solute you know they're not the sole
01:00:00
solution there's lots of things going on
01:00:01
but i i deeply believe in the medium of
01:00:04
the book i completely agree one of the
01:00:06
when i started writing my book i thought
01:00:08
it was insanity the concept of a book
01:00:09
because i'd grown up in that social
01:00:11
media area where you get instant
01:00:12
feedback etc etc and one of the like
01:00:14
really profound things i discovered with
01:00:16
a book is
01:00:18
because there's no comment section
01:00:21
no like really i think about a book if
01:00:23
it had a comment section below it the
01:00:25
comment section for a book exists on
01:00:27
some a website a million miles away
01:00:28
maybe in reviews and i really never look
01:00:30
at them so when someone's consuming it
01:00:32
they don't get to develop their opinion
01:00:34
based on consensus below and i've
01:00:36
noticed this so many times on instagram
01:00:38
if i post something and the top comment
01:00:41
takes on a certain narrative everyone
01:00:43
below will follow so if the top so i do
01:00:46
a post
01:00:47
people see it as it take it as it is you
01:00:49
can then see the behavior of them like
01:00:51
going into the comments section and the
01:00:53
minute a certain narrative emerges which
01:00:55
people find interesting everyone follows
01:00:58
that narrative and then if you i've done
01:00:59
it before like many years ago just
01:01:01
remove that comment or hide it
01:01:03
the narrative below changes and you can
01:01:05
see people actually deciding what they
01:01:07
think of what you're saying or whether
01:01:09
it's right or wrong based on the
01:01:10
consensus below i think it's even i
01:01:12
think you're absolutely right stephen i
01:01:13
don't know enough about comment sections
01:01:15
but i think in terms of commentary
01:01:17
online it's actually even worse than
01:01:19
what you just said in a lot of cases
01:01:21
and this is an effect of all the effects
01:01:23
i learned about in the book this is one
01:01:24
of the one that's that i think is most
01:01:26
harmful remember what we were saying
01:01:28
before which i know you know very well
01:01:29
that thing about the business model is
01:01:31
to keep people scrolling right minute
01:01:33
you stop scrolling they lose money all
01:01:35
their algorithms are designed with
01:01:37
literally one goal what will keep you
01:01:40
scrolling that's it that's the goal
01:01:41
right so as the algorithms in the ai
01:01:44
were figuring out what keeps people
01:01:46
scrolling
01:01:47
they bumped into they uncovered a human
01:01:50
quirk which is not the intention of
01:01:51
anyone at facebook or youtube or any of
01:01:53
these places
01:01:54
which is called it's a very well
01:01:56
documented psychological phenomenon
01:01:58
called negativity bias which is
01:02:00
basically means we will stare at
01:02:01
something negative longer than we will
01:02:03
stare at something positive anyone who's
01:02:04
ever been driving down the motorway and
01:02:06
passed a car crash knows exactly what
01:02:07
i'm talking about you stare at the car
01:02:09
crash longer than you stare at the
01:02:10
pretty flowers on the other side of the
01:02:12
road right and this is and this is
01:02:13
negatively biased goes very deep 10 week
01:02:16
old babies will stare longer an angry
01:02:18
face than a smiling face but when this
01:02:20
meets algorithms designed to maximize
01:02:23
the harvesting of attention this
01:02:24
produces a catastrophic effect and this
01:02:27
was this is not my view this is what
01:02:28
facebook itself found in its own
01:02:30
internal research which we've now had
01:02:32
leaked so imagine uh imagine this at
01:02:35
both a personal level and a political
01:02:36
level so imagine a teenager a group of
01:02:38
teenagers go to a party
01:02:40
one of them goes home
01:02:42
and on the bus on the way home they say
01:02:45
that was a really lovely party i enjoyed
01:02:47
it everyone looked great and they were
01:02:48
so nice
01:02:50
another teenager from the same party
01:02:52
posts
01:02:53
um
01:02:54
god karen looked like a right slag
01:02:56
tonight uh her boyfriend jim is a [ __ ]
01:02:59
what does the algorithm do
01:03:01
the second one
01:03:02
is more like the car crash people will
01:03:04
stare at it longer the algorithm will
01:03:06
promote it in the feed it will put it
01:03:08
much higher the nice one that's gonna be
01:03:11
way down if anyone sees it right now
01:03:13
that's disastrous enough at the level of
01:03:15
teenagers who've gone to a party now
01:03:16
imagine at a political level we don't
01:03:18
have to imagine it everyone listening
01:03:20
remembers who donald trump was so what
01:03:22
happened in the 2016 election what
01:03:23
happened in what's happening all over
01:03:26
the world every day all the time on
01:03:28
politics is we are being stoked to be
01:03:31
more angry
01:03:33
all the time the algorithms select for
01:03:35
anger because anger will keep you
01:03:37
scrolling right and that is destroying
01:03:40
our ability to solve problems and this
01:03:42
is not just my view in the wake of the
01:03:45
victory of brexit and donald trump
01:03:47
facebook internally set up a group of
01:03:50
its own data scientists called common
01:03:52
ground
01:03:53
and we now know what they found because
01:03:54
it was leaked and what their own data
01:03:57
scientists said is the facebook model
01:03:59
and the wider business model of social
01:04:01
media
01:04:02
inevitably causes division and
01:04:05
polarization that this was having
01:04:07
catastrophic effects it's partly what
01:04:08
fueled the genocide in myanmar
01:04:11
at burma um
01:04:13
and that this was in it was actually
01:04:15
very striking the way they put it this
01:04:16
was inherent to the facebook business
01:04:18
model and the only alternative was for
01:04:21
facebook to abandon its business model
01:04:23
and adopt what they called an
01:04:24
anti-growth model where they said we
01:04:26
won't grow as a company but we won't set
01:04:28
the cup world on fire right and there's
01:04:30
a very dry
01:04:31
the wall street journal who got leaked
01:04:33
it
01:04:33
they said their new story said
01:04:36
after he received this report mark
01:04:38
zuckerberg asked that he never be
01:04:39
brought any reports like this ever again
01:04:41
right so you know they know what they're
01:04:43
doing
01:04:44
the business model they're tied to their
01:04:46
business model they're only going to
01:04:47
stop doing it when we make them
01:04:49
but this machinery that is amping us up
01:04:51
into anger is just a personal first it
01:04:54
destroys attention when you're angry
01:04:56
it's much harder to pay attention we all
01:04:58
we've all had that experience but
01:04:59
there's good science for it as well
01:05:01
but also it's it's devastating for the
01:05:04
society
01:05:05
and we've got to deal with that i
01:05:07
remember doing a study i think it was
01:05:08
2017 i can't remember the year when
01:05:10
trump got elected which i presented to
01:05:12
coca-cola where i looked at hillary
01:05:13
clinton's online reach on crimson
01:05:15
hexagon versus trump's and it was like
01:05:17
12 he was reaching 12 times 12 to 15
01:05:20
times more people with his message
01:05:22
because it was centered in like really
01:05:23
polarizing inflammatory stuff and the
01:05:25
algorithm is just sending that whereas
01:05:27
indifference just doesn't move on social
01:05:29
media it's like a tree falling in the
01:05:30
forest with no one there well not even a
01:05:32
difference reasonable argument yeah who
01:05:34
cares you know like who's that going to
01:05:35
bang with it doesn't resonate with
01:05:37
anybody so the tribe can't pick it up
01:05:38
and move it for you so you're right like
01:05:40
the fear and anything sort of polarizing
01:05:42
moves really really well but i would say
01:05:44
i think it's a really important point
01:05:46
and i thought a lot about it when i was
01:05:47
working on stolen focus i think there
01:05:50
are obvious and i know you know this
01:05:51
much better than i do there are
01:05:54
huge other human motivators than fear
01:05:57
and anger
01:05:58
that we can that we can build algorithms
01:06:00
around right so more compelling than
01:06:02
fear though oh well at the moment
01:06:05
precisely because
01:06:07
this rage can be drilled into and
01:06:09
monetized
01:06:10
that's why we need regulations to stop
01:06:14
that hacking of the worst aspect of our
01:06:15
characters
01:06:17
which not to say there aren't legitimate
01:06:18
things to be angry about there are and
01:06:20
building algorithms around better things
01:06:22
right and and that's why you know people
01:06:25
in favor of progressive change like
01:06:27
ending racism in policing which is an
01:06:29
urgent cause
01:06:31
actually the emotion we appeal to most
01:06:33
is not rage the emotion we appeal to
01:06:35
most those of us who believe in that
01:06:37
cause
01:06:38
is hope and love and empathy right the
01:06:41
very
01:06:42
why why if you look at even if you think
01:06:44
about left-wing anger versus right-wing
01:06:46
anger why do these algorithms boost
01:06:49
right-wing anger much more than
01:06:50
left-wing anger and there's again this
01:06:52
is leaked by facebook we know this
01:06:55
it's because ultimately
01:06:57
when you're in favor of progressive
01:06:58
change you can't just be angry you have
01:07:01
to have a hopeful vision of the future
01:07:03
do you see what i mean yeah and we can
01:07:05
build this machinery around encouraging
01:07:08
and rewarding hope at the moment we have
01:07:10
it we're all plugged in to what maggie
01:07:12
haberman the new york times journalist
01:07:13
called an anger-based video game right
01:07:16
that's basically what twitter is and
01:07:18
facebook there's an amazing study by the
01:07:20
pew research institute that found that
01:07:21
for every word of moral outrage you add
01:07:24
to a facebook status update you double
01:07:27
the likes and shares right the words
01:07:29
that most supercharge sharing and views
01:07:31
on youtube
01:07:33
are hates destroys and obliterates right
01:07:37
now that is a machinery if you plug
01:07:40
people into that anger-based machinery
01:07:42
for large parts of the day the anger
01:07:44
doesn't go away when they put the phone
01:07:46
down right it's not like a release valve
01:07:48
it's like a it's like taking a an uh you
01:07:52
know a drug that amps you up right and
01:07:54
you're seeing that and that is degrading
01:07:56
our individual attention because angry
01:07:58
people pay attention much less well uh
01:08:00
it's dreading our ability to think but
01:08:01
it's also degrading our collective
01:08:02
attention right you see it's how we're
01:08:04
tribalizing around covid you can see
01:08:06
this in all sorts of ways the ways we're
01:08:08
tribalizing and turning on each other
01:08:11
about things that actually we have
01:08:12
perfectly sensible solutions to do you
01:08:14
think that it's anger-based machinery or
01:08:15
do you think it's plugging angry humans
01:08:17
into machinery because i i think i think
01:08:20
if you just created an algorithm which
01:08:21
just which had no bias at all and you
01:08:23
said
01:08:24
um
01:08:26
you know our objective as youtube is to
01:08:27
show you things that you click on more
01:08:30
it would only take a couple of days for
01:08:31
everyone's algorithm to be programmed to
01:08:33
show them fearful things because as you
01:08:35
said about the the fear bias we have and
01:08:38
the prehistoric evolutionary reasons why
01:08:41
we would want to know that there was a
01:08:43
line behind the rock versus one caring
01:08:46
if there was an ant behind the rock that
01:08:48
eventually because we are fear
01:08:50
avoiding humans we would we basically
01:08:52
would train in any algorithm eventually
01:08:54
just to show us the scary [ __ ] so there
01:08:56
are definitely and tristan harris i
01:08:58
talked to him a lot about this the
01:08:59
former google engineer there are lots of
01:09:01
alternative ways you can structure these
01:09:03
apps right so to give an obvious one
01:09:06
you could just turn off the youtube
01:09:07
recommendations it's not like before
01:09:09
they existed we were all going what will
01:09:11
i watch next what will i do we weren't
01:09:13
suddenly a lot just it's tristan says
01:09:15
just turn it off if the only way it can
01:09:17
work is that it [ __ ] people up
01:09:19
turn it off we don't need it it's not
01:09:20
that important or an alternative issue
01:09:23
and there are all sorts of other ways
01:09:24
the other ones could be structured so
01:09:26
twitter and we don't have to think
01:09:28
hypothetically twitter used to be
01:09:29
chronological right if you follow 200
01:09:31
people you open twitter the first thing
01:09:33
you would see is the most recent thing
01:09:35
that one of the 200 people you you
01:09:37
follow posted right you'll notice
01:09:39
twitter doesn't do that anymore it now
01:09:41
has an algorithm that selects precisely
01:09:43
for the things we're talking about means
01:09:44
twitter has become even more toxic and
01:09:46
even more hateful and it went wasn't
01:09:48
that good at the start right um
01:09:50
so again just go back to the
01:09:51
chronological even just going back to
01:09:53
the chronological algorithm you need a
01:09:54
lot more changes than that that in
01:09:56
itself you're right would be better so
01:09:57
there's all sorts of algorithms you'd
01:09:59
have to do to every technology company
01:10:02
though because no you don't this is the
01:10:04
thing you have to change the incentives
01:10:06
and then they will do it right at the
01:10:08
moment
01:10:09
all of their incentives you've got all
01:10:11
these smart engineers and they've got
01:10:12
one incentive how do i take steven's
01:10:15
attention the absolute most i can right
01:10:18
now
01:10:19
you change the incent they don't work
01:10:20
for you remember they work for the
01:10:22
advertisers who who
01:10:25
when the incentives change
01:10:27
then they're going to change then
01:10:29
obviously their behavior changes right
01:10:30
any business when their incentive
01:10:32
changes if they want to please you
01:10:33
rather than pleasing the advertiser then
01:10:35
of course the market will then provide
01:10:37
all sorts of ways the market the
01:10:38
competition at the moment the
01:10:39
competition is how do i maximally invade
01:10:40
your attention
01:10:41
if we move to a new business model the
01:10:43
competition is what does stephen
01:10:45
actually want if steven wants to know
01:10:47
where his friends are so we can have a
01:10:48
drink with them okay give him that
01:10:49
button what else does steven want steve
01:10:51
wants to meditate oh we'll give him that
01:10:52
button you can see how once they they're
01:10:54
figuring out what you want not what the
01:10:56
advertisers want then of course the
01:10:58
market begins to experiment and there'll
01:10:59
be a thousand innovations and maybe some
01:11:01
of those innovations will go awry and
01:11:02
have other negative effects and we'll
01:11:04
have to stop them doing that just like
01:11:06
you know there might be a new form of
01:11:07
paint that's even worse than lead paint
01:11:08
all right we'll ban that and we'll stick
01:11:10
with the one that doesn't screw people
01:11:11
up it feels like running around with the
01:11:13
uh with a fire extinguisher like
01:11:15
spring fight like absolutely will be
01:11:18
if we don't change the incentives yeah
01:11:19
right is that a government decision to
01:11:22
and what would the
01:11:23
legal intervention be it's pretty
01:11:26
straightforward you you ban the specific
01:11:28
mechanism of surveilling people in order
01:11:31
to harvest their education and sell that
01:11:32
to the it's not that's not complicated
01:11:34
it's not a legally difficult thing to do
01:11:35
it's a politically difficult thing to do
01:11:37
right we have to take on these companies
01:11:39
paul graham one of the leading silicon
01:11:41
valley investors
01:11:43
said the world would be far more
01:11:44
addictive in the next 40 years than it
01:11:46
was in the last 40. think about
01:11:48
something as simple a couple of simple
01:11:49
things facebook has already patented a
01:11:51
technology that could read your emotions
01:11:53
through your camera on your phone and
01:11:55
your laptop right
01:11:57
um you can see how that adds an extra
01:11:59
layer of how they can invade your
01:12:01
attention or think about something
01:12:02
called and i learned about this from
01:12:04
acer asking think about something called
01:12:06
style transfer really simple concept um
01:12:09
some people might have seen it in like
01:12:11
um
01:12:12
there's like machines that do it in
01:12:13
arcades in the us
01:12:14
so
01:12:15
you can take a photo any photo
01:12:18
and you can run it through a style
01:12:19
transfer program that will remake that
01:12:21
image in the style of vincent van gogh
01:12:24
or monet or you can name a painter right
01:12:27
so it'll just redo that picture in that
01:12:28
style the style transfer
01:12:30
but style transfer can be used in a very
01:12:32
different way
01:12:33
gmail totally legally now could scan all
01:12:36
of your gmail
01:12:38
at the ai would of course a human being
01:12:40
doesn't read it scan all of your gmail
01:12:42
and figure out the patterns of words and
01:12:45
the ways of talking that you reply to
01:12:48
you respond to most right
01:12:50
and then
01:12:51
it can sell that to advertisers so
01:12:54
advertisers know to approach you
01:12:56
using the kind of words that are
01:12:58
uniquely persuasive to you right now
01:13:01
that's going to happen if we don't
01:13:02
regulate that's that technology exists
01:13:05
um
01:13:06
imagine a thousand things like that are
01:13:08
going to be happening so it's not even
01:13:10
like we'll stay at the current level of
01:13:11
technological invasion there's
01:13:13
essentially a race on this aspect of the
01:13:14
attention crisis
01:13:16
between
01:13:18
the increasingly invasive forces of
01:13:20
technology which will get more and more
01:13:22
potent and are more potent this year
01:13:24
than they were last year
01:13:26
and would definitely be more potent a
01:13:27
year from now
01:13:28
there's that and then there's the
01:13:30
movement of people who are trying to
01:13:32
restrain this and to deal with the other
01:13:34
causes of the attention crisis and to me
01:13:36
it's a race right and it might seem like
01:13:38
a really big thing a movement what does
01:13:39
that mean when i think about that i
01:13:40
think about can i ask you that are you
01:13:42
optimistic
01:13:43
because i yeah i am absolutely not and
01:13:46
one of the the most compelling reasons
01:13:48
that i'm not optimistic about there
01:13:50
being any
01:13:51
um practical effective change is because
01:13:53
i watched the senate hearing when they
01:13:55
brought in mark zuckerberg and jack
01:13:57
dorsey and
01:13:58
the ceo of all these big companies jeff
01:14:00
bezos etc and the people who are making
01:14:03
the laws didn't have a [ __ ] clue
01:14:07
about
01:14:08
any social platform at all and it was
01:14:11
like parody in fact the videos went
01:14:13
viral on all social networks of these
01:14:17
plus 60 year old senators
01:14:19
trying to get their head around what
01:14:21
whatsapp was well they were basically
01:14:22
saying things like i can't find the
01:14:24
password for my phone well how do i get
01:14:26
it like bizarre
01:14:29
and you could see zuckerberg and dorsey
01:14:31
just like you could all if you look
01:14:33
close enough you'd see the smirk in the
01:14:35
corner of their mouth because they were
01:14:36
just like mentally bullying them they
01:14:38
have no idea about these technologies
01:14:40
and i'll be honest as someone that's
01:14:41
worked in this industry for a very long
01:14:43
time since probably
01:14:45
one of the few people that's been like
01:14:46
balls deep in this since it began
01:14:48
sometimes when i hear people speaking
01:14:49
about um
01:14:51
the risks
01:14:52
of technology and the data conversation
01:14:55
and all of these things
01:14:56
i think oh you just you've literally
01:14:57
just got your opinion from like reading
01:14:59
the newspaper and it's so much deeper
01:15:02
and if you just
01:15:03
flick that switch then
01:15:05
the cascading impact which you don't
01:15:07
understand because you can't see the
01:15:08
full picture is actually
01:15:10
this will just happen and so when i
01:15:12
think about the people making the laws
01:15:13
is kind of my conclusive point
01:15:15
they have no idea what they're talking
01:15:16
about like so you base and then the
01:15:18
conclusion is so you have to go and get
01:15:20
people from the industry to make the
01:15:22
laws i there is no way boris johnson
01:15:26
or anyone around boris johnson and i've
01:15:28
met some of these people could make any
01:15:32
real effective
01:15:33
change to legislation as you say when
01:15:36
you're talking about a race
01:15:38
in time
01:15:40
for that industry not to develop and
01:15:42
change and now you know they're probably
01:15:44
still trying to figure out the news feed
01:15:46
whereas these big corporations are now
01:15:48
talking about machine learning and ai
01:15:50
and they just will never keep up and
01:15:52
they've never been able to and now we've
01:15:53
got the metaverse coming and they
01:15:55
they're still trying to figure out if
01:15:56
snapchat is filters are okay and now
01:15:59
we're racing off into the metaverse
01:16:01
there's
01:16:01
in my opinion there is no possible
01:16:04
chance that technology and the pace of
01:16:06
change will
01:16:08
um be slower than the pace of effective
01:16:11
legislation
01:16:12
when i have that thought and that
01:16:13
thought obviously crosses my mind fairly
01:16:15
often
01:16:17
i think about something very specific
01:16:18
happen in my family will have happened
01:16:20
in your family will happen in the
01:16:21
families of everyone listening it's to
01:16:22
some degree
01:16:24
so i'm 42
01:16:26
when my grandmothers were 42 years old i
01:16:28
think about what the world was like
01:16:29
right so one of my grandmothers was a
01:16:30
working class scottish woman and one of
01:16:32
my grandmothers was a swiss woman living
01:16:34
on a mountain which is what would be
01:16:36
called sort of a peasant then right
01:16:38
it was legal for them to be raped by
01:16:39
their husbands
01:16:41
they were not allowed to have bank
01:16:42
accounts
01:16:43
because they were married women
01:16:45
in their own names
01:16:47
my swiss grandmother didn't even have
01:16:48
the vote
01:16:49
she needed written permission to work
01:16:51
outside the home which her husband would
01:16:52
not give her
01:16:54
at that time
01:16:56
nowhere in the world was there a woman
01:16:58
who ran a company
01:16:59
was there a woman who ran a country
01:17:01
there was one country
01:17:03
was there a woman who ran a police force
01:17:05
in fact there were almost no women
01:17:06
police officers senior women police
01:17:08
officers
01:17:09
in britain four percent of members of
01:17:11
parliament were women
01:17:13
every institution in the whole world was
01:17:15
run by men and had been since they were
01:17:17
created right
01:17:19
and because ordinary people
01:17:22
changed the culture that created
01:17:24
pressure on the politicians to change
01:17:26
the society so now
01:17:28
no politician would propose anything
01:17:30
like going back to 19 1962 1963
01:17:34
for women's rights it would be
01:17:35
unthinkable that even the most far-out
01:17:37
ukip candidate if they suggested that
01:17:39
would have to stand down right so it's
01:17:41
cultural change and just like the
01:17:43
feminist movement reclaim women's right
01:17:45
to their bodies and still has work to do
01:17:46
as we know
01:17:48
we need an attention movement to reclaim
01:17:50
our minds right we can do some of it
01:17:52
individually
01:17:53
but a lot of it we can do together at
01:17:54
the moment it's like someone is pouring
01:17:56
itching powder over us all day and then
01:17:59
the person pouring itching powder on us
01:18:00
is going
01:18:01
mate you might want to learn to meditate
01:18:03
it will stop you scratching so much
01:18:05
right i mean i'm in favor of meditation
01:18:06
it's a good thing
01:18:08
but someone's gonna have to take on the
01:18:09
[ __ ] who are pouring the itching
01:18:11
powder on us right
01:18:12
we've got to do both
01:18:14
so interesting because if you take on
01:18:15
the [ __ ] that are pouring the itching
01:18:16
powder there's like there's like
01:18:18
some knock-on effects i can see i was
01:18:20
thinking then about like why boris
01:18:22
johnson wouldn't want to impose
01:18:24
i was thinking as well about
01:18:25
recommendation algorithms which you
01:18:26
discussed um netflix has one youtube has
01:18:29
one tick tock has one everything
01:18:30
everything on my phone seems to have a
01:18:32
recommendation algorithm to get me to
01:18:33
buy something hang around longer
01:18:34
whatever trying to serve me better under
01:18:36
the guise of trying to serve me netflix
01:18:38
wants to serve you better because you
01:18:39
are the customer yeah so netflix doesn't
01:18:41
feed you in raging things netflix
01:18:43
doesn't show you the film that will wind
01:18:44
you up the most right because you are
01:18:46
the customer for netflix on facebook
01:18:48
tick tock and the others you're not the
01:18:49
customer
01:18:50
that's why it feeds you the stuff that
01:18:52
angers you maximally invades your
01:18:53
attention so there's an important
01:18:54
distinction between those two right and
01:18:56
then they're but they both have the same
01:18:59
incentive which is they say they are i
01:19:01
mean netflix famously said our only
01:19:03
competitor is sleepy yeah rex hastings
01:19:06
the head of netflix said that yeah yeah
01:19:08
so if like boris was to turn around
01:19:09
today and says i'm going to ban
01:19:10
recommendation algorithms or whatever
01:19:12
the issue he has is
01:19:15
it sounds like that would hurt our
01:19:17
chance of innovation in a global
01:19:19
landscape where other countries haven't
01:19:22
got those bans and so that would just
01:19:24
mean that uk tech companies were worse
01:19:26
yeah we've got to have bigger movements
01:19:27
but actually it's exact opposite a
01:19:29
society of people who can't focus can't
01:19:31
pay attention our thinking in 65 second
01:19:34
bursts
01:19:35
is not going to be an innovative society
01:19:37
right there's a reason why china
01:19:38
although i strongly oppose the communist
01:19:41
tyranny in china don't get me wrong why
01:19:43
china has just banned the amount of kids
01:19:45
or
01:19:46
very tightly restricted the amount of
01:19:47
time kids can spend on um video games
01:19:50
each week and don't allow any of these
01:19:53
algorithms on way about weibo and the
01:19:54
other things or
01:19:56
tightly regulate them would be more
01:19:57
accurate way of putting it right so if
01:19:59
our goal is as a country to be a country
01:20:01
that's innovative my god a country of
01:20:03
people who can think is going to be
01:20:04
innovative country of adult people
01:20:07
flicking between whatsapp snapchat and
01:20:09
tick tock ain't going to be a place full
01:20:11
of innovation right so i think
01:20:13
of course it's a job of explaining to
01:20:15
people if it was done out of the blue
01:20:16
now people would be baffled right so in
01:20:18
the same way that in you know
01:20:21
1962
01:20:22
um what you think about even just gay
01:20:24
people in 1962 literally nobody
01:20:27
including gay people suggested gay
01:20:28
marriage it wasn't saying anyone even
01:20:29
thought of right because it'd be like
01:20:31
it'd be so bizarre you know at that
01:20:33
point um well a little bit before that
01:20:35
being gay was a crime right
01:20:37
so
01:20:37
as you build you start to become more
01:20:39
sophisticated and have more ambitious
01:20:41
goals so at the moment we're starting
01:20:42
from a very basic level there's a really
01:20:44
interesting study that was done by a guy
01:20:46
called mahateri islami at the university
01:20:48
of illinois where he just got a load of
01:20:50
facebook users and just explained the
01:20:52
algorithm to them
01:20:53
and 62 of them didn't know what an
01:20:55
algorithm was before he taught them
01:20:56
through it one of them compared it to
01:20:58
the moment when keanu reeves in the
01:21:01
matrix finds out he's living in a
01:21:02
simulation right it blew their minds so
01:21:04
we're obviously a very basic level but
01:21:08
in terms of education because we haven't
01:21:10
been explaining i didn't know most of
01:21:11
this stuff before i did the research for
01:21:13
stolen focus and i didn't know about all
01:21:14
the other causes of uh things that are
01:21:16
invading our attention including some
01:21:18
that are much bigger actually than even
01:21:20
this so we have to do the work of
01:21:21
education we have to understand the
01:21:23
advantage i think we've got
01:21:25
is this isn't like explaining quantum
01:21:28
physics to someone right
01:21:30
we could stop anyone in the street here
01:21:32
in east london
01:21:33
and explain this to them and they are
01:21:35
going to get it right they can feel this
01:21:37
happening they can see it happening
01:21:38
around them so it's not that there's
01:21:44
in a sense the dissatisfaction and
01:21:45
unhappiness with all this is at the
01:21:47
surface
01:21:48
all we need to do is help people to
01:21:50
understand what they can do with that
01:21:51
dissatisfaction that this isn't just
01:21:54
it's not a personal failing on your part
01:21:55
it's really important people to
01:21:57
understand that if your response is
01:21:58
going ah
01:21:59
i'm just [ __ ] i'm weak i'm you know a
01:22:02
that's they would love you to think that
01:22:04
right they look they there's a constant
01:22:06
process of trying to transfer the blame
01:22:09
down to you right
01:22:11
so it's partly to understand it's not
01:22:13
your fault
01:22:14
it's partly to understand it's not even
01:22:16
the fault of technology it's the fault
01:22:19
of specific aspects about how our
01:22:21
technology works that we can change in
01:22:23
practical ways
01:22:25
that's those are the two things i think
01:22:26
it's really important to understand on
01:22:28
the about the current i mean there's
01:22:29
many other things and
01:22:31
other ways we can protect ourselves by
01:22:33
having more knowledge
01:22:34
but i think it's essential for us to
01:22:36
understand that because you're right
01:22:37
it's very easy to get into a
01:22:38
disempowered oh
01:22:40
this is so big but i'll tell you what my
01:22:42
grandmother's in 1962
01:22:44
would have a lot more reason to be to
01:22:46
think things could never change than we
01:22:47
do about tech right
01:22:49
i mean
01:22:50
it if you had shown my grandmother's my
01:22:53
niece's life it would have been
01:22:54
unthinkable these things can totally
01:22:56
change
01:22:57
james williams the google engineer i
01:22:58
quoted before said to me once you know
01:23:00
the axe existed for 1.4 million years
01:23:03
before anyone thought to put a handle on
01:23:05
it the entire web has only existed for
01:23:08
less than 10 000 days
01:23:10
we can change this thing if we want to
01:23:12
right we're humans and it's also about a
01:23:14
different disposition to this we're not
01:23:16
broken people and we are not
01:23:19
like
01:23:20
medieval peasants begging at the court
01:23:22
of king zuckerberg for a few little
01:23:24
crumbs of attention from his table we
01:23:26
are the free citizens of democracies we
01:23:29
own our minds we own our societies and
01:23:32
we can take them back if we want to we
01:23:34
have to decide do we value attention
01:23:36
people who've got children and there's
01:23:37
about a quarter of the book is about how
01:23:39
we're [ __ ] up our kids attention and
01:23:41
there's loads of really important things
01:23:42
we need to know about that that are very
01:23:43
different from how our schools work what
01:23:45
our kids eat to um the deprivation of
01:23:48
children being able to play but people
01:23:49
who've got children do you want your
01:23:51
child to be able to focus do you want
01:23:53
your child to be able to read books do
01:23:54
you want your child to be able to think
01:23:56
deeply do you want your life to have a
01:23:58
your child to have a life full of flow
01:23:59
states of course you do okay we've got
01:24:02
to fix the society and culture to give
01:24:04
them those things i feel like um
01:24:06
i feel like everyone listening to that
01:24:07
will agree and they'll all say that's a
01:24:09
problem i agree i want to make that
01:24:11
change but i think like
01:24:12
movements need a really specific
01:24:14
objective for people to rally around and
01:24:16
that objective is ultimately what
01:24:18
they're kind of taking to their
01:24:19
legislators or their politicians to say
01:24:21
this is the thing we want to change so i
01:24:22
would suggest three very specific if
01:24:24
we're going to have an attention a
01:24:25
movement an attention movement and
01:24:27
there's already lots of elements of this
01:24:29
fight going on and i
01:24:31
go through in the book how who peop who
01:24:33
they are and how people can join them
01:24:35
i would say initially three goals
01:24:37
uh ban this is called surveillance
01:24:39
capitalism ban the surveillance
01:24:41
capitalism business model just they
01:24:44
cannot track you invade you profile you
01:24:47
and sell your attention to advertisers
01:24:49
ban it very easy to do you can write
01:24:51
legislation in a day right
01:24:53
that's number one number two i would say
01:24:55
a four day working week the evidence is
01:24:57
very clear we are exhausted we are
01:24:58
overworked we are underslept
01:25:01
give people back time right covered was
01:25:04
the first time our society has slowed
01:25:05
down we've been accelerating for a long
01:25:07
time now we slowed down because of a
01:25:09
tragedy and of course none of us would
01:25:11
have wished for it to happen this way
01:25:13
but and of course there were many people
01:25:14
who were not able to slow down like
01:25:16
health workers
01:25:17
but
01:25:18
a lot of people found a real relief in
01:25:20
the slowness that came from covid right
01:25:22
we've got to slow the society down speed
01:25:26
destroys attention there's really good
01:25:28
evidence for this and the third thing is
01:25:30
we need to restore childhood
01:25:32
only 10 of children
01:25:34
play outside their home without adult
01:25:36
supervision
01:25:38
ever
01:25:38
play is how children learn to pay
01:25:40
attention it's how they learn to learn a
01:25:42
whole
01:25:44
body of skills come from play also just
01:25:46
exercise massively boosts your attention
01:25:48
and we've deprived our children of
01:25:50
exercise that's even before covid
01:25:52
obviously covered made it even worse for
01:25:53
all the obvious reasons so obviously
01:25:55
those are three very straightforward
01:25:56
goals two of them could be done with
01:25:58
legislation in a day right
01:26:01
now of course it takes a big fight to
01:26:02
prepare the ground for people to want
01:26:04
those things but they are achievable
01:26:06
they'll make our lives better not just
01:26:08
in terms of attention but in so many
01:26:09
ways so i'm optimistic in the sense that
01:26:11
there have been bigger challenges than
01:26:13
this yeah and human beings met those
01:26:15
challenges i also i think we have to be
01:26:17
optimistic because if we don't deal with
01:26:19
this
01:26:21
i don't think we can deal with the
01:26:22
bigger crises right think about the
01:26:23
climate crises
01:26:26
a group of people a species that cannot
01:26:29
pay attention that cannot focus
01:26:31
and that interacts primarily through
01:26:33
mediums that promote false claims and
01:26:36
lies so an mit study found that 19 of
01:26:39
the 20 most shared stories
01:26:41
on facebook in the 2016 election were
01:26:44
untrue like a false claim that the pope
01:26:46
could endorse donald trump 19 out of 20
01:26:49
just not true right
01:26:51
if we can't get
01:26:53
our focus and our ability to distinguish
01:26:57
uh
01:26:58
truth from falsehood back
01:27:01
how are we ever going to deal with the
01:27:02
climate crisis how are we ever going to
01:27:03
deal with
01:27:05
any of the problems that face us how we
01:27:06
can deal with our own personal problems
01:27:08
right we can't do that so this is the
01:27:10
necessary step we have to take
01:27:13
i think as individuals if you're facing
01:27:15
problems
01:27:17
the first step is
01:27:18
if you can't pay attention to the things
01:27:19
that matter
01:27:20
you're [ __ ] what can you do you can't
01:27:22
do anything you're just like a flailing
01:27:25
animal on a beach right um which is what
01:27:27
i always look like on a beach anyway but
01:27:29
um so
01:27:30
attention is the prerequisite to any
01:27:33
achievement i think
01:27:35
the last thing i was actually really
01:27:36
surprised to find in stolen focus was
01:27:38
you talking about food
01:27:40
in lost connections you talk about junk
01:27:42
values but in stolen focus you actually
01:27:44
talk about junk food and there's the
01:27:46
quote installed in focus where you say
01:27:48
we should endeavor to eat what our
01:27:50
grandparents would have eaten what they
01:27:52
would have considered real food
01:27:54
i loved that really resonates with me
01:27:56
and i've been i've been on a bit of a
01:27:57
crusade to try and live a little bit
01:27:58
more human and unless
01:28:00
20 20 maybe a little bit more
01:28:02
i don't know
01:28:04
9000 bc or whatever that was
01:28:06
so why why did you feel the need to talk
01:28:09
about junk food and food in a book about
01:28:12
attention this is one of the causes that
01:28:14
i learned about that i did not see
01:28:15
coming and it was only when i was
01:28:17
reading a lot of the science i was like
01:28:18
oh wait so there's
01:28:20
there's three ways in which the current
01:28:23
diet we eat which is completely
01:28:24
different to all humans before i was
01:28:26
eight i mean it's been an extraordinary
01:28:28
transformation in a very short period of
01:28:29
time
01:28:31
is is damaging our attention so dale
01:28:33
pinnock who's one of britain's leading
01:28:35
nutritionist you should um should have
01:28:36
him on actually he's really interesting
01:28:37
guy dale um so dale explained to me that
01:28:41
the and other scientists have shown that
01:28:43
the diet we eat
01:28:45
causes
01:28:46
very rapid release of energy and very
01:28:48
rapid crashes in energy which causes
01:28:51
brain fog which ruins your focus so say
01:28:53
for example you have and by the way i
01:28:55
want to say i'm completely hypocrite
01:28:56
saying this i literally had a mcdonald's
01:28:57
on the way here so just any sense of
01:28:59
superiority let's say you have frosties
01:29:01
and white bread right for breakfast what
01:29:03
that does is it releases a huge amount
01:29:05
of glucose gives you a massive rush of
01:29:06
energy feels great for about 20 minutes
01:29:08
and then you're sitting at your desk or
01:29:09
your kids sitting at their desk and the
01:29:11
glucose crashes and you're just in brain
01:29:13
fog right so one way is it the way dale
01:29:15
puts it is you know if you put
01:29:17
um rocket fuel into a mini it would go
01:29:20
really fast for a minute and then it
01:29:22
would just putter out and we're
01:29:23
basically doing that and as he put it to
01:29:25
me if you're eating sort of shitty
01:29:26
carbohydrates every meal
01:29:29
you're doing that to yourself again and
01:29:30
again and again all throughout the day
01:29:34
the second way in which it harms our
01:29:35
attention
01:29:36
our current diet deprives us of
01:29:38
nutrients that are necessary for your
01:29:40
brain to develop right there's an
01:29:41
interesting study by dutch scientists
01:29:44
where they got a bunch of kids they did
01:29:46
this several times and it replicated
01:29:47
well they got a bunch of kids
01:29:50
and they put one of them on what they
01:29:51
called an eliminationist diet where they
01:29:53
basically didn't eat any processed food
01:29:55
and the other group of kids just ate
01:29:56
normally and the kids that were put on a
01:29:59
on with cut out all the processed food
01:30:01
and all of that
01:30:02
that 70 of them had significant
01:30:05
improvements in their attention
01:30:06
and their average improvement in
01:30:08
detention was 50 so really big
01:30:10
improvement
01:30:12
the third cause
01:30:14
is that it's not just that our food
01:30:16
lacks things we need
01:30:18
is that it contains things that act on
01:30:20
us like drugs there's a really shocking
01:30:22
study on this it's done in southampton
01:30:24
here in britain in 2007. they got nearly
01:30:26
300 kids they were seven year olds and
01:30:29
12 year olds
01:30:30
and they split them into
01:30:33
two groups
01:30:35
and the first group was given a drink
01:30:37
that just contained
01:30:39
dyes that exist in normal food like m
01:30:42
m's you know synthetic dyes and the
01:30:45
other group i think i can't if it's just
01:30:46
water or it was some kind of flavoring
01:30:48
that doesn't contain these dyes
01:30:50
and then they were monitored and the
01:30:51
kids that drank the dyes that kitten
01:30:54
every day and i'm eating every day
01:30:56
were significantly more likely to have
01:30:58
attention problems struggle focusing so
01:31:01
you've got these three ways and you
01:31:02
mentioned you know this this big change
01:31:04
about how our ancestors i mean i
01:31:05
remember when i was a
01:31:06
as i said my my my dad's from
01:31:08
switzerland um i grew up on this in this
01:31:11
little hut in a mountain in switzerland
01:31:13
and when i was a kid it started when i
01:31:15
was nine
01:31:16
my dad that bastard sent me his very
01:31:18
nice man in many ways sent me every
01:31:20
summer to go and stay on this farm where
01:31:21
he'd he'd grown up he's like go to the
01:31:24
farm you've become a man he said um
01:31:28
and i would arrive there and to me this
01:31:30
was like i grew up in edward right
01:31:31
suddenly on a swiss mountain it's like
01:31:33
what's happening right
01:31:35
um
01:31:36
and i remember my so my grandparents ate
01:31:37
how almost all humans in almost all of
01:31:40
our history have eaten they would grow
01:31:42
their own food and they would kill their
01:31:43
own animals right and eat them
01:31:46
and i remember my my grandmother used to
01:31:48
just put food in front of me i remember
01:31:49
the i remember very clearly the first
01:31:50
day i was there looking at it because i
01:31:52
grew up you know i was raised mostly by
01:31:53
my scottish grandmother working class
01:31:55
scottish women i grew up eating
01:31:57
microwave chips and fried food and you
01:32:01
know i remember looking at the food my
01:32:02
swiss grandmother gave me
01:32:04
and literally saying
01:32:06
where is the food
01:32:08
this isn't food
01:32:09
and then just being completely puzzled
01:32:11
so for like two weeks i didn't i ate
01:32:12
almost nothing and then finally she
01:32:14
cracked and took me to the mcdonald's in
01:32:15
zurich which is pretty far away and i
01:32:17
remember i was sitting at mcdonald's and
01:32:19
her looking at it and her saying but
01:32:21
this isn't food what are you talking
01:32:23
about she just couldn't understand why i
01:32:25
would want to eat it and so in three in
01:32:27
two generations there was a huge change
01:32:30
we went from eating mostly fresh and
01:32:31
nutritious food to mostly most peop most
01:32:34
british and american people
01:32:36
most of their diet now consists of
01:32:38
processed or ultra processed food which
01:32:40
is just really different it's just very
01:32:42
different i mean the food writer michael
01:32:44
pollan who i know
01:32:46
said we shouldn't call it food we should
01:32:48
call it food-like substances
01:32:50
because it doesn't resemble food now
01:32:51
again this is one of the other causes
01:32:52
bit like the four day week
01:32:54
i can tell you all the facts
01:32:56
can i do it no
01:32:58
you know i mean i'm a bit better than i
01:33:00
was but only a bit so to um to end we're
01:33:03
going to continue with our new tradition
01:33:06
which is asking you the question that
01:33:08
our previous guest left for you
01:33:10
and the previous guest that sat here
01:33:11
wrote in the diary
01:33:18
what was
01:33:20
the best conversation
01:33:22
you ever had
01:33:24
and why
01:33:25
oh that's a very good question i'm not
01:33:27
meant to talk about this but i'll i'll
01:33:29
i'll talk a little bit about it
01:33:31
i
01:33:32
am getting emotional a bit emotional
01:33:33
about this uh try not to um
01:33:37
the last 10 years i've been researching
01:33:38
a book about
01:33:40
a series of crimes that have been
01:33:41
happening in las vegas and i'm not meant
01:33:43
to talk about it too much
01:33:47
and
01:33:48
there's a couple who lived beneath
01:33:51
caesar's palace in the drainage tunnel
01:33:52
beneath his palace
01:33:54
called tommy and shea who i got to know
01:33:56
incredibly well
01:33:58
who are two of the people i've most
01:33:59
loved in my life i remember standing
01:34:01
above where their tunnel is and shade
01:34:05
and shade just saying
01:34:08
all these people
01:34:10
they're so much closer to where we are
01:34:12
than they think
01:34:14
not just physically but
01:34:16
a few things go wrong
01:34:19
and
01:34:20
in that society you're in a [ __ ]
01:34:21
tunnel and i remember that night with
01:34:23
tommy and shay
01:34:26
and i must have heard that i think i was
01:34:27
with them for like 12 hours that day
01:34:30
uh
01:34:32
i think that's one of the best
01:34:33
conversations i've ever had there shay
01:34:35
is so wise
01:34:37
uh tommy is so f was so funny
01:34:43
and they taught me so much about
01:34:46
in all the years i knew them for how to
01:34:49
be a person and tommy was murdered last
01:34:51
year it's one of the reasons why i spent
01:34:52
a lot of the plague in vegas because
01:34:54
i've been trying to
01:34:55
help shay and figure out what's going on
01:34:58
what happened um
01:35:01
and
01:35:03
i think that's one of the best
01:35:04
conversations in my life i i think they
01:35:06
are
01:35:12
they they taught me to
01:35:15
think about life differently
01:35:17
and
01:35:17
every day i integrate some lesson that
01:35:20
tommy taught me and i think that's one
01:35:22
night i mean there's so many nights we
01:35:23
spent together but
01:35:24
that's one night that really stands out
01:35:27
for me i mean i can think of lots of
01:35:28
others but that's the one that
01:35:30
you know it's amazing the remarkable
01:35:31
thing about your writing which makes it
01:35:32
so engaging and compelling is it isn't
01:35:35
assigned to shouting facts and figures
01:35:36
at you which i just as someone that
01:35:38
struggles to read anyway i have to have
01:35:40
a captivating emotional journey to take
01:35:42
me through these subjects for me to be
01:35:44
able to ingrain them in my conscious so
01:35:46
um your books all do that especially
01:35:48
this one especially lost connections
01:35:50
which is one of my all-time favorite
01:35:51
books by the way but stolen focus is a
01:35:53
is a an amazing somewhat linked uh
01:35:57
sequel in many respects and on many
01:35:59
topics to that book and that was my
01:36:01
favorite ever and this is one of now one
01:36:02
of my favorite books as well because uh
01:36:04
it's one of the books that i managed to
01:36:05
actually read in the last year
01:36:08
because of the way you write and that's
01:36:09
a huge credit to you um there's a reason
01:36:11
i always bring you back on this podcast
01:36:13
i love these conversations great um and
01:36:15
you've been uh and off camera you're
01:36:17
you're
01:36:19
you know you probably should be a
01:36:20
comedian because you're so hilarious but
01:36:22
on camera you're such an intelligent
01:36:23
human being and
01:36:24
off camera you're funny you're
01:36:26
intelligent you're not so off-camera
01:36:28
but uh you're an incredible human being
01:36:29
and i love i love having you here so oh
01:36:31
thanks again for giving me this time and
01:36:33
i'm so i'm so glad that um we're able to
01:36:34
have this conversation because it's such
01:36:36
an important one and one that i need i
01:36:38
needed in my life i really appreciate
01:36:40
you how deeply you pay attention to the
01:36:41
book and um i'm meant to say or my
01:36:43
publishers will tell me let's do it that
01:36:46
um anyone who wants to know where to get
01:36:48
the audio book the ebook or the physical
01:36:49
book can go to stolenfocusbook.com and
01:36:52
on the website you can listen for free
01:36:54
to loads of the experts we talked about
01:36:55
like the guy who discovered flow states
01:36:57
uh
01:36:59
all these google experts
01:37:01
a ton of people
01:37:02
um i'm meant to read something where i
01:37:04
say like read it also i can't bring
01:37:06
myself to it makes me sound like a [ __ ]
01:37:08
something like you can find out what
01:37:09
stephen fry hillary clinton and many
01:37:12
other leading experts thought about the
01:37:13
book um something like that hillary
01:37:15
clinton's read the book she has she's
01:37:17
something a very nice
01:37:18
thing um
01:37:19
yeah
01:37:21
and lots i mean so sad there's there's
01:37:24
an alternate universe where hillary
01:37:25
clinton is in her second term as
01:37:26
president and unfortunately instead
01:37:28
she's in a world where she has to read
01:37:29
my book instead but um i would rather
01:37:31
live in the i'd rather live in a bit
01:37:32
where we got to skip trump but nevermind
01:37:34
um the yeah so and you can get the book
01:37:37
in all good bookshops you can even get
01:37:38
it in [ __ ] book shops and it's out right
01:37:40
now it's available it's just come out so
01:37:43
go and read it thank you so much steven
01:37:45
i really thank you
01:37:46
honestly that you came and did this
01:37:47
again
01:37:49
[Music]
01:37:58
[Music]
01:38:08
you