003: Craig Mod – I Want My Attention Back! - Hurry Slowly from Hurry Slowly on RadioPublic

Did you know that the mere presence of a smartphone near you is slowly draining away your cognitive energy and attention? (Even if it’s tucked away in a desk drawer or a bag.) Like it or not, the persistent use of technology is changing the quality of our attention. And not in a good way.

In this episode, I talk with writer, designer and technologist Craig Mod — who’s done numerous experiments in reclaiming his attention — about how we can break out of this toxic cycle of smartphone and social media addiction and regain control of our powers of concentration.

Key takeaways from the interview:

How Facebook and other social media apps are lulling us into “attention slavery”

Why interrupting your workflow to post on social media — and sharing pithy thoughts or ideas — shuts down your creative process

How short digital detox retreats and/or meditation sessions can “defrag your mind” so that you can deploy your attention more consciously and more powerfully

Why mapping your ideas in large offline spaces — e.g. on a whiteboard or blackboard — gives you “permission” to get messy and evolve your thinking in a way that’s impossible on a screen

How changing the quality of your attention can change your relationship to everything — art, conversations, creativity, and business

Favorite Quotes

“If there was a meter of 1 to 10 of how present you are or how much you can manipulate your own attention — how confident you are that you could, say, read a book for three hours without an interruption, without feeling pulled to something else. I would say the baseline pre-smartphone was a 4 or 3. Now, it’s a 1.”

“I think that a life in which you are never present, in which you have no control over your attention, in which you’re constantly being pulled in different directions, is kind of sad — because there is this incredible gift of consciousness. And when that consciousness is deployed smartly, it’s amazing the things that can be built out of it.”

Resources

Here’s a shortlist of things Craig and I talked about in the course of the conversation, including where you can go on a meditation retreat. You should be aware that vipassana retreats are offered free of charge, and are open to anyone.

Craig’s piece on attention from Backchannel magazine

Vipassana meditation retreat locations

Craig’s article on post-100 hours of meditation

Film director Krzysztof Kieslowski

Writer and technologist Kevin Kelly

The Large Hadron Collider at Cern

Sponsors

Huge thanks to this episode’s sponsors, who both make incredible products dedicated to helping you streamline your workflow and your business:

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