Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Gloria Mark on the Power of Attention: Reigniting Focus and Productivity in the Digital Age EP 301

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Psychologist Gloria Mark joins me to delve into two decades of groundbreaking research on attention and discover the keys to reclaiming control in a world of endless distractions. Join us on an eye-opening journey as we explore the science behind attention, uncover the reasons for our constant distractions, and unlock the secrets to restoring balance, happiness, and unmatched productivity in our lives. Gloria is the author of the book Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity. Unleashing the Power of Attention: Transforming Technology's Impact on Productivity and Focus In a riveting episode of the Passion Struck podcast, host John R. Miles engages in a dynamic discussion with the brilliant Gloria Mark, an esteemed professor of informatics at the University of California Irvine. Driven by their shared passion for unraveling the impact of technology on human attention and productivity, they delve into the present-day challenges we face and how to reignite focus and productivity.  Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/gloria-mark-the-power-of-attention/  Brought to you by Nom Nom. Nom Nom is healthy, fresh food for dogs formulated by top Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionists, prepped in their kitchens with free delivery to your door. Get 50% off and unlock a two-week risk-free trial at https://trynow.com/passionstruck. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/1zeDIC3l0lU  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Marshall Goldsmith on How You Create an Earned Life: https://passionstruck.com/marshall-goldsmith-create-your-earned-life/  Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the AMFM247 broadcasting network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for “AMFM247” Network

Coming up next on Passion Struck. We let our goals slip. That's the main thing. Our goals have slipped. And when our goals have slipped, we're open to any kind of distracting force in the environment. The way to stay on track is to be goal oriented. And then you can be in control.

We can all be in control of where we direct our attention. That's the real challenge for us in this digital age. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host John Armiles and on the show we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews,

the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Episode 301 of PassionStruck. Frank by Apple is one of the top 20 health podcasts, and thank you to each and every one of you who come back weekly. Listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. In case you didn't know it,

PassionStruck is now on syndicated radio on the AMFM247 National Broadcast, and you can tune in every Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Links will be in the show notes. And if you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this, the friends or family members we now have episode Starterpacks, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize in a convenient topic that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either good or spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.

In case you missed it, earlier this week, we had a very special episode that featured Seth Goden, and we launched his brand new book, The Song of Significance. And I'm sure most of you know who Seth is, but in case you don't, he's an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and speaker. He also has one of the most popular blogs in the world, and his 20 bestselling books include The Ditt, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and What to Do when it's your turn. I also had an amazing interview with Scott Simon, who is an acclaimed author, speaker, and the visionary behind the scarier soul movement.

And we discuss his book of the same name that recently came out and I have to tell you, it is such an amazing read, just like Sess. Now let's talk about today's episode. Did you know that it takes 25 minutes for us to return our attention to a task after we've been distracted or that we spend an average of only 47 seconds on any screen before altering our attention? How do we reclaim control of our attention span in a society where we are expected

to be present 24 hours a day and both are professional and our personal lives without suffering the consequences, following behind on information or messages? Many of us have a general a day, and both are professional and personal lives, without suffering the consequences of following behind on information or messages. Many of us have a general understanding of what it means to have an attention span. Some may even believe that it's shorter than it used to be. The belief that it's becoming increasingly difficult, the focus, is prevalent, and often supported by personal experiences of being easily distracted and the growing concern about our dependence on technology. Our guest today, Dr. Gloria Mark, introduces a revolutionary new

concept called kinetic attention that explains how our brains operate in the digital age, such a fascinating discussion. Through three decades of our research, we will delve into topics such as the four types of attention that we encounter daily and how to identify them, the negative impact of multitasking on productivity, how social media and contemporary entertainment fuel short attention spans, the factors that drain our mental energy and how to replenish them. The four common misconceptions about our relationship with technology. This episode is so important because instead of feeling guilty about our relationship with technology. This episode is so important because instead of feeling guilty about our dependence on technology, Gloria offers practical

steps on how to regain our attention by helping listeners understand why we struggle with focus, why we get easily distracted and interrupt ourselves, and why our attention usually shifts when we're using our devices. Dr. Gloria Mark is the chancellor's professor of informatics at the University of California Irvine. She is a wealth of publications and leading journals and conferences in the areas of human computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work. She is the author of the book,

Multitasking in the Digital Age, and her most recent publication is Attention Spanned, Finding Focus and Fighting Distraction. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an attentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so ecstatic today to welcome Dr. Gloria Mark to Passion Start. Welcome, Gloria. Thank you. Well I wanted to acknowledge you and say congratulations on the launch of this fantastic

book called Attention Span Finding Focus and Fighting Distraction. I found it to be just an incredible and fascinating read. Oh, thank you so much. Well, we're going to dive into that, but before we do, I think it's always good to give the audience an introduction to you. So I like to ask this question. We all have periods or moments in our lives that go on to shape who we become. And as I started to learn more about you, you were by training a psychologist,

but I understand that you first studied at the Cleveland Institute of Arts, specializing in painting and drawn. What caused you to not only venture out of that into psychology, but to do this couple of decades long now study of multitasking and attention span? decades long now study of multitasking and attention span. Yes, well, when I studied art, I never thought I would do anything else. I was just so passionate about it. To me, it was just the ultimate creative and endeavor that a person could do. But I learned very quickly the reality of making a living as an artist and it's not hard, it's not easy.

But I also knew that I could do other things as well. So I had math skills and analytical skills, and so I started looking for some other area where I could use those skills and I ended up getting my PhD in psychology at Columbia University. I would now argue that studying art of any kind, whether it's music or painting or sculpture, really benefits people in any kind of field. And it certainly taught me a lot about creativity. So it was very valuable. How did I started start studying attention? Well, in the year 2000, I was hired as a professor and my world changed. I was confronted with all kinds of projects and students and teaching committee meetings. And I also found myself being glued to my computer for much the day. But at the same time, I found it hard to stay focused on any screen.

And I noticed that I kept switching my attention and trying to multitask and keep up with all of these different tasks. And I started asking other people, is it just me? And it turns out that other people were reporting the same thing. Being a psychologist, I wanted to study what's going on. Is it just me? Or is it widespread? And it turns out that it was a widespread experience. And so I became very interested in understanding the effects that working with technology as often as we do has on human behavior, mood and attention. Yes, and I might have this incorrect, but did you not

for a period of time live in Germany? I did. I did. I met my husband in the US. We moved to Germany for a while. I did work in the same field I mean now it's called human computer interaction in Germany. It was a very different lifestyle because it was a research institute and I was able to just focus on one project at a time. But it was just a wonderful introduction to technology. There were so many exciting innovations that were just coming into the public sphere at that time. And so it was a very exciting time

to be studying people's interaction with technology. Well, something that I found to be the same exact thing that you experienced was I have spent a lot of time in Europe. I lived in Spain for about three years, but I've spent a lot of time in France, Germany, etc. And whenever I'm over there, they always seem to really enjoy time periods like lunch. In fact, it was a major time for socialization. And my friends in Spain would always say, you Americans lived or work and we work to live. And what I find is it's so different there than it is in the States where most of my

professional career was spent sitting at a desk trying to wolf down, well, meal, and not having any break at all or any white space. And I understand you found the same thing in your career. In fact, my lunchtime experience in Germany also helped trigger this idea to study our use of technology. When I lived in Germany, my colleagues and I would go out for a really nice long meal. It's called Mitakessen. It's your lunch. It's usually a warm meal. We would get together, we would talk, we'd gossip, and then we would go for what's called a wound, which means a walk around this beautiful campus.

In fact, there was a castle on the campus. Come back to the US and my lunch hour consisted of racing between my classes and meetings to grab some takeout, running back to my office. And I glanced at the open doors of my colleagues as I respect my desk. I saw everyone sitting in front of their computer, eating their lunch, and I would slide into my chair

and do exactly the same thing. Yeah, well, I found exactly what you found, and I wish we would do more of that here in the States. The only company I actually saw that in was Arthur Anderson, but it was less eating with those in the firm, and it was more conscious effort that you should be eating with clients and developing relationships. Well, I have interviewed a ton of scientists on the podcast and many of them, especially in the field of behavioral economics, started out doing lab experiments.

And many scientists are now gravitating more towards field experiments. And I understand that you view the real world as a living laboratory. And you go to where people live, work, and study, to observe their normal activities. And I wanted to understand how is that approach different, and maybe a listener doesn't understand from the way that a lot of science and experimentation is done. It's such a great question.

So I have done laboratory experiments, and that's typically what psychologists do to study human behavior. And when you do a laboratory experiment, you're creating an abstract model of the world, right? You're trying to model the world, and then you control variables so that you can really focus on your variable of interest.

But I realize that when we use technology, there's so many factors involved and it's just not possible to model all the things we do in a laboratory that things that can affect how we use technology. And so this is things like the chronic stress that people have, the relationships with colleagues, the fact that you might have just had a difficult meeting that you came out of people have career trajectories. All of those things affect how we use our technology. And so you're right, I decided I had to go to where people are to study them.

And to do that, I created living laboratories using a variety of different kinds of sensors so that we can study people in their natural environments and get the same kind of information that we might get in a controlled laboratory setting. Today we're going to talk a lot about attention and just to give you a backdrop of my background, I've spent most of my career in technology. At one point was the CEO of a Fortune 50 company and I was also the chief data officer of Fortune 50 company and the chief information officer for cattle in a marketing, which was one of the biggest players and understanding the behaviors of people shopping patterns and how to use attention as a way to deliver ads to them. So attention is something that I've looked at from many different directions, especially how do you capture someone's attention. So, you open up the book by talking about the anatomy of attention. And I'll start out with this question, why is it that we often find ourselves in control of our lives in the physical world, but not in the digital world? Yes, that's such a great question.

There are different kinds of attention. So there's controlled processing. And this is attention that's under your control. It's goal directed. And when we have a goal, our attention is directed toward what our goal happens to be. So if your goal is you want to work on writing, your attention will be directed toward that. A different kind of attention is automatic. This is basically outside of our control. It's called exogenous attention. And that's what happens

when you get a notification, blinking light or something that flashes on this screen. We can't help but pay attention to those stimuli. Now, there's also, our attention is grabbed when targeted ads go after just our basic emotions. So if they contain keywords that tap into basic emotions like fear or excitement or happiness, we can't help but look at these things. And our attention during the day is a mixture of both controlled processing and also this kind of automatic processing. And we use both when we use our computing technologies.

That's interesting. I'll just give an example for the audience. When I was at Catalina, we formed a strategic partnership with Nielsen called Nielsen Catalina Solutions. And a couple of third party vendors that were doing geo-fencing and allowing us to analyze where people were. And so we were able with pretty much 90, 8, 99% accuracy, understand when you were sitting at your home in front of the TV. And we would be able to match the watching history from Nielsen with our history.

And we would see what ads you're being served on TV, and then we would dynamically insert an ad to you on your mobile device if you had one of the retailers' apps that we served, which was 75% of grocery, 90% of pharmacy, and every big box except Walmart. So a lot of data and it just shows you how intrusive this stuff can actually be. Yes, it's intrusive and it also can be very accurate. And so every time people go on to the web, we leave digital traces, right? Depending on what websites we go to, what we click on, if you're on a shopping site, what you're browsing, what, even what you like on Facebook, all of that information is collected and it's used to construct profiles about people.

And that of course is fed into algorithms that are designed to be able to target ads and notifications as effectively as possible to people. Yes, and I think this digital world we find ourselves in is changing things at a pace that it's hard to even comprehend. And I look at the way the world has shifted since we were hunter-gatherers to then the agricultural kind of revolution, the industrial revolution, and now we're in this digital age. And the way people are working and the way that they're going to work in the future are working and the way that they're going to work in the future is transforming so much around us. It's hard to keep track of.

How is all of this impacting our lives? Oh, it's impacting our lives tremendously. And you talk about the history of technology. And I just want to remind everyone how new all of this is, right? The web is younger than the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are still in the wild west of trying to make sense with and integrate technology in our lives. And so I think that we just haven't kept pace in that area,

this idea of integrating technology in our lives, it hasn't kept pace with the innovations that we're seeing. And of course, designers are, they're interested in innovation. And sometimes they're interested in developing an application, right, a system that's in search of some kind of use for people. And so there is this mismatch. I do think we'll figure it out. And there's, of course, so many systems that have been developed that do integrate well in our lives. But there's still a lot of room, there's a lot of ways that we can use systems better so that we're not overusing technology and we're not letting ourselves get too distracted and exhausted by it. Yes, you're right about the internet.

I happen to graduate from the Naval Academy and I work for the National Security Agency. And I really think that the internet was born in the defense industry because we were using a form of it that was classified in the early 1990s that now would be considered more of an internet than an internet. But at the time, I was doing things like email and messaging and other things.

While my friends and peers on the outside had no clue what I was talking about or what our capabilities were, but I found even through that that it was causing me to start multitasking more. And I remember when I was an executive at Lowe's, my direct reports came to me one time and said we've never seen anyone who can multitask like you can. And I look back upon it now, as I think about

it, I don't think it today as a compliment. I look at it as a way that I was being interrupted by constant disruption. And I wanted to ask you, what does science reveal about what causes us to multitask and why is multitasking the antithesis of focus? Yeah, so it turns out that we tend to think that the primary cause for distractions for us to shift our attention is from algorithmic ads and notifications. And it turns out that people are just as likely, 49% of the time, as likely to interrupt themselves. So we self-interrupt, interruptions originate from within ourselves.

And there's a lot of things that cause that. We are conditioned in a lot of ways. We have urges that we want to look something up and we're sitting in front of the world's largest candy store where we can access information within milliseconds. Right? You have a memory to do something. Let me say a little bit about that. There's about a hundred years of psychological research that actually is traced back to Bluma Zygarnick, the first researcher who looked at interruptions, who found that when you have an interrupted task,

it tends to stay in your mind. We don't forget interrupted tasks. Why is that the case? Because if you finish a task, it's off your plate, right? You're not thinking of it anymore. But we have this nagging sense on the backburners of our mind to go back and finish tasks that were interrupted, right? That stays with us. And of course, it affects us. Another reason for distraction is cognitive fatigue. So when people are tired, they're much more susceptible to being distracted. So we have less mental resources available.

We become more vulnerable. We're vulnerable for this, for notifications, to grab our attention. We're also more vulnerable to shield against distractions from within ourselves, right? So we're more likely to be thinking of other things to have this unfinished tasks be attended to. The very design of the internet itself is designed to distract us. And this was not necessarily the intent, but this is what happened. So back in 1945, an engineer by the name of Vannevar Bush,

who was quite an innovator, he was one of the people who founded the National Science Foundation in the US. But he was concerned that information was not organized in a way that made sense for people. That was easy for people to find. Came up with an idea called the Memex in 1945. And the idea was to organize information according to how it's associated with each other. Fast forward, this became the design of the web, right?

Nodes and links. The thing is that it mimics so well the way that human memory is theorized to be structured in terms of a semantic network. We think in terms of associations. We associate concepts together. So when you go on the web, you go to a Wikipedia page and you start clicking on links and it brings up so many associations in our minds of thinking that's going on and we click on links, brings up new associations and we end up in a rabbit hole. Well I'll tell you that happened to me as I was preparing for this interview. I read about Professor Walter Mitchell who you study under Columbia and my sister also has her master's degree from Columbia. So it caused me to reach out to her, then I had to wiki him. And then I started looking into the marshmallow test

and that led me to her three other things. And all of a sudden, I'm like, get back on track, which just shows how easy it is to do. Yeah, now going back to the question, you asked why is multitasking not a good idea, right? Shifting our attention. Yeah, what are some of the downsides with multitasking? Yeah, so there are some. So first of all, people make more errors and this has been shown in a lot of studies, physicians, nurses, pilots, real-world studies. In laboratory studies, it's been shown people make more errors.

Performance suffers. So every time you switch attention, there's something called a switch cost. And it's the time it takes for you to re-orient to new task. And let me give you a metaphor of what's going on in the mind. It's like you have an eternal whiteboard when you work on a task that represents the task you're working on. So if I'm writing, let's say I'm writing a book chapter, I have a representation of what I'm writing, what's the topic,

the words I'm using, the research I'm using in it. So I have this pretty good representation and it's written on that internal whiteboard in my mind. And then suddenly I switch and check email. And all of a sudden I have a new representation of who is the sender, what information are they asking of me, what do I have to provide? Okay, so then I have to erase that whiteboard and then I go to another text and I erase the whiteboard from the email, write my new representation. The whole

process of switching attention can be analogous to writing on an internal whiteboard or racing it, writing it, or racing it. The problem is that just like with a real whiteboard, we can't always erase things completely. And sometimes there's a residue. And if I'm reading a new story, and I read about some tragic accident, that story is going to stay in my mind with me as I switch my attention and go to another task and it's going to interfere with my performance. The last thing about multitasking, maybe this is the worst of all, is that it's associated with stress. And we know that multitasking causes stress. We know that in the laboratory,

it's shown that blood pressure rises. There's a physiological marker that indicates people have stress. In my research, where we looked at people in real-world environments, they were hard-rate monitors, and we could look at how often they were switching attention by computer logging techniques. Stress was associated with attention shifting. And of course, people report, proceed higher stress when they shift their attention. I think we have a conscious mind and an unconscious mind. We get into this autopilot mode. And when we're doing that, we're giving ourselves permission to shift our awareness from what we should be focused on.

And I think it ends up making ourselves a slave to the environment around us instead of us practicing intense focus on a task. And I was wondering what causes that to happen. It's because we're not intentional. We tend to do so many things automatically. We see our phone and it queues us and we grab it. We see the open tabs on our browser and those provide cues for us to think of going to another website and we do it. And so we are susceptible to these automatic actions. We're not intentional, right? We let our goals slip. And when our goals have slipped, we're open to any kind of distracting force in the environment.

The way to stay on track is to be goal oriented. And then we can all be in control of where we direct our attention. And that's the real challenge for us in this digital age. Well, for those who listen to this podcast all the time, I swear I didn't pay her for that answer because this podcast is all about really the behavioral science and behavioral change around creating an intentional life. And I think focus and intentionality go hand in hand, which is why I ask you that question. So if you follow that, I believe that these underlying forces of distraction are taking

us farther and farther away from living intentionally. And I truly believe that there's some of the biggest causes of the employee disengagement. And more than that, the underlying cause that's impacting happiness and causing the epidemics of loneliness and hopelessness. I don't know if you agree with that, but I think there's a direct link. I do agree with you. Absolutely. When people are in control, they're more positive. And in fact, I want to stress the importance of maintaining well-being when we use our devices. I've studied so many people and I see that people can be

impacted negatively, emotionally, and it's exhaustion from switching their attention so fast. It's also partly the content that they might be reading, but the work that's being demanded of people, and it's so important to maintain well-being. There are a lot of ways we can do this. We tend to, we live in a culture where we tend to try to squeeze as much as we can into the shortest amount of time. And as a result, we get ourselves exhausted. And it's really important to give ourselves permission to be able to step back to let your mental resources replenish. When you have a full tank of resources, that's probably that one of the best guards against distractions. You have your goals in mind, it helps protect you from any kind of external distracting force or internal force from interrupting ourselves.

There's a psychological theory that's called the broadened and build theory. And what that basically says is that when people feel positive, they can do more. positive they can do more. So people can generate more ideas, they can take more action, they can be proactive as opposed to when people feel negative. And so by maintaining well-being, by feeling positive, people can actually be more productive and more intentional in how they're using their devices. Yeah, I actually have this concept that I talk about called the visionary arsonist, and what I like in it too is we have these goals that we set out that we want to achieve. But our lack of focus constantly gets in the way of our vision. And so when we're not intentional about the choices that we're making in the microseconds of our day, and not deliberate about them, it ends up over time causing us to arson the very vision that we're trying to accomplish

because of that lack of focus. Yeah. And this is something that you really get into in part two of the book. And we've talked about chapter six already where you tackle the internet and how it impacts our distraction. But I did want to ask along the lines of the internet, what is it about how we use our devices

that impacts our ability to focus and makes us feel so drained. Well that's a big question. One of the things is that people tend to not take meaningful breaks and when you don't take meaningful breaks you get exhausted. We find in our research that there are certain times of the day when people can be at their peak focus. And other times people are in a trough. For most people, peak focus is around mid to late morning, about 11 a.m., and then mid to late afternoon,

two to three p.m. And it depends, of course, on your acronotype. If you're an early bird or if you're a night owl, your peak focus will be different. If people are not aware of when their peak focus times are, right, then they might be working in a period when it's a trough for them, when their level of mental resources is very low.

And then, of course, they're more susceptible for distractions. So it's important to think about how to plan your day and to design your day, rather than packing things back to back and scheduling them. Design your day to have breaks. Design your day around when your peak focus level is when you have your troughs. You do easy things in the troughs when you have peak focus. Save that for your hardest and most creative tasks. And then you'll find that you'll be able to be more on track and you'll focus better. Yeah, I think there's so much truth to that. I happen to be more of a morning person, so I front load my day with all the complex tasks I need to do. And I try to push email, social things I have to do, other things like that that are really

mindless to the afternoon. And I find the further I get in the afternoon, the more my mind starts wandering. There have been two people on the podcast. One of them you might know who have really good books that have come out recently about this need to take breaks. One is Sarah Medneck, who's a professor at a University of California Irvine, and she runs the Sleep Center there. And her book, The Power of the Downstate, was great about talking about why we need these downstate moments throughout the day. And then Juliet Hunt wrote a book about the importance of white space and why white space

is missing in so much of corporate America and really a lot of Western civilization. And when you don't have those white space moments to collect, reflect, reenergize, it causes burnout, it causes fatigue, loss of energy, et cetera. Yeah. Let me also mention that in our current modern society, people tend to accumulate sleep debt. And sleep debt is the cumulative loss of sleep over days compared to what you really need. So if I need eight hours of sleep a night and I'm only getting six hours, I'm accumulating debt.

and I'm only getting six hours, I'm accumulating debt. And we find there's a correlation. The higher the sleep debt, the shorter the attention span. And what do people do? People tend to do lightweight activities like going on social media because they don't have the mental resources to be able to focus. So we've shown empirically that getting good night's sleep is really important in helping people pay attention. And the idea of white space is really interesting. When I was an artist,

we learned about the idea of negative space. So if you're doing a painting or if you're doing a sculpture, it's as important to be as aware of the space surrounding the figure you're creating as the figure itself. This enables your figure to really shine, it sets it off. And so you're constantly doing a figure ground reversal, you're looking at the figure, you're also looking at the space around it. And so when people design their day, it's so important not just to schedule in time for the important work, but also to schedule in time for this kind of negative space, which is time for contemplation, meditation, exercise, or even just pulling back and doing some simple activity to give your mind to rest. And you can think of it as surrounding the figure in your day,

what is the hard work that you want to accomplish? Yeah, it's interesting. For me, some of the things I've learned is that every 45 minutes you should take at least a five minute break from what you're doing. And I try three or four times a day to take a 10 to 15 minute walk to recharge myself. But as I was doing research on you, I understand you studied walking in a way because you did research with several peers of yours, including one on Microsoft that I found very interesting on not walking itself, but the role that blue light plays versus how walking impacts creativity.

And I was hoping because I found it so fascinating, you might be able to shed some light on that. Oh, sure. So this study was done with side of and Mary Sharvinsky, colleagues of mine at Microsoft Research. And the idea is that creative ability actually has two components. It has divergent thinking, which is brainstorming and convergent thinking, which is focus, the ability to have deep focus. And what we investigated was what the effects of walking and blue light hat on each of these components of creative thinking. And it turns out that a

20-minute walk in nature significantly increased people's ability to do divergent thinking, which is this brainstorming activity, whereas 20-minute exposure to blue light actually increased people's ability to do convergent thinking, to focus better. And it turns out that even using blue light for 20 minutes, it didn't negatively impact divergent thinking, but rather it increased conversion thinking. So these two kinds of activities together can be beneficial for people in the workplace. However, a caution is because blue light increases your ability to focus. It makes you more alert. It increases your arousal. It's actually not a good idea to do it before you go to sleep. And that's why it's not a good idea to be on your devices before bedtime. It's the blue light and even when you have blue light blockers, it's still the content

you're exposed to. It's going to affect your ability to relax and be calm and get a good night's sleep. I found out I'm doing one thing right. I know when I talk to a lot of the publishers, they're always wanting to send me a PDF and I like the PDFs because it makes it easy to take information and put it into my documents to prepare for the interview. But I am a huge book reader. So that's what I like to do at night is read just an old-fashioned book before I go to bed. Wonderful.

Well, I'm going to come back to part two of your book because speaking of Microsoft, which is very big in AI and algorithms in chapter seven, in fact, you explore both of those things and how AI and algorithms influence our thoughts. How is our distraction being paid for? Oh, every digital trace that we leave on the internet is collected by companies that are feeding these into algorithms. So it's algorithmic design that's being used to understand what people's preferences are. And of course, there's huge big data that's being involved. So every action that I do is compared with actions of people similar to me, and there's enough other data points so that pretty good models can be developed. These algorithms can target information, can personalize it to what an individual's interests are.

And people's personality can be detected fairly accurately, just based on the digital traces that people leave. And there's so many actions that we do online that we don't even think about. And it's hard to resist an ad or a notification that's targeted at something that really gets at your deeper interest. For example, there's a study that was done out of Stanford, that found that extroverts responded better to certain kind of ads, and introverts responded better to other kinds of ads. So knowing what a person's personality is can actually affect the ads and notifications

targeted to them. So it's actually quite involved and very sophisticated. Now, well, one of the things we used to use at both Lowe's and Dell when I was very much involved with our online platforms, and then we used extensively at Catalina with Psychometrics, which is something that you cover the book. And maybe if someone who doesn't understand what psychometrics are, what are they, and how do they target your attention? Yeah, that's basically measures of attributes of an individual. And psychometrics can be quite broad in measuring personality along five basic dimensions.

That's called the big five, it can also be much more detailed, and a lot of different personality attributes can be derived from an individual. Let me say a little bit about the big five, because that's the most widely used personality test. That basically categorizes an individual in terms of five basic dimensions. There's openness to new experience, conscientiousness, whether a person is an extrovert or introvert, agreeableness, which means how well you get along with other people, and neuroticism, which is your susceptibility to stress, your emotional stability. And our digital traces can be fed into algorithms that can detect pretty accurately

what our Big Five traits are, how we score on each of these measures. I will tell you, it's scary when you see how people are doing that in the background and how they're looking at and categorizing different customer types based on those attributes and then how to use content to attract them to make a decision that your client wants to make or the company wants them to make, typically purchasing or investigating. I will say that the TikTok algorithm is very powerful and it's very agile. And so when a person is watching TikTok, videos are recommended to them. And as soon as they start changing preferences, the algorithm picks up on this and can adapt to it and be very agile and change the kinds of videos it sends to people. Yeah, all of it is so interesting. As is the metaverse, what you go into in chapter 8, which I think some people think is in new concept, but it actually came out as you rightly pointed to

Neil Stevenson's book Snow Crash, which I think came out in early 90s, maybe 92, 93. And it leads me to this question, how can our attention be socially influenced, and why are young people specifically vulnerable to it? young people specifically vulnerable to it. Oh, our attention can be socially influenced because basically we are social creatures and we respond to social dynamics. And in real life, there's so many types of social dynamics. For example, social influence. We're influenced by other people. We are concerned with social capital, and that's the exchange of favors.

I'm going to do a favor for you because I'll expect you'll do it for me. We're concerned with identity. And in the real world, when you go to an event, you're very concerned with how you appear to others, how you want your identity to be portrayed. And then, of course, there's power in relationships. And all of these kinds of social forces also exist on the internet. So we are compelled to check email or to check Slack, because we're concerned about social capital. I'm gonna answer your email message because I expect you're gonna answer mine at some point

or I expect there might be some favor in it for me at some point in the future. People spend a lot of time concerned with their online identities and in some ways spend even more time than in their physical real world identity. Why? Because you can control your online identity. You can control how other people perceive you. Of course, power plays into it because people lower in power tend to pay more attention to people higher in power. And person in the workplace

is paying attention to their inbox waiting for that email from their manager as opposed to the other way around the manager. Probably spends less time waiting for that email from the people they're managing unless they're waiting on particular information. Yeah, it's so interesting. And I recently had on Dr. Robert Waldinger, he's the author of the new book, Good Life, and he is the latest director of the Harvard study on adult development. And as that study revealed, that relationships are the key to living a

good life. But it was interesting to me in your book, you point out that our distractions and attention on the internet are also influenced by the power that exists in our relationships. Why is that the case? Yes. Well, it's because relationships are important for people. And so if you're on some kind of social media, people want to try to maintain relationships. Something that people probably don't consider is that there's something called the Dunbar number. And the Dunbar number is that this is derived from a British sociologist, Robin Dunbar, who found that people can only maintain a small number of relationships about five in a very close way. And then you can have about 150 people in a relationship where you're less close with them, but that's about the

limit of what people can maintain in relationships. The problem with social media is that it enables us to have relationships with thousands of people. People commonly have networks on social media platforms with thousands of people, and there's just no way that you really can have any kind of meaningful relationship with people at that level. And what we also start to see is a kind of inequality. Some people might tend to receive more information than other people right in the network. So there's this kind of inequality that happens. But when you think of social media in terms of the Dunbar model,

it doesn't bring us a lot of value to have such a large network. And there is a cost because the cost is keeping up with, every time you go on social media, you're scrolling through posts of people that maybe you even forgot about who they were. And so I advocate instead to think more about meaningful relationships and to focus on those individuals where you can really derive meaning in your life. Yeah, I think that's excellent advice. And I want to jump to part three of your book, which is on focus, rhythm and balance. And earlier this week, I released an episode

with Professor Ethan Cross, who's at the University of Michigan. He's a psychologist and he does studies on controlling the conscious mind. And I asked him during the interview that based on his studies, does he believe that the conscious mind. And I asked him during the interview that based on his studies, does he believe that free will exist? And his answer was that it absolutely does.

However, in chapter 12, you look at both sides of this through the lens of the digital world. And what I wanted to ask is if people truly have free will in the digital world, then why aren't they simply practicing it? That was exactly my question. That was exactly the question that I was asking.

If we truly had free will, we would be able to focus whenever we wanted. We could cut off distractions whenever we wanted. We could perform our work. So I think it's better to think of free will as we have constraints. So within constraints, we can act freely. And an example of a constraint is, for person is in prison. They can't maybe go outside and exercise. There's a lot of behavior that they can't do,

but they're free in thinking. So there's a constraint in what an individual can do. And so I think it's important for us to think of free will in the sense that using our computing devices do impose a kind of constraint for us. They shape our behavior. And I think that's the better way to think about it. And by understanding what these constraints are, we can practice freely within them.

An example of shaping our behavior is when notifications come in, and they grab our exogenous attention, right? So to understand, this is a constraint. And I think that within that, yes, people can develop ways to act with agency over their attention. So I'm very optimistic in that sense. That's great. And as we discussed earlier, I've interviewed many behavioral scientists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, psychologists on the podcast. But almost every one of them discusses the importance of our microchoises in leading an intentional life. And two

interviews I did lead into this question I want to ask you, they were with David and who studies meta-awareness at Johns Hopkins and David Vago, who studies meta-awareness and meditation at Vanderbilt. And meta-awareness is something that I think we all absolutely need and strive to ingrain in the behavioral change that we desire to have. But how can we develop a meta-awareness of our behavior to help us realize when we are distracted? Yes, it's very important to make our unconscious actions conscious, to bring them to our conscious awareness. We can do this by probing ourselves to understand our actions. So when you have this

urge to go to a new site or social media recognize that urge and ask yourself why do I feel that I have a need to do this. When I ask myself this, when I probe myself, it's usually because I'm bored, or maybe the task is too hard, or I want to procrastinate, and it makes me much more aware of what my action is why I'm doing it, and then I can take action on it. And I also ask myself, will it bring me value? And I'm a professional observer of behavior. And when I observe someone using their technology, I'm always asking questions, why is this person doing that? Why did they just take that action? And I turn this on myself, and I can become a professional observer of my own behavior. And anyone can learn to become an observer of themselves. And it's a skill you can develop.

It's like a muscle, right? The more you do it, the easier it becomes. And it can become second nature. I find that this helps create a meta-awareness for me, an awareness of what I'm doing as it's unfolding and helps keep me on track. Yes, it's really about how do we integrate concentration into our lives and gain agency to control our attention. Yes.

Well, and the last question I wanted to ask you was, where do you see the future of attention going? Yes. Well, and the last question I wanted to ask you was where do you see the future of attention going? Yes, so I am an optimist. I realize a lot of people have this doom and gloom scenario, but I'm very much an optimist. Mainly because I'm so excited about technology and its potential. I do think that ironically technology can offer a solutions. An example is a study that I did with colleagues at Microsoft Research where we found that a simple AI conversational agent could serve as a coach to help people become more aware,

to gain that meta-awareness, to help people understand how tired are you. Do you need a break? Okay, you've been on social media too long. It's time to pull back, but coaching people, not doing the work for them. I don't believe that software should do the work for people, could people need to develop it themselves. So I do think that AI can be used to our benefit, to help us control our behaviors on our devices.

I also think that we need collective solutions to help our attention. I'm very much a fan of what's called right to disconnect policy. There's a law introduced in France, it's called the El Combrie law. There's also policy introduced in Ireland and Ontario. And the idea here is that individuals' workers should not be penalized for non-answering electronic communications after work hours. And what that does is give people the opportunity to detach, to psychologically detach from work. And by psychologically detaching,

gives people a chance to replenish, to build up resources, and come back to work the next day refreshed. When we take a vacation, right, we're detached. It gives us a chance to replenish. And we need to do that on a regular basis each day. So I do think the future of attention is going to be in the direction of enabling people to detach better from work so that they can build up the resources they need so that they can be productive and focused the next day. And hopefully avoid burnout as well. Yes, absolutely.

Well, Gloria, if a listener wants to know more about you and some of the research that you've done, where is the best place for them to do that. So you can go to my website at www.gloriamark.com. It's all when word Gloria Mark. What we talked about today, you can learn about more in the book Attention Sp Band, which basically is a culmination of two decades of my work in this area. I welcome to hear from everybody. I would love to hear comments. Thank you. Gloria, it was certainly an honor to have you on the show today.

Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it was my pleasure to talk with you. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Gloria Mark, and I wanted to thank Gloria and Harper Collins for the honor and privilege of having her appear on PassionStruck. Links to all things Gloria will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.

Videos are on YouTube at both John Armeyles, as well as PassionStruck Clips. As I mentioned at the beginning, you can also now hear us on the AMFM 247 National Broadcast, Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Links will be in the show notes. Avertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. You can find me on LinkedIn where you can subscribe to my newsletter and also at John Armiles on all the different social platforms, where I post daily bits of inspiration, hope, and meaning.

You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview that I did with How Herschfeld, who I have wanted on the show for a very long time. How is an accomplished professor of marketing, behavioral decision making, and psychology at UCLA's Anderson School of Management? Herschfeld's research on future selves is groundbreaking and I wanted to bring it to you. And we will be discussing his brand new book, which launches next week, your future self, how to make tomorrow better today. This is the next frontier. How can we examine these sorts of questions in situations where the impacts will be long

lasting? How can we ensure that people don't become sort of habituated, if you will, to whatever sort of interventions we might use? I would doubt that if I continually confront you with your future self, you'll continue to act future oriented because like anything else, you'll probably eventually start ignoring it. One of the big questions is, how do I vary things up in such a way that's always going to be fresh and novel and make you continue to think about that future self? The fee for the show is that you share it with family and friends when you find something useful or interesting.

I think today's episode on Attention Span is something that needs to be shared widely. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share this show with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out and be passion struck. you