August 19, 2015 • 41 mins
Technology has us more plugged in and connected than ever before but it also creates endless opportunities for interruptions. What effect do notifications have on productivity and anxiety? And how could technology help solve a problem it created?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, put your
head back in the clouds and shut your mouth. I'm
Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren vocle Bond. I'm Joe McCormick. Hi, Joe.
(00:24):
You know, I had something happened to me last week.
That's not the first time it's happened, and it's always
a brand new frustration every time. But I had a
couple of those work days. Sorry, you got an email
their job. Hold on, let me answer it for you now. No,
no, no no, no, hold on, there you go. You know,
(00:45):
I had, like I had several days last week where
I had a to do list of things I needed
to research and write, and you know, you all know
the kind of work we do around here, and I
was busy all day. But at the end of the day,
I realized I had crossed almost nothing off of my
to do list, and in fact, had added things to
(01:08):
my to do list. So to do list got longer,
a few, very few things were clicked off, and yet
you felt like your entire day was pretty much taken
up with work. Yeah, so how did that work? What happened? Well?
I realized looking back through my email that, oh, I
just spent most of the these days answering emails, reading emails,
(01:29):
answering emails, and responding to messages and notifications on our
social media accounts. So, in other words, every time you
would start to get to tackle one of the tests
on your to do list, something else would pop up
interrupt you, and you would take time away from that
task to attend to whatever that might be. Bingo. I'm
(01:50):
sure y'all have days like this too. Yeah, most days
honestly called week days. Yeah, it's great. You know, one
of the things that you can do once you're finally
done with work for the day is get your work done. Yes.
I frequently go home and get that research done that
I was meaning to do all day, but instead hatings
and answered some Twitter comments. If you've ever watched those
(02:12):
foward Thinking videos that are set in an office, and
you wonder, gosh, I wonder when he wrote those, the
answer is five am, the same day they were shot,
and they're shot at nine am. So that's it's true
for me too. Yeah. So, as it turns out, there's
some great things I love about the Internet, y'all. One
(02:32):
of the things, yeah, Well, for one thing, it employs me. So, uh,
don't look a gift towards in the mouth, that kind
of thing, right as a man, That's right. I'm a
made man on the internet, digital hit man. When I became,
you know, a gigabit capo, it was a special day.
(02:55):
All all my life, I wanted to be a wise guy. No, no, no,
there are great things about the Internet, and I will
tell you one of them. I have. I have so
I don't live in the same town where I went
to college. I went to college under grad school in
different towns, and I don't live in those towns. And
social media and the internet helps me keep up with
(03:16):
friends of mine that I very likely otherwise would not
have been able to keep up with. That's great. Uh.
I'm not entirely familiar with the concept of making friends
while in college, but I appreciate what you're saying. No,
that that is one of the things we love about
the Internet is that it allows us this connectivity to
(03:36):
friends and family, whether they are nearby or they move
far away. I mean, I've got friends who are working
in Korea right now, and I can keep up with
their lives on a regular basis. It's it's not as
infrequent as a letter every few months or a few
years for example. Yeah, in the old days, even if
you had wanted to keep up with them on a
(03:58):
day to day basis, it would have been physically possible
due to the speed of mail carriers. And you know,
existing you could all you could be living a day
to day basis, but you'd each be like a month behind. Right,
You're like, well, this is what happened on Tuesday of
last month to my friend. Uh. And we can also
use social graphs in social networks to discover connections that
(04:18):
we didn't know existed before. I even at even as
old as I am and as much as I've been
on social networking, it still amazes me when I noticed
that one of my friends from one circle and a
friend from a totally different circle know each other, because
to me, they don't exist in that same universe. Right,
you've got you've got this one. It's just all of
(04:40):
a sudden, You're like, what you guys had a map?
How is Superman hanging with thor when did that happen? Yeah? Yeah,
I keep promising myself that someday I'm going to stop
being surprised when I make a new friend on Facebook
and they're already friends with like eighty seven of my friends,
right right. Also, I've I've used that metric to kind
of decide whether not except friend requests. There was so
(05:02):
and so since you a friend request, you have one
friend in common, I ain't gonna happen. I mean, how
good is that friend? Am I? Right? Well? Yeah, I
mean that has to be a remarkably good friend for
me to accept that friend request. But no that we
can also just keep informed of important events and inform
other people of important events in our lives invite them
to stuff. Using this approach, you, you and we have
(05:24):
a support system that's very easy to tap into when
we need it. Uh. You can argue about whether or
not the support is as valuable as what you would
get if you were to have face to face encounters,
but it does matter that. You know, if you're feeling
like overwhelmed or upset, and you go onto a social
networking site and you make an honest statement, say, guys,
(05:46):
I I'm kind of in the in the weeds here,
can you help having a rough day? I either need
some suggestions or some kitten videos. Ya kitten videos. It's
like that's like number one prescribed solution to every problem.
I suggest that I have I keep my kitting videos
away from internet. Hit Man, You're on the list, Joe,
(06:07):
So uh At any rate, Um, those are some good
things about the Internet. We have this this immediacy, this
connection with so many people, and including people that we
don't have a real world connection to. I mean, I've
made friends through various forums and groups and even things
like just social networks like Facebook or Twitter. I've I've
(06:29):
or through chat rooms associated with other shows. I mean,
I made real friends that way, and that would not
have been possible without the Internet. But there's some other
things about the Internet that are more problematic, one of
those being that perhaps these interactions we have online aren't
(06:52):
as deep or meaningful in some way, or complex in
some way as were real world interactions. Although that really
kind of comes down to a lot of you know,
like it feels this way, so it must be this way. Yeah,
Getting a precise answer to that particular question is is difficult,
just because defining the quality of a given relationship is
(07:15):
really difficult. You've got all these factors to to contend
with you the type of relationship, if it's a romantic
or friendship or acquaintance, whether it's a static relationship, or
whether it's actively changing the demographics of the people in question,
their their age, their education, their sex, their gender, their
marital status, their income, the quality of their other relationships,
(07:35):
and and so on. So there have been a bunch
of scholarly surveys done, but the only sweeping conclusion that
they come to is that you get out of online
relationships what you put in to online relationships well, and
that people who are more comfortable with technology will have
higher quality online relationships, so it'll be more of more
(07:58):
of an analog to what the real world relation and
ship would be for those people. Whereas for people who
might lack that that level of savvy, they may feel
like the uh, the interactions they have are trivial or
not meaningful. Um is really interesting to me because if
you do the search on this and you're not looking
at the scholarly stuff, you see a lot of just
(08:18):
kind of armchair psychology. Yeah, like social media is destroying
our ability to have real world relationships. Think of the children,
how will the children possibly communication now? I will admit
that I like to use the internet to um to
skip certain mundane interactions, things like using Amazon to buy
(08:40):
stuff instead of going to a store. But that's really
more because I'm lazy and less that I want to
avoid real world interactions. UM. So there's that to be said.
And also the another downside to online communication is that,
like we said in our Tone Analyzer episode, sometimes it's
difficult to communicate nearly because we're limited in the level
(09:03):
of communication we can have with someone else. Yeah, even
if you're using as many smiley faces and uh little
icons of of martini glasses as you have to. Yeah. So,
of course, in the real world, we can have body language.
You can have your your the tone of your voice,
the pacing of what you're saying, so people know what
you're stressing versus not stressing. You know whether or not
(09:26):
you're you're making very rude gestures while you're saying something,
if you're making eye contact or not making All of
these things play into the communication we have with someone
else in the real world. Uh. In an online setting,
you lose a lot of that, So it can be
easy to send a message that can easily be misinterpreted. Um.
(09:47):
And someone might end up taking it the wrong way
and getting their feelings hurt or being confused by the message.
Um So dealing with that gets a little exhausting. But
the really big problem with all this online communication is
the one that Joe was talking about at the top
of the show, the fact that we now have all
these different channels through which communication can come to us,
(10:10):
that there are lots of potential ways that we can
be interrupted throughout the day, and we're inventing new ones
every single day. Not just not just new platforms like
new versions of Twitter or Facebook, but new ways that
those can annoy us, Like a device you wear on
your wrist or even your face that will and you know,
(10:32):
let you know, whatever physically move when you've got a message,
it will vibrate and thus get your attention and pull
it away from whatever it was you were doing in
the first place, to say, hey, Joe, Bob, just like
this barbecue joint, you should know about that. You know,
I want to take this a step further and and
just speak about an anecdotal experience. I don't have research
(10:54):
to back this up. And maybe you'll will say if
you agree, all right, I think that just having the
the devices through which notifications can be delivered present, even
if you are not currently getting notifications, can be a distraction.
So if I'm reading a book, I will get a
much better experience of reading that book if I put
(11:16):
my phone in my computer at the other end of
the house in a different room. What's a book. I
was just noticing this the other day. I was having
a wonderful experience reading a great book, and I realized,
you know, I'm so glad I don't have my laptop
sitting next to me. So, I mean, I fully agree.
(11:39):
I have a whole podcast I do with two other people.
It's not a how stuff works podcast, but it's a
podcast I do where one of the things we try
and do is watch movies with no distractions present because
we both well, we both we all three, I just
don't count Eric Sandy. Now, we all three agree that
we have seen our attention spans diminish over time, and
(12:03):
we often have distractions present when we're watching something at home,
like a laptops open, or our smartphone or tablet is nearby.
Sometimes all three, sometimes all three, and we know that
we're not paying full attention to the actual story. That's
unfolding on the screen. And therefore you can even have
a conversation about a movie you quote unquote saw and
(12:24):
have no memory of stuff that happened in that movie
because you weren't really paying attention. You don't you didn't
commit it to memory because you weren't really focusing on it.
Oh yeah, and that's not just anecdotal. Research shows that
we are genuinely bad at multitasking. Yes. Oh. One study
out of the University of Utah published indicated that, in fact,
the more confident participants were in their multitasking abilities, the
(12:47):
worst they were at multitasking. Here's the thing is that
I know I'm terrible at multitasking. Guess what, I'm terrible
at multi tasking. That's anecdotal. Another from Stanford in two
thousand nine showed that we perform worse on every task
we're doing when we multitask. And for a statistical example
(13:08):
of that, I turned to yet another study, this one
out of Carnegie Melon, also in two thousand nine, which
used m ri I to measure participants brain activity in
the parietal lobe, which is the one associated with spatial processing,
while they were steering a vehicle along a virtual road.
And so while the while the participants were concurrently listening
(13:30):
to sentences being read out loud, their spatial brain activity
decreased by thirty seven percent. That's not terrifying at all. So,
so that's at least one example in which we are
more than a third handicapped by trying to do more
than one thing at once. Yeah, and so this plays
into the the purpose why we even are doing the show,
(13:51):
Like we we wanted to talk about how all these
notifications and interruptions and demands and our attention can decrease
the quality of whatever task we're performing or attempting to
perform at that time. But we also wanted to talk
about how at least one group of researchers is trying
to decrease that effect on us, and they're doing it
through technology. Amazing technology. Yeah, so the answer to the
(14:16):
problem of technology having too many ways to get in
touch with us is more technology. Yes. Uh so again
they the study ends up or not the study, but
rather the proposal the approach that they're talking. Let me guess, Yeah,
every time you're about to try to multitask with different
(14:36):
technology devices, a robot on a like tank tread with
chainsaw bursts out of the wall, runs at you, says,
don't do that an excellent guests not. I think that
would be very very calming and non distracting. I think
that that would really help me get tied right back
into what I was doing in the first point. It's
actually a special pair of glasses you wear, and every
(14:58):
time you attempt to multitask, spikes embed into your temples
and then scramble right behind your eyeballs. No, that doesn't
happen either. In neither case does that happen for for
some reason that that the researchers it toughs University decided
to do eyeball impalement or chain sourbucks. Right, So we're
(15:18):
just throwing some extra ideas out there. If this other
version doesn't pan out, well tell me about propose. Okay.
So they started with that premise that the interruptions that
we experience in life, as Joe was mentioning at the
top of the episode, can really hurt productivity and they
increase our anxiety levels because we we have this increased
(15:38):
feel a feeling that we're never going to complete the
stuff we need to complete. And like Joe was saying,
sometimes we're not even able to identify why that's the
case in the moment. It's only after we reflect that
we realize, oh, I was doing I was wondering why
I was feeling so busy, but yet I wasn't getting
anything done. So this is you know that that contributes
to our anxiety, and they so, how can we decrease
(16:01):
that and increase our productivity and limited interruptions so that
we get notifications. But we only get the notifications when
our brain is ready to receive notifications, in other words,
when we're not trying to focus on some other task.
Which is kind of tricky, right, Like, how do you
tell your smartphone, hey, when I'm actually reading this research
(16:23):
about notifications, don't buzz in my pocket. Well, just plug
your smartphone straight into your brain through your and then
just have your smartphone say no, wait, he's busy. Folks
at home. I don't know if you've heard. Jonathan's gotten
like several notifications since we've been in here. Yeah, well
I'm a popular guy. What can I say? I have
not looked at them. I just keep my phone in
(16:46):
my pocket. But I was checking Facebook like four seconds ago.
I do see that I have a notification. I wouldn't
lie I have a notification on Facebook. I haven't looked
at yet, but that little number one and the notification
is bothering me. Um, so the paper show is judging us.
(17:07):
So no, no, I mean no, I'm looking at Twitter
right now. So we're all guilty of it. Guys, if
you're listening to this podcast and you're also have Facebook
or Twitter, open, shut that down, come on, show some respect,
laundry like a normal personast do something that doesn't require
any sort of concentration, so so melodious voices can wash
(17:30):
over you. The paper that the team published actually cited
a study by Bailey and Constant in which people had
to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, and the results are just
in line with the same studies that Lauren was mentioning earlier.
The participants reported higher levels of anxiety, they committed twice
as many errors, plus took twenty five percent longer to
(17:52):
complete a primary task than they would if they were
allowed uninterrupted time to work on a single task, if
they had down time to do this instead of being
bombarded by other tasks. So how does this technology work
that makes us, you know, sane by limiting the notifications
to times when we can handle them. Well, the first
(18:12):
thing they had to do was figure out how were
they going to measure brain activity to figure out when
we're focusing on something versus when we're done with a task,
because they had determined that the in between time for
tasks would be the ideal moment to send notifications because
you save them up and send them in yeah, and
then you're like, oh, I can handle this now, and
(18:32):
then when you're done you can move on to the
next task. Well, it seems like one option they have
would be E E G. Yeah, but those do have
a downside in that movement can create false data like
errors in the data, so positives. Yeah, so it may
be that if you're typing, you know, not even like
moving moving, not like necessarily doing you know, jumping jacks
(18:54):
or something. If you're typing, just the typing alone could
create enough movement to create false positive and then it
would it would not be able to set the threshold
for when you are actually focusing on a task versus
when you are kind of in a down mode. Okay,
so electron cephalography is out yep. So instead they decided
to look at functional near infrared spectroscopy the nurse. So
(19:20):
this is where you're going to think we're saying snarf
because it just sounds similar. So the nurse from now on,
we're we're all temporarily pinky from pinky in the brain.
That's right, Yeah, it's it's it's very similar to narf. Yeah.
So the technology uses infrared light to scan for brain activity,
and infrared infrared light can penetrate bone and other tissue,
(19:43):
including neural tissue, to a depth of three centimeters in
case you were wondering, because that's how this works. But
it's absorbed and scattered by hemoglobin, and hemoglobin's optical properties
depend upon whether or not it's oxygenated or deoxygenated. So
using two different wavelengths of for red light and measuring
with a detector which ones are coming back to that
(20:04):
sensor can tell you about the blood flow in the brain,
which in turn tells you about brain activity because I
would imagine that more blood flow equals more brain activity. Yes, specifically,
more oxygenated blood flow will tell you, hey, this person
is really concentrating because the blood flow indicates that they
need to think about something. Now, the paper points out
(20:25):
that this finnurse technology isn't ideal for all applications because
it takes several seconds for changes in blood flow to
actually reach the brain. So you when you start to
concentrate on a task, it takes a couple of seconds
for the blood flow to uh to accommodate that, and
you wouldn't be able to use the same technology as
(20:47):
a means of controlling like a robot necessarily, at least
not not without lag, because there it would take a
couple of seconds before it detected that increase of blood
flow for it to be able to send a command,
and that would get rustrating. We've all experienced lag in
some way. That's never fun. It's the worst usually, especially
if you're online and you're trying to play a game
(21:08):
of Halo and you know you're you're already handicapped by
being in our cases Jonathan or Laura, Yeah, where we
have we have the handicap of being us. And then
you know, you get a sniper gun and you line
up on somebody and you're sure they're right in front
of you, but in truth, they've already moved four feet
to the left because you're lagging. Not fun, I mean,
(21:28):
lagging is having a delay is worse than having nothing. Yeah,
like it. It's more frustrating if your computer continues to
work but it's very slow, then if it just crashes
and stuff. Absolutely true, So finners would not be good
for that. But finnurs is fine for monitoring brain states,
general brain states because it doesn't need to have that
(21:49):
immediacy for it to detect when you are focusing versus
when you have completed something. Um. Also, it's not sensitive
to movement, as e G. Technology can be. So studies
have shown that the sensors can be used on people
who are engaged in activities that require a lot of movement,
including things like jogging, with quote only slightly higher error
rates than a traditional clinical device end quote. So uh,
(22:12):
it's it's ideal for that kind of of application. And
you could create such a device and attach it to
something else, like a wearable like specifically like Google glass,
because obviously you have to wear it on your head
for it to detect neural activity because that's where it happens.
So you would need to put some sort of wearable
(22:34):
device on your head to be able to detect this
blood flow. So I'm sorry, Jonathan, you're like blowing my
elbow mind. I'm sorry, sorry, I can tell you where
I keep my brain, at least according to my wife,
but it's the family podcast. So um, at any rate,
you would probably attach to this to something like Google Glass,
which would give you those notifications and and that's a
great example anyway, because it's got a screen that's right there, like,
(22:56):
it's just incredibly accessible to get those interruptions that would
cause you some anxiety and stress and decrease your productivity.
So uh. You They then created software, because that's the
hardware side, to do the detection, but now they have
to create the software that actually interprets the data that's
collected by the device. And the software they call filter
(23:18):
p h y l t e R. So Filter takes
the the nurse data and then tries to interpret whether
or not that means you are concentrating on a task
or you are not concentrating. So uh. In general, the
strategy is filter will restrict notifications of low importance from
(23:41):
going to you immediately and hold back until your brain
activity indicates you are no longer focusing. Then it releases
those notifications. So if you're really focusing on studying, and
then you take a break and like, all right, I
need to rest. That's when those less important notifications would
come to you. Yeah, and since not all of our
brains are actually the same, uh, that they came up
(24:02):
with a way to account for that too. Right. It
might be that if I'm focusing really hard, I have
a certain amount of blood flow in my brain that
is equivalent to Lauren just taking it easy, because my
ability to focus is so pathetic that it's like Lauren
at rest. But you know, so if we're both using
the same device, it wouldn't know that I was focusing
and be like, oh, Jonathan's just taking it easy. Here's
(24:24):
a whole bunch of notifications. So what we need is uh,
the learning algorithm on the back end to say, all right,
this is what it looks like when Jonathan is concentrating
versus this is what it looks like when Lauren is concentrating,
and it looks you know, you have to train it,
just like with any learning algorithm. We've talked about this
so much on the in past Forward Thinking podcasts, So, uh,
(24:45):
the way they would train this is you would do
simulations of stuff that would require you to focus, uh,
and simulations of stuff that would be like low workload
moments when you aren't required to really focus your attention,
and the learning algorithm starts to pick up on those patterns,
and then it can extrapolate from the data in real
(25:07):
world situations whether or not you're focusing with pretty good
degree of accuracy once it's gone through that training. So
it also relies on another thing, and it relies on
the notifications themselves having some sort of meta data attached
to them to let the actual software no which notifications
are really important, which ones are kind of important but
(25:29):
can wait, and which ones are not important and can
be archived essentially, And I assume that you can set
these filters yourself, like say, uh, always let through calls
from my wife. I think it probably would depend upon
specifically the platform or the device that this is attached to.
I think exactly what you're saying, because you know, we've
got a lot of platforms like Gmail that allows us
to do this, right, It already automatically sorts things into well,
(25:53):
this goes into your priority inbox, this goes into your
social inbox, this goes into promotions inbox, and you can
set up other filters. I'm sure a lot of that
is uh, possible for users to indicate, and the idea
being that you would anything that has a high importance,
like an always send level of importance means that it
will come to you even if it's an interruption, which
(26:14):
is important for certain events like if someone needs to
get in touch with you because of an emergency, then
obviously you want that notification to come through. Uh. Then
there's the the never interrupt messages, that never send messages.
Those would just go to an archive where you could
go seek it out on purpose, like if I logged
into my Gmail account to look at my mail, then
(26:36):
I could see the ones that were there, but they
wouldn't interrupt me. And then there would be the adaptive
ones that would be withheld until you reach those points
of the day where you're not focusing on a task,
and that's when the adaptive ones would get sent through.
So not very different from the way we do things now.
So it's a pretty interesting approach to solving this problem
(26:58):
of let's let's just let's to get rid of notifications.
Let's just have a way to save the notifications for
the times when we're able to deal with them, as
opposed to just flooding us all throughout the day. I
think that's a pretty neat approach, a pretty neat solution,
and we should specify that this is not a product
(27:18):
that is like ready for consumer purchase yet. This is
a concept design. Yeah, it's it's essentially something that's being developed.
Whether it will ever become a product that you can
go out and purchase, I don't know. For one, thing
requires you wear something on your head so that puts
infrared waves into your brain. Yeah, steps of three centimeters.
I mean, it's one of those deals where like, is
(27:41):
it going to be built into a product in such
a way that people won't feel self conscious about wearing
it when they are working. I suppose if you are
maybe studying in a dorm room and you have this
thing on, then that's one thing. But if you're in
an office like we are, we're trying to get research done. Uh,
(28:02):
can you imagine all the photos that come out the
videos that are being done where like people are people
would be watching a video from how stuff works where
the office is in the background. I'm wondering why everyone's
wearing these tinfoil pyramids on their heads. Well, I think
that if you actually put it into something like headphones,
because frequently headphones are what I put on whether or
not big secret here, you guys, whether or not I'm
(28:24):
actually listening to anything as my que to leave me
the heck alone. When I'm sitting in the office trying
to get worked. I do the same thing with earbuds.
Unfortunately they're not as visible so as effective. Yeah. Yeah,
I've got like big obnoxious green things, so like the
Princess Leah Bun style sort of stuff. So yeah, they Yes,
(28:44):
our previous company was very nice and getting us all large,
obnoxiously colored, very excellent headphones which I broke. Mine were
broken when I got him out of the box. I mine.
Mine were working until I broke them. So now I
have your Lauren, I want to apologize for all the
times I've tried to talk to you when you had
your your your heads on your heads, your heads on
(29:08):
my head. Yeah, you always had pertinent things to say
to me that they were always important. You. You were
never like, hey, look at this picture of my dog,
which is not what you sound like, by the way,
about going to be honest, Lauren sits across from me,
and I'm an extrovert, so it is necessary for her
to put up a barrier so that I don't consistently
(29:29):
bother her. But it's okay, Lauren, because I know how
you feel, because Josh Clark sits next to me. So anyway,
as I was saying, uh, one of the interesting questions
we have is Josh Clark is more likely to slurp
soup at you than talk to you. That's so not true.
You just don't hear like every day that he is
here and I am here. He's he Actually, this is
(29:51):
a little peek behind the curtain. His art is not
necessarily to say anything to me. It's to sit back
in his chair and stare directly into the side of
my head for minutes at a time if I let him,
until I turn and look at him, and then he
just kind of gives me a half smirk and then
(30:12):
turns back to his world in his strictly controlling game.
Is really good. He Well, you gotta remember he was
hired like just a few months after I was, so
he and him in with that. That stuff goes way back. Anyway,
That's enough of that. So one thing we thought we'd
turned the conversation too, is putting this this technology aside,
(30:34):
whether or not it ever becomes available to the general consumer.
Will we ever get to a point where it won't
matter because we will just have adapted to this world
of constant notifications and interruptions. Yeah, and brains are really plastic.
We have an amazing capacity as human people to adapt
to new situations. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, okay, So
(31:00):
here's the thing I would say, are we talking about
actually our our bodies evolving, like biological evolution changing our
brains because that I don't know. It seems to me
unless there is a selection pressure that is killing people
or preventing them from having children if they can't handle
(31:20):
I don't know. I don't know. It's so much of
an evolution thing as it is. Because keep in mind,
this is so complex. It's both nature and nurture that
we're talking about here, with the nature part being the experience.
Like if if you some pot yeah, yeah, I absolutely understand.
It's a combination. I mean, like, if you're talking about
changing what our brains are naturally capable of, I don't
(31:42):
know about that. I don't know about naturally capable of.
I think more of the brains are shaped simply through
the experience. So in other words, in other words, if
if you from the moment you are consuming media, this
is the way things work for you, then it's on
on an iPhone and from that moment, yeah, you get
(32:03):
constant interruptions, then it may be a very different experience
for you versus somebody who was alive before the web
was a thing and didn't have all these various interruptions
that could potentially distract someone from a task. Um, I
don't know that answer. It's probably too early to really say,
(32:25):
but we do know, like as of right now, that multitasking,
except for a very tiny percentage of the population, is
something that we're just not good at, not at all. Yeah,
said something something like two percent of the population is
the most recent number of supertaskers. Supertaskers, and if you
think you're probably you're probably extra bad. Yeah. The more
(32:49):
you think you're part of that two percent, the less
likely it's true. I imagine multitasking, Well, I guess what
this would be. It would be a specific case of
the Dunning Kruger effect, right, specifically for multitasking competent Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah.
So another adaptation we might see is just a shorter
attention span. Though this is a very difficult thing to really,
you know, nailed down. But according to the National Center
(33:11):
for Biotechnology Information, which is part of the U s
National Library of Medicine, our attention spans have been on
the decline for a while. Yeah, back in two thousand
it was twelve seconds, and what's eight point to five seconds?
Was seconds attention spans? What were we just talking about?
Is that what you're gonna ask? Alright, so short term
memory obviously also on the decline. Um according to the
(33:32):
National Center for Biotechnology Information, our attention spans are getting worse.
So we're having problems actually doing this focusing thing in
the first place, that after eight point to five seconds,
we have this issue with our attention spans. I thought
it was funny because I kept seeing figures like this
without any attribution to the source, and some of the numbers, yes,
(33:56):
some of the numbers were ridiculous, and it made me think, like,
I need to see if there actually is a reliable
source out there that that cites this, because all of
the articles I was seeing or info graphics, some of
them were miles wrong. Some of them said twelve minutes
attention span, not seconds, but minutes, and had dropped down
(34:17):
to five seconds. And that's not what the h and
I'm thinking, how is that possible? And this is a
side note about how you should always check for sources
and if you don't find any Google into, you do
until you do. And that's exactly what I was doing too.
I kept going back because all the sources I was
finding were listicals and things like that are or info
(34:38):
graphics and uh. When I was trying to track down
the data, I finally found it UM with information on
this this uh this government US government center. And even then,
we can't draw any firm conclusions about why attention spans
have been on the decline or even I don't even
know what metrics they used or how they went about
(35:00):
measuring it. I don't know enough to feel like this
number is meaningful without seeing the actual studies and how
it was measured. Um, you know, it's an interesting possible fact.
I found some other interesting research. There was a report
out of Ohio State University in twelve that indicated that
(35:24):
we still feel good about multitasking even when we're less
productive because of it. I I didn't read the full thing,
so so I can't tell you in what way we
find kicking in. Yeah, like like like, why we find
it emotionally fulfilling, but but apparently some significant number of
participants in their study do. My guests would be purely
(35:48):
a guess, But it's not that we find it emotionally fulfilling,
but that we find it it's like we we punched
the cloth, you know, we put our time in. Like
when you do some multitasking, you feel like, well, I've
earned some relaxing, which is kind of silly because if
you were to focus on single tasks for most of
us anyway, yeah, you would be finished way earlier. But
(36:12):
you don't judge the merits of your labors by what
you've objectively produced. You judge it by how much work.
It was harrowing it was from point A to point B, right,
And since we are more stressed out while we're multitasking,
we're like, man, I was so stressed out today. I
must have done some stuff. Right, I didn't get anything done,
but I sure felt like I was in trouble. Well,
(36:34):
I feel like we broke some new ground today. Guys, Um, well,
this was really interesting. And again it's one of those
things where you know, it's I don't think I ever
operated under the assumption that I was good at multitasking.
I don't think I ever felt like I was confident
or competent at that um so it's interesting to me
(36:55):
to think that people had really overestimated their ability to
do that sort of stuff. Let's end this episode with
some personal, anecdotally only supported tips, and I'm gonna have
one of mine in addition to what I said earlier. So,
if you want to concentrate on a book or something,
put all your notifications supplying devices in a different room.
(37:17):
The other one is close tabs. You've got your browser open,
you're trying to get some work done. I think I've
discovered that it's actually easier to get work done if
you close a bunch of those other tabs, even if
you're going to use them, just save them for later,
close them, Lauren. Any tips, Well, if if I'm really
(37:37):
trying to very much concentrate on something, I'll just put
my phone in airplane mode, even even if I like
need for security blanket type reasons to have it next
to me, because I don't know about you guys, but
I get a little bit itchy when I'm not in
personal contact with my cell phone. But but yeah, just
just put it in airplane mode, nothing will come through.
It's beautiful or akin to shutting down extra tab, turn
(38:00):
off your email, like close that program. Yeah, depending on
if you can get away with that, we sure for
for short periods of time. That the the the writer
Jane Epsenson, I think I'm saying that correctly. Yeah, who
who is a writer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
is currently working on a whole bunch of different projects,
has these, uh these these Twitter uh runs sprints, attention
(38:25):
sprints where she gets on Twitter and she's like, hey, guys,
I'm going to go on an attention sprint for an hour,
shut down all of the things, concentrate only on this
one task, uh and and encourages other people to do
it too. And I think that that's a fun, you know,
crowd crowdsource responsibility kind of way of going about good tips.
That's interesting. I mean, it depends on if people in
(38:45):
your workplace demand instant responses to email all the time.
If they do, you might want to try and figure
out a way that that doesn't dominate the culture of
your workplace, because it really is helpful if you can
batch your email. I say that as somebody who doesn't
do that most of the time. Yeah, well, again, those
notifications pop up and it's really hard to just you know,
(39:06):
not look at the corner of your screen to see
what the subject matter of that email is or or
from whom it arrived, because you know, there's certain names
that when they pop up, you're like, yeah, well, I mean,
we gotta figure out a time to have this meeting
where we're going to talk about what we're gonna do
at the meeting. Yeah, and we'll have that meeting about
how to have fewer meetings. What's my favorite meeting? My
(39:28):
My tip is if you really want to pay very
close attention to some form of entertainment, you should start
a podcast. And I'm a co host on it, and
we will come up with some ridiculous gimmick to make
that the central premise for the existence of that podcast.
And that will help because it really helped me watch
(39:50):
really terrible movies online. So uh, you know, it works.
I mean, anecdotally, I only have so many hours in
the day though, So first comfort served, we're big on
the anecdotes today. Yeah, well, we we already had our
podcast where we talked about the really rigorous scientific studies.
So now we can go anecdote city. All right, Well,
(40:12):
this was actually a lot of fun to talk about,
and we've got lots of ideas for future episodes. But
we always want to hear from you, guys, and we
want to hear about your experiences. Maybe you have tips
that you would like us to share on future podcasts
about ways to really concentrate and cut down these these
these distractions. Yeah, send them in, Jonathan, How can they
send them in? They can send us an email that
(40:33):
addresses FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or
drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook. At Twitter
we are FW thinking, and on Facebook just search fw thinking.
We'll pop right up and you can leave us a
message there and we will talk to you again really soon.
(40:55):
For more on this topic in the future of technology,
I'll visit forward Thinking dot Com Problems, brought to you
by Toyota. Let's go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, put your
head back in the clouds and shut your mouth. I'm
Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren vocle Bond. I'm Joe McCormick. Hi, Joe.
(00:24):
You know, I had something happened to me last week.
That's not the first time it's happened, and it's always
a brand new frustration every time. But I had a
couple of those work days. Sorry, you got an email
their job. Hold on, let me answer it for you now. No,
no, no no, no, hold on, there you go. You know,
(00:45):
I had, like I had several days last week where
I had a to do list of things I needed
to research and write, and you know, you all know
the kind of work we do around here, and I
was busy all day. But at the end of the day,
I realized I had crossed almost nothing off of my
to do list, and in fact, had added things to
(01:08):
my to do list. So to do list got longer,
a few, very few things were clicked off, and yet
you felt like your entire day was pretty much taken
up with work. Yeah, so how did that work? What happened? Well?
I realized looking back through my email that, oh, I
just spent most of the these days answering emails, reading emails,
(01:29):
answering emails, and responding to messages and notifications on our
social media accounts. So, in other words, every time you
would start to get to tackle one of the tests
on your to do list, something else would pop up
interrupt you, and you would take time away from that
task to attend to whatever that might be. Bingo. I'm
(01:50):
sure y'all have days like this too. Yeah, most days
honestly called week days. Yeah, it's great. You know, one
of the things that you can do once you're finally
done with work for the day is get your work done. Yes.
I frequently go home and get that research done that
I was meaning to do all day, but instead hatings
and answered some Twitter comments. If you've ever watched those
(02:12):
foward Thinking videos that are set in an office, and
you wonder, gosh, I wonder when he wrote those, the
answer is five am, the same day they were shot,
and they're shot at nine am. So that's it's true
for me too. Yeah. So, as it turns out, there's
some great things I love about the Internet, y'all. One
(02:32):
of the things, yeah, Well, for one thing, it employs me. So, uh,
don't look a gift towards in the mouth, that kind
of thing, right as a man, That's right. I'm a
made man on the internet, digital hit man. When I became,
you know, a gigabit capo, it was a special day.
(02:55):
All all my life, I wanted to be a wise guy. No, no, no,
there are great things about the Internet, and I will
tell you one of them. I have. I have so
I don't live in the same town where I went
to college. I went to college under grad school in
different towns, and I don't live in those towns. And
social media and the internet helps me keep up with
(03:16):
friends of mine that I very likely otherwise would not
have been able to keep up with. That's great. Uh.
I'm not entirely familiar with the concept of making friends
while in college, but I appreciate what you're saying. No,
that that is one of the things we love about
the Internet is that it allows us this connectivity to
(03:36):
friends and family, whether they are nearby or they move
far away. I mean, I've got friends who are working
in Korea right now, and I can keep up with
their lives on a regular basis. It's it's not as
infrequent as a letter every few months or a few
years for example. Yeah, in the old days, even if
you had wanted to keep up with them on a
(03:58):
day to day basis, it would have been physically possible
due to the speed of mail carriers. And you know,
existing you could all you could be living a day
to day basis, but you'd each be like a month behind. Right,
You're like, well, this is what happened on Tuesday of
last month to my friend. Uh. And we can also
use social graphs in social networks to discover connections that
(04:18):
we didn't know existed before. I even at even as
old as I am and as much as I've been
on social networking, it still amazes me when I noticed
that one of my friends from one circle and a
friend from a totally different circle know each other, because
to me, they don't exist in that same universe. Right,
you've got you've got this one. It's just all of
(04:40):
a sudden, You're like, what you guys had a map?
How is Superman hanging with thor when did that happen? Yeah? Yeah,
I keep promising myself that someday I'm going to stop
being surprised when I make a new friend on Facebook
and they're already friends with like eighty seven of my friends,
right right. Also, I've I've used that metric to kind
of decide whether not except friend requests. There was so
(05:02):
and so since you a friend request, you have one
friend in common, I ain't gonna happen. I mean, how
good is that friend? Am I? Right? Well? Yeah, I
mean that has to be a remarkably good friend for
me to accept that friend request. But no that we
can also just keep informed of important events and inform
other people of important events in our lives invite them
to stuff. Using this approach, you, you and we have
(05:24):
a support system that's very easy to tap into when
we need it. Uh. You can argue about whether or
not the support is as valuable as what you would
get if you were to have face to face encounters,
but it does matter that. You know, if you're feeling
like overwhelmed or upset, and you go onto a social
networking site and you make an honest statement, say, guys,
(05:46):
I I'm kind of in the in the weeds here,
can you help having a rough day? I either need
some suggestions or some kitten videos. Ya kitten videos. It's
like that's like number one prescribed solution to every problem.
I suggest that I have I keep my kitting videos
away from internet. Hit Man, You're on the list, Joe,
(06:07):
So uh At any rate, Um, those are some good
things about the Internet. We have this this immediacy, this
connection with so many people, and including people that we
don't have a real world connection to. I mean, I've
made friends through various forums and groups and even things
like just social networks like Facebook or Twitter. I've I've
(06:29):
or through chat rooms associated with other shows. I mean,
I made real friends that way, and that would not
have been possible without the Internet. But there's some other
things about the Internet that are more problematic, one of
those being that perhaps these interactions we have online aren't
(06:52):
as deep or meaningful in some way, or complex in
some way as were real world interactions. Although that really
kind of comes down to a lot of you know,
like it feels this way, so it must be this way. Yeah,
Getting a precise answer to that particular question is is difficult,
just because defining the quality of a given relationship is
(07:15):
really difficult. You've got all these factors to to contend
with you the type of relationship, if it's a romantic
or friendship or acquaintance, whether it's a static relationship, or
whether it's actively changing the demographics of the people in question,
their their age, their education, their sex, their gender, their
marital status, their income, the quality of their other relationships,
(07:35):
and and so on. So there have been a bunch
of scholarly surveys done, but the only sweeping conclusion that
they come to is that you get out of online
relationships what you put in to online relationships well, and
that people who are more comfortable with technology will have
higher quality online relationships, so it'll be more of more
(07:58):
of an analog to what the real world relation and
ship would be for those people. Whereas for people who
might lack that that level of savvy, they may feel
like the uh, the interactions they have are trivial or
not meaningful. Um is really interesting to me because if
you do the search on this and you're not looking
at the scholarly stuff, you see a lot of just
(08:18):
kind of armchair psychology. Yeah, like social media is destroying
our ability to have real world relationships. Think of the children,
how will the children possibly communication now? I will admit
that I like to use the internet to um to
skip certain mundane interactions, things like using Amazon to buy
(08:40):
stuff instead of going to a store. But that's really
more because I'm lazy and less that I want to
avoid real world interactions. UM. So there's that to be said.
And also the another downside to online communication is that,
like we said in our Tone Analyzer episode, sometimes it's
difficult to communicate nearly because we're limited in the level
(09:03):
of communication we can have with someone else. Yeah, even
if you're using as many smiley faces and uh little
icons of of martini glasses as you have to. Yeah. So,
of course, in the real world, we can have body language.
You can have your your the tone of your voice,
the pacing of what you're saying, so people know what
you're stressing versus not stressing. You know whether or not
(09:26):
you're you're making very rude gestures while you're saying something,
if you're making eye contact or not making All of
these things play into the communication we have with someone
else in the real world. Uh. In an online setting,
you lose a lot of that, So it can be
easy to send a message that can easily be misinterpreted. Um.
(09:47):
And someone might end up taking it the wrong way
and getting their feelings hurt or being confused by the message.
Um So dealing with that gets a little exhausting. But
the really big problem with all this online communication is
the one that Joe was talking about at the top
of the show, the fact that we now have all
these different channels through which communication can come to us,
(10:10):
that there are lots of potential ways that we can
be interrupted throughout the day, and we're inventing new ones
every single day. Not just not just new platforms like
new versions of Twitter or Facebook, but new ways that
those can annoy us, Like a device you wear on
your wrist or even your face that will and you know,
(10:32):
let you know, whatever physically move when you've got a message,
it will vibrate and thus get your attention and pull
it away from whatever it was you were doing in
the first place, to say, hey, Joe, Bob, just like
this barbecue joint, you should know about that. You know,
I want to take this a step further and and
just speak about an anecdotal experience. I don't have research
(10:54):
to back this up. And maybe you'll will say if
you agree, all right, I think that just having the
the devices through which notifications can be delivered present, even
if you are not currently getting notifications, can be a distraction.
So if I'm reading a book, I will get a
much better experience of reading that book if I put
(11:16):
my phone in my computer at the other end of
the house in a different room. What's a book. I
was just noticing this the other day. I was having
a wonderful experience reading a great book, and I realized,
you know, I'm so glad I don't have my laptop
sitting next to me. So, I mean, I fully agree.
(11:39):
I have a whole podcast I do with two other people.
It's not a how stuff works podcast, but it's a
podcast I do where one of the things we try
and do is watch movies with no distractions present because
we both well, we both we all three, I just
don't count Eric Sandy. Now, we all three agree that
we have seen our attention spans diminish over time, and
(12:03):
we often have distractions present when we're watching something at home,
like a laptops open, or our smartphone or tablet is nearby.
Sometimes all three, sometimes all three, and we know that
we're not paying full attention to the actual story. That's
unfolding on the screen. And therefore you can even have
a conversation about a movie you quote unquote saw and
(12:24):
have no memory of stuff that happened in that movie
because you weren't really paying attention. You don't you didn't
commit it to memory because you weren't really focusing on it.
Oh yeah, and that's not just anecdotal. Research shows that
we are genuinely bad at multitasking. Yes. Oh. One study
out of the University of Utah published indicated that, in fact,
the more confident participants were in their multitasking abilities, the
(12:47):
worst they were at multitasking. Here's the thing is that
I know I'm terrible at multitasking. Guess what, I'm terrible
at multi tasking. That's anecdotal. Another from Stanford in two
thousand nine showed that we perform worse on every task
we're doing when we multitask. And for a statistical example
(13:08):
of that, I turned to yet another study, this one
out of Carnegie Melon, also in two thousand nine, which
used m ri I to measure participants brain activity in
the parietal lobe, which is the one associated with spatial processing,
while they were steering a vehicle along a virtual road.
And so while the while the participants were concurrently listening
(13:30):
to sentences being read out loud, their spatial brain activity
decreased by thirty seven percent. That's not terrifying at all. So,
so that's at least one example in which we are
more than a third handicapped by trying to do more
than one thing at once. Yeah, and so this plays
into the the purpose why we even are doing the show,
(13:51):
Like we we wanted to talk about how all these
notifications and interruptions and demands and our attention can decrease
the quality of whatever task we're performing or attempting to
perform at that time. But we also wanted to talk
about how at least one group of researchers is trying
to decrease that effect on us, and they're doing it
through technology. Amazing technology. Yeah, so the answer to the
(14:16):
problem of technology having too many ways to get in
touch with us is more technology. Yes. Uh so again
they the study ends up or not the study, but
rather the proposal the approach that they're talking. Let me guess, Yeah,
every time you're about to try to multitask with different
(14:36):
technology devices, a robot on a like tank tread with
chainsaw bursts out of the wall, runs at you, says,
don't do that an excellent guests not. I think that
would be very very calming and non distracting. I think
that that would really help me get tied right back
into what I was doing in the first point. It's
actually a special pair of glasses you wear, and every
(14:58):
time you attempt to multitask, spikes embed into your temples
and then scramble right behind your eyeballs. No, that doesn't
happen either. In neither case does that happen for for
some reason that that the researchers it toughs University decided
to do eyeball impalement or chain sourbucks. Right, So we're
(15:18):
just throwing some extra ideas out there. If this other
version doesn't pan out, well tell me about propose. Okay.
So they started with that premise that the interruptions that
we experience in life, as Joe was mentioning at the
top of the episode, can really hurt productivity and they
increase our anxiety levels because we we have this increased
(15:38):
feel a feeling that we're never going to complete the
stuff we need to complete. And like Joe was saying,
sometimes we're not even able to identify why that's the
case in the moment. It's only after we reflect that
we realize, oh, I was doing I was wondering why
I was feeling so busy, but yet I wasn't getting
anything done. So this is you know that that contributes
to our anxiety, and they so, how can we decrease
(16:01):
that and increase our productivity and limited interruptions so that
we get notifications. But we only get the notifications when
our brain is ready to receive notifications, in other words,
when we're not trying to focus on some other task.
Which is kind of tricky, right, Like, how do you
tell your smartphone, hey, when I'm actually reading this research
(16:23):
about notifications, don't buzz in my pocket. Well, just plug
your smartphone straight into your brain through your and then
just have your smartphone say no, wait, he's busy. Folks
at home. I don't know if you've heard. Jonathan's gotten
like several notifications since we've been in here. Yeah, well
I'm a popular guy. What can I say? I have
not looked at them. I just keep my phone in
(16:46):
my pocket. But I was checking Facebook like four seconds ago.
I do see that I have a notification. I wouldn't
lie I have a notification on Facebook. I haven't looked
at yet, but that little number one and the notification
is bothering me. Um, so the paper show is judging us.
(17:07):
So no, no, I mean no, I'm looking at Twitter
right now. So we're all guilty of it. Guys, if
you're listening to this podcast and you're also have Facebook
or Twitter, open, shut that down, come on, show some respect,
laundry like a normal personast do something that doesn't require
any sort of concentration, so so melodious voices can wash
(17:30):
over you. The paper that the team published actually cited
a study by Bailey and Constant in which people had
to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, and the results are just
in line with the same studies that Lauren was mentioning earlier.
The participants reported higher levels of anxiety, they committed twice
as many errors, plus took twenty five percent longer to
(17:52):
complete a primary task than they would if they were
allowed uninterrupted time to work on a single task, if
they had down time to do this instead of being
bombarded by other tasks. So how does this technology work
that makes us, you know, sane by limiting the notifications
to times when we can handle them. Well, the first
(18:12):
thing they had to do was figure out how were
they going to measure brain activity to figure out when
we're focusing on something versus when we're done with a task,
because they had determined that the in between time for
tasks would be the ideal moment to send notifications because
you save them up and send them in yeah, and
then you're like, oh, I can handle this now, and
(18:32):
then when you're done you can move on to the
next task. Well, it seems like one option they have
would be E E G. Yeah, but those do have
a downside in that movement can create false data like
errors in the data, so positives. Yeah, so it may
be that if you're typing, you know, not even like
moving moving, not like necessarily doing you know, jumping jacks
(18:54):
or something. If you're typing, just the typing alone could
create enough movement to create false positive and then it
would it would not be able to set the threshold
for when you are actually focusing on a task versus
when you are kind of in a down mode. Okay,
so electron cephalography is out yep. So instead they decided
to look at functional near infrared spectroscopy the nurse. So
(19:20):
this is where you're going to think we're saying snarf
because it just sounds similar. So the nurse from now on,
we're we're all temporarily pinky from pinky in the brain.
That's right, Yeah, it's it's it's very similar to narf. Yeah.
So the technology uses infrared light to scan for brain activity,
and infrared infrared light can penetrate bone and other tissue,
(19:43):
including neural tissue, to a depth of three centimeters in
case you were wondering, because that's how this works. But
it's absorbed and scattered by hemoglobin, and hemoglobin's optical properties
depend upon whether or not it's oxygenated or deoxygenated. So
using two different wavelengths of for red light and measuring
with a detector which ones are coming back to that
(20:04):
sensor can tell you about the blood flow in the brain,
which in turn tells you about brain activity because I
would imagine that more blood flow equals more brain activity. Yes, specifically,
more oxygenated blood flow will tell you, hey, this person
is really concentrating because the blood flow indicates that they
need to think about something. Now, the paper points out
(20:25):
that this finnurse technology isn't ideal for all applications because
it takes several seconds for changes in blood flow to
actually reach the brain. So you when you start to
concentrate on a task, it takes a couple of seconds
for the blood flow to uh to accommodate that, and
you wouldn't be able to use the same technology as
(20:47):
a means of controlling like a robot necessarily, at least
not not without lag, because there it would take a
couple of seconds before it detected that increase of blood
flow for it to be able to send a command,
and that would get rustrating. We've all experienced lag in
some way. That's never fun. It's the worst usually, especially
if you're online and you're trying to play a game
(21:08):
of Halo and you know you're you're already handicapped by
being in our cases Jonathan or Laura, Yeah, where we
have we have the handicap of being us. And then
you know, you get a sniper gun and you line
up on somebody and you're sure they're right in front
of you, but in truth, they've already moved four feet
to the left because you're lagging. Not fun, I mean,
(21:28):
lagging is having a delay is worse than having nothing. Yeah,
like it. It's more frustrating if your computer continues to
work but it's very slow, then if it just crashes
and stuff. Absolutely true, So finners would not be good
for that. But finnurs is fine for monitoring brain states,
general brain states because it doesn't need to have that
(21:49):
immediacy for it to detect when you are focusing versus
when you have completed something. Um. Also, it's not sensitive
to movement, as e G. Technology can be. So studies
have shown that the sensors can be used on people
who are engaged in activities that require a lot of movement,
including things like jogging, with quote only slightly higher error
rates than a traditional clinical device end quote. So uh,
(22:12):
it's it's ideal for that kind of of application. And
you could create such a device and attach it to
something else, like a wearable like specifically like Google glass,
because obviously you have to wear it on your head
for it to detect neural activity because that's where it happens.
So you would need to put some sort of wearable
(22:34):
device on your head to be able to detect this
blood flow. So I'm sorry, Jonathan, you're like blowing my
elbow mind. I'm sorry, sorry, I can tell you where
I keep my brain, at least according to my wife,
but it's the family podcast. So um, at any rate,
you would probably attach to this to something like Google Glass,
which would give you those notifications and and that's a
great example anyway, because it's got a screen that's right there, like,
(22:56):
it's just incredibly accessible to get those interruptions that would
cause you some anxiety and stress and decrease your productivity.
So uh. You They then created software, because that's the
hardware side, to do the detection, but now they have
to create the software that actually interprets the data that's
collected by the device. And the software they call filter
(23:18):
p h y l t e R. So Filter takes
the the nurse data and then tries to interpret whether
or not that means you are concentrating on a task
or you are not concentrating. So uh. In general, the
strategy is filter will restrict notifications of low importance from
(23:41):
going to you immediately and hold back until your brain
activity indicates you are no longer focusing. Then it releases
those notifications. So if you're really focusing on studying, and
then you take a break and like, all right, I
need to rest. That's when those less important notifications would
come to you. Yeah, and since not all of our
brains are actually the same, uh, that they came up
(24:02):
with a way to account for that too. Right. It
might be that if I'm focusing really hard, I have
a certain amount of blood flow in my brain that
is equivalent to Lauren just taking it easy, because my
ability to focus is so pathetic that it's like Lauren
at rest. But you know, so if we're both using
the same device, it wouldn't know that I was focusing
and be like, oh, Jonathan's just taking it easy. Here's
(24:24):
a whole bunch of notifications. So what we need is uh,
the learning algorithm on the back end to say, all right,
this is what it looks like when Jonathan is concentrating
versus this is what it looks like when Lauren is concentrating,
and it looks you know, you have to train it,
just like with any learning algorithm. We've talked about this
so much on the in past Forward Thinking podcasts, So, uh,
(24:45):
the way they would train this is you would do
simulations of stuff that would require you to focus, uh,
and simulations of stuff that would be like low workload
moments when you aren't required to really focus your attention,
and the learning algorithm starts to pick up on those patterns,
and then it can extrapolate from the data in real
(25:07):
world situations whether or not you're focusing with pretty good
degree of accuracy once it's gone through that training. So
it also relies on another thing, and it relies on
the notifications themselves having some sort of meta data attached
to them to let the actual software no which notifications
are really important, which ones are kind of important but
(25:29):
can wait, and which ones are not important and can
be archived essentially, And I assume that you can set
these filters yourself, like say, uh, always let through calls
from my wife. I think it probably would depend upon
specifically the platform or the device that this is attached to.
I think exactly what you're saying, because you know, we've
got a lot of platforms like Gmail that allows us
to do this, right, It already automatically sorts things into well,
(25:53):
this goes into your priority inbox, this goes into your
social inbox, this goes into promotions inbox, and you can
set up other filters. I'm sure a lot of that
is uh, possible for users to indicate, and the idea
being that you would anything that has a high importance,
like an always send level of importance means that it
will come to you even if it's an interruption, which
(26:14):
is important for certain events like if someone needs to
get in touch with you because of an emergency, then
obviously you want that notification to come through. Uh. Then
there's the the never interrupt messages, that never send messages.
Those would just go to an archive where you could
go seek it out on purpose, like if I logged
into my Gmail account to look at my mail, then
(26:36):
I could see the ones that were there, but they
wouldn't interrupt me. And then there would be the adaptive
ones that would be withheld until you reach those points
of the day where you're not focusing on a task,
and that's when the adaptive ones would get sent through.
So not very different from the way we do things now.
So it's a pretty interesting approach to solving this problem
(26:58):
of let's let's just let's to get rid of notifications.
Let's just have a way to save the notifications for
the times when we're able to deal with them, as
opposed to just flooding us all throughout the day. I
think that's a pretty neat approach, a pretty neat solution,
and we should specify that this is not a product
(27:18):
that is like ready for consumer purchase yet. This is
a concept design. Yeah, it's it's essentially something that's being developed.
Whether it will ever become a product that you can
go out and purchase, I don't know. For one, thing
requires you wear something on your head so that puts
infrared waves into your brain. Yeah, steps of three centimeters.
I mean, it's one of those deals where like, is
(27:41):
it going to be built into a product in such
a way that people won't feel self conscious about wearing
it when they are working. I suppose if you are
maybe studying in a dorm room and you have this
thing on, then that's one thing. But if you're in
an office like we are, we're trying to get research done. Uh,
(28:02):
can you imagine all the photos that come out the
videos that are being done where like people are people
would be watching a video from how stuff works where
the office is in the background. I'm wondering why everyone's
wearing these tinfoil pyramids on their heads. Well, I think
that if you actually put it into something like headphones,
because frequently headphones are what I put on whether or
not big secret here, you guys, whether or not I'm
(28:24):
actually listening to anything as my que to leave me
the heck alone. When I'm sitting in the office trying
to get worked. I do the same thing with earbuds.
Unfortunately they're not as visible so as effective. Yeah. Yeah,
I've got like big obnoxious green things, so like the
Princess Leah Bun style sort of stuff. So yeah, they Yes,
(28:44):
our previous company was very nice and getting us all large,
obnoxiously colored, very excellent headphones which I broke. Mine were
broken when I got him out of the box. I mine.
Mine were working until I broke them. So now I
have your Lauren, I want to apologize for all the
times I've tried to talk to you when you had
your your your heads on your heads, your heads on
(29:08):
my head. Yeah, you always had pertinent things to say
to me that they were always important. You. You were
never like, hey, look at this picture of my dog,
which is not what you sound like, by the way,
about going to be honest, Lauren sits across from me,
and I'm an extrovert, so it is necessary for her
to put up a barrier so that I don't consistently
(29:29):
bother her. But it's okay, Lauren, because I know how
you feel, because Josh Clark sits next to me. So anyway,
as I was saying, uh, one of the interesting questions
we have is Josh Clark is more likely to slurp
soup at you than talk to you. That's so not true.
You just don't hear like every day that he is
here and I am here. He's he Actually, this is
(29:51):
a little peek behind the curtain. His art is not
necessarily to say anything to me. It's to sit back
in his chair and stare directly into the side of
my head for minutes at a time if I let him,
until I turn and look at him, and then he
just kind of gives me a half smirk and then
(30:12):
turns back to his world in his strictly controlling game.
Is really good. He Well, you gotta remember he was
hired like just a few months after I was, so
he and him in with that. That stuff goes way back. Anyway,
That's enough of that. So one thing we thought we'd
turned the conversation too, is putting this this technology aside,
(30:34):
whether or not it ever becomes available to the general consumer.
Will we ever get to a point where it won't
matter because we will just have adapted to this world
of constant notifications and interruptions. Yeah, and brains are really plastic.
We have an amazing capacity as human people to adapt
to new situations. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, okay, So
(31:00):
here's the thing I would say, are we talking about
actually our our bodies evolving, like biological evolution changing our
brains because that I don't know. It seems to me
unless there is a selection pressure that is killing people
or preventing them from having children if they can't handle
(31:20):
I don't know. I don't know. It's so much of
an evolution thing as it is. Because keep in mind,
this is so complex. It's both nature and nurture that
we're talking about here, with the nature part being the experience.
Like if if you some pot yeah, yeah, I absolutely understand.
It's a combination. I mean, like, if you're talking about
changing what our brains are naturally capable of, I don't
(31:42):
know about that. I don't know about naturally capable of.
I think more of the brains are shaped simply through
the experience. So in other words, in other words, if
if you from the moment you are consuming media, this
is the way things work for you, then it's on
on an iPhone and from that moment, yeah, you get
(32:03):
constant interruptions, then it may be a very different experience
for you versus somebody who was alive before the web
was a thing and didn't have all these various interruptions
that could potentially distract someone from a task. Um, I
don't know that answer. It's probably too early to really say,
(32:25):
but we do know, like as of right now, that multitasking,
except for a very tiny percentage of the population, is
something that we're just not good at, not at all. Yeah,
said something something like two percent of the population is
the most recent number of supertaskers. Supertaskers, and if you
think you're probably you're probably extra bad. Yeah. The more
(32:49):
you think you're part of that two percent, the less
likely it's true. I imagine multitasking, Well, I guess what
this would be. It would be a specific case of
the Dunning Kruger effect, right, specifically for multitasking competent Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah.
So another adaptation we might see is just a shorter
attention span. Though this is a very difficult thing to really,
you know, nailed down. But according to the National Center
(33:11):
for Biotechnology Information, which is part of the U s
National Library of Medicine, our attention spans have been on
the decline for a while. Yeah, back in two thousand
it was twelve seconds, and what's eight point to five seconds?
Was seconds attention spans? What were we just talking about?
Is that what you're gonna ask? Alright, so short term
memory obviously also on the decline. Um according to the
(33:32):
National Center for Biotechnology Information, our attention spans are getting worse.
So we're having problems actually doing this focusing thing in
the first place, that after eight point to five seconds,
we have this issue with our attention spans. I thought
it was funny because I kept seeing figures like this
without any attribution to the source, and some of the numbers, yes,
(33:56):
some of the numbers were ridiculous, and it made me think, like,
I need to see if there actually is a reliable
source out there that that cites this, because all of
the articles I was seeing or info graphics, some of
them were miles wrong. Some of them said twelve minutes
attention span, not seconds, but minutes, and had dropped down
(34:17):
to five seconds. And that's not what the h and
I'm thinking, how is that possible? And this is a
side note about how you should always check for sources
and if you don't find any Google into, you do
until you do. And that's exactly what I was doing too.
I kept going back because all the sources I was
finding were listicals and things like that are or info
(34:38):
graphics and uh. When I was trying to track down
the data, I finally found it UM with information on
this this uh this government US government center. And even then,
we can't draw any firm conclusions about why attention spans
have been on the decline or even I don't even
know what metrics they used or how they went about
(35:00):
measuring it. I don't know enough to feel like this
number is meaningful without seeing the actual studies and how
it was measured. Um, you know, it's an interesting possible fact.
I found some other interesting research. There was a report
out of Ohio State University in twelve that indicated that
(35:24):
we still feel good about multitasking even when we're less
productive because of it. I I didn't read the full thing,
so so I can't tell you in what way we
find kicking in. Yeah, like like like, why we find
it emotionally fulfilling, but but apparently some significant number of
participants in their study do. My guests would be purely
(35:48):
a guess, But it's not that we find it emotionally fulfilling,
but that we find it it's like we we punched
the cloth, you know, we put our time in. Like
when you do some multitasking, you feel like, well, I've
earned some relaxing, which is kind of silly because if
you were to focus on single tasks for most of
us anyway, yeah, you would be finished way earlier. But
(36:12):
you don't judge the merits of your labors by what
you've objectively produced. You judge it by how much work.
It was harrowing it was from point A to point B, right,
And since we are more stressed out while we're multitasking,
we're like, man, I was so stressed out today. I
must have done some stuff. Right, I didn't get anything done,
but I sure felt like I was in trouble. Well,
(36:34):
I feel like we broke some new ground today. Guys, Um, well,
this was really interesting. And again it's one of those
things where you know, it's I don't think I ever
operated under the assumption that I was good at multitasking.
I don't think I ever felt like I was confident
or competent at that um so it's interesting to me
(36:55):
to think that people had really overestimated their ability to
do that sort of stuff. Let's end this episode with
some personal, anecdotally only supported tips, and I'm gonna have
one of mine in addition to what I said earlier. So,
if you want to concentrate on a book or something,
put all your notifications supplying devices in a different room.
(37:17):
The other one is close tabs. You've got your browser open,
you're trying to get some work done. I think I've
discovered that it's actually easier to get work done if
you close a bunch of those other tabs, even if
you're going to use them, just save them for later,
close them, Lauren. Any tips, Well, if if I'm really
(37:37):
trying to very much concentrate on something, I'll just put
my phone in airplane mode, even even if I like
need for security blanket type reasons to have it next
to me, because I don't know about you guys, but
I get a little bit itchy when I'm not in
personal contact with my cell phone. But but yeah, just
just put it in airplane mode, nothing will come through.
It's beautiful or akin to shutting down extra tab, turn
(38:00):
off your email, like close that program. Yeah, depending on
if you can get away with that, we sure for
for short periods of time. That the the the writer
Jane Epsenson, I think I'm saying that correctly. Yeah, who
who is a writer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
is currently working on a whole bunch of different projects,
has these, uh these these Twitter uh runs sprints, attention
(38:25):
sprints where she gets on Twitter and she's like, hey, guys,
I'm going to go on an attention sprint for an hour,
shut down all of the things, concentrate only on this
one task, uh and and encourages other people to do
it too. And I think that that's a fun, you know,
crowd crowdsource responsibility kind of way of going about good tips.
That's interesting. I mean, it depends on if people in
(38:45):
your workplace demand instant responses to email all the time.
If they do, you might want to try and figure
out a way that that doesn't dominate the culture of
your workplace, because it really is helpful if you can
batch your email. I say that as somebody who doesn't
do that most of the time. Yeah, well, again, those
notifications pop up and it's really hard to just you know,
(39:06):
not look at the corner of your screen to see
what the subject matter of that email is or or
from whom it arrived, because you know, there's certain names
that when they pop up, you're like, yeah, well, I mean,
we gotta figure out a time to have this meeting
where we're going to talk about what we're gonna do
at the meeting. Yeah, and we'll have that meeting about
how to have fewer meetings. What's my favorite meeting? My
(39:28):
My tip is if you really want to pay very
close attention to some form of entertainment, you should start
a podcast. And I'm a co host on it, and
we will come up with some ridiculous gimmick to make
that the central premise for the existence of that podcast.
And that will help because it really helped me watch
(39:50):
really terrible movies online. So uh, you know, it works.
I mean, anecdotally, I only have so many hours in
the day though, So first comfort served, we're big on
the anecdotes today. Yeah, well, we we already had our
podcast where we talked about the really rigorous scientific studies.
So now we can go anecdote city. All right, Well,
(40:12):
this was actually a lot of fun to talk about,
and we've got lots of ideas for future episodes. But
we always want to hear from you, guys, and we
want to hear about your experiences. Maybe you have tips
that you would like us to share on future podcasts
about ways to really concentrate and cut down these these
these distractions. Yeah, send them in, Jonathan, How can they
send them in? They can send us an email that
(40:33):
addresses FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or
drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook. At Twitter
we are FW thinking, and on Facebook just search fw thinking.
We'll pop right up and you can leave us a
message there and we will talk to you again really soon.
(40:55):
For more on this topic in the future of technology,
I'll visit forward Thinking dot Com Problems, brought to you
by Toyota. Let's go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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