NASHVILLE — Put down your phone! Unless you’re reading this on your phone. In that case, please keep reading. Keep reading until the end of the … oh, look, there’s a squirrel!
Consultant Curt Steinhorst told members of the Service Round Table meeting here as part of Comfortech 2014 that we are all so distracted that we’re getting less and less done. Steinhorst began with a story about going in to the doctor’s for his pregnant wife’s ultrasound and there was a sign asking for no cell phone usage. At one of life’s more significant events, seeing one’s unborn child, we need to be reminded to put down our phones.
The title of Steinhorst’s presentation was how to get more done despite the ADD environment at the typical contracting company.
We have reached a state of technology, he said, where we are absorbing 300% more information than the average person did in the 1960s, but it has no correlation to how well we do our jobs. All this information does is limit how much we can transfer into long-term memory, Steinhorst said. Our ability to meet the demands of the world has not kept up because we no longer have the capacity.
The problem, Steinhorst said, is that we see our attention as infinitely divisible, but that’s not how it works; we can’t focus on two things at the same time. And yet businesses are all constantly trying to grab our attention so we’re now living in a culture of constant distraction or, conversely, constant partial attention.
Most people work a mere three minutes before they get distracted and 60% of them are self-interruptions because of digital media, Steinhorst told the SRT members. The consequences are serious. We’re not doing the things we need to do to be successful. We’re looking at our phones during the most important moments of our lives.
Although we have the perception that we’re accomplishing more, we’re really slower because we lose 40% of the time we switch. We have to reorient. Where were we? What was this author saying? Was I agreeing with him or not? We’re reorienting as much as three hours a day, Steinhorst said, lowering our quality of work. It’s like pulling an all-nighter as a way to get work done. More importantly, we lose meaning, why what we are doing matters and is important.
Don’t get him wrong, Steinhorst said, he’s not absolutely anti-technology because it’s a powerful tool, but at the same time he doesn’t want to be the type of person who needs a sign telling him to put his phone down. Sixty percent of people, Steinhorst maintained, spend more time on digital media than with their partner.
As humans, we are wired to be distracted. We seek out new and novel stimulus. We are hunter-gatherers.
Steinhorst centered his techniques to be less distracted around four Es: energy, environment, experience and emotions.
It takes energy to be focused. It’s easier to be distracted for a reason. When there’s a lion in play, we need to pay attention to new and novel stimuli.
We have to prioritize so that we use our energy in the morning and do easy and distracting tasks such as looking at email in the afternoon.
If your environment distracts you with phone calls and emails, you can use tech to combat tech. There’s a program called Freedom that will turn off the Internet for a predetermined period. A phone app called Self Control blocks everything coming in on your phone except for calls coming for a select few phone numbers.
The experience component is all about habit formation. People too often let email be the center of their universe when it should be their calendar. If the calendar is the first thing that pops up, then those tasks will take priority.
You have to create barriers to entry or else you’ll react to everything. The average teenager sends 4,000 texts a month because she reacts to everything. If you create firm barriers, then people will only communicate with you when the issue is important.
The cliché about people being creatures of habit is profoundly true, he said, and that can make it either easier or more difficult to focus. For example, if you go back to technology, you’ll just want to go back to it more and more and more. Emotions play a part. Neuroplasticity creates a link between reading your email and dopamine. It’s a habit that can be broken.
First, notice that you’re doing it and refocus. Notice when you drift back to your phone and refocus on things that will provide true long-term pleasure, such as your spouse and children. Overcome the choice to be distracted.
Consciously be the proper you in the proper place, rather than being at home on the couch and checking work email, or at work texting your family, or in the bathroom playing Candy Crush.
Living in a state of partial attention hurts everyone, Steinhorst pointed out, because a person with the always-on-never-off mentality also pays partial attention to customers too. Steinhorst and his family have a rule that there are no phones from 7:00-9:00 PM so that being at home is about being at home.
Create contemplative space in your life to connect emotionally with your family and find meaning in your work.