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My son and the iPhone
were born three weeks apart
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in June 2007.
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So while those early adopters
were lined up outside
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waiting to get their hands
on this amazing new gadget,
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I was stuck at home
with my hands full
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of something else
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that was sending out
constant notifications:
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a miserable, colicky baby
who would only sleep
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in a moving stroller
with complete silence.
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I literally was walking
10 to 15 miles a day,
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and the baby weight came off.
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That part was great.
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But man, was I bored.
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Before motherhood,
I had been a journalist
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who rushed off when the Concorde crashed.
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I was one of
the first people into Belgrade
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when there was a revolution in Serbia.
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Now, I was exhausted.
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This walking went on for weeks.
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It was only until about three months in
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that something shifted though.
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As I pounded the pavement,
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my mind started to wander too,
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and I began imagining what I would do
when I finally did sleep again.
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So the colic did fade,
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and I finally got an iPhone,
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and I put all those hours
of wandering into action.
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I created my dream job
hosting a public radio show.
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So there was no more
rushing off to war zones,
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but thanks to my new smartphone,
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I could be a mother and a journalist.
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I could be on the playground
and on Twitter at the same time.
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Yeah, well, when I thought that,
when the technology came in and took over,
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that is when I hit a wall.
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So I want you to picture this.
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You host a podcast,
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and you have to prove that the investment
of precious public radio dollars in you
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is worth it.
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My goal was to increase my audience size
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tenfold.
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So one day, I sat down to brainstorm,
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as you do,
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and I came up barren.
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And this was different
than writer's block, right?
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It wasn't like there was something there
waiting to be unearthed.
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There was just nothing.
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And so I started to think back.
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Like, when was the last time
I actually had a good idea?
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Yeah, it was when I was
pushing that damn stroller.
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Now, all the cracks in my day
were filled with phone time.
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I checked the headlines
while I waited for my latte.
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I updated my calendar
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while I was sitting on the couch.
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Texting turned every spare moment
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into a chance to show to my coworkers
and my dear husband
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what a responsive person I was,
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or at least it was a chance to find
another perfect couch
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for my page on Pinterest.
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I realized that I was never bored,
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and anyway, don't only
boring people get bored?
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But then I started to wonder,
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what actually happens to us
when we get bored?
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Or more importantly, what happens to us
if we never get bored?
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And what could happen
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if we got rid of
this human emotion entirely?
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I started talking to neuroscientists
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and cognitive psychologists,
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and what they told me was fascinating.
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It turns out that when you get bored,
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you ignite a network in your brain
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called the default mode.
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So our body, it goes on autopilot
while we're folding the laundry
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or we're walking to work, but actually
that is when our brain gets really busy.
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Here's boredom researcher
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Dr. Sandy Mann.
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(Audio) Dr. Sandy Mann:
Once you start daydreaming
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and allow your mind to really wander,
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you start thinking a little bit
beyond the conscious,
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a little bit into the subconscious,
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which allows sort of different
connections to take place.
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It's really awesome, actually.
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Manoush Zomorodi: Totally awesome, right?
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So this is my brain in an FMRI,
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and I learned that in the default mode,
that is when we connect disparate ideas,
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we solve some of our
most nagging problems,
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and we do something called
autobiographical planning.
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This is when we look back at our lives,
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we take note of the big moments,
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we create a personal narrative,
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and then we set goals
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and we figure out what steps
we need to take to reach them.
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But now we chill out on the couch
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also while updating a Google Doc
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or replying to email.
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We call it getting shit done,
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but here's what neuroscientist
Dr. Daniel Leviton says
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we're actually doing.
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(Audio) Dr. Daniel Leviton: Every time
you shift your attention
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from one thing to another,
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the brain has to engage
a neurochemical switch
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that uses up nutrients in the brain
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to accomplish that.
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So if you're attempting to multitask,
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you know, doing four
or five things at once,
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you're not actually doing
four or five things at once
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because the brain doesn't work that way.
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Instead you're rapidly shifting
from one thing to the next,
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depleting neural resources as you go.
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(Audio) MZ: So switch, switch, switch,
you're using glucose, glucose, glucose.
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(Audio) DL: Exactly right,
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and we have a limited
supply of that stuff.
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MZ: So a decade ago, we shifted
our attention at work
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every three minutes.
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Now we do it every 45 seconds,
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and we do it all day long.
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The average person checks email
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74 times a day
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and switches tasks on their computer
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566 times a day.
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I discovered all this talking
to professor of informatics
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Dr. Gloria Mark.
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(Audio) Dr. Gloria Mark: So we find
that when people are stressed,
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they tend to shift
their attention more rapidly.
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We also found, strangely enough,
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we find that the shorter amount of sleep
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that a person gets,
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the more likely they are
to check Facebook.
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So we're in this vicious, habitual cycle.
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MZ: But could this cycle be broken?
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What would happen
if we broke this vicious cycle?
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Maybe my listeners could help me find out.
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What if we reclaimed
those cracks in our day?
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Could it help us jumpstart our creativity?
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We called the project Bored and Brilliant,
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and I expected, you know,.
a couple hundred people to play along,
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but thousands of people
started signing up,
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and they told me the reason
they were doing it
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was because they were worried
that their relationship with their phone
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had grown kind of codependent,
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shall we say.
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(Audio) Man: The relationship between
a baby and its teddy bear
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or a baby and its fakey
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or a baby that wants its mother's cradle
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when it's done with being
held by a stranger,
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that's the relationship
between me and my phone.
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(Audio) Woman: I think
of my phone like a power tool:
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extremely useful but dangerous
if I'm not handling it properly.
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(Audio) Woman: If I don't
pay close attention,
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I'll suddenly realize that I've lost
an hour of time
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doing something totally mindless.
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MZ: Okay, but to really measure
any improvement,
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we needed data, right?
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Because that's what we do these days.
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So we partnered with some apps
that would measure how much time
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we were spending every day on our phone,
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and if you're thinking it's ironic
that I asked people to download
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another app so that they would spend
less time on their phones,
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yeah, but you gotta meet people
where they are.
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Okay.
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So before challenge week,
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we were averaging two hours
a day on our phones
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and 60 pickups,
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you know, like, a quick check,
did I get a new email?
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Here's what Tina, a student
at Bard College,
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discovered about herself.
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(Audio) Tina: So far, I've been spending
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between 150 and 200 minutes
on my phone per day,
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and I've been picking up my phone
70 to a hundred times per day.
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And it's really concerning,
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because that's so much time
that I could have spent
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doing something more productive,
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more creative,
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more towards myself,
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because when I'm on my phone,
I'm not doing anything important.
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MZ: Okay, so like Tina, people
were starting to observe
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their own behavior.
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They were getting ready
for challenge week.
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And that Monday,
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they started to wake up
to instructions in their inbox,
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an experiment to try.
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Okay, day one:
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put it in your pocket.
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Take that phone out of your hand.
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See if you can eliminate the reflex
to check it all day long,
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just for a day.
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And if this sounds easy,
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you haven't tried it.
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Here's listener Amanda Itzko.
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(Audio) Amanda Itzko: I am
absolutely itching.
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I feel a little bit crazy,
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because I have noticed
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that I pick up my phone
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when I'm just walking
from one room to another,
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getting on the elevator,
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and even, and this is the part
that I am really embarrassed
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to actually say out loud,
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in the car.
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MZ: Yikes.
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Yeah, well, but as Amanda learned,
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this itching feeling
is not actually her fault.
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That is exactly the behavior
that the technology
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is built to trigger.
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(Laughter)
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I mean, right?
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Here's former Google designer
Tristan Harris.
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(Audio) Tristan Harris: If I'm Facebook
or I'm Netflix or I'm Snapchat,
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I have literally a thousand engineers
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whose job is to get
more attention from you.
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I'm very good at this,
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and I don't want you to ever stop.
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And you know, the CEO
of Netflix recently said
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our biggest competitors
are Facebook, YouTube, and sleep.
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I mean, so there's a million
places to spend your attention,
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but there's a war going on to get it.
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MZ: I mean, you know the feeling,
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that amazing episode of Transparent ends,
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and then the next one starts playing
so you're like, eh,
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okay fine, I'll just stay up and watch it.
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Or the LinkedIn progress bar
that says you are this close
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to having the perfect profile,
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so you add, like, a little
more personal information.
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As one UX designer told me,
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the only people who refer
to their customers as users
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are drug dealers and technologists.
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(Applause)
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And users, as we know,
are worth a lot of money.
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Here's former Facebook
product manager and author
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Antonio Garcia Martinez.
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(Audio) Antonio Garcia Martinez:
You know, the saying is,
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if any product is free
then you're the product, which is true,
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and so your attention is the product.
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But what is your attention worth?
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And that's why literally
every time you load a page,
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not just on Facebook or any app,
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there's an auction being held instantly,
billions of times a day,
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for exactly how much
that one ad impression cost.
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MZ: Okay, by the way, the average person
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will spend two years
of their life on Facebook.
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So back to challenge week.
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Immediately, we saw
some creativity kick in.
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Here's New Yorker Lisa Alpert.
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(Audio) Lisa Alpert: I was bored, I guess.
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So I suddenly looked at the stairway
that went up to the top of the station,
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and I thought, you know,
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I'd just come down that stairway,
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but I could go back up
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and then come back down
and get a little cardio.
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So I did,
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and then I had a little more time,
so I did it again, and I did it again,
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and I did it 10 times.
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And I had a complete cardio workout.
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I got on that R Train feeling
kind of exhausted,
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but, like, wow,
that had never occurred to me.
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How is that possible?
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(Laughter)
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MZ: So creativity, I learned, means
different things to different people,
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but everyone found day three's
challenge the hardest.
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It was called "delete that app."
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Take that app, you know the one,
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that one that always gets you,
it sucks you in,
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take it off your phone,
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even if just for the day.
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I deleted the game "Two Dots"
and nearly cried.
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Yeah, Two Dots players
know what I'm talking about.
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But my misery had good company.
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(Audio) Man: This is Liam in Los Angeles,
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and I deleted Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, and Vine
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from my phone in one fell swoop,
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and it was kind of an embarrassingly
emotional experience at first.
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It felt weirdly lonely
to look at the lockscreen
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with no new notifications on it,
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but I really liked deciding for myself
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when to think about or access
my social networks,
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not giving my phone the power
to decide that for me.
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So thank you.
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(Audio) Woman: Deleting
the Twitter app was very sad,
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and I feel I may be, over the last year
when I've been on Twitter
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have developed an addiction to it,
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and this Bored and Brilliant challenge
has really made me realize it.
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After a brief period of really horrible
withdrawal feeling like
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lack of caffeine headache,
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I now feel lovely.
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I had a lovely dinner with my family,
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and I hope to continue
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this structured use
of these powerful tools.
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(Audio) Woman: I don't have
that guilty gut feeling
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I'll have when I know
I'm wasting time on my phone.
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Maybe I'll have to start giving myself
little challenges and reminders
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like this every morning.
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MZ: I mean, yes,
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this was progress.
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I could not wait to see
what the numbers said
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at the end of that week.
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But when the data came in,
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it turned out that we had cut down,
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on average,
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just six minutes,
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from 120 minutes a day on our phones
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to 114.
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Yeah, whoop-dee-do.
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So I went back to the scientists
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feeling kind of low,
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and they just laughed at me,
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and they said, you know,
changing people's behavior
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in such a short time period
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was ridiculously ambitious,
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and actually what you've achieved
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is far beyond what we thought possible,
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because more important than the numbers
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were the people's stories.
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They felt empowered.
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Their phones had been transformed
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from taskmasters
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back into tools.
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And actually, I found what
the young people said most intriguing.
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Some of them told me
that they didn't recognize
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some of the emotions
that they felt during challenge week,
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because if you think about it,
if you have never known life
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without connectivity,
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you may never have experienced boredom,
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and there could be consequences.
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Researchers as USC have found,
they're studying teenagers
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who are on social media
while they're talking to their friends
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or they're doing homework,
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and two years down the road,
they are less creative and imaginative
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about their own personal futures
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and about solving societal problems
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like violence in their neighborhoods.
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And we really need this next generation
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to be able to focus
on some big problems:
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climate change, economic disparity,
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massive cultural differences.
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No wonder CEOs in an IBM survey
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identified creativity as the
number one leadership competency.
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Okay, here's the good news, though.
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In the end, 20,000 people
did Bored and Brilliant that week.
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Ninety percent cut down on their minutes.
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Seventy percent got more time to think.
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People told me that they slept better.
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They felt happier.
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My favorite note was from a guy
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who said he felt like he was waking up
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from a mental hibernation.
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Some personal data and some neuroscience
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gave us permission to be offline
a little bit more,
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and a little bit of boredom
gave us some clarity
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and helped some of us set some goals.
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I mean, maybe constant connectivity
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won't be cool in a couple of years.
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But meanwhile, teaching people,
especially kids,
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how to use technology
to improve their lives
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and to self-regulate
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needs to be part of digital literacy.
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So the next time you go
to check your phone,
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remember that if you don't decide
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how you're going to use the technology,
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the platforms will decide for you.
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And ask yourself,
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what am I really looking for?
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Because it's to check email, that's fine.
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Do it and be done.
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But if it's to distract yourself
from doing the hard work
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that comes with deeper thinking,
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take a break,
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stare out the window,
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and know that by doing nothing
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you are actually being
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your most productive and creative self.
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It might feel weird
and uncomfortable at first,
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but boredom truly can lead to brilliance.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)