WEBVTT

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So a few years ago I heard
and interesting rumor.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Apparently, the head
of a large pet food company

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
would into the annual shareholder's
meeting with can of dog food,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and he would eat the can of dog food,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and this was his way of convincing them
that if it was good enough for him,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it was good enough for their pets.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This strategy is now known as dogfooding,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and it's a common strategy
in the business world.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It doesn't mean everyone
goes in and eats dog food,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but business people
will use their own products

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to demonstrate that they feel --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that they're confident in them.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This is a widespread practice,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but I think what's really interesting
is when you find exceptions to this rule.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
When you find cases of businesses
or people in businesses

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
who don't use their own products.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Turns out there's one industry where
this happens in a common way --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in a pretty regular way --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and that is the screen-based
tech industry.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So, in 2010,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Steve Jobs,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when he was releasing the iPad,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
described the iPad as a device
that was "extraordinary."

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"The best browsing experience
you've ever had;

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
way better than a laptop,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
way better than a smartphone ...

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It's an incredible experience."

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
A couple of months later,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
he was approached by a journalist
from The New York Times,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and they had a long phone call.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And at the end of the call,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the journalist threw in a question
that seemed like a sort of softball.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
He said to him, "Your kids
must love the iPad."

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And there's an obvious answer to this,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but what Jobs said really
staggered the journalist.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
He was very surpsrised,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
because he said, "They haven't used it.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We limit how much technology
our kids use at home."

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This is a very common thing
in the tech world.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
In fact there's a school
quite near Silicon Valley

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
called the Waldorf School
of the Penninsula,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and they don't introduce screens
until the eighth grade.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
What's really interested about the school

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is that 75 percent
of the kids who go there

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
have parents who are high-level
Silicon Valley tech execs.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So when I heard about this,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I thought it was interesting
and surprising,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and it pushed me to consider
what screens were doing to me

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and to my family and the people I loved,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and to people at large.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So for the last five years,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
as a professor of business and psychology,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I've been studying the effect
of screens on our lives.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I want to start by just focusing
on how much time they take from us,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and then we can talk about
what that time looks like.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So what I'm showing you here
is the average 24-hour workday

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
at three different points in history:

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
2007 --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
10 years ago --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
2015,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and then data that I collected
actually only last week.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And a lot of things haven't
changed all that much.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So we sleep roughly seven-and-a-half
to eight hours a day,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
some people say that's declined slightly,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but it hasn't changed much.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We work eight-and-a-half
to nine hours a day.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We engage in survival activities,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
these include eating and bathing
and looking after kids,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
about three hours a day.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And that leaves this white space.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That's our personal time.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That space is incredibly important to us.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That's the space where we do things
that makes us individuals.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That's where hobbies happen,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
where we have close relationships,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
where we really think about our lives,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
where we get creative,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
where we zoom back and try to work out
whether our lives have been meaningful.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And of course we get some
of that from work as well,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but when people look back on their lives

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and they wonder what their
lives have been like

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
at the end of their lives,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you look at the last things they say --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
they are talking about those moments
that happen in that white personal space.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So it's sacred;

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it's important to us.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Now what I'm going to do is show you

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
how much of that space
is taken up by screens across time.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
In 2007,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
this much.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That was the year Apple
introduced the first iPhone.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Eight years later,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
this much.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Now, this much.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That's how much time we spend
of our free time in front of our screens.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This yellow area,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
this thing sliver,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is where the magic happens.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That's where your humanity lives.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And right now,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it's in a very small box.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So what do we do about this?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Well, the first question is,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
what does that red space look like?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Of course screens are miraculous
in a lot of ways.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I live in New York,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
a lot of my family lives in Australia,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I have a one-year-old son.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
The way I've been able to introduce
him to them is with screens.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I couldn't have done that 15
or 20 years ago in quite the same way.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So there's a lot of good
that comes from them.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
One thing you can do is
you can ask yourself,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
what goes on during that time?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
How enriching are the apps
that we're using?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And some are enriching.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
If you stop people while
they're using them and say,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"Tell us how do you feel right now,"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
they say the feel pretty good
about these apps.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Those that focus on relaxation,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
exercise,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
weather,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
reading,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
education and health.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
They spend an average of nine
minutes a day on these.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
These apps make them much less happy.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
About half the people,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when you interrupt them
and say, "How do you feel?"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
say they don't feel good about using them.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Now what's interesting about these --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
dating, social networking, gaming,
entertainment, news,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
web browsing --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
people spend 27 minutes a day
on each of these.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We're spending three times longer
on the apps that don't make us happy.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That doesn't seem very wise.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
One of the reasons we spend so much
time on these apps that make us unhappy

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is that they rob us of stopping cues.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Stopping cues were everywhere
in the 20th century.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
They were baked into everything we did.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
A stopping cue is basically a signal
that it's time to move on,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to do something new,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to do something different.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Think about newspapers,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
eventually you get to the end,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you fold the newspaper away,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you put it aside.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
The same with magazines,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
books, you get to the end of a chapter,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
prompts you to consider whether
you want to continue.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You watched a show on TV,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
eventually the show would end

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and you'd have a week
until the next one came.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So there were stopping cues everywhere.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But the way we consume media today
is such that there are no stopping cues.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
The newsfeed just rolls on,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and everything's bottomless.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Twitter,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Facebook,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Instagram,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
email,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
text messaging,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the news.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And when you do check all sorts
of other sources,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you can just keep going,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
on and on and on.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So we can get a cue about what to do
from Western Europe,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
where they seem to have a number
of pretty good ideas in the workplace.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Here's one example.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This is a Dutch design firm.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And what they've done is they've
rigged the desks to the celing.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
At 6pm everyday,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it doesn't matter who you're emailing
or what you're doing,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the desks rise to the ceiling.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Laughter)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Applause)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Four days a week the space
turns into a yoga studio.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
One day a week,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
into a dance club.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It's really up to you which ones
you stick around for.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But this is a great stopping rule,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
because it means at the end of the day,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
everything stops.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
There's no way to work.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
At Daimler,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the German car company,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
they've got another great strategy.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
When you go on vacation,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
instead of saying, "This
person's on vacation,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
they'll get back to you eventually,"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
they say, "This person's on vacation,
so we've deleted your email."

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This person will never see
the email you just sent.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Laughter)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You can email back in a couple of weeks,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
or you can email someone else.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Laughter)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Applause)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You can imagine what that's like.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You go on vacation and you're
actually on vacation.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
The people who work
at this company feel

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that they actually get a break from work.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But of course that doesn't tell us much

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
about what we should do at home
in our own lives,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and so I want to make some suggestions.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It's easy to say between say,
five and six pm

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I'm going to not use my phone.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
The problem is five and six pm
looks different on different days.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I think a far better strategy is to say,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I do certain things every day,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
there are certain occasions
that happen every day,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
like eating dinner.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Sometimes I'll be alone,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
sometimes with other people,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
sometimes in a restaurant,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
sometimes at home,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but the rule that I've adopted is
I will never use my phone at the table.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It's far away.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
As a far a way as possible.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Because we're really bad
at resisting temptation,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but when you have a stopping cue

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that every time dinner begins,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
my phone goes far away,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you avoid temptation all together.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
At first it hurts.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I had massive FOMO.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I struggled.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But what happens is you get used to it.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You overcome the withdrawl the same
way you would from a drug,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and what happens is life
becomes more colorful,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
richer,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
more interesting --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
you have better conversations.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You really connect with the people
who are there with you.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I think it's a fantastic strategy,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and we know it works,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
because when people do this,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I've tracked a whole lot of people
who have tried this,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it expands.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
They feels so good about it

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that they start doing it for the first
hour of the day in the morning.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
They start putting their phones
on airplane mode on the weekend.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That way your phone remains a camera,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but it's no longer a phone.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It's a really poweful idea,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and we know people feel much better
about their lives when they do this.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So what's the take-home here?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Screens are miraculous.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I've already said that,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I feel that it's true.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But the way we use them is a lot like
driving down a really fast, long road,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and you're in a car where the accelerator
is mashed to the floor,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it's kind of hard
to reach the brake pedal.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You've got a choice.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You can either glide by,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
past the beautiful ocean scenes
and take snaps out the window --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and that's the easy thing to do --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
or you can go out of your way
to move the car to the side of the road

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to push that brake pedal,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to get out,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
take off your shoes and socks,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
take a couple of steps onto the sand,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
feel what the sand feels like
under your feet,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
walk to the ocean

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and let the ocean lap at your ankles.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Your life will be richer
and more meaningful

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
because you breathe in that experience,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and because you've
left your phone in the car.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Thank you.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Applause)