How many times a day do we check our smartphone?
It's time for a real confession. For the Average American, the number is 52. My number is 139 (according to my iPhone monitoring system). When I ask my friends about their relationships with their smartphones, they all tell me that they have tried to limit their smartphone usage, but only some of them succeeded in cutting back. Cal Newport, a professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, in his new book "Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World" explains that our phones use is really getting in the way of too much of our lives. The main criticism is that we are losing our freedom. The truth is we keep going to our phones, more than we think is useful, more than we think is healthy, and to the exclusion of things we know are more important. Well, this is called smartphone addiction. The book calls it "moderate behavioral addiction" . It means if we have it around, we are probably going to use it more than is healthy. This is exactly the definition suits our current relationship with our phone: the feeling of wanting to look at it or have it in our hands or handy at all times. (By the way, I'm guilty of it BIG Time) Let's look at a few apps that we use nowadays. In fact, things have definitely become worse. A big part of this is that the user experience of social media was re-engineered so that it would encourage more compulsive use. Look at Facebook 10 years ago, when I joined it. It was an experience that's very different than Facebook today (I haven't been a member since 2013). Ten years ago, we were looking at our friend's profiles. Today, it is this constant stream of rich reward, likes, @ tags and @ comments, that are coming at us all day 24/7, that we have to keep compulsively checking. The big question is why should we cut back on time spent on our phones? SOLITUDE. Losing the time to reflect and be alone with our thoughts is one of the greatest undetected outcomes of what we have engineered in the digital age. When we struggle to step away from our screens, we are missing out on activities that are "crucial to a flourishing, functional human life" - such as taking time to self-reflect, having a face-to-face conversation with someone or simply being bored. The author tells us this SOLITUDE factor might sound intolerable to the modern smartphone, sort of, infected individual, but it's absolutely crucial to reset in our mind, to have insight, to have true and successful self-reflection The book makes excellent recommendations for all of us to cut back on constant scrolling. STEP AWAY for 30 days and clear it all out. We must try to get back in touch with what we really care about, what we want to spend our time on, and when we are done with the 30 days experience, we can rebuild our digital life from scratch, do it this time with real intention. I know it is difficult to commit to completely wiping out apps on our phone for a month. So we can start by deleting any app in which a company makes a profit ever time we click on it. We don't have to be extreme and cancel the service, but only use it when we're on a device other than a smartphone. We must reintroduce leisure activities we used to do before compulsively checking our devices - reading books, cooking, writing, visiting with friends, etc. To be a successful digital minimalist, we must evaluate how much time has been wasted skimming and tapping through our phone. Also weighing cost over benefit. By COST, the book tells us "What is the cost in terms of our life energy, our life force, and time we could be spending on something more important?" The truth is that we are losing much of our humanity by always staring at these screens. It's time to change it. It's time to move from connections to conversations. Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. We need it more than ever before in our digital lives.
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In the past three years or so I have grown used to hearing “America First”—but are we truly prepared for the world where “Asia First” seems to be more likely?
What happens when Asia no longer produces for the West, but the West provides for Asia? And when Asians don’t attempt to live like the West, but rather Western societies wish they had Asians’ security and far-sighted leadership? My very good friend, Parag Khanna, the Author of the Future is Asian tells us to get ready to see the world, and the future, from the Asian point-of-view. Yes, the future is surely Asian. This Asian century is much greater than we imagine. It is also far bigger than just China. The new Asian order is taking shape in multicivilizational system crossing Kuwait to Japan, Russia to Australia, Turkey to Malaysia - and connecting over five billion people through trade, finance, infrastructure, and strategic network, which represents over 40 percent of global GDP. China is the leader in building the new Silk Roads across Asia, but it will not lead it solely. Today Asia is swiftly returning to the centuries-old principles of trade, conflict and cultural exchange that grew long before European colonialism or American dominance. It seems that Asians will decide their own destiny - and as they collectively advance their interest around the world, they will determine ours - in the West as well. I agree with Parag, there is no more important region of the world for us to better understand than Asia - and therefore we cannot afford to keep getting Asia wrong. Parag explains that today Asia's complexity has led to common misdiagnoses: Western thought on Asia vies the whole region like China, predicts impending conflict around every corner, and always projects debt-driven breakdown for the region's major economies. In reality, the entire region is undergoing a bold new wave of growth led by much younger societies from India to the Philippines, nationalists leaders have put aside regional disputes in favor of integration, and today's infrastructure investment is the platform for the new generation of digital innovation. If the nineteenth century highlighted the Europeanization of the world, and the twentieth century its Americanization, then the twenty-first century is the time of Asianization. From investment portfolios and trade conflicts to Hollywood films and university admissions, no aspect of life is immune from Asianization. With America’s tech sector reliant on Asian talent and politicians celebrating Asia’s glittering cities and efficient governments, Asia is permanently in our nation’s consciousness. We know this will be the Asian century. Parag's new book gives us an accurate picture of what it will look like. I highly recommend "The Future is Asian" as Parag presents this irrepressible global Asianization through detailed analysis data, maps of Asia's major markets and their combined impact on the global economy, society, and governance. With his trademark conceptual clarity and on-the-ground reportage, Parag provides essential guidance for all of us. I very much enjoyed reading it. Parag's intimate knowledge of Asian history and geopolitics, also how help painted a compelling vision of a balanced global system of shared responsibilities across America, Europe, and Asia. The Future is Asian by Parag Khanna is one of the best definitive guides to Asia’s global influence in the 21st century. I highly recommend it. I have been fairly unhappy with myself lately. I have been spending many hours responding to emails, checking my Twitter, Instagram among other social media platforms, trying to keep up with news and reading my dosage daily articles . On top of that, I also check my phone at night every 5 or 10 minutes intervals. In short, I always have my phone in my hand 24/7, and it is even sitting next to my bed at night while sleeping (sometimes on airplane mode). My wife is not happy about it. I am not happy about it. In short, I'm easily distracted by so many emails, twitter feeds, Instagram posts, breaking news, and a whole bunch of infotainment.
In short, I have been doing many things but let me call them shallow tasks. I read a piece in the NYTimes by Cal Newport. I've learned about the book he published almost two years ago - Deep Work. The book could not be more suitable for me and my growingly disturbing habits with technology in recent years. Newport's book is a manifesto for anyone, like myself, involved in 'knowledge work' to really abandon shallow and ultimately unproductive ways of working and focusing. Newport discusses the benefits of what he calls "Deep Work" and by that, he really means: working with intensity on difficult things over concentrated periods of time. Here is a good definition of deep vs shallow life that I found very interesting. Deep work: professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes the limit has value, and or hard to replicate. Shallow work: non-cognitively demanding, just to cool style tasks, after perform while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate. There is a real danger of living a fragmented life - in the shallows - continually distracted by unnecessary meetings, emails, chitchat or general, by modern life's infotainment. I agree with Cal Newport, deep work and less constant distractions have made me more productive and have made me a happier person in the past two weeks. It's only by working deeply, we can produce at what he called an "elite level." Yes, it is something the author kind of knows a thing or two about. In the past ten years, he has published four best-selling books, authored tens of research papers and became a tenured professor an Ivy League university at age 34. By the way, he is not a workaholic and doesn't work beyond 5 p.m. He has a fulfilling family life and plenty of friends. Although not on Facebook, Instagram or WeChat. Nowadays, the ability to engage in deep work is a rare skill and that is really getting rarer. The truth is the ability to focus on hard things over long periods of time improves our chances of making something that's not just good - but great. It is really, really wrong for us when we bounce from one thing to next, unable to concentrate and get constantly pulled away from tasks. This really damages us and can cause long-term psychological and emotional damage. Going deep is easier said than done. In Deep Work, Newport studied many prolific authors concluded that the most effective workers aren't people who necessarily shun the modern world or live in exile. Rather, they're people who excel at one thing - scheduling. The fact is that people who produce at an 'elite level' are just damn good at dividing their lives into periods of intense work followed by - something else. The truth is we cannot fight distraction. We should focus on organizing. None of the examples in Deep Work claim that deep work is easy but what it claims that we have a choice - and that's what makes Deep Work a fantastic read. I highly recommend this book. It really helped me The ability to perform deep work or even living is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy and in our society. As a consequence, if we can cultivate this skill, and then make it to the core of our working life, will thrive. Let me leave you with a quote from Winifred Gallagher. “I’ll live the focused life because it’s the best kind there is.” |
AuthorRoozbeh, born in Tehran - Iran (March 1984) Archives
April 2024
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