Daniel Coyle

And before the experiment, the first group predicted they would be quite happy and content.

And the second group predicted it would be awkward and difficult.

But as it turned out after the experiment, it flipped.

The second group was delighted.

It was the highlight of their day to chat with a community member.

And the first group was kind of bored and de-energized by it.

So we're absolutely terrible because I think at the root of that is we don't really understand what attentional health is.

You know, we've developed, you know, we didn't really understand what physical health was until the 1960s and 70s, where we figured out how the aerobic system works and the anaerobic system works.

And we're just now, I think, beginning to understand that it is not attentionally healthy to be narrowly focused on a simple task for long periods of time or to be narrowly absorbed by a screen.

We're starting to understand how deeply unhealthy that is.

and how incredibly healthy it is to be in atmospheres where there's loose exchange, light conversation, and a day filled with sort of little collisions, little bump-ins.

It reminds me of a story Kurt Vonnegut used to tell.

One time he went down to the drug store in a small town where he lived, the writer Kurt Vonnegut, of course, and he bought one envelope.

And the woman said, I could sell you 50 envelopes.

And Kurt Groninger said, well, you could, but I just, I'm not coming down here for the envelopes.

I'm coming down here so I can, you know, look at the baby in the stroller and make funny faces at him and wave to the kids driving past and give a thumbs up to the fire engine as it goes by.

Like I just want one envelope.

And that idea that those sorts of frictions, those sorts of collisions are the stuff that makes our day full and rich.

And it's really the frequency.

The science here is really interesting too.