David Epstein

It's like we have some distraction barometer.

So if you say, now I'm going to focus, you won't be able to.

So you actually have to train your focus by making blocks of work where you're not flipping between things all day.

The evidence for the fact that this constant toggling makes people miserable is eye-opening.

And so I think there are a lot of things that are important for human wellbeing, but I think this is one of the most overlooked.

So that's why I'd want to leave that because I think it's something that I can uniquely trumpet that isn't trumpeted as much, that it makes you less happy to be toggling.

It doesn't mean you can't do these things, monotask them one at a time and you'll be happier.

I mean, I think we were just talking there about structuring your attention span, which I think is in training your attention span.

And when you do need to focus...

Related to that point I was making, there are now studies showing that if you have a phone visible, you'll do worse on cognitive tests if it's visible, even if you can't use it.

And the more phone dependent you are, the greater that deficit is.

So sometimes when you really need to focus, put it out of the room.

Yeah.

I think we should add certain types of constraints in your life.

If something's important for you in work, you schedule it.

But if something's important in your personal life outside of vacation, you don't schedule it.

So I think we should add those deadlines for personal things too.

as if those things are as important as our work, which they are, but we just don't add deadlines for them, right?

Or regular cadences or habits and things like that.

I think that's really important to structure our personal life the way we structure other things that we want to get done.