Over the last few years, I made a conscious effort not to be ruled by technology. Don't get me wrong. I love technology and its power, but it needed to be on my own terms. And, as a result of this new paradigm, I decided to do things that had either a longer burn or that involved me going outside. This paragraph from How to Be Healthy in a Dopamine-Seeking Culture sums up nicely how our overabundant culture has changed us:
In many areas of our lives, things that are not as satisfying now tend to be more satisfying and leave us better off later. If living a good life in ancient times of scarcity was about seeking fast-reward, lower-effort goods, then living a good life in modern times of abundance is about seeking slow-reward, higher-effort goods. Scientists call this the evolutionary mismatch—when strategies that were once adaptive to a species become harmful.
So living in a world where social media and immediate results or "hits" exist is in conflict with this slow burn. In fact, we know it to be harmful. Study after study cites that excessive use of social platforms leads to an increase in depression and anxiety. Cal Newport (Author of Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World and Deep Work)
talks of a recent study which actually proves just that. “Taking a One-Week Break from Social Media Improves Well-Being, Depression, and Anxiety,”. I like the result:
The researchers found “significant between-group differences” in well-being, depression, and anxiety, with the intervention group faring much better on all three metrics. These results held even after control for baseline scores, as well as age and gender. The researchers further found that they could obtain smaller, but still significant improvements in depression and anxiety by having users simply reduce the time they spend on Twitter and TikTok. The biggest effects, however, came from full abstention.
I mean - you wouldn't eat a specific food if it resulted in this. Similarly, if social media was a drug, you wouldn't allow minors to have it - and it might be banned or regulated in some way. That doesn't seem to be the case. Cal sums up nicely: "Why do we insist on still shrugging our shoulders and continuing to treat the use of these tools like some sort of unavoidable civic and professional necessity?" So I recommend to you: delete your social media, pick up a book, go for a walk, or pick a year-long (or life-long) project.
Stay Curious,
Onward! - Rahim
PS. My Colleagues wrote up how they create trickier questions on Quizlet. I found it fascinating.
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One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.
In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.
A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories -- from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air -- and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. DEEP WORK is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.
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