Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef
In a Nutshell
Dr. Sahar Yousef explains that technology's default settings are engineered to maximize engagement through infinite scroll, variable rewards, and constant notifications, causing people to lose over 2 hours daily to task-switching and an average of 1 hour per day to phone use. The solution involves reversing these effects with "reverse neuroscience": switching phones to grayscale, setting up VIP notifications only, choosing long-form over short-form content, and using focus sprints with MITs (Most Important Tasks) broken into small steps. She emphasizes that sleep is foundational, attention and memory are inseparable, and decreasing noise through digital hygiene is more effective than trying to increase signal.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Every single time you switch your attention, you pay for it. Multitasking is a myth. On a daily basis, a person can theoretically lose 60% of their productivity just by switching between two different types of tasks at once. Over 2 hours a day is the average amount of time being wasted bouncing between screens and different tasks.
The book teaches the science for productivity and human performance. The default settings of all technology are designed by people to maximize engagement. For example, the infinite scroll is like going to a buffet and just opening your mouth with an assembly line of food and candy going straight in with no backstop. Reverse neuroscience can be used to reverse this entire thing.
First, put your phone in gray. Research from the lab shows grayscale makes the phone less neurologically stimulating. On average, people spent 1 hour less on their phones every single day, which is 7 hours a week. Next is choosing long form over short form content. If there is too much short form content, the attention span is shot, a person literally feels shittier, and the brain operates at a lower level.
A clock is a huge game changer in terms of productivity. There is also a focus sprint to help people do up to two times as much as they would otherwise do. There are biological prototypes that dictate the ideal time a person should be doing focus sprints. There is another tool to strengthen the mind and make a person better at focusing.
The mission is to first and foremost bring science education to the world in a way that allows people to work more in line with how their brains and their bodies actually work best. There are fundamental laws of how the brain and the body actually work, similar to the laws of physics. There are laws of physics that are not questioned, like gravity. There are also fundamental laws of biology, but these laws of biology are blissfully ignored. Kids are not taught when they are in school at an early age how their brains work so that they might be able to study a little bit easier, find flow, and actually be able to manage things like stress and physiological stress. People are not taught the fundamentals of sleep.
The area of expertise is productivity. The focus is so much on what, what the deliverable is, what the long-term goal is, what the annual goal is, what the quarterly goal is, but not the how. The question is how a person should go about getting these things done. What is the best way in fact that a human being might sit down and have an innovative thought? The neuroscience of innovation needs to be understood. The brain is a biological system, and it is a good idea to take a step back and learn how the system actually works. There is so much friction with how people are working and living today. The number one thing that seems to be getting in the way of all of this is technology, which is a shame because it is also the most amazing piece of modern human invention.
Innovators often think about working backwards from the customer. Understanding the customer problem and then reverse engineering a solution from there is the approach. Feedback has been received from people as it relates to productivity on what they are really struggling with and how they describe it in their own words.
A lot is heard about brain fog. A female CEO said something that has always stuck: "I can hear my own thoughts again." The question is where were the thoughts before? The heartbreaking truth is that people are not listening. People do not hear the inside of themselves anymore. There is some sort of global discomfort with being with ourselves, and people have been distracted completely 24/7. Every little second and minute in between all tasks and to-dos and meetings and calls is filled in with technology and scrolling. People are just constantly consuming. When a person puts themselves into that sort of setup and state, when is it that the mind is supposed to say, "Hey, what about this?"
The goal is not to cure cancer, but in some small part, if people can be helped to go do the amazing things that they want to do in the world, if the science of productivity and performance, of focus, energy management, and attention can be brought back into lives, then this is the small part that can help people do all of the amazing things that they want to do and still be happy.
The founder and managing director of the Becoming Superhuman Lab, which is a lab focused and obsessed with productivity and human performance, has done an entire academic career at UC Berkeley. The area of expertise is cognitive neuroplasticity, which is how the brain actually changes and evolves. The key word is plasticity, meaning the brain is constantly changing and evolving and adapting. If the brain is constantly changing, evolving and adapting, that means it could be getting better. The lab has colloquially been called the becoming superhuman lab because the area of interest is increasing things like attention span, memory, and general fluid intelligence. The goal is to increase the volume on all of those cognitive traits and cognitive skills, to make people better, faster, stronger.
A lot of work has been done with executives. One of the first execs worked with was at a fortune 10 company. Observations would be done, noticing everything from what a person is eating and drinking throughout the course of the day, if breaks are taken, how a person works, and following a person to a bunch of meetings. Then an overhaul would be done, interventions would be made, and changes would be suggested.
There is a distinct memory of sitting in an executive's office at a fortune tech company. The executive is sitting in a glass box in the middle of a busy floor, working on a deck for a board meeting, pulling together data that different teams have sent, looking at things, and making pretty big decisions. The executive has a computer with a second monitor that has email open, two phones, personal and professional, both face up right next to him, and an Apple Watch on. As the executive is sitting down to focus, all of this is happening, people are walking by, and at some point the chief of staff comes in. The executive probably got 30 seconds of focus. The average amount of time a knowledge worker stays focused on one screen before another one distracts them is 47 seconds.
If a billion dollars were given and support and advice were provided, and the goal was to cure cancer, the best minds from all around the world would be galvanized. The question is how those people would be set up to go about trying to solve this global issue of such importance. Would they be strapped up with an Apple Watch, a bunch of notifications, Slack, and then have their day littered with a bunch of meetings and calls, and then hope that in the next few years they cure this thing? Ideally, they would be in an environment with a setup that is not distracting and does not waste their best thinking. They would not wake up in the morning and have to jump onto calls instead of thinking about the cancer problem. It is constant ping-ponging all day.
The goal is to focus on cleaning this up. This is called digital hygiene. There are obstacles in the way of productivity and performance and focus. Forget becoming superhuman. People just need to become human. People need to understand collectively how this human system works so that the laws of biology can be accepted again.
A world first is being done, turning this episode into an online workshop that will be filmed live and interactive. Every single thing that was discussed in this episode will be worked through and solutions and actionable tools will be given that can be put into life straight away. This is the first time this has ever been done. There is a link on screen and a link down below to sign up. There is only a certain amount of people that can join the workshop because there is a limit.
The first place to start is the foundational, which is sleep. Sleep is talked about in a way that if a person is averaging 5 hours of sleep a night and wants to become 1% better, a picture is painted: it feels like taking a car to the mechanic and the thing is on fire. The flames are there, and the person is sitting there unaware of the fact that it is on fire and asking to soup up the engine. The response is to put the fire out first. It is not even known where to begin to assess baseline performance. When a person does not get enough sleep, and the minimum is 7 hours a night, it is impacting cognitive performance and emotional regulation. A person will be irritable in the office and with other people. The system is messed up. Sleep is for sure the foundation.
The next biggest thing is the relationship with technology, which is a global issue impacting everyone from senior citizens to children. A phone lock box is shown, where technology is put inside and locked away. The point of something like this is for a human being and the brain as a focus machine, as a monotasking machine, to actually be able to focus. Focus and attention are so fundamental to all things, personal and professional. Any kind of distraction that is diminishing focus is impacting memory. Another word for memory is learning. Attention and memory are impossible to divorce from one another. They are connected in the most connected way that they can be. The way that they are connected is a person cannot remember anything that they do not attend to. It is only things that come into the aperture of attention that a person is aware of in the first place. A person cannot learn anything or remember anything unless they are paying attention. Attention spans and the ability to sustain attention has been linearly decreasing since the advent of the phone. It is not just phones necessarily. It is notifications in general. If a person is monitoring their inbox all day and it is constantly available, what is the plan for having deep thoughts?
The rebuttal that comes to mind is the fear around missing important things, like if a big email comes in or if a fiance is going to text that they need to be let in the house. These are called fires and urgencies. These are called VIP notifications and messages. A VIP list is created, which includes a partner, a boss's boss, top 15 clients if client facing. If these numbers call or text, it pushes through the filter. There are no defenses. There are three keywords set up in the email inbox, including the first name. If somebody says the first name, it is known that it is important. Otherwise, the reality is being CCd on email chains with seven other people sometimes, and they are just talking to each other. There is no need to get a ping every single time two people are chatting with each other about something. They are solving their own problem. The focus needs to be on leading, not getting pinged about every conversation.
For mail, if an extremely important package is coming to the house, somebody knocks because it needs a signature. It is not left outside. Somebody needs to be home. The knock is the notification. That is the fire. Everything else just gets shoved in the mailbox or left by the door. This is what is advocated for. People are all smart enough and should respect themselves enough truly to demand better than the default settings that apps, email, and phones come with. The default settings of all technology are designed by cognitive neuroscientists and behavioral neuroscientists that work at these companies to get people hooked. The bottom line for even Microsoft Outlook is engagement. At the end of the year, engagement numbers are shown to prove that everyone is using and constantly talking to each other 24/7, so the contract is reupped. The way that these softwares and products are designed is for them to be as engaging as humanly possible. The default setting that a phone comes with, the default setting of every single app that is downloaded on that phone, the default setting of email, of any messaging software that all teams use, the default setting is there to maximize engagement, not to make a company more productive. These companies do not care about productivity. That is not their problem. That is the person's problem to figure out.
A person has a sweet tooth, so think of a chocolate company or a candy company. What is their bottom line? What do they want out of a person as a customer? Their goal is to sell as much of their product as humanly possible. It is not their business or responsibility to think about whether or not a person gets diabetes or if they are having trouble with overconsumption. The same is true for email. The same is true for any kind of platform. Engagement is the currency. Everything from the sound that an email client makes when an email is sent off has been tested for what will feel the best and sound the best to the human. Everything from the vibrate functionality that is felt in the phone has been highly optimized to keep a person obsessed with the thing and addicted to the thing to increase engagement on the platform. The big push in the goal of productivity is the first thing to really focus in on is getting rid of the drains of productivity first. It sounds obvious, but it is totally not obvious that a productivity tool's incentive actually is not the person's own productivity. It is the engagement with the tool.
When these companies report to investors, they have to show how much engagement there was and how much the tool was used. It is almost antithetical to the mission of the tool for them to be removing distraction because engagement and distraction are like opposites. Slack is distracting under the premise that it is making a person better at their work. The products and tools call themselves productivity software, but the need to communicate with each other is acknowledged. There are team members in different time zones, and there is obviously a need to communicate and collaborate at this scale. Technology is amazing. What is advocated for is people telling themselves this mantra: "I deserve better than the default. I am better than the default settings. The default settings are not there to help you."
The number one suggestion, especially because the fear around missing important things was brought up, is to set up what is called VIP notifications in both the phone, the inbox, and every single different communication software. A VIP list is created. This is the partner, the boss, the boss's boss, if client facing or customer facing, the top 15 clients. These are the VIPs. If these numbers call or text, it pushes through the filter. There are no defenses. There is a need to get that immediately. There are three keywords set up in the email inbox. The first name is one. If somebody says the first name, it is known that it is important. Otherwise, the reality is being CCd on email chains with seven other people sometimes, and they are just talking to each other. There is no need to get a ping every single time two people are chatting with each other about something. They are solving their own problem. The focus needs to be on leading, not getting pinged about every conversation.
The speaker emphasizes the need to stay informed without constant interruptions. There's significant social pressure to respond quickly, accept meetings, and accommodate others' requests. The most focused individuals often develop resistance to people-pleasing tendencies. The speaker identifies her husband as the most focused person she knows, noting his default response is "no" compared to her default "yes." This creates a productive balance when running their company together.
Kevin Olirri shared insights from working with Steve Jobs and Elon Musk about the signal versus noise concept. Steve Jobs demonstrated remarkable ability to focus on the 80/20 principle - signal being the most important task of the day and noise being everything else. Johnny Ives described Steve Jobs' focus as the ability to wake up with a brilliant idea and say no to it anyway. Jobs would push colleagues to identify what brilliant ideas they had rejected in service of their primary focus. Elon Musk was identified as the only person Kevin Olirri encountered who was more focused than Steve Jobs.
When asked whether it's easier to increase signal or decrease noise, the speaker identifies decreasing noise as the more practical first step. The brain is designed as a monotasking machine - humans survived through strategic thinking and focus rather than physical attributes. Approximately one-third of the human brain's cortical real estate is dedicated to looking and listening, making us hypervigilant to environmental stimuli.
Distractions reach people through two mechanisms: external notifications that interrupt focus, and internal seeking behavior when work becomes difficult or uncomfortable. When facing challenging tasks, people naturally seek distractions through social media or other immediate gratifications.
The brain functions as a problem-solving machine that avoids uncomfortable feelings including overwhelm, stress, anxiety, confusion, depression, FOMO, loneliness, anger, and frustration. When experiencing discomfort, the brain seeks the fastest solution, which in modern contexts often means avoiding the issue through immediate distractions.
A study demonstrated that people would rather electrocute themselves repeatedly than sit alone in silence. Participants who had experienced electric shocks and stated they'd pay to avoid them again proceeded to shock themselves hundreds of times when left alone. This illustrates the modern tendency to reach for phones rather than tolerate silence or discomfort.
Technology companies follow the same three-part framework used by the food industry to create addiction. The food industry increases stimulation by adding sugar, decreases friction through convenient packaging and accessibility, and decreases satiation by removing protein and fiber. Technology applies the identical approach.
Technology increases stimulation through color-saturated icons, bright screen emissions, and short-form content with intermittent variable rewards. The algorithm strategically serves low-to-medium engaging content before delivering high-value content right when users are about to disengage, creating the jackpot effect similar to slot machines.
Technology decreases friction through infinite scroll, removing the natural stopping points that existed in early internet design. Previously, users would reach the end of content and naturally stop; now, endless feeds eliminate these natural boundaries.
Social media creates an illusion of connection while actually increasing loneliness. The longer people spend on these platforms, the lonelier they become. Short-form content provides stimulation without actual learning or genuine connection, similar to consuming candy when hungry - it provides temporary satisfaction without meeting fundamental needs.
The speaker advocates using neuroscience principles to reverse technology addiction. One key intervention is switching phones to grayscale mode, which reduces neurological stimulation. A lab study with working professionals showed that maintaining grayscale mode for three weeks resulted in participants spending one hour less on their phones daily - equivalent to seven hours per week.
Choosing long-form content over short-form content provides actual satiation rather than the illusion of learning. Short-form content creates the false impression of acquiring knowledge while leaving viewers unable to recall what they consumed.
Long-form content like a good film has been shown to increase empathy in young people. The message is not that technology is bad or that all screen time is evil. Being a huge fan of content diet means that if you want to sit down and watch a movie, sit down and watch a movie. Get into your pajamas, make a bowl of popcorn, romanticize it, turn the lights down, put Netflix on.
Everyone's also got the phone out, so they're doing two things at once. This has just become accepted that you no longer have people's undivided attention. The way in which content is being made now assumes that someone is looking at something else as well.
If attention spans have gotten this bad, how are kids supposed to learn in school? If someone has the interest in becoming superhuman to experiencing the full potential of their own mind, how are they supposed to do that if they can't even pay attention to a movie anymore?
Watching a complicated old movie requires paying so much attention that if you miss a word, the next three hours you're lost. The effort required to stay focused on this movie was noticeable, creating a mismatch between the media being consumed versus the way people live their lives.
People who love short form content should know that too much of it leads to being more depressed, more anxious, and having shot attention spans. Over-consuming this content makes people feel worse and their brains operate at a lower level cognitively speaking.
The fundamental needs are there. To increase satiation, learn something new, spend time IRL in real life with real human beings. Hold people, touch people, talk to people, have dinner parties, have conversations, hang out with friends and family. Actually meet the fundamental need for social connection. When this is done, people notice that they're full and will magically actually like short form less. They are far less likely to lose themselves scrolling until 2:00 in the morning and then feeling terrible the next day because they didn't get enough sleep.
The feeling of the next day is a good way to navigate life. Jack Dorsey talked about one of the new metrics being reducing regrettable minutes. With Skittles, they would feel good in the moment but people would probably regret having a massive bag of Skittles in a couple of hours, probably the next day because it sends them on a bit of a roller coaster.
With platforms like TikTok, 60% of active TikTok users experience negative welfare and would rather live in a world where the platform didn't exist. It ranks as number one in terms of regret because people report that their time was distorted. They open the app and lost an hour or two hours and walk away from it without clarity about what they gained.
Young people are waking up. Graphs from the Financial Times showed time spent online had started to plateau since 2022 for young people first. The stats show that less than half of graduating high school seniors have ever been on a date compared to what was believed to be something like 80 or 90% in previous generations.
A third of UK nightclubs have seen engagement in the nightclub scene go down to a third. There's been a recent piece in The Atlantic about the death of dinner parties. People are spending increasingly more time alone and not with others, so they're hungry.
These platforms are taking advantage of perpetual hunger and keeping people locked into the cycle of distraction. It's now socially appropriate to always hold phones, always have them in pockets.
One of the best things to do is introduce portion control back into how content is consumed. Increase the friction. Do things like the phone parking lot, put the phone out of sight, out of mind. Turn notifications off, which decreases the stimulation.
Increasing the friction means if this stuff is addictive and you want to do less of it, don't have it right there. It's like sitting down with someone who is freshly trying to become sober as an alcoholic and putting a beer down in front of them while they're working and going about their day.
Every young person in the entire world should learn this and know this. Parents are tired of being bad cop at home, constantly saying get off your phone, get off this, get off that. This ought to be taught in schools.
Exogenous ketones have had probably the single biggest impact on productivity. Of all the products tried that have given productivity gains or cognitive boosts, exogenous ketones are in the top three most pivotal things that have given massive productivity gain.
Stanford graduates have been able to bottle up the effect from being in a ketogenic diet in a small shot that makes people feel incredibly focused and gives the brain an incredible source of energy. The clinical studies done on exogenous ketones have absolutely blown minds.
Deep work is something that requires focus. In a world that is so distracted where phones are constantly present, focus sprints are a method of working that according to research allows people to do up to two times as much as they would otherwise do while also reducing the number of mistakes.
People feel better because they're working in line with their brain and body. They don't have that sense of friction where they're exhausted after doing one of these sprints. It feels good to do that kind of deep work.
Focus sprints have five steps. The first step is to set aside time in your calendar in advance to block the time off. You benefit from anticipatory networks in the brain and body. If you know that you have a speech or presentation to give, you get butterflies, an increase in cortisol and adrenaline.
Even while sitting at rest, because you're anticipating getting up to do public speaking, your brain gives an extra boost in cortisol and adrenaline so that you're a little bit more focused and high energy.
From a team perspective, if your team can see your calendar and they know you're sitting down to do a focus sprint, it deals with social guilt people feel and the feeling that they need to be responsive to all the things.
Step two is to identify what you're going to do and define it. Break it down in clear, simple terms. Instead of saying you're going to sit down and work on X, unless you're going to finish X, that's not going to feel good.
Dopamine is the brain's primary motivation molecule. It's going to get people excited and motivated to do a task, and it's also going to reward them if they really do more than expected.
With a massive to-do list, shop from that list and take out one piece to focus on. Break that one thing into small, manageable pieces and time block every piece.
Instead of saying you're going to work on a deck without finishing it, specify that you're going to work on slide three for about seven minutes, then send a follow-up email to John for data needed for slide 17, then work on a table to put there.
This increases dopamine for getting work done. If you're not going to finish something, how is that motivating? The goal becomes an output, not the input.
People start something and the moment they get done with step 1B and don't immediately know what step 1C is or what step two is, and it's not clearly outlined, they go what's the next step, what should I do next. That's when you lose people, that's when you lose focus.
In deciding what the next step is during a sprint, outline what the game is before going into it. Then go into it and sprint.
Treat your to-do list like your refrigerator. Every single day, wake up in the morning and choose your MITs - most important tasks. These are the one, two, maximum three things on any given day that you would want to accomplish if you want your day to be a success.
Every single day, open up the refrigerator, the pantry, and the freezer, and ask yourself first how much time is available today. Then ask with that time, what are the most important tasks that if done today would make the day a success.
Another phrasing is what will your future self thank you for? People often reach for the easiest things, the things they're not quite ready to do yet because they don't have the information or it's a little bit out of their area of competence.
LITs are least important tasks - the lit fast dopamine things like emails, DocuSigns, toilet paper from Amazon, the little tiny things that take five minutes but make people feel like they can cross something off.
The things that push businesses and lives forward are typically the slow dopamine bits. The suggestion is to identify one, two, or a maximum of three MITs that are actually going to push toward goals, the long-term goals, the things that actually matter.
The LITs will fill in all the other nooks and crannies for the day. If there's an uninterrupted hour, attack one of the MITs. If there are 15 minutes between meetings and calls, shove the LITs in there.
When setting the goal in step two of a focus sprint, there are two different kinds of sprints possible. A sprint on one MIT where the MIT is broken down into small, manageable chunks with time allocations. Or an LIT sprint where 15 LITs could be done.
If you don't know what the MIT is, take an even further step back and do awareness training on what your long-term goals are. Where do you want to be both personally and professionally in five years? What is your Everest?
If you have a sense of what your Everest is, you then ought to have a sense of what your next step is. If Everest is that way, you're not going to go the other way.
A powerful framing is to think about yourself on your deathbed. Visualize being the tender age of 110 with all the modern technology and longevity medicine that's going to come out. What looking back on your life do you need to have experienced, accomplished, done in order to leave with a smile on your face and say it's been real, I did good, had an amazing life, I did what I wanted to do here and I'm ready to go.
The priorities that emerged from deathbed visualization were to have loved deeply, to serve and make this world a better place with what can be brought to the table. This obsession has come at a great cost of not doing a lot of other things and not having a lot of what other people see as fun, with personal sacrifices.
The flavor of the mind is squarely focused on building better systems for humanity. When closing eyes and thinking about the deathbed, first and foremost who was there, then what they think. The three things wanted them to think were that things had been achieved so they can too and be evidence of that, that the world had been made a better place, and the philanthropic impact that had been made.
The three clear priorities are family and having a big family, being a good role model to them, and them having evidence that being here was net positive to the planet. This was clarifying because there are really three things that matter.
Bronny Wear, a hospice nurse who sat with many dying individuals, asked these people what their regrets were and kept a log of the answers. The number one regret across all the people who were dying was I wish I lived a life more true to myself, cared less about what others thought.
For some, all that matters at the end of the day is what family thought of accomplishments and how time was spent. It's not even them because you'll never really know what the other person thinks. We come into this world alone and we die alone no matter how much we love each other.
This is one of the paradoxes of love and human connection. From that first cry that a newborn screams out when they're born, they're crying out for connection. They're scared and they're saying wait, I feel disconnection in this moment, I was connected before and now I feel disconnected, and they're seeking connection.
Humans are seeking this connection and belonging for the rest of their lives. But the paradox is we'll never get it. We die alone.
Consciousness is fundamentally private and dynamic. Each person experiences their own consciousness, and even within an individual, consciousness changes moment to moment. The same moment never repeats itself, which means the same self never repeats itself. Every second that passes creates a different version of the self.
There are moments when consciousness feels intertwined with someone else's, described as consciousness dancing together. This experience creates a deep sense of connection that can feel spiritual and energetic. These moments occur during extended conversations, particularly in podcast settings when discussing childhood, trauma, and personal experiences.
Flow states during human connection require a loss of the sense of self. When stuck in individual identity and self-awareness, people remain conscious of being separate others. The magic happens when self dissolves and two people become an energetic "we." This state feels like being in flow with another person, where the sense of "I" and "you" disappears.
The same flow state occurs during work when time stops and three hours pass without awareness. When deeply engaged in work, time becomes irrelevant. This mirrors the experience of great podcast conversations where four hours pass unnoticed. Both represent states where the self dissolves into the activity.
The goal is to make MITs (Most Important Tasks) as easy as a list of little tasks. This involves taking a big goal and breaking it into small, sequential steps. A large goal becomes a series of single steps rather than an overwhelming Everest. The approach transforms slow dopamine experiences into fast dopamine rewards by sprinkling small achievements throughout the process.
The mantra "pol slowly, slowly" comes from Mount Kilimanjaro guides. The only way to reach the top is focusing on taking the next step every day, moving a little closer each time. Olympic athletes use the same approach. Sir David Brailsford, who transformed the British cycling team through marginal gains, banned his team from thinking about the podium and focused them on today's work.
The phrase "pedals over podiums" emerged from conversations with Sir David Brailsford. When Christopher Hoy focused on the world record or podium, his performance worsened. When guided into a meditative state focused on the immediate task, his times improved and he couldn't remember the cycle afterward. This represents the flow state. Additionally, when the team focused on small things and broke goals into tiny goals, people stopped leaving at 5:00 p.m. and started staying until 1:00 a.m. because they felt they were making progress.
The progress principle refers to the feeling of progress being motivating. A Harvard Business Review study found that people's favorite work days were when they experienced small feelings of progress. Breaking MITs into little tasks provides this sense of forward movement that large goals alone cannot deliver.
The best way to increase signal and reach goals is to remove obstacles rather than adding more. This means cutting distractions through hygiene practices: phone out of sight and out of mind, notifications off. In noisy environments or when music helps, headphones can be used.
People vary in their response to music during work. Some prefer silence, while others benefit from noise-cancelling headphones. Noise-cancelling headphones should not be used more than three to four hours daily because they change the brain's baseline for what the world should sound like, leading to overstimulation when removed. Noise-cancelling should be used only for focus sprints.
When listening to music for work, choose tracks with no lyrics or lyrics in an unfamiliar language. Invest in a specific playlist that the brain will associate with focus over time. Different playlists should exist for different brain states: focus mode, email sprints, and winding down for sleep.
Human beings and most mammals are highly influenced by markers of progress. Seeing time ticking by motivates faster work. From a productivity standpoint, countdown timers are most effective for hustling and staying focused. Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fit the time given to it.
Cleanup songs demonstrate how markers of progress work. When children are asked to put away toys without structure, they become distracted. When given a cleanup song with a clear beginning and end, children become goal-oriented and focused, especially as the song nears completion.
The center point of influence on the planet is the allocation of time. Everything downstream from time allocation: relationships, achievement, health, and reaching the deathbed at a desired age. Being intentional with time allocation is key, rather than being pulled around by little things like a plastic bag in the wind.
Working with constant distractions prevents people from getting high-quality work done. Despite wanting to make an impact and receive recognition, people end up answering messages and attending meetings instead of completing important tasks. This leaves work unfinished, leading to evening and weekend work that takes time away from family.
A brain break is defined as a short period where no information processing occurs. Research from a 2024 Nature paper measured fatigue levels before work, after work, and after different types of breaks. The groups tested included no break, TikTok-style scrolling, looking at nature, and staring ahead. The best break was exposure to nature, followed by doing nothing at all. The worst break was TikTok-style scrolling, which continued information consumption.
Rest means not using the brain for reading, writing, or arithmetic. The point is to rest the cognitive processing muscle. One approach is doing something cognitively challenging enough to prevent thinking about other worries. DJing serves as an example of an immersive activity requiring complete focus.
Create systems that force use of both hands, preventing simultaneous scrolling. Examples include cutting cheese from a block instead of using prepackaged portions, or boiling water for tea. These activities require manual engagement that blocks phone use. Additional recommendations include exposing yourself to natural light, getting fresh air, and taking walks.
Innovation and creative insight require first loading up all data related to the problem so relevant neural networks are activated and top of mind. Einstein's attributed quote states that no problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it. When stuck in problem-state neural networks, the solution involves walking away and introducing new stimuli like walking the dog, washing dishes, or showering.
New environments activate new neural networks. Ideas emerge when two neural networks cross paths, creating the lightbulb moment. These insights typically occur when neural networks loosen through walking away from the problem. The solution appears obvious once the gridlock of problem-focused thinking is broken.
Continuously rehashing and talking about traumas deepens the associated neural networks rather than resolving them.
Rumination involves repeating the same thought over and over again. The only way out is to break the cycle rather than talking about feelings repeatedly in the same way, which deepens the neural network and makes it more robust and strong. Repetition forms habits, and constantly telling yourself about trauma and victimhood can quickly become your identity.
The solution is to acknowledge why rumination is happening and then redirect attention. When it starts again, redirect and put attention somewhere else. Consider what your Everest is and what different version of the story or narrative you want to feed. The brain is an electrical system that can be designed like a gardener or architect designs, and like any muscle, it can be strengthened or atrophied through choice of focus.
When aiming at big goals, it can feel psychologically uncomfortable like standing at the foot of Mount Everest. The way to accomplish goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps called the 1%. This philosophy is highly responsible for much of their team's success. They created 1% diaries that sold out last year, with new colors and minor tweaks now available.
The clock represents the power and science of when. MITs and LITs represent the what, focus sprints represent the how, and chronotypes represent the when. Human beings do not share one circadian rhythm. Different circadian rhythms are called chronotypes, which represent your genetic biological ideal time and profile of hormones and energy levels throughout the day.
There are three chronotypes:
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AM shifted individuals comprise about 25% of the human population. These are morning birds whose cortisol levels spike early. They naturally wake up at early hours regardless of when they went to bed. The world seems oriented around these people.
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PM shifted individuals comprise about 16% of the human population. These people can stay up late and sleep in, with energy levels rising later in the day. They tend to be the most artistic and creative. Anthropologically, they exist to provide nighttime protection in tribes.
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Biphasic individuals represent the vast majority. They wake up groggy but within 45 minutes to an hour feel great. They peak once in the morning, experience the biggest afternoon dip, and then have a second wind if managed properly.
People are not machines but bags of blood, guts, and chemicals with biological laws governing their state. Cognitive abilities are different throughout the course of the day, meaning when certain things are done matters. PM shifted people must make adjustments since the world is more AM shifted.
Strategic automaticity involves getting people to do things without meaning to do them, removing deliberation so behaviors happen automatically. The speaker has been approached by tech companies wanting to increase engagement and make products more sticky. One email offered four times their annual salary to work in-house implementing these techniques.
Digital dependence will be the Everest for our species. Technology offers amazing advances but comes with downsides if used improperly. The fear is creating a future with a thinking class of educated people with attention spans who can think critically, while the rest of the world will not be expected to think but just do as told. It's far easier to control a distracted populace.
The speaker's Everest is illuminating healthy, intentional relationships between minds and machines. The last century made amazing strides in education and equity, but algorithms and AI are shrinking the thinking class again by taking thinking away from people.
The human brain is wired for shortcuts due to evolutionary survival needs. Daniel Kahneman, UC Berkeley professor and Nobel Prize winner in economics, illuminated cognitive biases in his book Thinking Fast and Slow. His famous quote states that thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats - they can do it but would prefer not to.
There's no shame in finding oneself dependent on scrolling or having an addictive relationship with technology. Hundreds of experts have designed these tools to be addictive, and it's natural given human brain wiring. The key is to assess the situation like a blood test, identify where the problems are, and implement tactics.
Stephen shares that he has always believed in multitasking and considers himself a proud context switcher. Dr. Sahar introduces an exercise to demonstrate that multitasking is a myth by measuring switch cost - the time and energy wasted every time attention switches between tasks.
The exercise involves two simple tasks performed in different ways. First, writing "I'm a great multitasker" on the top line and numbers 1 through 20 on the bottom line. This focused approach takes 31 seconds to complete.
The second version requires alternating between letters from the phrase and numbers. Stephen must write "I" then "1," "A" then "2," and so on, either by moving between the two lines or alternating within a single line. This version takes significantly longer - reaching only number eight in 30 seconds, representing approximately 40% of the speed of the focused approach, or 60% slower.
Stephen notes that the alternating task was much less enjoyable and painful, and it reminded him of how he typically works. Every time he switched between letters and numbers, he had to remind himself where he was in each sequence, creating gaps in his workflow.
Dr. Sahar explains that the phenomenon Stephen experienced has a name: attentional residue, which she prefers to call attentional baggage. This refers to carrying the cognitive load from one task into the next task unless you consciously close it out.
The recommendation is to get cognitive closure - closing out the tab or box on your computer mentally before moving to the next task. When multitasking, you're barely onboarding to the next task because you're carrying baggage from the previous one.
Research shows that the average knowledge worker loses over 2 hours a day just bouncing between screens and different tasks.
Dr. Sahar addresses the question of how to become more lucky. The key is to prime the mind to look for luck by first getting crystal clear on what you want - your personal "Everest" or long-term goals. Without knowing what you're looking for, there's nothing for you to find.
Once clear on your goals, you need to remind yourself daily of what that Everest is and ask what you can do today that will make you incrementally closer to that long-term goal. This is about turning up the signal of what's important rather than filling the mind with noise.
The mind is designed to look for evidence and data that supports its beliefs. If you ruminate in a victim mindset or focus on shortcomings, you'll notice closed doors and obstacles. If you prime your mind with your goals and what you're hoping to achieve, you'll find opportunities because the brain is constantly scanning for evidence that confirms its beliefs.
Dr. Sahar emphasizes that this isn't just manifestation or positive thinking - it's about genuinely believing in your goals so that your brain actively looks for supporting evidence and opportunities.
Dr. Sahar has started a YouTube channel where she continues to share her work. She recommends the Mind Machine and Meaning Institute at mminstitute.org, which offers free scientific assessments for digital dependence and attention span. The goal is to make scientific assessments available to the general public so people can gain data on themselves and assess their attention, similar to how people get annual physical checkups.
The assessments allow people to understand where their attention falls and take proactive steps rather than waiting for problems to become severe.
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