It's

absolutely draining our resources to follow news. Our culture is that of a productivity culture, right? And it goes back historically, you know, the Protestant work ethic, and, you know, there's this pressure for us to be as productive as possible, which And on tougher days, you know, I definitely don't have enough to deal with it. which means we need to work as long as possible. But there's another aspect to it, and that's we're part of a busyness culture. And the business culture is that we have to occupy our minds every minute with something. And so if we're not occupying our minds with work, well, we turn to the news as a way to occupy our minds. Right? So just pulling away from, you know, any kind of tech and anything that's reminding you of work or what's going on in the world can help our minds recuperate. Yeah,

I would like to give everyone who is listening my permission to disengage from the news as much as you feel like you need to, because it's really important to being able to engage with the news, your loved ones, your work when you need to, you have those finite cognitive resources. So you talk in the book about how there is actually a lot we can do to recharge those resources, which was good news to me because it's easy to feel pessimistic because our environment has gotten so good at defeating our control over our attention that there is actually a lot we can do to recharge it. Can you talk about some of those techniques?

Yes, there are things we can do. Let me start with something that I call practicing meta-awareness. Now, during the pandemic, my university offered us a course in mindfulness, mindfulness-based stress reduction, which I think probably a lot of listeners are familiar with. But it gave me this idea that we could do something related when we're on our devices. So mindfulness is about teaching you how to focus in the moment, right? You focus on things like your breath or your senses. But when we're on our devices, it's also really important to be aware of what we're doing. And a lot of things that we do on our devices are automatic, like going to check the news or checking email or checking social media. And this idea of meta-awareness is to become aware of these automatic responses that we have. And when you can become aware of them, you can check them. And you can say, ah, you know, I have this urge to check the news. Do I really need to check the news? Is it going to be good for me right now? No, it's probably not. So, if you become aware of your actions, you can become more intentional. When you're intentional, you can form a plan. And so I can say, okay, I am going to work 30 more minutes. And gee, maybe after 30 minutes, I won't even have any urge to check the news. But I can give myself permission. Okay, I'm going to look at for two minutes. I'm going to glance at the news. What's even better is to step up, walk around, or go outside. That's an even better use of our time.

Why is that better? Why is going for a walk something that's better for our attention?

Yeah, because research shows that just a mere 20-minute walk in nature with some kind of exposure to nature can significantly refresh us. I've done research where we found that people are actually more creative. They have better, it's called divergent thinking, which is thinking of different ideas. Oh,

sure. Yeah.

Just after 20 minutes. And you don't have to be in a forest or a park, but having exposure to a tree or birds or something that's nature-related.

And that can also help recharge that tank of attention when it feels depleted.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's one thing we can do. Another thing we can do is to practice forethought. And what that means is imagining our future self at the end of the day. And I like to use the end of the day as a timeline. Whenever you have the urge to check news or social media, visualize where you want to be in the evening, how you want to see yourself, and really importantly, how do you want to feel? And I want to see myself relaxing on the couch. I like to, you know, back on the couch and read something. And how do I want to feel? I want to feel relaxed, and I want to feel fulfilled and rewarded. And the last thing I want to visualize myself doing is working on a deadline at 10 o'clock at night, because I've been there, I know what that's like and that's a recipe for burnout. And so this visualization, if you can make it very concrete, it's very powerful and it can stop us in our tracks and it can help us keep going. So practicing forethought. So

the idea is that imagining my evening as I want it to be will help me focus more now so that I can complete the task that I want to work on and I will get to spend the evening as I wanted to and not catching up on work?