Humans + AI

‘’Determining what information is important to you starts with your values.’’ – Nir Eyal About Nir Eyal On this episode we learn from Nir Eyal, who writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. He is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked: has sold over a quarter of a million copies and heavily influenced the tech industry and Indistractable which has been named best business book of the year, among other accolades. Website: nirandfar.com Facebook: Nir Eyal LinkedIn: Nir Eyal Twitter: @nireyal Instagram: @neyal99 Books Indistractable: How To Control Your Attention And Choose Your Life Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products What you will learn How to turn your values into time (04:47) You absolutely can multitask as long as you multi-channel multitask (09:22) A process to make sense of all the information that you consume using Pocket, emailing yourself, and Evernote (09:57) Use tags to efficiently file ideas (15:22) Any endeavour is hard work, and you can’t wait for inspiration to strike (17:44) Once your schedule is set, follow it (20:11) The opposite of distraction is traction (21:05) Being Indistractable means understanding why you got distracted and doing something so it doesn’t distract you in the future (23:30) Call yourself Indistractible because doing so actually empowers you (24:29) The 4 steps to becoming Indistractable (25:55) Episode resources SaneBox Pocket Evernote Transcript Ross Dawson: Nir, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Nir Eyal: My pleasure. Thank you so much. Ross: I think you are a wonderful exemplar of thriving on overload. You are able to create wonderful books to gain deep insights into what’s happening in the world. How do you do it? Nir: It’s not easy. I don’t know anyone who says it’s easy, but I will say that I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think we should start, first of all, by reframing this idea that sounds pejorative, information overload as in incredible blessing. Ross: Absolutely. Nir: We have the luxury to have information overload. I would much rather live in an age today where the world’s information is at my fingertips than in past generations, where the seat of power and influence was how much information you had access to. Now, we are drowning in information, we have so much information. Now, the scarce commodity is our ability to make sense of all that information, and make sure that it doesn’t divert us and distract us into things that are not congruent with our goals and our values. But starting off, it’s a wonderful thing; that past generations, spent a lot of their time very bored, and we don’t have that problem. Ross: You’ve got to the entire thesis of what I’m doing. Nir: Is that right? Ross: Yes. This is an opportunity. Nir: Exactly, it is a huge opportunity, but opportunities also present challenges. It’s really the people who are able to rise to this occasion, people who can make the most of all this information are really the people who will succeed in the century to come. This ability to make sure that we harness our time and attention properly is a super skill. A lot of my research is around distraction, and my book “Indistractable” is all about how to control your attention and choose your life. This is definitely something that’s near and dear to my heart. Ross: I want to dig into what you do. Obviously, we’ve learned what you do quite a bit from your book, and we wanted to hear, and learn from that. But in terms of just information, I think, part of it is scope. What is the purpose? What information is going to be useful and relevant to you? How do you start off by framing that as to what information is going to be relevant to you, and how you seek it and find it, or make it come to you? Nir: Determining what information is important to you starts with your values. What are values? I define values as attributes of the person you want to become. You have to ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend their time? That’s how you define your values. Now values, by the way, are very different from things you value. Money is not a value. Why? Because money can be taken away from you. Money is a thing you value, it is not your value. However, the idea of being a dependable person, being honest, being someone who lives with integrity, are the things that can’t be taken away from you; those are values.We have to start by turning our values into time. When we ask ourselves, how would the person I want to become spend their time, I like to use these three life domains starting out with you. You are at the center of these three life domains. If you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of others, you can’t make the world a better place, so you have to start with you.What I recommend is that we start by asking ourselves, how would the person you want to become spend their time tomorrow? Starting with the very next day, how would a person who lives at your value spend their time in this life domain of taking care of you? If physical health is important to you, do you have time on your calendar for exercise? For rest? We all know how important sleep is. We’ve heard this research to death now. We all know about it, but how many of us have a bedtime? Very few. We yell at our kids and say, you have to have a bedtime, but we’re hypocrites because we don’t have a bedtime.Making that time for prayer, meditation, video games, whatever is important to you, has to have that time on your calendar. Namely, this time that you spend consuming information, for the vast majority of people, it seeps into whatever cracks of time we have in our day, whenever we feel bored, whenever we feel lonely, whenever work is too hard, that’s our escape. I’m doing something good for myself, I’m reading the news, I’m checking on our newsletter, I’m going through email, and we think that’s something productive, but it is a distraction if it’s not what we plan to do with our time. Remember, the opposite of distraction is not focus, the opposite of distraction is traction.Traction is any action that moves you towards your goals, towards your values. Distraction is the opposite, anything that moves you away from what you said you were going to do. That’s why it’s so imperative to start with the time that something takes. Dealing with information overload doesn’t start with, what do I want to consume? It starts with, when do I want to consume? When in my calendar, will I make time to consume this information? Now, why do I say that’s so important? Because I’m forcing a constraint. When people say what do I want to do with my time, I want to write a book, I want to have a beautiful family relationship, I want to have a big business, I want to make sure I’m up to date in all the news in the world, you can’t do it all. You only have 24 hours in a day. What you have to do is to make tradeoffs. You can only make tradeoffs when you impose constraints.By looking at your calendar and saying, okay, I want X amount of hours with my family, I need to do work for this many hours in the day, I want this much time for prayer, meditation, I want this much time for whatever else it is, how much time do I have left to do this important thing that is consuming information? Starting from that constraint, you will have to give something up. There’s no way you can do it all, you only have 24 hours, everybody does. By doing that, you will understand how much time you even have. What you might find is a lot less time than you think. Maybe if you’re lucky, you have an hour or two to consume information. That forces you to be very frugal with your time.I often say that people are stingy with their money and generous with their time, and it should be the exact opposite. We should be generous with our money, and stingy with our time because we can always make more money, we can’t make more time. You have to start by asking yourself, this is a nonrenewable resource, your time in your day has to be accounted for first. By saying to yourself, hey, look, after all my other priorities and values, I only have 45 minutes in a day to consume information; What can I consume that provides 45 minutes of information that is actually valuable enough to warrant that time allotment? That’s the first place to start, I think. Ross: For you, what time do you allocate when? Nir: I typically do it in the morning, where I have time, when I go through my email; I have time booked in my day to go through email, an hour and a half of email per day. I have a separate folder; I use a product called SaneLater, which is a wonderful product that will sort out the important from the less important information; the emails that you need to respond to versus the emails that you simply consume. For about 30 minutes of my day, I have time on my calendar when I go into this folder, and I look through these various new sources and places that I want to consume this information. I use a little trick that I talked about in my book “Indistractable”, that I do believe in multitasking. I know that this is killing a sacred cow, that everybody in the productivity spaces tells you, you can’t multitask, that’s not true; You can absolutely multitask, as long as you multi-channel multitask.What we can’t do is receive inputs of information on the same channel at the same time. You can’t listen to two podcast episodes, one in each ear, you can’t do two math problems at the same time, you can’t watch two television screens at the same time, because you’re using the same channel. But you absolutely can multi-channel multitask as long as the information is coming through different sources. What I do is I have 30 minutes on my day for deciding what’s worth consuming.I open up the New York Times, Daily News Digest, I’ve subscribed to several newsletters, I open those up, I don’t read them, I save them. Immediately, when I see an article that I want to read, I have a rule, I never read articles on my web browser. I immediately save them to this wonderful app called “Pocket”. Now Pocket will scrub out the text. Instead of all those linkbaity headlines, all the links, and all the stuff that will distract you, it just gives you the text in the app. Then I use multi-channel multitasking, as the reward for doing something I don’t really want to do. In my case, it’s exercise, to reward myself with these articles read to me.You can have this app “Pocket” read these articles to you while you’re doing something else. This is called temptation bundling, this comes from the work of Katy Milkman. She has these studies where she finds that you can actually use a reward in one area of your life to help incentivize you to do something else that you don’t really feel like doing in another area of your life. I like exercising, I don’t love it, but it’s an extra boost of motivation to be able to listen to these articles while I’m in the gym exercising, or taking a walk. That becomes how I use this multi-channel multitasking to consume this information while I’m doing something else. Ross: Are all those articles that you’re consuming in audio? Nir: Yes, pretty much 100% of them. Ross: Right. Obviously, it’s not as if you’ve got dozens of articles every day, because… Nir: No, I get through probably 30-40 articles a day during my exercise session. Ross: How long does that last? Nir: About an hour. Ross: Okay. Do you put it on faster than normal speed? Nir: Yes, definitely. I use another app called “Voice Dream”, which works with Pocket. It has these great text-to-speech voices that read about 800 words a minute. I can’t listen to 800 words a minute, but I listen to about 600 words a minute. It’s fantastic. You can get through a ton. Many articles are fluff. You’ve got the opening, you’ve got the closing, the summary. But to get the new information, you can listen to it pretty quickly. Ross: This takes us in a way to sense-making, which you talked about at the beginning. Yes, we got a wealth of information; we can carve out some time to be able to pull out what’s relevant or interesting to us. Is there a process for you to make sense of the world from all of this information? Do you take any notes? Do you do anything visually? Do you build any frameworks in your mind? Do you do it simply by writing? Blog posts or books? What is the process by which it makes sense? Nir: The first pass will be to just listen to these articles, as we just described. But if it’s something that I feel like I want to dive deeper into, if it’s a particularly good article, that maybe it’s relevant to something I’m actually working on at the moment, or something I think I might work another moment, I email that article back to myself. It goes from, let’s say, this email newsletter, I just read the headline, and I immediately send it to Pocket.I don’t read the article itself. I listen to the article later on. If I say, Wow, that was really good; maybe one out of 20 things I listen to, I’ll say, Wow, that’s really insightful. I want to remember to come back to that, I’ll email it back to myself. Then when I have time in my schedule to do that type of work, to do the work that requires me to look through these articles, and think through these and extract the value in accordance to what I’m working on, that’s when I’ll do it.I’ll open up these articles, and then if it’s something that I’m working on directly, if I’m writing an article, then that goes straight to the Google Doc, where I’m working on that article. If it’s not something that I’m working on, right this minute, but I think I might work on it at some point, I file it into Evernote. I just save it into Evernote. I’ve got 100 different book ideas and article ideas, I just tag it based on that subject. Then I’ve got this nice file in Ever note, I can just type in the topic and I’ve got 20-30, maybe 100 different articles that I’ve saved over the years around this particular topic.It makes for a very rich source of reading, to get up to speed on a topic that when I’m ready to write about it, is there. Then in terms of how do I add something new? How do I not just consume but actually create? That’s where writing comes into practice. For me, I can’t remember who said it, but I remember this quote that you can’t write clearly without thinking clearly. Writing is really my process to understand new ideas. By processing these ideas, and thinking through them, and chewing on them, and then presenting them to others, that’s how I get to the truth. Ross: I think one of the interesting nuances in what you described is choosing those tags. You’ve got like 100 tags; this could be a book idea, or this theme, or this topic, or this idea. How is it that you have developed that particular array of tags that you can attach meaning to the content you’re getting? Nir: It just comes through the years of thinking about… that’s an interesting topic. It’s unanswered questions. It’s the mysteries. What drives my writing is curiosity. I think it was Dorothy Parker, who said, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity”. It’s really about the unknown, that’s what drives me. What do I not really understand? What do I want to get clear in my own head? Those tags come from these areas of interest. I have hundreds of different tags of things that I’m still curious about, that I don’t quite understand, so I file them under those tags. Ross: Do you relate these back in any way to your values, or is this just something which has just emerged in terms of… this is interesting. Nir: Yes, usually it’s in terms of either topic areas, or sometimes like a book title. If I have a book title in my head that maybe I’ll write someday, then I’ll have to file it under that title. Sometimes it’s just vague categories, race relations, or neuroplasticity or behavioral design or there might be broader categories, and most of them I’ll probably never dive back into, but should I need them, they’re there. Ross: In “Indistractable”, you talk about moving beyond distraction to traction. In that sense of traction, I think that there are different levels of focus or different types of focus, so you can have your deep dive where you close the world off. There are others where you may be consuming information or writing, or it could be less immerse things where you may be exploring for things. Within this world of traction, do you think about different types, or levels, or kinds of focus, or traction? Nir: There are times where the topic might be easier to write about, and you feel more focused. If it’s a subject, I’ve chewed on a lot, and maybe I’ve spoken about, and digested, and shared with others, and I’ve come to some conclusions, then, of course, the writing is much easier. Other times, when it’s a brand new topic, sometimes it’s a slog. I really have to think through things, and thinking is hard. Many times we believe that we can just spout out ideas on a page, and I don’t know how to do that. Thinking is really hard work. To come up with anything interesting and novel, that you’re proud of, takes a lot of time, takes a lot of thought. That requires sitting down and doing the work.I try not to put a burden on myself to think that I have to reach this cloud-nine level of focus and flow. I’m not a big fan of flow. This concept by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, I think it’s really great if you can get it, but it’s not a requirement. This concept of flow that time moves quickly, and you feel like it’s effortless, I think that’s great for some of the things that Csikszentmihalyi talks about in his book; Basketball players playing basketball, and surfers surfing… okay, great, you got into the flow because it’s fun. What happens when the task is not fun? Many times when I’m writing, it is not fun. It sucks. It’s really hard work. Yet, I want to do it because it’s a hard type of fun, but it’s certainly not the flow.I don’t try and put those requirements of “oh, I’m not focused enough”. Steven Pressfield talks about this a lot as well in his book, “The War of Art”. A professional does the work. A professional doesn’t wait for the muse to strike. A professional doesn’t wait to be in a state of flow. A professional doesn’t wait to be focused. A professional puts their butt in the chair and does the work. That’s why it’s so important to be Indistractable, because Indistractable teaches you the skills to do this at the drop of the hat, to sit down and do the work, whether you feel like it or not.That’s really where we can live the life we want. It’s not just about work. It’s not just about productive stuff. It’s about being fully present with people you love. It’s about exercising when you say you will, eating healthfully when you say you will. It’s about following through. I try not to attach any requirements that I’m at a certain level to do in order to do the work. I just do the work. Ross: Right. But if it is going to be the harder work, as in the book writing, would you put that out for a certain minimum time of day, at a particular time of day that works best for you? Nir: Yes. Right now, I do it in the afternoon. I do it right after lunch. I like to write from a coffee shop typically. I like a little bit of ambient noise while I’m writing. But I’ve played around with it. I used to write first thing in the morning. Then I moved to Singapore, and I needed to take calls in the morning, so I don’t write first thing in the morning anymore. Now I write in the afternoon. I’ve moved my schedule around. The important thing is that once my schedule is set, and it might change from day to day, once my schedule is set, I follow it. Once you’ve made that schedule, and you said this is what I want to do, now that is traction. Whatever it is you said you were going to do, that’s in your calendar, that’s traction, everything else is a distraction. Ross: There’s a distinction. People talk about focus a lot, whereas your theme is around being Indistractable. Do you draw a distinction there? What is the theme of “Indistractable” which people who haven’t read the book or already, can benefit from in understanding perhaps that distinction? Nir: Focus is something you can do with your attention but it doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be… it’s not the end goal. The end goal is to do what you say you’re going to do. If you want to divert your attention, let’s say you want to watch a movie, play a video game, play with your kids, be spontaneous, awesome, you can do that. There’s nothing that says that focus is the pinnacle of our existence. It’s alright to let yourself divert your attention from one thing to another. That’s fine, but don’t regret doing it. The way we minimize regret is to decide in advance what we will do. That’s the difference between traction and distraction.Both words come from the same Latin root “Trahere”, which means to pull. You’ll notice both words end in the same six letters “ACTION”, which spells action. Traction is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do, things that you do with intent. The opposite of traction is distraction. Distraction is any action that pulls you further away from what you plan to do. It’s all about intent. It’s all about deciding in advance, this is what I’m going to do, even if it’s something fun, frivolous even, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with scrolling Instagram or playing a video game or being silly with your kids. That’s great. That’s wonderful. But do it on your schedule and according to your values, not someone else’s. If what you want to do with your time is to be focused on your writing, wonderful. But that’s not necessarily the requirement, which is why I don’t think that the opposite of distraction is focused. The opposite of distraction is traction. Ross: “Indistractable”, I think a key part of that is identity, as in understanding and believing yourself is Indistractable, being able to get traction in whatever it is you’re doing. But there’s a whole series of tools or techniques in order to enable you to align your actions with the belief that you are Indistractable and able to be there, doing what you’re planning to do. Nir: Absolutely, yes. This is why I titled the book “Indistractable”. “Indistractable”, it’s a made-up word. I made it up so I could define it in any way I like. Being Indistractable doesn’t mean you never get distracted. Even I get distracted from time to time. Being Indistractable means you understand why you got distracted and you do something about it so you don’t get distracted by the same thing in the future. Paulo Coelho has a wonderful quote, he said, “A mistake repeated more than once is a decision”.How many people go through life constantly complaining about how they didn’t get this done? And they got distracted from that, and they had this goal and this thing on their to-do lists, and they didn’t finish it? How many times do we keep getting distracted by the same thing again and again before we say, enough, I’m going to do something about it? A distractible person chooses to be distracted because they don’t do anything about the problem. An Indistractable person says, okay, you got me once, now I’m going to do something about it.What I teach in the book “Indistractable” is this model around knowing exactly why you got distracted and using this toolkit to prevent it from happening again in the future. Once you become that person, that person who strives to do what they say they’re going to do, the person who strives to live with personal integrity, you are Indistractable. It doesn’t matter if you read the book or not, if you’re listening to my voice right now on this podcast, you can call yourself Indistractable, because doing so actually empowers you to change.We know that monikers have a huge impact on our behavior. If you look at the psychology of religion, when devout Muslims call themselves Muslims, they don’t have to use willpower to do certain behaviors. A devout Muslim doesn’t wake up in the morning and say, I wonder if I’ll have some alcohol today? No, a devout Muslim doesn’t drink alcohol. It is who they are. A vegetarian doesn’t wake up and say, I wonder if I’ll have a bacon sandwich for breakfast? No, they don’t eat meat. It is who they are. They are vegetarian. You are now Indistractable. Indistractable sounds like indestructible, it’s a superpower. It’s who you are. It’s your identity. You’re the person who strives to do as they say they’re going to do, someone who lives with personal integrity, and who is as honest with themselves as they are with others. Ross: To round out, what would be your advice beyond anything which we’ve already covered to someone who’s saying, this is a lot of information, I’m trying to work out what to do. What are the steps which I should take? How can I thrive in this world? Nir: The four steps to becoming Indistractable are pretty simple. They took me five years to uncover, but these are the four basic steps that are the four pillars, the strategies that we have to use. Strategies are why we do something, tactics are what we do. It’s much more important to understand the strategy than just the tactics. But if you follow these four steps, number one, mastering your internal triggers, understanding where distractions come from, that’s step one. Step number two is, make time for traction. What we talked about earlier, planning out your day, understanding what you define as traction so that you can know what is distraction. You can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from.Step number three is, hack back the external triggers. Removing all the pings, dings, and rings in your outside environment that can lead you towards distraction. Finally, prevent distraction with Packs. Packs are the last line of defense. They’re the firewall against distraction. We use them as this barrier when we fall off track. After we’ve tried the other three strategies, we use them as the last line of defense. When we use these four strategies in concert, this is how we become Indistractable. There’s a lot in the book, but really, it boils down to these four basic strategies that anyone can master. Ross: Given the world we’re into, I think that there are many people that are very distracted and could benefit a lot from being able to take your advice. In a way, that’s the future of where we are, it is to the degree to which we become a distracted race, or something else. This is a bit of a pivotal moment in human history, isn’t that? Nir: This is very autobiographical. They say, “research is mesearch”. I wrote this book for me more than anyone else; because I found I was incredibly distracted. It was because the world is such an interesting place. There are limitless videos to watch. Now with these amazing technologies, like the one we’re using right now, you can speak with people all over the world, and things you can learn, and incredible things you can see and do. But the price of progress, the price of these amazing technologies that we have at our fingertips today is you know what, you got to learn some new methods, you got to upgrade your own skillset to make sure that you can live in this modern world, and use these tools to your advantage, to use them as opposed to letting them use you.It’s not that hard. This isn’t rocket science. Simple things like planning your day, understanding your internal triggers, turning off the external triggers, simple stuff, we can all do it, if we stop complaining about it long enough to take action. Many of us, all we do is whine and moan about the crazy world these days but we don’t do anything about it. I really think the world is bifurcating into two types of people, people who let their time and attention be manipulated and controlled by others, and people who stand up and say, no, I decide how I will control my time and attention. I will control my life. I am Indistractable. Ross: Absolutely agree, Nir. It’s fantastic to get your insights on thriving on overload. I’m sure many people will benefit from them. Thanks so much. Nir: My pleasure. Thank you. The post Nir Eyal on using your values to filter, when to consume information, the best apps for content, and using audio for reading (Ep3) appeared first on Humans + AI.

“Jump in there really be an active participant in the industry, because it’s also about that. How are you becoming a voice, an active participant in the idea sharing and everything that’s being built?“ – Cathy Hackl About Cathy Hackl On this episode we learn from Cathy Hackl, a leading tech futurist and globally recognized business leader specializing in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), & spatial computing. She is the CEO of Futures Intelligence Group, a futures research & consulting firm that works with clients in tech, fashion, media, government, and defense. BigThink named Cathy “one of the top 10 most influential women in tech in 2020”. Business Website: Futures Intelligence Group Personal Website: www.cathyhackl.com LinkedIn: Cathy Hackl Facebook: Cathy Hackl Instagram: Cathy Hackl Twitter: @CathyHackl Books The Augmented Workforce: How AI, AR and 5G Will Impact Every Dollar You Make Marketing New Realities: An Introduction to Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality Marketing, Branding & Communications What you will learn Cathy is a voracious consumer of information and loves conversations (03:13) But all that information is constantly refined (06:43) It starts with keywords (08:59) And being selective (10:09) Tagging is it, especially high level topics (10:58) She has developed her thought process over time (13:10) Asking the right questions… (16:16) …then hypnagoia (19:08) Blocking time on her calendar and turning off distractions (21:48) How Cathy became the metaverse expert (24:25) When is the right time to share an idea (32:59) Episode resources Feedly Leo Medium Diigo Google Docs Transcript Ross Dawson: Cathy, it is awesome to have you on the Thriving on Overload show. Cathy Hackl: Awesome. Happy to be here. Ross: Cathy, you keep across the edge of emerging technologies. There’s a lot of information to keep across, a lot of new things. How do you do it? Cathy: It’s interesting because when I was looking at some of the questions that you sent over for this, I started to really try to think about, “How do I organize this? How am I doing this?” I’m a voracious consumer of information like a lot of folks are in our industry. How do you organize everything? How do you make sense of all of it? How do I do it? I would say I wake up, I read a huge amount of news—mostly focused on technology, because that is kind of where I spend most of my time. I consider myself a tech futurist. I’m very much focused on the technology, having been working in this space inside these companies for several years now. Definitely, start reading a lot of different information. If there’s something really interesting, I’ll flag it with different services that I use. Sometimes I’ll forward it to one of my assistants and ask them to put it in different programs. We have Google Docs right now—to be honest, as simple as that—on metaverse things. I’m very focused on the metaverse. Back in January, you didn’t have that many metaverse headlines. Now, it’s like every single headline in tech is a metaverse headline or something like that. We used to have a Google Doc where we used to keep those a little bit. Now, it’s getting a little bit more complicated. We use tools like Diigo, for example, to keep things organized. I have a very well-organized Feedly to also keep tabs of things and keep organized, kind of know what are the sources I want to get information from. I mean, lots of scanning, lots of reading lots. I will say a lot of information that I do get, I also get from conversations, especially right now with the metaverse becoming such a hot topic and lots of people wanting to talk to me about it. Sometimes it might be as simple as like, “I’m launching the X project.” Before, I might have been like, “I don’t have time.” But now, I want to hear what they’re doing. What is it that they’re doing in the space? Sometimes those conversations, not always, they don’t lead to anything. But sometimes I’ll find out something I didn’t know, or I’ll know this is interesting. This brand’s thinking of doing this. That’s gonna be happening, what does that mean? What is that a signal of? It’s a bit of a process. Especially in my field because it’s evolving so fast, it’s hard to keep up. What was new yesterday might be old by today in the technology space, because it’s moving so fast. Another thing I do is I publish a weekly column in Forbes called Metaverse Weekly. That forces me as well to always keep on top and try to make sure that I have the freshest news and the most relevant news and those sorts of things. Sometimes I do get that information via a PR pitch; it’s not my preferred way. So, it’s a combination of all these different sources of information. I don’t have one place I go, it’s a multitude of places and sources. Ross: You say in the morning you scan and you look around. You mentioned you use Feedly. Essentially, you’re choosing feeds to go into your Feedly, and that’s been curated over some time I guess? Do you continue to refine or add? Cathy: I continue to refine all the time. They’ve got some interesting AI tools called Leo that you can use to help you as well, make it more tailored. But I don’t only do that. I use my Feedly, but I also go into Google News. I go into Apple News. I like to see how the different algorithms and everything presents the news to me. Of the different things, there might be something I missed. When I go, for example, into Apple News or Google News, I tend to always go to the technology tab because you know they’ve got headlines. I tend to always go to business or tech. But I force myself to go to international or go to other ones, even though that’s not necessarily my main interest. But I’m forcing myself to go to these other tabs because there might be something I’m missing here. There might be something happening in X country that I was not aware of that could impact X. So, forcing myself like that. I’m very lucky that I have a team. I also have my team finding news and curating those. I have them send me a small metaverse review of the of the Daily News, things that could be of interest to me. They’ll send me something on a daily basis. It will be like a headline, small summary, and then the link if I want to read more. So, I also have that added bonus of having a team that also helps me with this. Ross: When you’re scanning and you see all of these articles, some of them you say, “I want to bookmark that, I want to put it in a list.” What is it that makes it something which is worth seeing? What switches the trigger to say, “This goes in my database” or “I got to pay attention to this?” Cathy: It starts with keywords, especially with the metaverse. It started with the keyword “metaverse.” Now that there’s a lot more metaverse content, we have to be a little bit more selective. What is the actual topic here? Who’s actually interviewed? Who’s actually saying this? There’s an article a couple weeks ago when you had Mark Zuckerberg say that Facebook was going to go from being a social media company to a metaverse company. You pay attention to that, right? That’s something you save. Satya Nadella in an earnings call saying the metaverse is one of our goals, you save that article because that is a significant statement by significant figure. I think it started off with a keyword, just anything metaverse, because we didn’t have that much metaverse coverage. Now that there’s a lot more, it’s being a little bit more selective. Who’s interviewed? What’s really the topic? I love going, for example to Medium, to find maybe some new voices. But it doesn’t mean that every single article on Medium that uses the term metaverse is relevant to me or that is a well- thought out article. Be very selective on the sources. Who wrote this? It’s interesting because I’ve seen the evolution with the metaverse on who is writing about it, who’s writing about it now, what is the context. Are they just using it for clicks in the headline nowadays? It evolved. Whereas before, you might have metaverse in your in your headline and it wasn’t necessarily something that people would click on. Now, a lot of people are putting it in the headline because people will click on it. It’s been interesting to see this evolution on how I’ve been tracking metaverse as a general mega trend. Ross: When you put in Diigo or Google Doc or whatever, what happens to that then? Is that for later reference? Do you have some tags to that? You’re accumulating all of this, when do you refer back to that, or how does that help you build that bigger picture? Cathy: When we’re doing Metaverse Weekly, sometimes we’ll tag Metaverse Weekly, so we know we got to pull this in, and at least I know some of the stories that I’ve organized for Metaverse Weekly in Forbes. I’m writing a book. I got an international book deal. Ross: Congratulations. Cathy: I’m very happy about that. It’s on the metaverse. Ross: Surprise, surprise. Cathy: Of course. I’m saving things there as well, tagging it in the book, whatever we’re putting there. Definitely tagging with different things, and it’s going depend on what I’m doing. I’m working, for example, on an article on defense in the metaverse, working with it with Lieutenant Colonel Jake Sotiriadis who’s widely known in strategic foresight. I’m keeping tabs on that so that when he and I have to actually sit down and write the article, I can just pull that information. Sometimes those links just live there. Sometimes I won’t do anything with them, sometime I will. You just really never know in the tech space, to be honest. Something could happen tomorrow where I might have tagged something, synthetic humanoid robot, for example. Then Elon Musk’s goes on stage and talks about his Tesla AI, and everyone’s like, “What is this synthetic humanoid robot?” Sometimes they’ll live there, nothing will happen. But sometimes something will just happen in technology, and of a sudden I have all this research already done on some of these things. Ross: You build up your own tag taxonomy or structure? Do you virtually tag a book or just high-level topics? Cathy: High-level topics. But they’re high level topics to me, right? Synthetic humanoid robots is a topic for me because I’ve been writing about it for a while. That seems pretty specific for someone else, it’s not just robots. Ross: What always intrigues me about this is we got this wealth of information. You’re obviously understanding the space, as well as anyone else in the world. Does that all just happen in the gray matter in your brain? Do you do some mapping to draw correlations? Do you draw out themes, or does it all just happen as you’re writing your weekly articles and your books? What is that process of taking all of those sources, those inputs, “I already know that, that’s new, that’s another angle?” How does that add to the comprehension that you have? Cathy: I think it’s something that you build through the years, to be honest. I started off my career as a journalist, right? When you’re a journalist, you got to keep your sources straight. You got to keep all that information. I think it comes from having been a journalist and having kept things organized in my mind, as you write the story and as you report on the story, especially if it’s something that takes you months to report on. It’s interesting, it definitely brings some of that things I learned from journalism into the space. I would say it’s something that you’ve built through the years when you start to see some of the things. For me, it’s a little bit strange because I do get a chance to try a lot of things that a lot of people don’t get to try or get to see, a lot of things that people have never seen or will see in a couple years. I can’t necessarily store that somewhere because there’s NDAs and stuff, so I can’t just be storing it. But I’ll keep it in my head. Eventually, if I see something else I’m like, “That’s how that’s going work,” or “That’s related to that specific thing that I saw the other day.” I think it’s a lot of mental models in some way. Sometimes it’s something that I’ve seen, that I’ve written an NDA and I can’t really go write about it or share it. I just kind of start it, I guess, in my mind. That has happened, I would say, in a lot of some of the things that I’ve been able to demo and see. Eventually I’ll see something, a startup or something, and I’ll be like, “That startup is related to this other thing to this.” I think it’s a lot of mental maps for me. I’m probably very different than some of the people you interviewed because my work is a little bit different. Sometimes I can’t even put it down on paper. There’s way too many in the AI side, and I just have to store it here. I would say it’s about mental mapping, for me. A lot of it comes from the conversations I have, the questions I ask when I’m demoing a new piece of tech or things like that. It might be different to some of the folks that you speak to, because I do have to keep some of these things stored in my mind without being able to publicly speak about some of the things—or even writing things down. Ross: In the questions you ask or the conversations you have, I suppose part of those questions then are trying to uncover what is new, which is different, whether it fits or not with your existing models? Cathy: Most of the things I’m trying are different and are new. Whatever question I ask is going to be new. Even though I’m not necessarily the most technical person, sometimes there will be technical questions, because I do have a grasp of some of the technical things that go into building some of these devices of the future. Sometimes I’ll try something that is so new that I’m just quiet, I’m just in awe. I’m like, “How did you build this?” My question won’t be as informed or technical. Sometimes when it’s something that is exciting but it’s something that isn’t as new—new to me—I’ll have more technical questions. I’ll pull them and be like, “I had demoed X other device, how is this different?” I can pull those questions. But sometimes when something is so, so new and you don’t have a frame of reference for this something new, you’re just trying to make sense of what this is. Some of the questions might be more elemental, not as informed. But I love what I do because it’s so exciting and it’s so fresh. Sometimes it doesn’t always happen. But sometimes I’ll demo something and I’ll just be like, “What was that,” just trying to, in my mind, to make sense of it, let alone the rest of the population. Once again, to that point, I feel like my experience is going to be very different than a lot of other folks. I’m very hands on, very tech focused, and I get to demo some of these things years before anyone does. Ross: Anyone that’s familiar with your LinkedIn feed, for example, and imagining some of the things which you can’t share—which are even beyond that—they’ll know you’ve seen some pretty amazing stuff. Cathy: If someone were to hack my brain, I think they’d have a lot of information. So, don’t do it people, please don’t. Ross: The problem, I suppose, is the synthesis. Is there a state of mind? Do you find that sometimes when you get these “ahas” you sort of get this into perspectives and to framing things? Is there anything which makes that more likely to happen? Can you design those times when you get those insights? Cathy: I tend to have really some of those moments. I think there were a couple of times that I know I have those moments. Something I learned from Amy Webb is brown noise. She uses it a lot to concentrate. I’ve started to use it, and that really, really helps me get to that next level and really focus, when I need to be very focused and very productive. That’s one little thing. I’ll have those moments, right? It’s kind of a state of flow where your mind is just in it, and eventually this connects and this connects. So, I have that. Other times—and this happens to me all the time, my husband hates it—is right when I’m about to fall asleep, I’m trying to calm my mind—which is not calm—it will come to me. It will just come to me and I’ll make a connection of it, this and this, and then grab my phone and write something, grab a piece of paper or something, He hates it. Everyone’s trying to go to sleep at home and I’m like, “No, but I have an idea and I need to do this.” I’ll have those moments that happens sometimes, and it’s usually at that time. I’m trying to calm my brain. I’m trying to disconnect from the world. All of a sudden, boom, it’s there and connection is made; I totally understand, and I see something I didn’t see before. If it’s me wanting to have that time to really kind of start to make some of these connections, it’s focused time, brown noise—really very focused and studious. Sometimes it’s just that, I’m at a point where I’m relaxing, I’m getting rid of all the craziness of the day. I’ve got three kids, it’s one of those things, I’m getting rid of the craziness of the day. All of a sudden, boom, there it is. Sometimes it’s deliberate, the brown noise time. But sometimes it’s just like this moment where, boom, it just happens. Ross: It’s called hypnagogia, the time between sleep and waking. Thomas Edison, amongst others, used to use that and have some notes ready, so that when he when he was falling asleep he could jot down his latest invention. Cathy: I’m not necessarily inventing things, but it comes to me at times. Ross: It’s inside. Cathy: “I get it, I totally see it now.” Ross: You talked about these focus times, there are times when you block out. How do you block that out? When do you block that out? The brown noises are usually interesting, how do you how do you organize your focus time? Cathy: I’ll put blocks in my calendar on a weekly basis, it doesn’t mean they happen. Ross: The world happens. Cathy: Kids happen, pets happen, lots of other stuff happens during those block times sometimes, pediatricians or whatever it is. I have blocks, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they happen. I have two blocks on my calendar, and it bothers me every single time I look at them. I’m like, “Am I really sticking to this block? I don’t know like. Friday afternoons I’m trying to block off to do those sorts of things, it just ends up being something like, “Mommy, take me to the pool.” So, I’m trying. Sometimes, even though they’re blocked on my calendar, it might be something that just happens. I’ve got an hour in between calls, let me do some of that now. I’m not maybe as structured or as rigid as some folks with their calendar, in that sense. I have blocks for it, it doesn’t always happen though. Sometimes it will just be I’ve got an hour, like I said, between calls, let me focus and really get this project done or this research done. Ross: Do you turn off social e-mail distractions during that time, or do you have any other rituals which gets you into that space? Cathy: I would say my LinkedIn, I close my LinkedIn. If I’m on my desktop or laptop, I have to close my LinkedIn. That’s my most active network, so I don’t want it pinging me every five seconds. DMs, I get way too many dams. LinkedIn, I have to immediately close it. I know that it’s just going to start pinging and pinging. I’m not as bothered by Slack or other stuff. But when it’s LinkedIn, I have to close it. So, I would say that’s one of the things I definitely do. I always keep my phone around. It’s never something where I don’t look at my phone, just because I do have three children. That, for me, is just not an option, and one of them has got some food allergies and stuff. For me, it’s just not an option to turn off my phone. I’ll have it on the side and I won’t look at it, or I’ll cover it up. But I’ll make sure I have it where I can actually hear it ring, or whatever it is that that needs to happen. But I would say my biggest distraction when I’m doing something like this is LinkedIn, for sure. Ross: Changing tack a little bit, I think one of the most important things is to find your area of expertise. You can be the world-class expert and know what it is you’re doing. I’d love to hear the story of how you’ve ended up in your area of expertise at the moment. What was that journey? How did you find your calling as it were and what you’re an expert on? Cathy: I kind of have to trace everything, and it all kind of comes together at some point. The way I explain it to people, the reason I got into the immersive technologies and the metaverse and all the things I’m working on, I would have to trace it back to 2004. I was working at CNN, and part of my job there was to look at all the raw footage that was coming in from the war in Iraq. As you can imagine, not pleasant things. It wasn’t the only thing I did, but it was one of the things I did. I always joke in some way and say I was a Facebook moderator before there were Facebook moderators. When you have a type of role where you have to see this type of content and that’s your job, you have to turn your humanity dial or humanity switch off a little bit or turn it to the side, just to kind of get through the day and go home and have regular life. It was about seven years ago, I went to a conference, and I got invited to put a virtual reality headset on. I put the VR headset on, and I was put into this 6 x 9 very tiny, virtual solitary confinement cell and VR where prisoners in solitary confinement spent 90% of their time. Within a couple of minutes, I just felt something. It was claustrophobia, but it was also something else. I took the headset off and I said, “This is the future of storytelling.” I just saw the future—or whatever that was—and that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. For me, it was very clear moment. At that moment, it’s like the switch got turned back on. That’s the only way I can describe the feeling. I felt something different. I felt something that made me feel human again. I don’t know what the right term would be, but it was that moment. After that, I was very intentional with my pivot. Everyone thought I was crazy. My friends and my husband were like, “What are you doing? What is this VR thing?” Fast forward, 2021, I’m very lucky to have worked with some of the top companies. I’m considered one of the people that is very much, I guess, an expert in the field. I’m very much at the center of the conversation and everything that’s happening in this immersive and now metaverse space. I would say it was a very clear moment for me when I knew that’s where I was heading. That’s where I’m going to go. That’s exactly what I want to do. It’s evolved and changed. But, for me, it was a very clear moment. Ross: You saw it and you recognized it. How did you go about it? Presumably, you weren’t the expert when you put on that VR headset. You took it off and you said, “I’m going to become that.” What was that journey? What did you do to follow that path? Cathy: I did several things. One of them was voraciously consume absolutely everything there was that I could find that relate to VR and AR. Another thing I did is try to figure out, who are the key players here? Who are the people I need to be paying attention to? Figuring out, what are they saying? How are they saying it? What are they working on? Who are they working with? Going through that and figuring out who are the people that I needed to keep tabs on. Eventually, I’m very lucky some of them became my mentors. As a woman, as a Latina woman, in tech, I was also very lucky to be able to see two other very strong Latina women leading the way. That, to me, was very helpful in saying there’s a place for me here. I can do this. If you can see it, you can be it. I think that was a big motivator for me as well, when I saw them. I used to admire them from afar, they were my north stars. Now, they’re both my friends. It’s been an evolution. But I think I got educated, I made connections. I said I’m going to work in this industry, got my first break, and then made everything I could out of it. It’s been great. I worked at HTC Vive, worked at Magic Leap, worked at Amazon Web Services. I mean, I’ve got a pretty solid career track there. For me, it really started with that pivotal moment. How can I educate myself and learn as much as I can, and then go into these companies and really be a part of it? It’s interesting, as a tech futurist and very much focused on what I do, I’m a little bit different because I’ve actually been inside these companies. I don’t necessarily just read articles, I know these people, I’ve worked on some of these projects. There’s a lot of stuff that I’ve worked behind the scenes on that people don’t necessarily realize. But I know it’s one of my projects or something I had a part in. It’s been quite a journey and exciting one. I’ve been very lucky, I have to say. Ross: You made it happen. Cathy: If you can see it, you can be it. There you go. Ross: What advice would you give to anybody that’s wanting to follow a similar path to you to become the expert? Essentially, in a space of emerging technologies, to keep current, keep ahead, to make sense of it, and become at the center of that, what would your advice be? Cathy: If you know enough about the technology, if you’re interested in something, for me, it’s about getting to the right place at the right time. It’s almost about recognizing a rocket when you see one. I’m sure many people saw some of the same things I did, but they didn’t see it. They didn’t see the rocket. I saw the rocket and I jumped on it. I’m taking this trip to wherever this is leading, and it’s paid off really well. So, I think it’s about being able to recognize some of those rockets, the new things that are coming. If people are really excited about a new technology, get in there, jump in there really be an active participant in the industry. It’s also about that, how are you becoming a voice, an active participant, in the idea sharing and everything that’s being built? The metaverse, for example, as a greater vision doesn’t currently exist, we’re building it. But now is the time to start voicing what you believe this metaverse should be, how you think it should be built. That was a time to be a participant and have your voice out there. We’re all slowly building it. I would say those are some of the things. Making connections, making lots of connections in the industry. Who are the people that you should be paying attention to? Being open to being educated and being open to being teachable, I think that’s very important, especially in my in my space. Another thing I think, specifically, for people that are interested in becoming tech futurist is you can’t know everything about technology and you cannot be an expert in all the technologies. That is way beyond anyone’s capability really. Not even Elon Musk attempts to do that. He has his arms in a lot of different things, but not everything in tech. Sometimes being a generalist in some other areas might be beneficial. But I think in tech, you have to be kind of focused. And you have to realize, what is it exactly that I’m focused on here? There are some folks that are very focused on artificial intelligence, folks that are very focused on more on the bio science side. It’s trying to figure out exactly what you’re going to focus on. Ross: You’re obviously wonderful at sharing. One is to actually share ideas. There is the of having the ideas or having the fresh ideas. At what point do you, I suppose, gain the confidence to feel, “I’ve got a fresh idea and want to share it?” Do you do it right away, just sort of throw it out? Do you do sort of develop enough confidence in your own ideas before you start opining on the industry? Cathy: It’s a slippery slope. The only reason I say that is because I am a woman, and I am a woman in tech. I think it’s a little bit different. I do pause before I tweet, because I know that maybe a guy can tweet what I’m saying and they wouldn’t get the some of the pushback or things that I might get. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I do see it sometimes. As a woman in tech, sometimes I do take a step back and say, “Should I tweet this?” I remember sharing an article with a friend. I said, “Hey, do you think this is going to make anyone angry?” He’s like, “Why do you care? Someone’s going to get angry somewhere.” It’s true, but I think sometimes as a woman, I think it’s a different game—especially if you’re a woman in technology, in a very male-driven industry. Ross: To have something solid to share in that case. I think that’s that value. Cathy: Yes, value. But still, I think that there’s a lot to unpack there. Ross: I think that’s a whole other conversation. Cathy: That’s a whole other podcast, issue, book, anything. Ross: Cathy, it’s been such a delight to talk to you. I so admire what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Fantastic to get your insights, and I’m sure many other people will really appreciate it. Thanks so much for your time, Cathy. Cathy: Thank you, Ross. Appreciate it. The post Cathy Hackl on finding the key players to listen to, building mental maps, how to see connections, and becoming a voice in your industry (Ep2) appeared first on Humans + AI.

Tim O'Reilly, influential figure in Internet development, talks about noticing the important things, soft focus, open source framing, and patience in narratives. Topics include mental models, creativity, perceiving reality, building frameworks, cooperation, and the repeating pattern of centralization.

We live in a world of exponentially increasing information, every day becoming more intense. All success in our incredibly fast-paced world is based on our ability to make sense of infinite information. On the Thriving on Overload podcast we speak to the world’s very best at dealing with a deluge of information – investors and venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, authors and more – to learn precisely how they are able to thrive in a world of overload. We’ll learn their techniques, their frameworks, their routines that let them transform the ocean of information we swim in to insight, value, and the ability to create a better future. Join futurist Ross Dawson and his guests to discover how to be your very best in a world of unlimited information. Subscribe to the Thriving on Overload podcast on your favorite platform. The post Trailer: Thriving on Overload appeared first on Humans + AI.