Most things you do should serve that thing in the best way you can find. And those unimportant things, take it away from your life.
Editor’s note: Recently, “GQ” interviewed Cal Newport, the author of “Deep Work” and MIT Xueba. This computer scientist talked about why we live in isolation Quality may depend on how you use technical products. Although the isolated life in China has gradually come to an end, the reflection on the relationship between people and technology products, social networks, and working methods in contemporary life is still worthy of our consideration. This article was compiled from the original article entitled “Cal Newport on Surviving Screens and Social Media in Isolation”.
At present, in the face of the continuous new coronavirus epidemic, for many people, technology products are the main link to the outside world. It allows us to maintain important contacts with friends, family and colleagues. In this rather gloomy time, it provides us with information and much-needed outlets for happiness, entertainment and creativity. However, it can also be a source of deep anxiety and upset: we have never been more prone to stress like now: swipe your Weibo, check the latest real-time dynamics of the epidemic, or pick up your phone to send messages to friends Unconsciously fell into a network black hole.
Our online world has always been of a dual nature: the potential for unlimited access to information and the connection to everything is curbed by the anxiety caused by the epidemic, and our concentration and attention are becoming increasingly fragile. But as Cal Newport, a computer scientist who teaches at Georgetown University, said of the isolation period, “The current crisis also highlights the advantages and disadvantages of technology.”
In recent years, Newport has become an expert in the digital world. He is one of the few who resists the rapid development of technology. He calls on people to stop and think deeply about how the technology we use affects culture and human behavior. In his books “Deep Work” and “Digital Minimalism” (Digital Minimalism), he provides some practices that can help readers regain their autonomy on electronic devices, which are easy to hijack people’s attention (in In the first book, he explained the benefits of single-task processing and deep concentration; the second book helps readers think about their personal philosophy of using technology products, and discard all platforms that cannot bring value or meaning to your life).
As the screen usage time increases, we asked Newport how to better spend every moment of the moment. His advice will not only help you avoid the possibility of swallowing your attention in the vortex of anxiety and stress, but in this period of unprecedented isolation, it will also help you rethink the importance of autonomy,And how you spend your isolation period determines to a certain extent where your life will go.
In the book “Digital Minimalist,” you put forward a point of view that is designed to help people regain their autonomy in using electronic devices. In my opinion, this is especially important when we are all isolated at home.
The basic ideas in “Digital Minimalist” have been shown to the extreme. One of the core ideas is that technology is dualistic. Now, we are all thrown into a world where we have to work with technology all day. It is definitely a necessity-yet the negative side of technology has never been stronger.
I like a metaphor in Plato ’s dialogue “Phildro”: He likens the soul to a chariot consisting of a driver and two winged flying horses. It controls the rational thinking and planning part that represents people. A horse is black, representing desire, the lowest part of the soul, this part is the demand for material. The other horse is white, representing will or spirit. This is the soul of a hero. It can free and ascend people from material depravity to find personal glory.
You can give an example, such as a social network. If you use it carefully, you can gain the power of the white horse in that fable. It can help you accomplish what you have done in a day and improve your quality of life. But if you use it at will, like a psychological placebo, it will only inspire dark horses of ignorance. You will find yourself completely lost in anxiety and distraction.
Have you ever experienced self-struggle and could n’t resist temptation? Or do you already do well enough to be immune?
When the new crown epidemic just started to deteriorate, I wrote an article about digital minimalism and wrote some things I suggested to everyone. I did this myself: I only read the news in the morning to understand What happened, and then I stopped watching the news on this day. But at the beginning, even if you only watch the news in the morning, you will find that you have read all kinds of information for 90 minutes. I found my mentality very unstable. Therefore, I realized that I had to control the time of browsing the news every day, and I could not immerse myself in it. Even myself was caught off guard by the distracting vortex.
For ordinary people, it ’s really no good to pay attention to all kinds of news at all times. I read the Washington Post every day. I only need to browse the front page to know everything I need to know.
It may be a bit rash to say so, but as far as public health issues are concerned, you should probably turn off Twitter. This technology, what it brings to people, and the discussions there are really not suitable for the moment.
Yeah, I have a friend who stopped in the middle of the nightPay attention to the news, because that is actually just passing the time. But then I took a look at a platform like Instagram, and felt that people really got in touch there. There seems to be idealized, maybe an idealized version of the Internet, is this really the case?
It is entirely possible. Because everything is so dense, it is forcing people to experience this minimalist ritual. You need to be really careful: these tools have potential and dangerous things in them. In the past, these platforms were so easy and casual: I used Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. These are not bad things. Now, suddenly, using Twitter makes me panic. Brushing Instagram will calm me down. “People have built an affinity community on Instagram. Twitter seems to have evolved into a place where people yell at government officials to relieve pressure.
When we talked last year, I mentioned cigarettes. Now, what I want to say is that synthetic opioids and narcotics are also related to this. In medicine, opioids are very important for pain management after surgery. You do n’t want to have no opioid painkillers in the world. They can help your grandmother perform hip replacement surgery. But they can also destroy your life in another situation.
These technologies have brought new power to people, and we do n’t want to have these technologies. But at the same time, if you spend your time on Twitter every day, it is destroying your own mental health, which is equivalent to giving yourself an injection every hour. But if you are making video calls with your parents or relatives instead of brushing social networks, this is very beneficial.
One of the things I often do is to really try to understand the philosophy of technology. The impact of technology on culture is complex. We treat it too simplistic, forcing everyone to entangle with technology all day, and the coexistence of positive and negative factors will inevitably make our way of thinking about these tools more complicated.
If I ask you, which side do you think will win in this war: good technology or bad technology, how would you answer?
First of all, I will not use the terms “good technology” or “bad technology”. I would say “good technology used” and “bad technology used”, but even this is a bit too simplistic. The mainstream philosophical framework in which people think about technology is called “technical instrumentalism.” Its basic assumption is that technology is very neutral. What matters is how people use it.
You can also use technology to understand other social forces, a philosophy called “technical determinism”: technology may have changesChange the attributes and characteristics of human behavior, and these attributes and characteristics cannot be planned. In the book I was writing, I delved into the introduction of internal e-mail in the office, which changed the way people work almost overnight. This is completely unconscious.
When Facebook decided to add a like button, it was a similar situation. At first there was a reason: People writing meaningless comments are completely wasting space. This is totally engineer thinking, writing comments is too inefficient, let’s add a button to like it directly. But this move also introduced this unpredictable social recognition indicator, and suddenly people began to overuse it, no one expected this.
Technology can have a huge impact on us. It changes our behavior in ways we are not aware of. So for me, it’s not that technology is good or bad, but whether it is conscious or unconscious. If you use technology consciously, you know what you want to do, you know what you care about, technology is a tool to help you, but when you find “I seem to be too much online,” or “This makes me feel bad , “You are observing it consciously. Unconsciousness is a random, indifferent attitude.
The danger of arbitrariness is that it means technological determinism. Those who hold this view believe that the progress of technology will inevitably lead human society to a specific result, which is the only and most important thing that determines social development. the elements of. As soon as you look up, your life is completely different. So, the question for me is: Will consciousness or unconsciousness win? I am very optimistic about this. Conscious or unconscious, one side is heaven and the other side is hell.
How has email changed the way we communicate and work?
When we introduced email to the workplace, many things changed. Basically, this type of communication has zero cost, whether it is time and effort, or social capital. If I were to knock on the door in your office and then talk and interact with you, this involves social capital. Because of the emergence of e-mail, all this disappeared.
It is generally observed that the amount of communication in the office has increased dramatically. Because of this tool, we have more communication than before, only because the tool brings the convenience of communication, not because we really need more communication. Work becomes full of this continuous, unstructured dialogue. We think this is “work”, but it is completely different. This is a very new thing and a very specific way of working.
I ca n’t find any evidence that says: “The only way to gain a competitive advantage is to communicate more.” We must connect everyone to these communication channels so that we can talk to them anytime, anywhere. “This happened just because the tool was there. It turns out that this kind of workThe formula basically does not work, once you exceed four people, this way of working will fail.
Because it conflicts with the way the human brain works. This is an incredibly inefficient behavior of occupying people’s cognitive resources. A terrible way to try to get value from the brain.
Your description of unconsciousness resonated with me, because I watched too much TV during isolation, and it was almost impossible for me to concentrate on watching TV. I always watched TV while watching my mobile phone.
This is what I discovered in the experiment. I let 1600 people spend a month away from all these optional technologies, especially the younger generation. People find it difficult to be alone, and they are totally unaccustomed to it. By the way, solitude was once a skill, just like speaking: yes, if you have n’t learned it, it will be complicated, but in the past most people learned it naturally because everyone will face solitude .
Man now has lost a lot of time alone. However, being alone is absolutely crucial. Time alone with you is your time to think, you can understand the life you want, where you want to go. Without these, you are just drifting with the waves. You are basically just following the crowd and being pushed around by the attention economy. Where you are, who you are, and who you want to be, this requires thinking. During the current isolation period, we are forced to do a lot of thinking, because in our apartment, we can do very little, and most of the time we can only stare at a screen.
Now people are increasingly using emoticons to communicate. If we can distill complex emotions into a heart, a thumb, or an emoticon, how does this affect our emotional intelligence?
I think this is a good example. It is almost certain that the expression function comes from a software engineer or a leader of an Apple product group. Introducing this thing, it has completely changed the emotional interaction of hundreds of millions of people. It also changes the psychological model of people’s understanding of emotions, which may have a huge impact on our culture. This may be a good thing or a bad thing. But this is an unpredictable change. This is technical determinism: it may have unexpected consequences and is unpredictable.
Facing this situation, the fashionable response is: “This is just an evolution. The children are different now. Like we also think that the parent generation is old-fashioned. Technology is only sustained by this Positive ways change our culture, do n’t be conservative. “
But this is not the case. This is just a random fluctuation. Think carefully, do we really like to change the way we express our emotions in this way? If not, then do n’tUse this technique. E-mail is very good and more convenient than voice mail. But if you look at it, we are now sending ten times more information than before. This kind of side effect is not the best for companies. Maybe we need to make some changes.
In my opinion, the goal of technology is efficiency, speed and optimization. It seems to be somewhat contrary to slow-paced, thoughtful and reflective attitudes. How do you consider balancing these two points?
One question is: what do you want to do efficiently? What do you want to speed up? What makes your life better? Efficiency without a specific goal is a vague measure. Computer scientists will care about the efficiency of the algorithm, because using a processor can save us time. You do n’t want to spend more time doing what the machine can do. This is a very clear purpose.
There are some things in our life, it ’s good to hurry up. If there is a way to do the dishes faster, then of course it will be better. However, when it comes to information and information flow, it does not mean that having more information per unit of time or exposure to as much information as possible will definitely be better for you.
Optimization is not the same as efficiency. I don’t want to be too technical, but there is a form of optimization called combinatorial optimization, which means you have different solutions, and each solution is just a combination of things. You can think of life as a combined optimization process. Do you want to know what kind of combination of activities and key goals will bring you the most benefits and make you feel that this day is the best?
Once you ask these questions, you will be more careful in choosing what to do. Do you spend two hours on the Internet as a particularly efficient sprayer, or do you spend those two hours doing other things? It may not be the kind of thing that will work immediately, but it will be more fulfilling. I like this optimized mentality.
I do n’t care much about efficiency, I care about optimization.
There is a view that the more you can process mail quickly and efficiently, the more efficient your work will be. This seems to be an example where we value efficiency incorrectly. I feel that when people perform “work”, they are thinking “how can I quickly reply to this email?” And this is actually contrary to their work goals, what they should do is use their brain power to think Come up with smart solutions.
You are right. The tricky thing about optimization is that you have to have something that can be optimized. If you are writing a combinatorial optimization algorithm, you can use the cost function to measure whether this is a good algorithm.
If I am a baseball player, I can measure my base rate. Our trouble is that in mental work, we do n’t have this kind ofThe exact function.
This is also true of technology in our personal lives. Once you know what you want to optimize, it will be easier for you to choose the technology products you use, because you have something to compete with. Is the technology I want to use helpful for the things I care about? This is the key.
If you do n’t know what your purpose is, what you want to do, what you care about, then you will end up doing something like digital detoxification (a person stays away from electronic devices such as smartphones and computers for a while ) Thing. “It’s like you say to an alcoholic,” I have a good plan to quit drinking. “Don’t drink alcohol for two weeks, wait two weeks and we will go to the bar to celebrate.”
It is time to figure out what is the most important thing in life. I think many people are facing this problem. When you know what you really care about, you have something to optimize. Then when you go to Facebook, you can say, “What is really valuable here is a group, that is the group that is very important to me.” So, once a week, participate in that group, It only took 30 minutes, but it brought huge benefits.
Determine what is important to you. Most things you do should serve that thing in the best way you can find. And those unimportant things, take it away from your life.
Translator: Tick Wei