Name: Overcoming the Pull of Social Media
Uploaded: 2021-05-11T18:19:05.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Overcoming the Pull of Social Media' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-11. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Overcoming the Pull of Social Media' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-11. Transcript available.

So this is another thing that I point out in the book is that we're never bored
anymore.
So as we evolved, boredom is this evolutionary discomfort that basically told
us
whatever you're spending your time on right now, it's not an efficient use of
your time.
So go find something else.
Now in the past, this would be like, let's say you're picking berries from a
bush.
You've picked the easiest to pick ones.
Well, if we didn't have this cue of boredom, we'd be like reaching into the
very back
for the berries that are hard to pick, but they become successively harder to
pick
because we've picked all these different ones, right?
Boredom would kick on and be like, hey, your return on your time invested has
worn thin.
Move on to another bush, right?
But nowadays, with this influx of media we have, people spend 11 hours a day
engaging with digital media.
Is that real?
Yeah, 11.
And that's the average.
So you want to hear an even crazier thing?
Yeah.
Okay, so I'm a professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and one of the
classes I teach is an intro class.
So it's got about 150 students, and it's a media class I teach in the
journalism department.
First day of class, I'll talk about just how things have changed with media.
You know, it's like we lived 2.5 million years with no media in our lives, and
now it's become our lives.
And then I will ask, all right, I want everyone to pull out your phone right
now.
I want you to look at your screen time.
Tell me how much you have.
Who thinks they have the highest?
And we'll start to go through people.
I've had people, you know, 7 hours, 45 minutes.
8 hours, 50 minutes.
9 hours, 16 minutes.
It's like, that's your entire day.
All on that cell phone, right?
So nowadays, when we have this discomfort of boredom kick in, we have a super
easy escape from it.
Right.
Right?
We're not forced to be like, okay, what am I doing with my time?
Is there something better I could be doing?
We just pull out our phone.
And you see this, right?
Anytime people have one moment of solitude or inactivity, it's like, oh, might
as well just check my phone.
It's brutal when you see people on dates.
Oh, yeah.
They're not even talking to each other.
They're just looking at each other's phones.
Yeah.
Wow.
People at dinner.
It's like, yeah.
It's like you're in front of an actual person.
Yeah.
And you prefer to communicate in digital with someone who's not even there.
Totally.
So what's interesting about boredom is when oftentimes, when boredom would kick
on, we would go inward, sort of mind wander.
And mind wandering, it gives you, your brain, some time to like reset and
revive.
Whereas anytime you're focused on the outside world, your brain is actively
processing information.
So this is kind of like in the book, I compare it to lifting a weight.
When you're having a conversation, looking at your phone, watching a screen,
whatever you're doing,
if you're focusing on the outside world, your brain is working and it's lifting.
When you go inward, your brain goes into this default mode network, which is
like a rest period, right?
So now, because every time we're bored, we just pull out that screen and focus
more.
Our brains are just constantly being worked and overworked and overworked.
And this is associated with just burnout, anxiety, et cetera.
Yeah, it's, there's some real benefits to boredom in terms of creativity as
well.
Oh, totally.
Boredom is really good for coming up with new ideas.
Yeah.
And there's actually research behind this.
They've done studies where they'll have, they'll have people watch something
really boring, like a video of people folding laundry,
just like they bore the shit out of these participants.
And then they have them come up with, take these different creativity tests
that scientists use.
And the people who were bored come up with more better solutions and responses
than the people who had been stimulated the whole time.
And you think about this, I mean, just in terms of anecdotes from creators, it's
like, you need time to just sit and be with yourself and have these weird ideas
bubble to the surface.
If you never have that, you're not letting that, the weird stuff come out, you
know?
Yeah.
I mean, like, do you experience this when you're trying to think of stuff in
your own work?
Yeah.
You have to have discomfort.
The worst thing that could ever happen to me if I'm writing is to just open the
browser and start, let me just Google this real quick and see.
It's like I'll play little games with myself.
Like, I'll be in the middle of writing.
I'm like, what does that mean, really?
And then I'll Google it and, like, shut the fuck up and get back to work.
Yeah.
Because, like, I'm just being distracted.
I'm just distracting myself.
And sometimes I'll allow myself a couple of minutes of distraction before I get
mad.
But really, I shouldn't allow myself any.
I should just keep working.
And sometimes people say, I can't write.
I just stare at the screen and nothing comes out.
I'm like, yeah, that's what's supposed to happen.
Yeah.
That's how it works, man.
You're supposed to fucking stare at the screen.
Yeah.
And then you just write some nonsense and eventually something good will come
out of that.
Yeah.
But if you just bail because you don't like the staring at the screen part and
nothing's
coming out, guess what?
You're never going to write anything.
Exactly.
Congratulations.
So then you'll be at the whim of whatever random spontaneous creativity just
pops into
your head throughout the day.
Yeah.
And sometimes you'll get some and sometimes you won't.
Yeah.
But Pressfield talks about that in The War of Art.
Have you read that book?
I haven't read that book.
It's a very small book, but it's really good.
It's great for writers.
And it's, he's basically says, he talks about the muse as if the muse is a real
thing.
And he's like, treat it like it's a real thing.
Treat it like you're a professional and you're there to summon the muse.
And if you just show up every day and do that work, it will come, it will come
to you and
it will bestow upon you these creative ideas.
But if you don't do that, if you don't sit down and be discomfort, to be
uncomfortable rather,
rather, it won't happen.
And in this day and age, like you said, we're so accustomed to having our, any
boredom alleviated
by our phone.
So in the book too, I talk about, you hear all this stuff that's like, break up
with
your phone, less time on your phone, here are a thousand different ways to use
your phone
less.
Yes, that is important.
But the problem is, is a lot of times when people go, okay, I'm going to use my
phone
less.
So they put their phone in, you know, a safe or whatever weird habit they've
developed.
But then they go watch Netflix.
It's like your brain doesn't know the damn difference between the screen on
your phone and the screen
on your TV.
The point is that you need to remove yourself from this outside media.
That's totally just weaved its way into your life.
Like stimulating you with nothing.
Yeah.
It's yeah.
The switch from phone to Netflix is like going, I'm quitting smoking, but I'm
going to go buy
some Redman and just pack that in real hard.
You know?
Yeah.
Same thing.
We're all aware that there's this immense gravity that comes from the digital
world.
It's immense.
It's just constantly pulling you in with new content and new distractions.
And this is one of them.
This fucking thing that you and I are on.
That's what's ironic.
This is one of them.
We're talking shit about what we actually are doing right now.
But they, you know, they pull you.
They pull you.
And we all know that it's probably not the best way to live.
But it's so hard to break the addiction.
I mean, it's, it's amazing, right?
It's amazing that I can pull up a podcast and listen to almost whoever I want,
their thoughts
and get these new ideas.
But at the same time, it's like, if that's all you're spending your time doing,
there's
some downsides.
We need to offset it that I, you know, I don't necessarily think the answer is
to go live in
the woods in Alaska for the rest of your life.
Although that'd be pretty cool if you did more power to you, but figuring out
like, how
do we, how do we balance this all and have these moments where we have, you
know, solitude,
go more inward and aren't as stimulated.
So one thing that, you know, after I am standing out there in solitude, when I
get home, I start
researching, you know, what are the benefits of solitude?
Because we know that the data shows that being lonely isn't good for us, but
there's the
difference between loneliness and solitude.
Like solitude is electing to be by yourself and using that time for sort of introspection.
And the scientists that I talked to, they said, yeah, you really need this
because a lot of
times people are more conductor circuits and they, they don't do well when they're
alone
at all.
This is part of the reason we have such a loneliness problem.
But if you can like build this, build this capacity to be alone, they call it
like that
can serve you well in the long time.
And it also breeds deeper thinking creativity.
I mean, it's like, there's a reason that thousands of years of religious
tradition, they
have people who go and spend this time alone out of nature.
I mean, Jesus was in the desert for 40 days, the Buddha exited the palace gates,
you know,
and spent a bunch of time alone and in solitude.
Even Abraham Lincoln used solitude and for all his, a lot of his writing and
stuff like
that.
And I feel like people don't have that as much anymore.
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