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  • [ Music playing ]

  • Something that distracts me?

  • Um...

  • Oh man, computers?

  • Traffic.

  • This thing.

  • My phone [ laughs] for sure, yeah.

  • Mmm, my wife.

  • [ laughs ] I'm just kidding.

  • Seeing the lights flash on my phone.

  • You have to look at it, 'cause it bothers me if I just hear it.

  • (Beep beep beep) Or like vibrate or whatever, I'll be like, "Oh god, I've got to check that!"

  • My attention span is down to about 10 seconds [ laughs ].

  • Nothing is intrinsically distracting, right?

  • If you want to be spending an hour on social media paging through your friends' updates,

  • then that is not a distraction.

  • It's only a distraction if you find yourself doing that when you meant to be working on something else.

  • It's really important to understand the weaknesses in how your brain processes information.

  • When you're focusing on something, you activate a network in your brain that involves the prefrontal cortex,

  • and its connectivity with the rest of the brain.

  • If there is a distraction, it degrades the strength of this connectivity, and that degrades your performance.

  • You can be pulled away from something that's really important to you by something that's really superficial.

  • You know, to me, a healthy relationship with technology is one that's informed,

  • where you make decisions about how you engage with it, and not allowing it to drive your interactions.

  • And so it really is a matter of each of us setting really clear intentions,

  • and then developing tactics that help us stay focused when we do get distracted.

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