فصل 2

Chapter 2

WHY THIS MATTERS NOW

I’m a firm believer that we all have incredible superpowers that are waiting to be awakened. I’m not talking about the ability to fly, create iron-clad armor, or shoot lasers from your eyes, but real-life practical abilities like flying through books, iron-clad memory, laser focus, boundless creativity, clear thinking, mindfulness, superior mental attitude, and more. We are all superheroes in one way or another.

Just as every superhero has powers, so do they have arch nemeses. Enter the supervillain. Think the Joker to Batman, Lex Luthor to Superman. The villains we face may not look the same as they do in the movies, but they’re still the bad guys—the ones you, as a superhero, need to vanquish and hold at bay. Modern-day supervillains get in our way and make life harder, keeping us from our potential. They hold us back and rob us of our productivity, prosperity, positivity, and peace of mind. And it’s up to us to recognize and defeat them.

If you’ve ever read a comic book or watched a superhero movie, you know that supervillains are often borne of unlikely places. Take Harvey Dent, also known as Two-Face, for example. He starts out with the greatest of intentions—he’s a prosecutor helping to uphold the law and put the bad guys in jail, and he’s an ally of Batman. But through an act of revenge, Dent’s face is scarred, and he turns angry, bitter, and vengeful. He becomes what he had spent his life fighting: a duplicitous criminal who gambles with his victims’ futures. The good in him becomes twisted and used for sinister ends.

In the same way, the four supervillains of learning started out innocent— they are being fed by some of the greatest advancements that humankind has made in the last hundred years. They were given rise by technology. To be clear, technology is a vital part of progress and being limitless. It allows us to do everything from connecting to learning, making our lives that much more convenient. But it is possible that we consume digital technology at a rate that even its creators would find extreme. Much of the technology available to us today is so new that we don’t know the level at which we need to control our interaction with it.

Through our educational platform Kwik Learning, we have students in 195 countries and have generated tens of millions of podcast downloads.

Our community has expressed a growing concern about their overreliance on technology and they come to us to upgrade their brains to find relief from these “four horsemen” of our age: digital deluge, digital distraction, digital dementia, and digital deduction. It’s important to note that overload, distraction, forgetfulness, and default thinking have been around for ages.

While technology doesn’t cause these conditions, it has great potential to amplify them. The benefits of the digital age are plentiful, but let’s take a look at how the advances in technology that help you, can possibly also hinder you.

DIGITAL DELUGE

Do you have too much to process but not enough time? We’re privileged to live in a world with so much unfettered access to information. In this age of connectivity, ignorance is a choice. Compared to the 15th century, we now consume as much data in a single day as an average person from the 1400s would have absorbed in an entire lifetime. Not so long ago, information moved glacially through word of mouth, or a newspaper, or a posted bulletin in a town square. Now we have so much access to information that it’s taking a toll on our time and our quality of life. The average person consumes three times as much information as we did in the 1960s;1 a 2015 report indicated that respondents spent eight hours a day consuming media.

In an NPR interview, New York Times tech reporter Matt Richtel said that after 20 years of glorifying technology as if all of it were good, “I think science is beginning to embrace the idea that some technology is Twinkies and some technology is Brussels sprouts. If we consume too much technology, just like if we consume too much food, it can have ill effects.”2 In a University of California, San Francisco, study on the effect of downtime, researchers gave rats a new experience and measured their brain waves during and after the activity. Under most circumstances, a new experience will express new neural activity and new neurons in the brain— that is, if the rat is allowed to have downtime. With downtime, the neurons made their way from the gateway of memory to the rest of the brain, where long-term memory is stored. The rats were able to record memories of their experiences, which is the basis for learning.3

Doesn’t that make you wonder what happens if you don’t have downtime? There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that if we never let our mind wander or be bored for a moment, we pay a price—poor memory, mental fog, and fatigue.

As far back as the mid-1990s (when digital deluge was a fraction of the concern it is now), research was beginning to show that there were real health risks involved with navigating through an always-on world. A Reuters study, ominously titled “Dying for Information,” showed that, “Two out of three respondents associated information overload with tension with colleagues and loss of job satisfaction; 42 percent attributed ill-health to this stress, 61 percent said that they have to cancel social activities as a result of information overload and 60 percent that they are frequently too tired for leisure activities.” The study goes on to add, “Faced with an onslaught of information and information channels, they have become unable to develop simple routines for managing information.”4

What’s more, we also have to contend with the fact that the half-life of information has decreased. The half-life of information is the amount of time that passes before that information is replaced by newer or more accurate information. You can study to your heart’s content; the information you process now will be outdated sooner than you think. “Facts” written in articles, books, and documentaries are based on strong evidence and accepted as truth. But then they are completely reversed when a new study comes out.

I don’t need to tell you how completely inundated each of us is with digital details. Even when we try to go “off the grid,” digital information somehow finds us. While I’m writing this, I’ve shut down all my devices.

But I need to have access to the Internet for research purposes, and a handful of random notifications and updates still popped up on my computer (yes, I know I can turn these off as well, but you get my point).

In Chapter 12 (Study) and Chapter 14 (Speed Reading), you will discover practical ways to catch up, keep up, and get ahead of the digital deluge of information you must process each day.

KWIK START

Take a moment and schedule 30 minutes of white space in your calendar for this week. This is time to be spent away from technology, time dedicated to clear your mind, relax, and be creative.

DIGITAL DISTRACTION

Before mobile devices, we would say “brb” (be right back) all the time when we were online. We don’t say it anymore. We no longer leave. We live here now. Because of our always-on, ever-connected devices, we’re struggling to find connection when we’re with friends and family, and we’re struggling to stay focused at work. Most of us deal with some kind of work-life situation where we don’t feel comfortable forgoing digital connection for large swaths of time every day. So we stay on the grid out of the fear that if we were unreachable, we would lose out.

The trouble is, we’re wired to enjoy it. Each successive hit of dopamine we get from the likes we receive on social media, or from the texts we get from loved ones or friends, only reinforces our behavior. But those rewards are changing our brains. Instead of relaxing into the downtime that we might experience when waiting in line, waiting for a bus or an appointment, etc., we pull out our phones and train our distraction muscles. What happens when this is our constant way of being, when every loose moment is filled with shining stimulus?

Staying connected may make us feel more secure, but it doesn’t make us happier. Ryan Dwyer, MA, of the University of British Columbia, led a study that showed how our digital habits are affecting our relationships. In one experiment, more than 300 adults and university students were asked to keep their phones on the table, easily accessible, while others were asked to put them on silent and keep them in a container on the table during a meal.

Afterward, participants were asked to respond to a questionnaire that asked them about their feelings of connectedness, enjoyment, distraction, and boredom.

The survey also asked them to detail the amount of time they spent on their phone during the meal. Those whose phones were accessible used them more often . . . and they described themselves as feeling more distracted. They also enjoyed the dinner less than the diners who didn’t have access to their phones. “Modern technology may be wonderful, but it can easily sidetrack us and take away from the special moments we have with friends and family in person,” Dwyer says of the study.5

Just as few of us have learned how to learn, not many know how to process and filter the massive amount of information we are constantly seeing. We just multitask to get all of it in, and this doesn’t serve us well.

“Asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task,” notes neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin in his book, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information

Overload. “And the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time. We’ve literally depleted the nutrients in our brain. This leads to compromises in both cognitive and physical performance.”6

From app notifications to message alerts, it’s not just adults who deal with this. With the availability of technology and social pressure to be online and active on social media, children and teenagers experience the constant distraction, too.

In Chapter 11 (Focus), you will discover the keys to sustained concentration and focus development to learn and get things done.

KWIK START

Go to the notification settings of your phone and turn off all unnecessary and distracting pings and dings. Do this now.

DIGITAL DEMENTIA

When is the last time you had to remember someone’s phone number? I’m dating myself here, but I’m part of a generation that, when you wanted to call your friend down the block, you needed to know their number. Can you still remember some of your best friends’ numbers from childhood? What about the number of the person you talk or text with every day? You no longer have to, because your mobile remembers it for you. This is not to say anyone wants to or should memorize 200 phone numbers, but we’ve all but lost the ability to remember a new one, or a conversation we just had, the name of a new potential client, or something important we need to do.

Neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer uses the term digital dementia to describe how overuse of digital technology results in the breakdown of cognitive abilities. He argues that short-term memory pathways will start to deteriorate from underuse if we overuse technology. It’s the same with GPS.

Move to a new city and see how quickly you become reliant on GPS to tell you how to get around. Then notice how long it takes you to map new roads in your mind—probably much longer than when you were younger, but not because your brain isn’t working as well. With tools like GPS, we don’t give our minds the chance to work. We rely on technology to do the memorization for us.

This reliance may be hurting our long-term memory. Maria Wimber of the University of Birmingham told the BBC that the trend of looking up information prevents the build-up of long-term memories. In a study that examined the memory habits of 6,000 adults in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, Wimber and her team found that more than a third of respondents turned to their computer first to retrieve information. The UK came in the highest—more than half of the participants searched online first without trying to come up with the answer themselves.7

Why is this a big deal? Because such instant information can be easily and immediately forgotten. “Our brain appears to strengthen a memory each time we recall it, and at the same time forget irrelevant memories that are distracting us,” said Dr. Wimber. Forcing yourself to recall information instead of relying on an outside source to supply it for you is a way of creating and strengthening a permanent memory. When you contrast that with the reality that most of us have a habit of constantly looking up information—maybe even the same information—without bothering to try to remember it, it seems we’re doing ourselves harm.

Is relying on technology always bad? Many researchers disagree. The argument goes that by outsourcing some menial tasks like memorizing phone numbers or doing basic math or getting directions to a restaurant we’ve visited before, we’re saving brain space for something that matters more to us. There’s research that says our brains are more like a muscle, rather than a hard drive that fills up. That the more you use it, the stronger it gets, and the more it can store. The question is: Are we making those choices consciously, or are we acting out of unconscious habit?

Too often, we outsource our brains to our smart devices, and our smart devices are making us, well, a little bit stupid. Our brains are the ultimate adaptation machines, capable of seemingly endless levels of evolution. And yet we often forget to give it the exercise it needs. Just as there is a physical price to always relying on the technology of the elevator instead of taking the stairs, so is there a price for lazy mental muscles. Use it or lose it.

In Chapter 13 (Memory), I will show you simple tools and techniques to remember anything from names and speeches to languages, faster and easier.

KWIK START

Take a minute to exercise your memory: Memorize the phone number of someone you communicate with regularly.

DIGITAL DEDUCTION

“In a digital-first world, where millennials obtain all their answers to problems at the click of a mouse or swipe of a finger, the reliance on technology to solve every question confuses people’s perception of their own knowledge and intelligence. And that reliance may well lead to overconfidence and poor decision-making,” says Rony Zarom, founder of the video collaboration platform newrow.8 The ubiquity of information about everything also means that there’s a ubiquity of opinion about everything. If you want to know how to feel about a hot-button issue, you can just go online and collate the opinions of others. If you want to know the implications of an event or a trend, a quick online search will provide endless amounts of analysis. The upshot is that deduction—an amalgam of critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity that is an essential skill for being limitless—is becoming automated.

There’s a certain amount of value to this, of course. Before the Internet, we were limited in our access to the opinions of others. In an ideal world, being able to get as many perspectives on a topic as possible would be enormously valuable in helping us to form our own opinions.

Unfortunately, that’s rarely how it plays out in the real world. Instead, we tend to identify a handful of sources with which we align and then give those sources extreme influence over our thinking and decision-making. In the process, the “muscles” we use to think critically and reason effectively are atrophying. We’re letting technology do the deduction for us. And if technology is forming our deductions, then we are also ceding much of our problem-solving ability—something so important and something we will discuss at length later in this book.

Psychologist Jim Taylor defines thinking as, “The capacity to reflect, reason, and draw conclusions based on our experiences, knowledge, and insights. It’s what makes us human and has enabled us to communicate, create, build, advance, and become civilized.” He then goes on to caution that there is “a growing body of research that technology can be both beneficial and harmful to different ways in which children think.”9

Patricia Marks Greenfield, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UCLA, has been looking at this issue for more than a decade. In discussing the impact on education, she wrote, “What is the effect on learning if college students use their laptops to access the Internet during a classroom lecture? This was tested in a communication studies class where students were generally encouraged to use their laptops during lectures, in order to explore lecture topics in greater detail on the Internet and in library databases. Half of the students were allowed to keep their laptops open, while the other half (randomly assigned) had to close their laptops. Students in the closed laptop condition recalled significantly more material in a surprise quiz after class than did students in the open laptop condition.”10 Because they were engaging their minds in the lecture rather than looking for what the Internet already thought about the subject, they were much more responsive when it was time to reason for themselves. Greenfield analyzed another study that showed that college students who watched a news program without the crawl at the bottom of the screen remembered significantly more of what the anchors were discussing.

Playwright Richard Foreman fears that this reliance on the Internet to do much of our thinking is changing our very selves. “I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and ‘cathedral-like’ structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West . . . . But today I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available.’”11 Do you remember what it was like when you were approaching your teens and you first started formulating thoughts and opinions independent of your parents? My guess is that this experience was extremely liberating for you and that it might have even been the first time in your life when you truly felt like your own person. What had happened to you, of course, was that your critical faculties had become refined enough to allow you to regularly employ reason to navigate through life.

Why, then, would you want to turn this liberating skill over to a device?

Think about it: How do you feel when someone tries to impose their thinking on you? If a family member, friend, or colleague came up to you and said, “Don’t think about this; here’s your opinion,” you’d try to get away from that person as soon as you possibly could. Yet, when we immediately reach for the Internet to provide us with information, we’re essentially inviting the same thing.

In Chapter 15, I will provide you with a powerful set of tools that will allow you to supercharge your thinking and expand your perspective on any topic or problem.

While these four horsemen are the ones we need to contend with most vociferously, there’s another digital danger that is worthy of our attention. I call this digital depression, a result of the comparison culture that emerges when we let the highlight reels of the social media feeds of others cause us to perceive ourselves as less than. Now, I enjoy social media. I love staying connected with our community of students and podcast listeners and staying updated with the everyday lives of my family and friends. I appreciate it so much as not only a source of entertainment, but also education and empowerment. But I only recommend using it consciously, not mindlessly out of habit, and in a harmonious way so it doesn’t highjack your productivity and peace of mind.

In the upcoming Part II: Limitless Mindset, I share ideas to mitigate these feelings of not being enough, as well as fears of looking bad or missing out.

Those are the same limits that stand in the way of personal growth and learning. In Part III: Limitless Motivation, I will show you how to add, break, or change these habits.

KWIK START

Think about a decision you need to make. Schedule some time to work on that decision without the use of any digital devices.

KEEPING THE VILLAINS AT BAY

In the hero’s journey, the heroes need villains just as much as villains need heroes. The challenges from trials and rivals make us grow and become better. The power and strength of the villain determines the necessary power and strength of the hero. If the villain was weak, there would be nothing to vanquish—and no need for the hero to rise to greatness. In my podcast interview with Simon Sinek, author of The Infinite Game, Simon refers to our “worthy rivals,” those who help point out the personal weaknesses we need to address. That is where your opportunity lies.

As I mentioned, I love the light side of technology—how it can connect us, educate us, and empower us, make our lives easier. What we’ve just described are a few potential drawbacks of technology, which is an inherent part of all the good that it brings into our lives. Like fire, technology has changed the course of human history. However, fire can cook your food or burn your home down—it’s all in how you use it. Like any tool, technology itself isn’t good or bad, but we must consciously control how it’s used. If we don’t, then who becomes the tool? It’s up to you to choose how you engage.

KWIK START

Which of the four digital villains do you believe are currently most disrupting your performance, productivity, and peace of mind? Take a moment and write the name of this villain down.

Conscious awareness is the first part to solving a problem.