Recently I finished reading a great book called “Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success” by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. The book is about, well, how to achieve peak performance while avoiding burnout. The authors laid out the secrets succinctly: “optimally alternating between periods of intense work and rest; priming the body and mind for enhanced productivity; and developing and harnessing the power of a self-transcending purpose.”
But the most interesting part of the book is where the authors discuss why we are biologically screwed – because we can’t put down the cell phones.
“To unravel why this is the case, let’s turn to another addiction that ruins many lives: gambling. When a gambler awaits their next card at the blackjack table or pulls down the lever on a slot machine, they get a hit of the powerful neurochemical –dopamine. Under the influence of dopamine, we feel revved up and alive. Unlike other neurochemicals that are released when we’ve achieved something, the far more potent dopamine is released prior to the payoff of an event, when we are longing for or desiring something deeply. In other words, we don’t become addicted to winning; we become addicted to the chase.
The unpredictability of gambling-the feeling we get while we wait for the dealer to turn over his card or for the slots to cease spinning-triggers a super-sized dopamine rush. That’s because uncertain situations, when there is a mere chance of winning, are far more irresistible than situations in which we know we’ll win every time. If this weren’t the case, then people would get all jazzed up about putting their money into municipal bonds with guaranteed 4 percent returns instead of into slot machines. But alas, the brain rewards us with more dopamine for the act of seeking a reward than for the act of receiving one. While being biochemically drawn to the chase is not survival advantage in modern-day casinos, long ago it was a necessity. If it wasn’t for our attraction to unpredictable rewards, we wouldn’t be here today. Our earliest ancestors needed compelling reason to endure days-long hunts food with no guarantee of success. So we evolved to crave the chase.
This same tendency explains why, thousands of years later, we can’t put down our phones. Our phones and the apps on them, designed by highly sophisticated PhDs lure us in, operate like slot machines. When we swipe down and wait for our email and instant messenger and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and on and on to refresh, dopamine floods our system. Instead of a row of cherries or 7s, the potential reward we are chasing are new likes, comments, or messages. Although most of us aren’t rewarded every time we check our phone, we are rewarded often enough to keep us checking. And since there is always a chance that someone somewhere is pinging us, we can’t stop using our social slot machines. Even when we’re on the highway. This isn’t only a problem when it comes to safe driving. It’s also a problem when it comes to performance. Because, as we discussed earlier, the most effective work- the kind that yields greatness and growth- demands our entire focus.”
But knowing that evolution puts us in a bad position against smartphones is not very useful unless there’s something we can do about it. Here the authors explain why the most common strategy against distraction caused by smartphone use is almost certain to fail and offers the most effective alternative:
“The most common defense against smartphone distractions is straightforward: turn your phone to silent mode and then place it face down on the table, or perhaps even put it in your pocket. Unfortunately, this alone won’t enable you to engage in the deep focus necessary for peak performance. Telling someone they can keep their cellphone within arm’s reach but cannot check it is not much different than telling a drug addict he can keep a loaded syringe in plain sight but may not use it. In both cases, the craving for reward, and the emotional and chemical addiction to it,is overpowering.
Let’s say that you could somehow resist the temptation to check your phone when it is near you. This in and of itself would take a lot of effort. Rather than devoting all your cognitive energy to what you are truly trying to accomplish, a good portion of it instead goes toward thinking about checking your phone, imaging what might be awaiting you on it, and restraining yourself from actually checking. The mere sight of a desirable object triggers dopamine, which is like the devil on our shoulder that says, “Are you sure you don’t want have just one?
Perhaps this discussion even prompted you to feel for your phone or, worse, check it. It follows that the best solution for preventing smartphone follows that the best solution for preventing smartphone distraction is to remove it from the picture altogether. It turns out there is a lot of truth in the expression ‘out of sight, out of mind.'”
