In our increasingly distracted world, we often get the question in workshops – Are our brains evolving to thrive in amongst the constant bombardment of notifications in Screen Time? Our short answer – um … NO!
And it’s quite obvious they aren’t evolving because leaders are also complaining about the lack of focus, lack of staff resilience and people are taking way more time than they should be to actually get stuff done.
Leaders are seeing staff being constantly distracted by phones – and many of these same leaders are admitting to not being immune to this problem.
Mental health is going down due to doom scrolling and the algorithms designed to make you angry or sad.
So what’s behind this problem and how can we address it effectively?
The amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for processing threats) hasn’t evolved to know the difference between a predator and a deadline in 30 million years. So it’s safe to say that brains haven’t adapted to be focused and sustain great mental health despite our devices’ best efforts to train them the opposite way.
So are brains evolving yes – but not in a way conducive to high performance. They are evolving to be less focused and less resilient, often leading to more ADHD. They are evolving to need more and more dopamine – a form of digital addiction, and wanting more and more notifications for more dopamine hits. This is of course leading to other addictive behaviours too.
And in fairness, our brains are wired to look for “notifications” or in the old days it was called new and novel information that could have been a predator. But the old “notifications” would be a few times a week, now the average number of notifications is 150 – and that’s just average!
And we don’t just have our devices annoying us – we have other people’s devices overloading our brains. Public spaces are filled with people mindlessly scrolling in close proximity to others and constantly subjecting others to loud conversations and video calls because they aren’t using headphones. At the risk of sounding like I’m 40 years older than I actually am, when exactly did that become ok?? People who use headphones are my kind of people – but I digress…
So long story short – people brains have not evolved for the level of overload they currently face on a day-to-day basis. So the ability to focus deeply is fast becoming a sought after superpower that fewer and fewer people have.
So what to do?
It’s not likely that social media platforms are going to change in ways that reduce the eyeballs on their advertising model anytime soon. So it’s very much up to individuals and businesses to set a culture with ways of working that promote more focus and less distractions.
- Educate people about the neuroscience behind digital distraction so that people can make choices about how they interact with their devices.
- Promote a culture of focus – Stop the culture of expecting everyone to reply to their emails instantaneously, unless of course the job is to react to emails. And if that’s the case, don’t make them do anything else.
- Prioritise human connection – As one of the Professors of Behavioural Science at King’s College London said in a recent webinar, there is no way to replace human connection with a device. It’s a shame than many aren’t learning how to actually have human interactions and are in fact even nervous about them, and yet that’s exactly what they need. For some, human contact is like exercise, it’s easier to sit on the couch and not do it, but our bodies actually need it. So encourage people to engage in face-to-face conversations – in the same room where possible. So yes there is definitely an argument for getting people into the office.
- Encourage stillness and mindfulness – Set clear boundaries about device use during all meetings – especially virtual meetings. And encourage deep diaphragmatic breathing. This is the only way we can signal to the brain that we are relaxed. This switches off the stress response and then allows for more rational, strategic and creative thinking, which enables people to be far more present with each other.
- Streamline meeting culture and have the conversations about appropriate “device etiquette”. If you were speaking with someone in the same room and they kept looking at their phone – how would you feel – probably like they weren’t listening, devalued, annoyed etc – and yet we are doing this in virtual meetings all the time which is lowering trust and psychological safety very quickly.
- And of course parental guidance plays a crucial role in shaping future workplace behaviour. Research is supporting the approach to keep your kids off devices completely as long as possible – at least until three years old and then limit usage after that. Recently I was on a plane with a small child who screamed the loudest scream I’ve ever heard, the entire way except for when on devices. Neither parent or the nanny (also travelling with them) were actively interacting with the child. The child wasn’t old enough to be on a device and was on the device a lot of the flight.
The challenges associated with digital distractions are not going away any time soon. And as there is more and more information and notification overload, leaders and teams need to take responsibility for including proactive measures to ensure a productive and healthy work environment.
You can’t just blame the device – you control the device – or at least that’s how it should be. High performers are making it their business to take back control of their devices and set up ways to manage the bombardment of information trying to get at them all the time.
As leaders, as though you weren’t busy enough – yes this is now something that you very much need to address if you plan to get your team to perform at their best without burnout.
Of course, if you’d like to find out more about how to improve performance with less effort why not either book a Performance Call or sign up for our next 20/20 session or one of our open workshops here.