Is 24/6 the New 24/7?: My Weekly Thoughts
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: Yes, I’m writing another item about Stoicism. If that seems excessive, then this is, ironically, a perfect moment for Stoicism — to realize that while you can’t control external events (like my expressions of love for Stoicism), you can control your reaction (and choose one of calm acceptance and open-mindedness ). Okay, I’ll stop, but I had to flag this great piece in Entrepreneur by JotForm founder and CEO Aytekin Tank on the lessons Stoicism can teach entrepreneurs. My favorite is about how to set priorities and leads with this wisdom from Marcus Aurelius: “If you seek tranquility, do less. Or (more accurately) do what’s essential. Do less, better. Because most of what we do or say is not essential.” You could fill a book with companies that failed because their founders didn’t realize that and tried to do everything, all the time. And if you’re reading this on Sunday, I’ll add this nugget from Seneca: “The mind must be given relaxation — it will rise improved and sharper after a good break.”
Freud 2.0: Can the tech world disrupt therapy? That’s one of the questions raised by Nellie Bowles in her New York Times piece about Silicon Valley’s search for mental health solutions. The impetus is that the great awakening we’ve all been going through — the realization that our relationship with technology has downsides — is hitting those who produce our technology. “It’s one thing to be grinding for a big tech company that you believe in,” says Michael Seibel, the chief executive of Y Combinator, “but once you start questioning that company’s motivations, that can make the eight hours a day that you work not feel as fulfilling.” And that, along with the “ambient emotional chaos” we all feel swimming in the news cycle 24/7, has led Silicon Valley to turn to therapy. But they’re doing it in their own way, complete with “therapy metrics,” “therapy R.O.I.” and “matching therapists with clients using the tools of online dating.” In short, as Bowles puts it, “The cure for tech’s ills, they hope, is more tech.” And dozens of mental health and therapy startups are here and on the way. Sure, technology can motivate us, help us track progress and even help silence other technology. But at a certain point, it has to be you alone with you. Another alternative is to do what one tech worker did: Delete all news apps and Twitter from the phone. “That did improve my mood,” he said. It’s a lot cheaper and quicker than laying down on the couch — real or digital!
Unlike Data, Wisdom Is Carbon Neutral: Sure, it makes sense to move to the cloud, but as it turns out, the cloud’s full of carbon. Sort of. Fortune reports that researchers have calculated that the energy used to stream the mega-hit “Despacito” could have fueled 40,000 U.S. homes for a year. And the energy cost of data is only going to go up. Clearly it’s time for a new public service campaign. “Give a Hoot: Don’t Netflix and Chillute.”
School Daze: An amazing sign of our current moment, and how our burnout epidemic is sadly tied to ambition and achievement: The Washington Post reports on a study calling students in high achieving schools an “at-risk” group. The relentless pressure to succeed is causing mental health and behavioral problems in these students above the national levels. “Children are so saturated with messages about achievement in many schools and communities that parents need to be really conscious about fighting against those messages at home,” says psychologist Richard Weissbourd, the faculty director of Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Making Caring Common project. We have a workplace culture dominated by the delusion that burnout is the price we have to pay for success, so it’s not surprising that the culture is also permeating high achieving schools. It would be great if these schools could add a class on all of the science and data on the connection between high achievement and recharging/recovery/refueling/renewing. Maybe Tom Brady or Andre Iguodala could teach it?
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Before You Go
Internet of Things, British Politics, United Nations and Cheese Intersection of the Week: Boris Johnson to the General Assembly, warning of the dark future of technology: “In the future, voice connectivity will be in every room and almost every object: Your mattress will monitor your nightmares; your fridge will beep for more cheese; your front door will sweep wide the moment you approach, like some silent butler.” Maybe so, but as a Greek, my fridge will never, ever need to beep me for more cheese.
True Crime Tech and Humanity Collision Story of the Week: This piece in Wired about the role of wearables in crime through the story of a murder in California last year. The prime witness: a Fitbit. As Lauren Smiley notes, now that tens of millions of people are wearing the devices, they’re going to become more central in criminal investigations. “Does a suspect's alibi of being at home asleep hold up?” she writes. “Does a victim's steady heart rate at the time of an alleged attack suggest the charge was fabricated?” In other words, while wearables track how we live, they also track when we cease to live. Another question: How long until the trend makes it into Hollywood crime dramas… “Forget it, Jake — it’s just a buggy watchOS update.”
Quote of the Week: Lupita Nyong'o, in Vanity Fair, on what allows her to be so productive: taking breaks, like meditation retreats, to recover. “Finishing an intensive project is kind of like having a hangover, where you’re so used to a rigor of existence and then all of a sudden, there’s none. I make the time because otherwise I wouldn’t survive.” At Thrive Global, we call this “Thrive Time.” We all have projects (if not Black Panther) that require extra effort. So directly after, we offer time off — that doesn't count as vacation or sick time — to recharge. And now we have Oscar-winning validation!
Book of the Week: 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week by Tiffany Shlain. We all feel the technology-fueled pressure to be on 24/7. And here’s the answer — take it down to 24/6 by shutting off screens for 24 hours. As the founder of the Webby Awards and the co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, Shlain certainly knows the value of technology. And she also knows the value of unplugging from it, writing about how “Technology Shabbat” has changed her family’s lives. I’m such a long-time fan of the idea that we started a special Shabbat section at Thrive Global. So if you didn’t take a day of rest this weekend (don’t worry — I’m not going to Shabbat shame you!) try putting it on your calendar for next week. And then you’ll have time to read this book — though not on your iPad!
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Have any feedback or ideas for what you'd like to see included? Reach out to me at [email protected] or comment below.
16000 chez dari mohamed
5 年H
Owner at The LifeSong Store
5 年I love your energy, Arianna. Is the growing list of serious challenges we see in the world today telling us to wake up, wise up, and rise up to greater awareness and understanding? When these thoughts, "wake up, wise up, and rise up," first expressed themselves through a voice in my mind, my wife and I were riding in my son's car with his wife and daughter on our way to San Francisco, from Sonoma County. It happened during a political discussion as our emotions began to heat up. I mention the "inner" voice in my mind because it adds a new dimension to who and what we think we are. The experience above was spontaneous but on another occasion, when I asked the universe, through my Inner Self, what my deepest Feeling Tone or impulse was, it took several years to get an answer. As I straightened up after picking up a piece of paper from our kitchen floor, several years later, a voice inside my mind said: "Seek the greatest understanding and serve the highest good."?The moment I heard these words I knew what it was. It was the answer to the question I had asked the universe several years earlier.? If we can access inner knowing, why are we so earthbound in our thinking? Is it a matter of social programming? Quite possibly, it is. During my first week of catholic school, a nun, after reading the Story of Creation from the Book of Genesis in the bible, told my class that all human beings are born in sin because Adam and eve ate fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil against God's command. She quickly followed that up with the belief that "and you cannot trust your bodies because they will always betray you." Wow, talk about taking the wind out of someone's sails. Think about it, if we carry around the idea that everyone is evil and can't be trusted, how are we going be as people and how are we going to treat ourselves and each other? ?In public school, several days later, a young male teacher asked me to stand up and introduce myself to my new classmates. After doing so, I told the class that I transferred from the catholic school down the street. Then I told them why I? transferred. I told them what the nun told us in catechism class and how I turned my back on her afterwards for the rest of the class. I also told them that the next morning she singled me out in the line of students waiting to enter her class.? Pulling a heavy wooden ruler out of her Habit, she beat my knuckles until I couldn't help but cry in front of my classmates. I then asked the public school? teacher how the public schools treat children. His face turned red with rage and he? yelled at me, "Sit down, shut up and do as I tell you. I'm the teacher and I know what's best for you! What a learning moment this was for me. I suspect it was a learning moment for all that were involved, which brings up questions like, are we here to be whatever we want without considering the thoughts and feelings of others or are we here to live, love, learn and evolve? The way we answer this question has much to do with the level of stress we experience in life At some level within our consciousness, I'm quite sure we know that ideas, like people, want to fulfill their own potential.* As you can see in the definition of "self-fulfilling prophecy" below, the power of an idea to fulfill its potential is given to the person who utters it, instead of the idea itself. For an alternate perspective, read My Encounter With the Energy of Unconditional Love on realtalkworld.com. In this extraordinary waking experience, the Energy of Unconditional Love is as alive as you and I. If you're interested, you can also read accounts of What I Learned in Catholic School and My Recurring Superman Nightmare, which also concerns church influence and how it affected me. These two articles are on realtalkworld.com, as well. ?*??A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that causes itself to be true due to the behavior (including the act of predicting it) of the believer. Self-fulling, here, means “brought about as a result of being foretold or talked about,” while prophecy refers to the prediction. -?https://www.dictionary.com Here's another interesting question to ask ourselves. Outside of this moment, in what form do we exist? Don’t our past selves exist as memories and our future selves exist as potential expressions of who we are now, who we have been in the past and who we can and want to be in the future? Isn't it the same for the earth and all "matter," and if it is, are we all living in a waking dream?
Educationalist, Artist, published writer and poet, activist against gender~based violence, and Conservationalist.
5 年@AriannaHuffington, Loved your article "Can't stop, won't stop" and the importance of scaling back and prioritizing, I for one find it so hard to find the time to do it, but a health crisis put everything into perspective with its reminder that the world will continue to turn without me! Nothing like perspective to regain the humility of the relative importance of everything we do.
DSS
5 年Great
Assistant Deputy Manager at Grameen Foundation
5 年Good Article. You addressed important issues of Technical Field.