In 1996, I was working at Microsoft in Seattle and teaching a graduate student seminar at NYU in the Interactive Telecommunications Program. I noticed that at Microsoft, some of my colleagues had two screens, but each screen only had one thing running; either email, a spreadsheet, or a word processor. At NYU, students had one screen and it was tiled with open windows: instant messaging, email, chat, and more. In many cases, the students were also carrying pagers and cell phones, and juggling the many incoming communications.

In the media, there was already a conversation about multitasking, but what I was witnessing went far beyond the simple multitasking that people were fretting over. With simple multitasking, we are engaging in an activity that’s automatic (like stirring soup, tying a shoe – anything that we can do without taxing ourselves mentally), and another activity that is somewhat mentally taxing (a phone conversation, writing an email, etc). Many moments, most days, involve a lot of simple multitasking.

What I witnessed people doing was beyond simple multitasking, and in order to differentiate it from simple multitasking, I gave it a new label: continuous partial attention. We were continuously paying partial attention to more than one activity that was mentally taxing.

With continuous partial attention, we engage in two or more activities that are mentally taxing (also called cognitive load). For example, we are writing an email and having a phone conversation.

Both in the case of simple multitasking and continuous partial attention, we are not doing these tasks simultaneously. We are rapidly task switching. Thus, the “myth of multitasking.”

With continuous partial attention, as we rapidly task switch, we experience more physical and mental stress. When we do this day after day, for hours on end, and, often attempting to do multiple activities on multiple screens, our body experiences a chronic fight or flight state, or stressed state (there are a number of posts, videos, and a FAQ on my website that explain this more fully).

A recent Stanford study suggests that heavy multitasking contributes to reduced memory, decreased ability to focus, compromised reasoning, and sleep and mood changes.

In 2012, German neuroscientist, Manfred Spitzer, created the term, digital dementia, to describe the health costs resulting from the chronic stress, multitasking, and compromised breathing we do when we work with personal technologies.

Since 1996, I’ve been speaking and writing about attention, technology, and health. We intend to do our best to manage our time online, to take breaks from our smartphones and screens and to get up frequently to move, and give our eyes and bodies a few minutes of recovery time during the course of a day. But. We. Don’t.

How can we better support ourselves given that we are likely to keep multitasking? What activities might serve as antidotes to digital dementia?

My favorite antidote is partner or ballroom dancing. There is preliminary research suggesting that ballroom dancing can decrease your risk of dementia by 76%. Ballroom dancing is physically, socially, and mentally challenging. Compared with walking, dancing has been associated with reduced brain atrophy in the hippocampus – a brain region that is key to memory and functioning.

Social partner dancing reduces social isolation and inactivity. It’s one of the most restorative activities we can do to minimize the health costs of multitasking, continuous partial attention, and hours in front of screens.

Here’s a recent CBS interview with Dr. Jon LaPook on multitasking and ballroom dancing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/multitasking-myth-research-expert/

“Dance is the joy of movement and the heart of life.” — unknown

According to James Nestor, the author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, “We get most of our energy from our breath, not from food or drink. Our bodies process about 30 pounds of air every day, compared to only a few pounds of food and water. There’s a reason why you can survive weeks without food, days without water, and only minutes without air.”

It isn’t easy to breathe properly. Proper breathing is slow – fewer inhales and exhales per minute, with the mouth closed. Breathing through the nose allows the nose to filter out mold, bacteria, and dust. It also helps the body produce, in the sinuses, nasal nitric oxide, which is antibacterial, antiviral, anti-fungal, and anti-pathogenic.

In 2007, I started doing ten minutes of breathing exercises every morning. Some mornings, I would go to my computer to check email right after doing the breathing exercises. I noticed that as soon as I sat down in front of the screen, my breathing was compromised. I was either holding my breath or breathing shallowly. The wonderful sense of peace and presence the breathing exercises created, dissolved into stressful thoughts, “There’s too much to do! I can’t get this done! I’m so behind!”

I wondered if this was just me or if it was more widespread. I observed people in offices, cafes, and on their phones. Screens tend to consume us. We stoop forward, round our shoulders, bring our eyes in closer to the screen, chest concave. Try sitting this way when you’re not in front of a screen. It’s impossible to breathe optimally. Also, when we anticipate or strongly focus on something, we inhale. That inhale is usually followed by an exhale. Except, this isn’t the case, when we’re in front of a screen. At least 80% of the people I observed, just like me, appeared to have compromised breathing when in front of a screen.

I followed this up with “dining room table science.” I’d seat someone at my dining room table, wire them up, ask them to do email, do a web search, to text, and I tracked their pulse and breathing. 80% of the people I tested had compromised breathing.

Chronically compromised breathing puts us into a state of “fight or flight.” In a state of fight or flight, our bodies dump stress hormones. Our bodies are accustomed to moments of fight or flight – we hear a noise, we inhale, listen carefully, and exhale when we determine we’re safe. We are preparing to run from a tiger. When we’re interacting with screens, we have chronically compromised breathing. Our body floods with stress hormones and then, because we’re not being chased by a tiger, our bodies bathe in those stress hormones. In a state of chronic fight or flight, we feel increased anxiety, we lose our sense of satiety and can experience compromised digestion, and compromised immune function.

After talking with neuroscientists, psychologists, researchers, and physicians, I gave this a name because I thought naming it would help raise awareness. I called this Email Apnea or Screen Apnea.

I was particularly interested in those who didn’t have screen apnea. My favorite conversation was with a music teacher. He explained that beginning music students often lean into an instrument, almost trying to merge with the instrument. The teacher works with the student on posture and breathing and helps them learn how to stay “embodied,” so they can bring their full selves, body and being, into playing the instrument. My hunch is, that if we teach kids how to play an instrument, it will teach them skills that will support them in healthier use of personal technologies.

Here’s what we can do today, to give our bodies the air they need, in a world where personal technologies are here to stay:

1. Awareness: When you look at a screen, take a minute to notice your posture and to notice your breathing before you start reading or typing.
2. Take breaks: Every hour, take a 5 minute break. Walk around. Notice your breathing. Enjoy a glass of water.
3. Box Breathing: Breathe in and out through your nose. Inhale to the count of 3. Hold to the count of 3. Exhale to the count of 3. Hold to the count of 3. Repeat.
4. Exhale for twice as long as you inhale: Breathe in through the nose to the count of 4. Exhale through the nose or mouth to the count of 8. Repeat.

Screen apnea hijacks the autonomic nervous system because it puts us in chronic fight or flight. Healthy breathing techniques help us reset the autonomic nervous system.

We love and hate our personal technologies. They set us free. They enslave us. As long as we’re spending hours every day in front of screens, we need to stay aware of our breathing.

My blog frequently discusses attention and also embodiment.  And these themes play an important role in Sharon Salzberg’s newest book, Real Love.  I found this to be a particularly lovely and comforting read, filled with stories and sweet practices.

1.  What prompted you to write a book on love?  In your wildest dreams, what impact might it have, for those who read it?

I’ve always been moved by love. I also, looking back on my writing, seem to have a fascination with reclaiming words that have, in my view, become something other than what I’ve always taken them to be, thereby losing some of their transformative power. I’ve long said I feel we are living in a time with a degraded understanding of love, and a blunted sense of aspiration in imagining what might be possible. But it hasn’t been that long. Look at photos of freedom riders in the civil rights movement praying before getting up and going to register black people to vote in the south – and getting beaten and tormented. They are connecting to a power of love so that they can remain non violent. That movement didn’t describe love as sentimentality, or over romanticized. In my wildest dreams I’d like the book to seriously help redeem the word, and return it to us as an enormous strength. I’d of course like people who read the book to find greater love for themselves and a greater sense of connection to others. It would be a far less lonely, more united world.

2.  You write about embodiment and love.  How does embodiment contribute to our sense of safety and our capacity to love ourselves and others?

An area of research I’m trying to investigate more is the relationship between interoception (perceiving your inner state through awareness of body sensations) and empathy. I’ve seen studies with conflicting results, but it makes sense to me that we are far more attuned to our own emotional landscape if we can experience it through our bodies, and the more we are attuned to ourselves the more we can attune to others. I also keep coming back to love as connection – not as liking, or adoring, or approving of but connecting to. The first connection we need in order to live more fully is with our bodies.

3.  A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and has completed chemo, and is now getting radiation.  She’s often ashamed of being ill and angry with her body, feeling limited and betrayed due to this illness.  Her mind knows that being more loving to her body would be best, but she struggles with this.  What do you suggest?

It takes a lot of awareness to look at the often cruel conditioning of this society which says we should be in control of all things at all times and if we’re sick or afraid, we blew it. We need to look at that conditioning, step back from it, and look honestly and rigorously at what is strength, really, and is love actually as often portrayed — simpering and ineffectual? Because that’s what we’re taught.

If you feel bold enough to experiment, you can send lovingkindness throughout your body…which doesn’t mean you are pleased with your diagnosis or you want it to triumph, at all. It’s recognizing that integrating all of one’s experience into a whole, seeing life working through us even in an illness, might well be the healing note we need.

4.  The election has been hard on families and friends when there are strongly held differing political views.  Fear, pride, anger, and a host of emotions overwhelm any feelings of love.  What advice do you have for people in these situations?

Something that is very hard to believe, or remember, is that we can love someone without at all liking them. And love, the generosity of the spirit that wishes that someone could have a happier, more connected life, doesn’t mandate any specific action: smiling, saying yes, giving in, trying to please, or having Thanksgiving dinner together. There is such a thing as tough love, or fierce compassion. In times of great division, and fear, it is very important to also take care of oneself. So we are looking for a really exquisite balance: love and compassion for ourselves and others; love for someone alongside the determination to do all we can to counter their views and not accede power to them if we believe they are really wrong, or harmful. We are not just living in a time of hyper -partisan views, we are also living in a time where you might wake up in NYC and go to get on the subway and the subway car walls are covered in swastikas, your mosque may be a terrorist target, or your African American son or daughter might be stopped by the police and become our latest, shameful tragedy. Adding more hatred to the mix doesn’t seem like it will get us anywhere.

5.  Many of us live with densely packed schedules day in and day out.  What can we do with short patches of time, time during a commute, time in rush hour traffic, etc, to cultivate love?

   We can remember to breathe, first of all. We can use awareness of our breath as a vehicle to return to ourselves, return to the moment, instead of being lost in rumination about the past or anxiety about the future. When we return in this way, we also return to our values, to remembering what we really care about most in any situation. If we have set an aspiration for that to be love, we will return to love.

We can also look around any conference table, subway car, or room, silently recalling, “Oh, you want to be happy too.” “And you want to be happy too.” It’s quite useful to reflect that everyone actually does want to be happy, we want a sense of belonging…. somewhere, in this body, on this earth. We all want connection. It’s the force of ignorance, believing so many myths and mistaken notions, that leads us astray. But remembering that we all do want to be happy is another way to return to love and compassion.

6.  What are the obstacles to forgiveness?    How can embodiment contribute to forgiveness?

One of the strongest obstacles to forgiveness I’ve seen is a distorted notion of what forgiveness is. As my friend Sylvia Boorstein would say, “Forgiveness is not amnesia.” But we kind of think it is, often, that it is the same thing as saying what happened doesn’t matter. But maybe it matters quite a lot. Forgiveness is more like connection to something other than the incident – the truth of change, or a bigger picture of life.

I’ve also heard many inspiring stories of what I would call forgiveness, which end with the statement, “But I’ll never forgive.” Once I was teaching with a colleague, who gave a talk on forgiveness. One of the retreat participants, who clearly was struggling with lots of physical discomfort, came up to me to complain about what she, my colleague, had said. He then told me the story of surviving a terrorist attack but being in continual pain. He said, “I will never forgive, but I have learned that what is absolutely essential is to stop hating.” I’d call stopping hating forgiveness, but if he didn’t want to, that was ok with me!

Embodiment helps in that we can be sensitive enough to feel the burden chronic hatred is adding to what is already hard to bear – chronic pain. We can feel the difference, and make a choice for less suffering.

7.  Let’s talk about social media and real love.  We spend so much time on our phones, laptops, Facebook, Twitter, and email.  How does the time and attention we spend online effect our ability to love, and to cultivate the capacity for loving?

I think it depends on what you do on social media. Are you crafting a highly curated life, so much so that you feel inauthentic, or are you learning things about types of people, say those living in another country, you might not otherwise ever have known?
A professor friend of mine told me once he was worried about his students, who seemed to largely use their social media platforms to impress others with their, oh so perfect lives, and have them feel badly about their own lesser attempts at a life. As he put it, “no one posts a photo of their mediocre lunch.” I told him that might be an age thing, as most of my people seemed to post about their shoulder surgery etc. If your experience online is that you feel lonelier than before you signed on, there is something important to look at there. And of course we all need to look at how often we are glued to our devices…or we might actually not connect to the people we’re actually having lunch with at all!

8.  How does our time online contribute or take away from our sense of embodiment?  What do you recommend we do about this?

Some people describe almost a kind of dissociative state if they stay online for a long time. I call it my fugue state. It’s definitely not embodied. Linda, you described email apnea, which seems part of the same bundle of tendencies. I think people confuse this with a flow state, which might feel as spacious as the fugue, but not as spacey. For every level of our well being, physical, mental etc, I’m told it is good to stand up every half an hour…so I’m about to do that right now.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Sharon’s new book.  Feel free to comment.

A young woman  was quite burned out after many years in a job to which she had given her heart and soul.   A colleague described the work as, “Throwing toothpicks at dragons.”

I began to mentor her as she stepped into her transition out of the job and into, she knew not what.  She could hardly imagine what she wanted to do next.

I gave her an assignment:

Every day, text me about something you notice or learn that is interesting to you.  Write as much as you like.

She sent me daily texts and she started to notice a few things.  She noticed that she was most likely to notice human behavior.  When she realized that, she made a point of working to notice design, objects, and how things worked.  She went from noticing people’s attitudes and behavior around Zika in Miami, to how escalators worked.  She realized that, after a few days, she shifted from worrying about her future, to being in the present, curious about the world around her, and curious about the sentient beings in that world.

To give credit where credit is due, I first learned about this exercise from friends who required each of their children, every night at dinner, to share something interesting.  The penalty for not doing so?  A quarter in the jar.

What are you noticing?

Note from a Second Grader

Between 1978-1986, I was a teacher and, later, a children’s librarian.  I wrote the children notes and they wrote back to me.

A devastating fire wiped out most everything in my apartment in January 2016.  I’ve been working through smoky documents that were salvaged, and found notes from the children that I had saved.

Bullying today seems nastier and more viral due, in part, to social media.  When I discovered this note, I asked a few people, if Karla had taken their pencil, what would they have done?  What would they recommend to Rachel, the sweet second grader who wrote this note.

What would you have done (as a second grader)?  What would you suggest to Rachel?

My friend, Julia Cross, a brilliant dancer, demonstrates how to get exercise in flight.  What fitness program would make it possible for the rest of us?!  Happy Holidays and safe travels!

This discussion of Essential Self Technologies was presented April 10, 2014, at the MIT Media Lab.

Special thanks to Pattie Maes for hosting, to Alex Bodell and Anthony Zorzos for helping with the demo technologies, and to Karthik Dinakar, who provided video and tech support.

(Yes, I mis-speak for a moment at the beginning.  Oops!  The sympathetic nervous system refers to our “fight or flight” response.  The parasympathetic nervous system refers to our “rest and renew” or “rest and digest” response.)

I started hosting dinner parties when I was 12.  I enjoyed cooking and especially loved great conversation.  Over the years, I started to notice that even with fourteen fascinating people at the table, sometimes the conversation was like fireworks and sometimes it fell flat.

I wanted to figure out an algorithm for dinner party seating.  Was this magic?  Or was there a formula?  I was certain there was a way to ensure great conversation.

I think of dinner table conversation as “pinball.”  If the ball stalls or goes down the drain, the game loses energy.  If an energetic conversation is happening between two people sitting across from each other, the ends of the table “die.”

It’s an art!  It’s a science!  It’s fun.  Please try it out and let me know how it works for you!

Basic Rules

»Eight to 14 people per table works best.

»Never seat friends next to one another.

»Ignore the old etiquette of alternating males and females.

Strategy

»Sort place cards into four “energy density” piles: H (high), M (medium), L (low), and ? (wild card).

»Assign the H guests first. Seat them diagonally from one another. Never seat H people directly across from each other.

»If you have guests with strong opposing views, seat them diagonally from each other, too.

»Seat the L people next to the H people. When conversation bounces around the table, The Ls will be more inclined to participate because of their proximity to an H.

»Scatter M and ? guests among the remaining open seats.

The piece below was first published by Wired in August of 2006

Scroll down on this page to see the original.

Play researchers’ findings indicate that self-directed play, for both children and adults, nourishes the human spirit and helps develop resilience, independence, and resourcefulness. Yet, our desire to be efficient and productive, and our tendency to over-schedule and over-program, has crowded out opportunities for self-directed play in our education system and in our lives at home.

Read the rest…