How better tech could protect us from distraction | Tristan Harris

Summary

The speaker explores the concept of 'time well spent' and the struggle to manage time amidst technological distractions. They highlight how devices resemble slot machines, offering unpredictable rewards that capture our attention. The talk suggests a need for design solutions that restore user choice and control over technology, using examples like focused work modes and conscious interruptions. It calls for a shift in design goals from mere functionality to enhancing the quality of human interactions and experiences, proposing a new metric for technology success: net positive contribution to human life.

Takeaways

• 🕒 The speaker is deeply concerned about how we spend our time, feeling that it's slipping away, especially due to technology.
• 📲 Technology, particularly smartphones, is likened to a slot machine, enticing us with the promise of new content every time we check.
• 🔄 The speaker acknowledges the paradox of being aware of the time-wasting nature of technology yet still being drawn to it.
• 🤝 There's a need to restore choice in our relationship with technology, moving away from an all-or-nothing approach.
• 🛠️ Designers have a crucial role to play in reshaping technology to enhance, rather than detract from, our quality of life.
• 💬 The example of chat or text messaging is used to illustrate how design can help manage interruptions and improve focus.
• ⏱️ Interruptions in work cost us an average of 23 minutes to refocus, highlighting the importance of designing for reduced distractions.
• 🌟 The speaker advocates for a shift in design goals from mere functionality to fostering deeper human values and positive experiences.
• 🌱 The concept of 'net orchestrated conviviality' is introduced as a measure of success for platforms like Couchsurfing, focusing on creating positive experiences.
• 🌐 The speaker envisions a world where technology is designed to contribute positively to our lives, measured by the value it adds rather than time spent.

Q & A

What is the main concern the speaker has about spending time on technology?

The speaker is concerned about how time spent on technology, such as checking emails and social media, can feel like a compulsion and lead to a loss of control over how time is spent, resulting in a feeling of life slipping away.

Why does the speaker compare checking a phone to playing a slot machine?

The speaker compares checking a phone to playing a slot machine to illustrate the unpredictable and addictive nature of receiving notifications and updates, which keeps users engaged and checking their devices repeatedly.

What is the 'all-or-nothing' relationship with technology that the speaker refers to?

The 'all-or-nothing' relationship refers to the binary choice people feel they have with technology: either being constantly connected and distracted or being disconnected and potentially missing out on important information.

How does the speaker suggest designers can help restore choice in our relationship with technology?

Designers can help restore choice by creating features that allow users to control when and how they are interrupted, such as the example of a 'focus mode' that holds messages until the user is available.

What is the average time it takes to refocus attention after an interruption according to the speaker?

According to the speaker, it takes about 23 minutes on average to refocus attention after an interruption.

Why does the speaker believe that external interruptions can lead to more self-interruptions?

The speaker believes that external interruptions condition and train us to interrupt ourselves more frequently, leading to a habit of self-interruption every three-and-a-half minutes.

How does the speaker propose changing the goal of chat applications?

The speaker proposes changing the goal of chat applications from simply facilitating easy messaging to creating the highest possible quality communication and positive relationships between people.

What is the concept of 'net orchestrated conviviality' mentioned by the speaker?

'Net orchestrated conviviality' is a concept where the success of a service like Couchsurfing is measured by the net positive hours of social interaction it creates that would not have existed without the service.

How does the speaker suggest measuring the success of technology in terms of human life?

The speaker suggests measuring the success of technology by its net positive contribution to human life, such as creating positive experiences and relationships, rather than just the amount of time spent on the technology.

What is the speaker's vision for a world driven by 'time well spent'?

The speaker envisions a world where technology and services are designed to help people spend their time well, focusing on creating positive contributions to human life, rather than just maximizing time spent on devices.

Outlines

00:00

🕒 The Struggle with Time and Technology

The speaker begins by contemplating the value of time and the struggle to utilize it effectively. They admit to obsessing over how they spend their time, as they feel that moments of their life slip away, particularly due to the distractions of technology. The speaker illustrates this with examples of how emails and notifications can consume their attention, drawing parallels between the addictive nature of checking their phone and playing slot machines. They argue that this leads to an all-or-nothing relationship with technology, causing either constant distraction or fear of missing out. The speaker calls for a restoration of choice in our interaction with technology, suggesting that designers can play a crucial role in creating solutions that allow us to manage our time better.

05:01

📱 Designing for Conscious Interruptions

The speaker explores the issue of constant interruptions in our work and communication, using the example of text messaging and how it can disrupt focus. They discuss the research by Gloria Mark and Microsoft, which indicates that interruptions can take up to 23 minutes to overcome and can lead to bad habits of self-interruption. To address this, the speaker proposes a design solution where individuals can signal when they are in a focused state, allowing messages to be held until the person is ready to receive them. This approach aims to create conscious interruptions rather than accidental ones, providing a new choice for both the sender and receiver of messages. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of aligning design goals with deeper human values, such as quality communication, and shares an anecdote about a meeting between tech designers and mindfulness expert Thich Nhat Hanh, highlighting the potential for technology to be designed with compassion and mindfulness.

10:04

🌟 Redefining Success in Technology

In the final paragraph, the speaker challenges the conventional metric of success in technology, which is often based on the amount of time users spend on a platform. They propose a new metric focused on the net positive contribution to human life, giving examples of how companies like Couchsurfing measure their success by the quality of experiences they facilitate. The speaker envisions a world where technology is designed to enhance life rather than consume time and calls for a shift in the way we value and design technology. They encourage company leaders to prioritize this new metric, designers to redefine success, and users to demand technology that contributes positively to their lives. The speaker concludes by expressing a desire to live in a world driven by 'time well spent' and invites the audience to start a conversation towards this goal.

Keywords

💡Time Well Spent

The concept of 'Time Well Spent' refers to the idea that our time is valuable and should be used intentionally and meaningfully. In the video, the speaker emphasizes the importance of being mindful of how we allocate our time, as it directly correlates with the quality of our lives. The speaker uses the metaphor of time slipping away to convey the urgency of this issue, suggesting that we should be deliberate about what we choose to do with our time.

💡Obsession

Obsession, in this context, refers to an excessive preoccupation or fixation on a particular subject or activity. The speaker admits to being obsessed with how they spend their time, indicating a deep concern for the efficiency and value of their daily activities. This obsession is portrayed as a necessary response to the feeling that time is being wasted on trivial pursuits.

💡Technology

Technology is a central theme in the video, where it is both a tool and a potential distraction. The speaker discusses how technology, particularly mobile phones and email, can consume our time without our realizing it. The example of being tagged in a photo and the compulsion to check it illustrates how technology can hijack our attention and time.

💡Slot Machine

The term 'slot machine' is used metaphorically in the video to describe the unpredictable and addictive nature of checking our phones and emails. The speaker likens the act of checking for new notifications to playing a slot machine, where the anticipation of a reward (like an interesting email or social media update) drives us to keep checking, even though we know it can be a waste of time.

💡Distraction

Distraction is defined as the act of drawing one's attention away from the current task or activity. In the video, the speaker discusses how technology often leads to a state of constant distraction, where we are never fully present or focused on one thing. The concept is tied to the idea that our attention is a limited resource, and constant distractions can significantly reduce our productivity and satisfaction.

💡Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a pervasive anxiety that arises from the worry that one might miss an opportunity for a rewarding experience. The speaker mentions FOMO as a driving force behind our constant checking of technology, suggesting that the fear of missing out on important information or social interactions can lead to a compulsive use of technology.

💡Design

Design, in the context of the video, refers to the intentional creation and planning of products, services, and systems to improve user experience and solve problems. The speaker calls for designers to rethink their approach to technology, focusing on creating tools that help users spend their time more effectively rather than simply maximizing engagement for profit.

💡Interruptions

Interruptions are moments when our attention is diverted from a task or activity. The video discusses how frequent interruptions, particularly through digital communication, can significantly impact our ability to focus and be productive. The speaker cites research indicating that it takes an average of 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption, highlighting the cost of constant digital distractions.

💡Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present and engaged in the current moment. The speaker mentions a meeting with Thich Nhat Hanh, a mindfulness meditation spokesperson, to illustrate the importance of designing technology with deeper human values in mind. Mindfulness is presented as a counterbalance to the constant distractions of modern life, encouraging a more intentional and meaningful use of time.

💡Net Positive Contribution

The term 'Net Positive Contribution' refers to the idea of creating value that exceeds the costs or negative impacts. In the video, the speaker suggests that technology companies should measure their success not just by user engagement but by the net positive contributions they make to people's lives. This concept is used to advocate for a shift in how we evaluate and design technology, focusing on its ability to enhance life quality.

💡Consumer Demand

Consumer demand is the desire and willingness of consumers to purchase goods and services. The speaker uses the example of McDonald's adding salads and Walmart offering organic food to show how consumer demand can drive companies to change their offerings. In the context of technology, the speaker calls for consumers to demand technology that helps them spend their time well, implying that such demand could lead to a shift in the types of technologies developed.

Highlights

The importance of spending time well and the speaker's personal obsession with it.

The feeling of time slipping away and its impact on life.

The analogy of technology as a slot machine that consumes our time.

The psychological trap of checking emails and the urge to refresh for new content.

The revelation that slot machines make more money than movies, game parks, and baseball combined.

The idea that our phones are like slot machines, enticing us with the unknown.

The struggle to resist the all-or-nothing relationship with technology.

The need for design intervention to restore choice in our relationship with technology.

An example of how design can help manage interruptions in work through a focus mode feature.

The cost of interruptions and the time it takes to refocus attention.

The concept of 'net orchestrated conviviality' as a measure of positive experiences created by design.

The potential for technology to create a net positive contribution to human life.

The idea of a new system for technology that values positive contributions over time spent.

The call to action for company leaders, designers, and users to prioritize time well spent.

The potential for a world driven by time well spent rather than time spent.

The applause at the end signifying the audience's appreciation for the talk.

Transcripts

What does it mean to spend our time well?

I spend a lot of my time

thinking about how to spend my time.

Probably too much -- I probably obsess over it.

My friends think I do.

But I feel like I kind of have to, because these days,

it feels like little bits of my time kind of slip away from me,

and when that happens, it feels like parts of my life are slipping away.

Specifically,

it feels like little bits of my time get slipped away

to various things like this,

like technology -- I check things.

I'll give you an example.

If this email shows up --

how many of you have gotten an email like this, right?

I've been tagged in a photo.

When this appears,

I can't help but click on it right now.

Right? Because, like, what if it's a bad photo?

So I have to click it right now.

But I'm not just going to click "See photo,"

what I'm actually going to do is spend the next 20 minutes.

(Laughter)

But the worst part is that I know this is what's going to happen,

and even knowing that's what's going to happen

doesn't stop me from doing it again the next time.

Or I find myself in a situation like this,

where I check my email and I pull down to refresh,

But the thing is that 60 seconds later,

I'll pull down to refresh again.

Why am I doing this?

This doesn't make any sense.

But I'll give you a hint why this is happening.

What do you think makes more money in the United States

than movies, game parks and baseball combined?

Slot machines.

How can slot machines make all this money

when we play with such small amounts of money?

We play with coins.

How is this possible?

Well, the thing is ...

my phone is a slot machine.

Every time I check my phone,

I'm playing the slot machine to see,

what am I going to get?

What am I going to get?

Every time I check my email,

I'm playing the slot machine,

saying, "What am I going to get?"

Every time I scroll a news feed,

I'm playing the slot machine to see,

what am I going to get next?

And the thing is that,

again, knowing exactly how this works -- and I'm a designer,

I know exactly how the psychology of this works,

I know exactly what's going on --

but it doesn't leave me with any choice,

I still just get sucked into it.

So what are we going to do?

Because it leaves us with this all-or-nothing relationship

with technology, right?

You're either on,

and you're connected and distracted all the time,

or you're off,

but then you're wondering,

am I missing something important?

In other words, you're either distracted

or you have fear of missing out.

Right?

So we need to restore choice.

We want to have a relationship with technology

that gives us back choice about how we spend time with it,

and we're going to need help from designers,

because knowing this stuff doesn't help.

We're going to need design help.

So what would that look like?

So let's take an example that we all face:

chat -- text messaging.

So let's say there's two people.

Nancy's on the left and she's working on a document,

and John's on the right.

And John suddenly remembers,

"I need to ask Nancy for that document before I forget."

So when he sends her that message,

it blows away her attention.

That's what we're doing all the time, bulldozing each other's attention,

left and right.

And there's serious cost to this,

because every time we interrupt each other,

it takes us about 23 minutes, on average,

to refocus our attention.

We actually cycle through two different projects

before we come back to the original thing we were doing.

This is Gloria Mark's research combined with Microsoft research,

that showed this.

And her research also shows that it actually trains bad habits.

The more interruptions we get externally,

it's conditioning and training us to interrupt ourselves.

We actually self-interrupt every three-and-a-half minutes.

This is crazy.

So how do we fix this?

Because Nancy and John are in this all-or-nothing relationship.

Nancy might want to disconnect,

but then she'd be worried:

What if I'm missing something important?

Design can fix this problem.

Let's say you have Nancy again on the left,

John on the right.

And John remembers, "I need to send Nancy that document."

Except this time,

Nancy can mark that she's focused.

Let's say she drags a slider and says,

"I want to be focused for 30 minutes,"

so -- bam -- she's focused.

Now when John wants to message her,

he can get the thought off of his mind --

because he has a need, he has this thought,

and he needs to dump it out before he forgets.

Except this time,

it holds the messages so that Nancy can still focus,

but John can get the thought off of his mind.

But this only works if one last thing is true,

which is that Nancy needs to know that if something is truly important,

John can still interrupt.

But instead of having constant accidental or mindless interruptions,

we're now only creating conscious interruptions,

So we're doing two things here.

We're creating a new choice for both Nancy and John,

But there's a second, subtle thing we're doing here, too.

And it's that we're changing the question we're answering.

Instead of the goal of chat being:

"Let's design it so it's easy to send a message" --

that's the goal of chat,

it should be really easy to send a message to someone --

we change the goal to something deeper and a human value,

which is: "Let's create the highest possible quality communication

in a relationship between two people.

So we upgraded the goal.

Now, do designers actually care about this?

Do we want to have conversations about what these deeper human goals are?

Well, I'll tell you one story.

A little over a year ago,

I got to help organize a meeting

between some of technology's leading designers and Thich Nhat Hanh.

Thich Nhat Hanh is an international spokesperson for mindfulness meditation.

And it was the most amazing meeting.

You have to imagine -- picture a room --

on one side of the room, you have a bunch of tech geeks;

on the other side of the room,

you have a bunch of long brown robes, shaved heads, Buddhist monks.

And the questions were about the deepest human values,

like what does the future of technology look like

when you're designing for the deepest questions

and the deepest human values?

And our conversation centered on listening more deeply

to what those values might be.

He joked in our conversation

that what if, instead of a spell check,

you had a compassion check,

meaning, you might highlight a word that might be accidentally abrasive --

perceived as abrasive by someone else.

So does this kind of conversation happen in the real world,

not just in these design meetings?

Well, the answer is yes,

and one of my favorites is Couchsurfing.

If you didn't know, Couchsurfing is a website

that matches people who are looking for a place to stay

with a free couch, from someone who's trying to offer it.

So, great service --

what would their design goal be?

What are you designing for if you work at Couchsurfing?

Well, you would think it's to match guests with hosts.

Right?

That's a pretty good goal.

But that would kind of be like our goal with messaging before,

where we're just trying to deliver a message.

So what's the deeper, human goal?

Well, they set their goal

as the need to create lasting, positive experiences and relationships

between people who've never met before.

And the most amazing thing about this was in 2007,

they introduced a way to measure this,

which is incredible.

I'll tell you how it works.

For every design goal you have,

you have to have a corresponding measurement

to know how you're doing --

a way of measuring success.

So what they do is,

let's say you take two people who meet up,

and they take the number of days those two people spent together,

and then they estimate how many hours were in those days --

how many hours did those two people spend together?

And then after they spend that time together,

they ask both of them:

How positive was your experience?

Did you have a good experience with this person that you met?

And they subtract from those positive hours

the amount of time people spent on the website,

because that's a cost to people's lives.

Why should we value that as success?

And what you were left with

is something they refer to as "net orchestrated conviviality,"

or, really, just a net "Good Times" created.

The net hours that would have never existed, had Couchsurfing not existed.

Can you imagine how inspiring it would be to come to work every day

and measure your success

in the actual net new contribution of hours in people's lives

that are positive, that would have never existed

if you didn't do what you were about to do at work today?

Can you imagine a whole world that worked this way?

Can you imagine a social network that --

let's say you care about cooking,

and it measured its success in terms of cooking nights organized

and the cooking articles that you were glad you read,

and subtracted from that the articles you weren't glad you read

or the time you spent scrolling that you didn't like?

Imagine a professional social network

that, instead of measuring its success in terms of connections created

or messages sent,

instead measured its success in terms of the job offers that people got

that they were excited to get.

And subtracted the amount of time people spent on the website.

Or imagine dating services,

like maybe Tinder or something,

where instead of measuring the number of swipes left and right people did,

which is how they measure success today,

instead measured the deep, romantic, fulfilling connections people created.

Whatever that was for them, by the way.

But can you imagine a whole world that worked this way,

that was helping you spend your time well?

Now to do this you also need a new system,

because you're probably thinking,

today's Internet economy --

today's economy in general --

is measured in time spent.

The more users you have,

the more usage you have,

the more time people spend,

that's how we measure success.

But we've solved this problem before.

We solved it with organic,

when we said we need to value things a different way.

We said this is a different kind of food.

So we can't compare it just based on price;

this is a different category of food.

We solved it with Leed Certification,

where we said this is a different kind of building

that stood for different values of environmental sustainability.

What if we had something like that for technology?

What if we had something whose entire purpose and goal

was to help create net new positive contributions to human life?

And what if we could value it a different way,

so it would actually work?

Imagine you gave this different premium shelf space on app stores.

Imagine you had web browsers that helped route you

to these kinds of design products.

Can you imagine how exciting it would be to live and create that world?

We can create this world today.

Company leaders, all you have to do --

only you can prioritize a new metric,

which is your metric for net positive contribution to human life.

And have an honest conversation about that.

Maybe you're not doing so well to start with,

but let's start that conversation.

Designers, you can redefine success; you can redefine design.

Arguably, you have more power than many people in your organization

to create the choices that all of us live by.

Maybe like in medicine,

where we have a Hippocratic oath

to recognize the responsibility and this higher value

that we have to treat patients.

What if designers had something like that,

in terms of this new kind of design?

And users, for all of us --

we can demand technology that works this way.

Now it may seem hard,

but McDonald's didn't have salads until the consumer demand was there.

Walmart didn't have organic food until the consumer demand was there.

We have to demand this new kind of technology.

And we can do that.

And doing that

would amount to shifting from a world that's driven and run

entirely on time spent,

to world that's driven by time well spent.

I want to live in this world,

and I want this conversation to happen.

Let's start that conversation now.

Thank you.

(Applause)