Mindfulness and Smartphones

It has been said that the fundamental adult skill is deferred gratification.  Children who master this skill usually become successful adults, and those who don’t, don’t.

You’d be hard-pressed to discern this truth from any ad for any commercial product, since nearly everything is marketed on the basis of promising immediate gratification.  “There’s an app for that!”TM means “more instant gratification for you.” 

Instant gratification is, indeed, gratifying, but only for an instant, in the same way that eating a potato chip is gratifying.  It doesn’t last, and there are consequences. 

In the case of smartphones, texting, checking emails, IM’ing, and internet surfing, there are a few costs associated with the “convenience” and occasional pleasure of doing whatever you want whenever you want. This constant momentary checking taxes you in specific ways.

First, there are task-switching costs.  When you switch from one mental activity to another, there is a loss.  There is no such thing as “multitasking.”  It’s just task-switching – when you multitask, tasks take more time and have higher error rates. Here’s the research.

Second, seeking instant gratification actually makes you less happy:  it impedes development of fulfillment and associated feelings of satisfaction and well-being.  Fulfillment shows up when we have "flow," a term first identified by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi as an experience of total engagement.  Flow occurs when we are so immersed in something that we don’t notice the passage of time.  Csikszentmihalyi explained that we can find flow by “doing great things, or doing everyday things with greatness.”  The ingredients to flow are:  (1) a high challenge; (2) skills matched to the challenge; and (3) constant feedback.  One of his findings is that people find more flow – and therefore more fulfillment – in work, rather than in leisure.  This is because work requires us to engage.  Instant gratification is pretty much the opposite of engagement.  Flow comes from challenge, not ease.  

Third, instant gratification is the opposite of mindfulness, which you might say is the one requirement for being content in life.  Mindfulness means being present – living, experiencing and relishing the present moment, rather than being distracted by other thoughts or feelings.  Mindfulness involves observing how the mind acts – when it gets bored, distracted, annoyed, fearful, etc – and is based on the idea that the mind is not you.  It’s part of you, but it’s not the whole you.  It’s the tool, not the master. Buddhism calls the urge to get out of the moment, to move to something else, whether good or bad, "The Monkey Mind."  The Monkey Mind is endlessly dissatisfied.  When you're having dinner with a friend or loved one and decide you need to check your phone, that's the Monkey Mind in action.   

Smartphones and their ilk are basically The Monkey Mind in physical form.  With their constant ringing, buzzing and urges to “check me! check me! check me!” they are a ceaseless force urging you to leave the present moment and do something else.  Your urge to check your smartphone feels like your real mind, but it's really your Monkey MInd.  The false message of the smartphone is:  “whatever reality you’re experiencing now is not as good as the reality I’m promising you.”  So in addition to your natural Monkey Mind, when you carry around and are a servant to your smartphone, you have created a second, outsourced Monkey Mind. 

Feel like slipping out of the moment and checking your device?  Gawker will just have another snarky, celebrity story, similar to a hundred others you’ve read. Facebook will have some updates, but nothing as real as the reality you're in. That email might be good or bad, but it’s just another email. 

Just as that additional potato chip is not really going to make you happier.  Just fatter, and experiencing a salty aftertaste. And setting up the urge to do it again in 30 seconds.  

Comments

[Tyler agent]

Thanks for the post, and hopefully I can get help here. But anyways, I need to help my sister find a personal injury lawyer due to her bad decisions. And I came across http://lawyerinottawa.com what are your thoughts on them?

[Jason Fonceca]

Fantastic post, Michael!

I absolutely LOVE how you clarify key things like multi-tasking vs. task-switching and flow-challenge/flow-ease. And I'm a huge fan of mindfulness.

That said, I'd like to contribute a slightly different perspective.

I notice that the article starts off on the premise that being a 'successful' *adult* is a good thing, and so we should delay gratification, and not be (foolish?) children.

but from what I can tell (research, personal experience, simple observation and pattern recognition), children and people with child-like qualities in general, are much, much happier, and a happier life could be said to be a more 'successful' life.

In fact, many of our world's "most successful" (giant celebrities) lived a life of instant gratification.

For example, Drake often sings (and his producer often tells) the nail-biting tale of how he spent a $1,000 on champagne before they'd been signed or sold any albums.

And depending on which biographies one reads, one can find many stories of instant-gratification-gone-right.

Soooooo...

What does this second perspective mean?

Well to me, it indicates that you'r e still right, and I still love your post, most people could use a deeper understanding of delayed gratification, but at the same time, perhaps a BALANCE is needed, or perhaps a LIFE of instant-gratification can be awkward at the beginning but "made workable?"

Either way, hopefully there's some food for thought here and some discussion starters.

Keep ryzin'! :)
-J

P.S. I never thought I'd see the words "Creative" and "Lawyer" together. I LOVE IT.