Tagged with: hump day
I was supposed to write a blog post on protecting your mental space today, but . . . I spent all night dreaming about rattlesnakes. I'm afraid of rattlesnakes, so it was not pleasant nor restful dreaming. And, yes, I got bit.
So, in lieu of a long blog post, here is a cute picture instead from out my front door.
I'm skipping my trail run and sticking to pavement, just in case dreams do have predictive power.
Have a wonderful day.
Happy Hump Day! Let’s get to work.
Work, that thing we do when we aren’t distracted. Play, too.
Distractions aren’t new. People have been ranting about television commercials almost since the invention of television. Ditto for radio. Phones used to be anchored to walls and you had to literally dial numbers, one at a time, to call someone locally. When salesmen discovered they could always find people at home during dinner, the useful telephone became a primary annoyance.
Even your home was not fully insulated from distractions. Back then, salesmen knocked on doors selling brushes, pots and pans, vacuums, and life insurance.
These were all obvious efforts to gain attention, first, and sales, second.
There is a difference between voluntarily watching a show - “I want to watch Raylon Givens take on Boyd Crowder tonight” and being involuntarily pummeled by car ads. The thieves say we give permission by watch the show. That is a provable falsehood. They could offer shows the same way movies do. Produce them and charge for each show, an honest exchange on the open market. Why don’t they? Because their revenue would leave a smoking crater on the balance sheet. They know this. Stealing your attention with advertising is more profitable for the producer and the captured attention of the audience means that the advertiser doesn’t have to hand sell individually like the old door-to-door salesmen.
People adapted. The popularity of TiVo and Netflix is directly related to the ability to avoid commercials. Spotify and Sirius Radio do the same with music. People ditched landlines in droves.
Each of these was a way for ordinary people to minimize the efforts of attention thieves.
One defining characteristic of a marketer is they don’t quit. They invent new ways to capture attention and the creation of the Web made their job easier. We changed mediums, they changed delivery systems. Web banners, flashing ads, auto-launch video and audio, and a dozen other methods are used to distract you. No one reads an article in magazines or newspapers anymore. Those are dying as ad revenue dries up. Instead, we catch the last clickbait-y article on endurance training or world affairs (if you think it isn’t happening in standard news reporting, you’re not paying attention).Everyone of them has at least a couple of ways of sidling ads in under the radar.
They also figured out that getting paid by the click required more clicks, so now we have the “Top Ten Reasons You Won’t Get Laid Tonight” type of clickbait spread over eleven web pages. Sure, they could put it all on one page, but that’s bad for revenue. Both the title and the layout are designed to steal your attention for as long as possible.
The rise of social media escalated this to new heights. They create an intentionally addictive system to capture and hold attention. Facebook and Twitter are the two leaders for now, with Snapchat, Instagram, and a host of others not far behind. New versions come out daily like Gab. (Disclaimer: I am an investor in Gab.)
The first means they use to addict you is the network effect. Simply put, you need to be on the platform because you may miss out if you aren’t. Network television pioneered this, but Facebook took it to a whole new level. Instead of “Who shot JR?” conversations around a water cooler, we now have constant conversations online.
Facebook has a notification feature that reinforces this, as do the other social media sites. You open a FB page and the first thing you get is a little red emblem with a number. Ever wonder why it is red? Go check your FB page. What else is red?
The second means is the near instantaneous speed of communication. Someone says something dumb, and you can correct them in a nanosecond. 
This is a particular problem for me. I have tendencies toward playing the part of Don Quixote, but instead of tilting at windmills, I aim for hypocrisy (others hypocrisies, mind you, not my own.) and stupidity. The end result is squandering emotion and energy into a black hole, but because the inclination of people is to seek a point of status superiority, it is addicting.
Equally addicting and for the same status-seeking reason is the effort to rebrand other people as undesirables, deplorables, or untouchables. Ostracizing a person for wrong-think is a trait that predates modernity. If you were too lazy to hunt, you weren’t going to get fed. If you wanted to upset the established order, the established order would dispatch you from the tribe. It was, and is, an effective form of control.
Social media has elevated the sayings of shibboleths to a daily ritual for a great many users. Use the term SJW? You must be Alt-right! Note that both sides have their tests. Well, make that all sides. Social media has a tendency to fracture everything into “Not my tribe” for every activity.
Ostracizing is still happening, it's still a form of bullying, and that isn't going to change any time soon.
Television I control by paying for Netflix. No commercials. I use Pandora Plus for music. The landline is gone and the business phone is on mute. I answer my personal phone only for friends and family.
I have three ad-blockers on my web browser. If sites demand I remove them, I keep moving and close the page unless I really want their content.
I have mostly weened myself from Facebook. I’m still there but on my own terms, participating in a few groups. Some of the family is there, so I keep up with them, though daughters still, and will always, get a phone call at least once a week. I limit my time and stay task-focused.
My tendency to call out stupidity? I have lost hours on Twitter making points only to watch goalposts get moved. Then they invariably block me. For a little while, it was a game. How fast could I get someone to block me using purely rational arguments? That fun fades fast on that, by the way, and I gave it up.
This past week, I tried the Lincoln method to manage my Twitter-bursts. Lincoln famously would write a letter excoriating a critic. Once complete, he put it in his drawer. Days later, feeling better, he consigned it to the dustbin. Over the last week, I probably composed a dozen replies that I ended up erasing. Anne Rice, in particular, seems to have been a catalyst.
The act of writing the tweet was satisfying. The act of deletion was more so as it demonstrated that I was indeed in control.
When most people preach awareness, they talk about in the environment around you. A higher level of awareness is to see and understand how you react to that environment – and adapt your reaction to your goal. Try it. See how it works for you.
Welcome to Hump Day! Aaaand, some of you just harrumphed.
Wednesday used to be celebrated for the half-way mark to the weekend. While that doesn't hold for writers who can work every day of the week, it was a pleasant milestone in a workweek during the manufacturing age.
Back to the harrumphers. Don't deny you did and I agree, you have a point. What weekend, you ask? My phone, email, etc. never stops. Calls come in from clients or bosses at all hours, including the middle of the night. Emails chime on the laptop or the smartphone with urgent requests or imperious orders.
Yep, that is a problem.
Today, there is no Hump Day. The information age drove a stake into the heart of it. In the 24/7 wired world, we work on weekends, on evenings, and drive ourselves batty with online outrage from social media. Throw in the never-ending news cycle, a drip-drip-drip of negativity in our lives, and it's no wonder people are getting increasingly desperate to regain some control over their lives. Well, not everyone, but that will be a separate blog post.
The information age is maturing. The early gee-whiz phase of computers has evolved from strictly task oriented projects where technology served to accelerate progress to a system of gaining attention. Your attention. For all the money that technology saves in increased productivity, the big bucks are on stealing your attention, your data, and your thoughts.
If you don't think so, look at the tech field. The dominant players are not the hardware manufacturers. They are the companies that produce software that can monetize off the user. For example, Windows 10 from Microsoft is a data-mining scheme built onto a crappy operating system. Google has been busted spying on emails. Think your iPhone is secure? Think again.
In this regard, the social media platforms are more honest. They tell you up front in their Terms of Service that they intend to sell you out.
These are the voluntary areas that we elect to engage in. The involuntary, like work, is equally pernicious in violating our private time. For those who want to blandly state that "well, if you don't like it, quit", I will politely suggest they shove it. Families need to eat and for all the fanfare about employment, finding a new job that doesn't impose on personal time is an exercise fraught with stress and eventual disillusionment.
None of this is healthy. For me as a writer, it is especially damaging. The ideas for writing need to come from a creative mindset that disappears under high stress. My writing becomes unfocused and burdensome when it should be joyful. Under stress, I also indulge in bad health habits like imbibing more adult beverages than I should, or killing an entire bag of potato chips in one fell swoop, or skipping exercise.
The plain fact is that much of this stress, and my reaction to it, is self-inflicted.
This blog series is about guarding your mental space. The problem is, that topic is so vast, I can't do it in one post or at least, not one that can be read in a day. So I'm breaking it down in bite size pieces, one post a week on Hump Day. I'm going to keep them short, so you can read them fast.
The goal here is to change one person's interactions with modern life.
Mine.
Twelve steps programs are big on an initial affirmation of admittance and powerlessness. I reject the second part of that.
I, Paul Duffau, have an information addiction and, through my choices, let others steal my attention. But I am not powerless. I can -and will - change my choices and guard my mental space from all intruders.
The truth is, none of us are totally powerless. Taking control, though, takes effort and willpower. We all have those - and when we need to, we can lean on each other for a little support.
See you on Hump Day next week. The subject?
Awareness.