Notes from "The Search for Stillness in a Mad, Mad World

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When life is productively inefficient, things get done, and they get done well, yet we slow down enough during the day, and recover enough periods of stillness and quiet and “doing nothing”, that our mind knows how to slow down again and stop when it’s time to sleep. The productivity that’s “lost” due to inefficiency is offset by numerous small gains, like better sleep, lower stress, seeing problems from unfamiliar angles, and more attentiveness in our interactions with other people.

We don’t just get preoccupied with what we see online, as we click from one thing to another, whether amazing or amusing or outrageous. We are practicing an altogether new state of mind, a weird between-state in the uncertain gap between the thing that is beginning to bore us and the thing that’s about to stimulate us.

It’s as if we’re stepping across a narrow gap between cliffs, again and again, with a sense of uneasiness. For some this abyss of distraction, and the feeling of uneasiness that comes with it, can be as much a feature of the online experience as the content we’re consuming.

in the Internet age, distraction is not just a way of coping but becoming a normative way of being. We are creating a culture of ambient distraction.

“it depends”. People are different, and their environments are different, which makes it very difficult to generalize whether a certain technique or strategy is going to be effective (or harmful).

Monetized Ambient Distraction

Notes from The Search for Stillness in a Mad, Mad World

Added 2024-10-12.