Reflections - My 4 Biggest Lessons from Richard Cytowic
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This is Smart People Podcast. A podcast for smart people, where we talk to smart people, but not necessarily done by smart people. All right, listen, this is a pilot episode, if you will. This is trial and error. It's probably going to take a little bit of editing because I don't have anything written, but I felt compelled.

For a lot of reasons, I felt compelled to record this. I don't even know if it's going to see the light of day. I just finished, literally just hung up with Richard Saitoic, the episode that is going to air late on December 2nd. He's the author of the book, Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age.

And as you can imagine, what we talked about in that episode was the impact of screens, digital distraction and sensory overload. Now, one thing I realized in this conversation is so many platitudes, so many common phrases today are taken seriously.

As not just common knowledge or common sense, but it's like because we can recite them, we understand them. Let me give you an example. Almost everybody has heard the phrase technology is a drug, right? And so we go, yeah, it is. There are so many of those moments in this episode with Richard where I said, wait a second. I have long known this, but I haven't thought of it this way.

So my intent with this conversation is to walk through some of those moments, some of those ahas and break down why they were so impactful for me. Now, I do this to an extent in the interview, but I thought maybe this format will be beneficial, beneficial to you, beneficial to me. Let's see. So the first one that really, really struck me, and I talk about this in the episode, is this idea of technology being a drug. As I said earlier,

And Richard solidified technology has the same impact on our brains as other drugs do. Now, of course, there's nuances based on the drug and the chemical interaction. But essentially, you can't think differently about how alcohol impacts neurotransmitters than you do about how TikTok impacts neurotransmitters or pulling a slot machine in TikTok. I'm using TikTok as an example. You know, pick your poison.

or pornography, gambling, tobacco. Now, the reason I want to pause on this is because when we just say technology is like a drug, we need to reframe it. It is a drug. It has the same impacts as drugs and therefore should be at least thought of as drugs. So today, Monday, December 2nd, when my nine-year-old and six-year-old come home from school and get on their iPad, which they will, and they play games, which they will,

I have to now think of it as I am handing them a metaphorical pack of cigarettes. Now, is it going to have the same negative impact on their lungs? No, we're not saying that. But we all know this as parents. When they get off, it is like taking the alcohol away from the alcoholic. It is. And yet we allow it. So now take that analogy and apply it to your own life or my own life.

Why is it when I go out to lunch at work and I need a break, I feel almost all of that break while eating with scrolling? What am I doing there?

What is the harm? What is the benefit? What is the impact? So that's where my brain started with this conversation. The second thing is this idea of energy. Anybody who knows me knows that I often feel fatigued to the point of I've gone on medical expeditions to find the source of this fatigue. And I think I've been dialing in on it for a while. And I think this conversation helped, which is the following. I think a lot.

I think critically a lot, creatively a lot. I'm aspirational. I'm curious. I want to accomplish. I want to succeed. I want to optimize and I want to enjoy. I just really think a lot about my existence. That takes energy. I worked with

a therapist, coach, whatever you want to call it. But she was a guest, Julia Degange. Highly recommend, highly, highly recommend her work. And one of the things she helped me understand was this idea of interception, which is the ability to feel what you're feeling. It is internal awareness.

I, like many, have a high interception, high sensory experience. Where am I going with this? And why do you care? Why does it relate to you? Right. There's a lot of eyes in this. And trust me when I say this, when I interview people and I bring my own experiences, it is to bring out more knowledge and understanding and hopes that you can tie on to that. It is communal, just joint learning.

I hope it comes across that way. If it doesn't, please email me, genuinely. So where am I going with this? Well, what Richard made me realize is the amount of things I am trying to solve for or accomplish or make progress on in a given day. And I would imagine many of you feel the same. So for example, I have kids. I want them to have the best life possible. I have a job. I want to be successful at it. Not because...

of some arbitrary success. I have long given that up, but it's not a title. It's not even a money. It's what that money can do for me. It's that freedom. I want to have impact. I want to be healthy. I want a great relationship with my wife and my parents and my friends. All of these things take work, and I think about them often. No wonder I'm tired. It is a mental fatigue. But those things matter to me. You know what doesn't matter to me? What

What's happening on social media, reading every email, reading every text, being available constantly. But recognize that the things you want to accomplish take energy and the things you are allowing to happen take energy. So that phone, that TikTok, that Instagram, that email, that takes energy and you only have a certain amount available.

So choose wisely. And that's something that kept coming away in this interview was I'd say the ultimate learning for me was to first clearly identify why you do what you do, like genuinely why you do what you do, and then to recognize actions need to align to those things and anything that doesn't.

is going to subtract from it the simple fact that you only have a certain amount of energy units and time units. So for me, I was thinking of here's an example, right? Let's talk health. Let's talk working out. Let's talk all those things. If I spend 15, 20 minutes at night scrolling, I'm not going to work out during that time. But that is energy usage that's not going towards health.

or sleep. Again, sounds obvious, but I'm asking you to reflect on the actions you take in a given day that don't align with your goals and then recognize that every time you sweep that away, you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I might do Instagram. I might check email. I might look at text and all this stuff constantly, but it's part of the day and it's just a quick break. And it's all of the reasons that

The same things an addict will say why they need to continue their drug, but they're not helping. And that was just such for some reason it's hitting me right now. I mentioned the example of go back to the episode if you haven't coming off of Thanksgiving break and for days on end, I've been

building a basement with my dad and truly enjoyed it. Enjoy the complexity and the thought, the creativity, the innovation and the physical labor. I go to bed tired physically, but I've slept better and I have woken up ready to go again. Why can't I slash we have that feeling more often? And you might be saying, Chris, think about the scenarios, right? I have to commute

Two hours round trip a day. I have to work eight, 10 hours a day. I have to eat. I have to feed my family. I have to do all these things. And man, do I get that. And so number one, recognize it's situational. And number two, recognize it's hard. Number three, recognize I'm in a similar boat. What I will say is, at least for myself, man, do I still find plenty of time for technology? And then I explain it away.

Here's why I want to say this. In order, what I'm going to do based on this episode is I'm going to clearly define anything I want. It can be more than possible. I'm going to write down all the possible actions I might actually do in a day to accomplish those things.

And then I'm going to write down and take note of maybe for a week, maybe for a month, all the things I do that don't align with that. So an example is socially, I enjoy friends. I might go to a brewery with them and I might drink beer. And guess what? That is acceptable. Like, I'm not saying be a monk about this. What I'm saying is be intentional about this. But what I can almost guarantee is at no point is social media benefiting this.

And so I'm going to look at that and I'm going to see what are the options, what are the things, what are the actions I can take to reduce the likelihood that I engage in non-beneficial activities. And I'm going to put systems in place to eliminate those and I'm going to see how it goes. Now, again, keep in mind, this is not living a restrictive life. If your marriage, for example, in my case, is important. And one of the things we do in said marriage is

That is enjoyable as we watch a show together at night. I will still watch that show because it was intentional. That's what I'm talking about, though, is the intentionality. And for some reason in this episode, it really just it just grabbed me. Another thing that really stuck out to me was this idea of novelty. And for some reason, you know, despite the fact, as I mentioned in the interview, having talked to Yuval Noah Harari, having talked to multiple people,

on neuroscientists, on attention, and all of these things, there was something about this conversation that really made me think of the fact, if you picture yourself 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 million years ago, and the environment you're in, and for me, there's just something peaceful about that. I realize there's death and famine and starvation and a lot of things we don't have to deal with today, okay? Like,

Can we all just state that I realize these things to be true? I'm not Pollyanna about it. But in theory, imagine you wake up in your small little dwelling, your stone one room apartment, whatever it is, apartment, one room building. And you know that you have to do things today to survive. You have to find food or make food. You have to protect and provide. You have to raise kids. But it's done in this very,

three-dimensional world. I can picture myself like stalking in the Savannah or hiking through the jungle or sitting around a fire with those in my tribe, telling stories. And, you know, it just feels right. It feels better. And then there's something in the distance. There's a noise. And at that moment, you leverage all of that built up brain power. That's how we were designed.

Or somebody in the tribe says, hey, we need to find a better way to bring water into our village or something like that. Okay. And we just grind over it creatively. That's enjoyable. Transpose that with what our days are like now. We were not meant for constant novelty, for constant availability, for constant interruptions and environment changes and stimulation.

So in this episode, this idea of endless novelty and how it contrasts with what we're designed to do and feel really stuck with me. You know, I use TikTok as an example because I do use it a lot and I enjoy it and I'm addicted to it. But it's not every video. It's the hope. It's the it's the anticipation of a good one. Good by your definition.

Just last night, I was scrolling through TikTok. And you know what caused me to put my phone down is like 10 videos in a row that were just annoying to me. And that's when I was like, what am I doing? Just highlighted how true this is. And when the novelty felt like it was wearing off is when I became so disgusted with the activity. So many implications of that. So that's what I took away from this episode.

Like I said, we'll see if this ever comes to light. If it does, I'd love to know what you think. You know, maybe I need to structure it better. Maybe I need to record these kind of rants and then run them through chat GPT and then edit them. I don't know, but it helps me recount the discussion and its importance and what I'm going to do with it. Reach out to us at smartpeoplepodcast.gmail.com. Let us know what you think of this. Truly enjoy the rest of your day.