This Is Your Brain… This Is Your Brain On Technology.
In a recent New York Times article by Matt Richtel, scientists confirmed what most of us already feel… that all these emails are making me crazy! It seems, our brains have begun to reach “tech-overload.”
“Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.”
In fact, our brains may be adapting to new technology and rewiring itself accordingly…
How do you handle your daily flood of emails, text and other information?
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47 Comments
Francisco, you have achieved successful starts in several careers and then moved on. Each career would pay the bills & put food on the table, but are you seeking something else, self-esteem? I am the same way, I have had several careers, but am surrounded by very successful people, one of my acquaintences just got a ferrari and a jet…one has to decide if they want a job or chase goals they may never achieve.
Dear Francisco,
I am 23 years old myself and feel the need to reach out to you, from the same sort of platform sort of speak( since we are both the same age and probably looking at life through the same lenses as well.)
Someone told me once that when your young, life looks limitless, all the opportunities that can “be”, all the endless possibilities and paths your life can take. They told me to embrace it.Cherish that feeling. Back then,possibly a few years ago from now, it didn’t truly make sense to me. But now, it does. I feel the same as you at times, confused, doubtful where my life is taking me. Scared.Excited. Anxious of whats around the corner. At a time, I didn’t see my future past the next day, what I was going to do with my friends after 3rd hour of high school.lol. But now, its amazing what I can see, what i hope to achieve, all the people and places I hope to meet and see and explore and touch… But I keep holding on to that little voice inside of my head that keeps saying, “everything will work out according to its set time for it to…just give it time…it will come…” And I wish that for you. Be patient with yourself…From a fellow 23 year old, I feel ya. I know what your going through.
As I was reading your story, I found myself saying to you if you were there in front of me talking to me, “Keep going.Keep going” At the end of your letter to Tony Robbins, I believe you already answered your own questions. Follow your heart.Listen to it. Its giving you the answers you long for.You just have to listen.You feel you just want to drop everything and start a new journey?GO! Something is telling you to, follow it. Whereever that may lead you is probably going to bless you with what you were looking for this whole time.
take care. Hope this helps 
Francisco, you are 23 years old. No doubt by now you not only see yourself as old, and a failure, but also wondering what life will have in store for you.
I speak of my own experience now:
At the age of 19 I was a solider in the United States Army, being all I could be, and no one was more proud to ever wear the uniform of his military.
We were about to go to war in 1991, and a freak training accident put me in the hospital for six months, and discharged. I was a disabled veteran at the ripe old age of 20, having never served a day in combat (the war ended in four days, if you recall).
I went to college, and changed schools 4 times in three years. I was exposed to Personal Power, attended my first UPW in 1992 in New Jersey where we Firewalked in a monsoon.
I’d like to say life was perfect after, but life doesn’t work that way.
Here I am some 20 years later, about to turn 40. I’m married, with a loving wife, and a wonderful 4 year old daughter.
I eventually earned a college degree in a field I wouldn’t work in; and a master’s degree in a field that defined my career.
At 20, the age of 30 was a hundred years away. At 40, I can see 60 just around the corner.
So take it from me. . . at 23, in the eyes of your elders, you’re still a baby. If more education is what you want, pursue. If you’re afraid to strike out in design because you fear failure, then face it.
Man up. No tiene ganas?
Hold your head high. . . and even if you don’t do what you love for a living, live a life you love.
It’s the only one you’ll get.
To the 23 year old poster. Don’t be too hard on yourself, you certainly have skills to apply yourself to whatever you put your mind too. You are only 23, and it is not to late to start over again. Seeing you have no money, my first suggestion is get a job, any job. Then take your time away from work to just sit in silence for at least 30 minutes a day. Quite your brain, and enjoy the piece. Within 30 or so days, it will all become clear what you need to be doing with your life.
Again, you are only 23. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off. You have your whole life in front of you. It will sort itself out.
Hi Tony,
This is the only way I envision right now of reaching you. I’m not here for you to solve my problems, rest assured. My problem is within me and it’s my belief that the answers lie on the inside. But yet, I have this need of writing something here.
I’m 23 years old and I have come to the conclusion that something is wrong with me. I have had an amazing life, I always certain of what I was / wanted since an early age – or at least I thought, everyone envisioned in me that person that would achieve high levels of success. Life has given me several opportunities, and now I see that something stuck me from getting to the point of “becoming”.
I see myself as a guy who has grown on the opposite direction. I never had teenage doubts about what I wanted in life – like all my friends, who did. So I never questioned myself, nor entered inside me to find out what I really was. Although my interest in culture was always very broad, since I was a small kid I wanted to study fashion design. And so I did, I enrolled the best degree in my country – Portugal – and I studied it. In the beginning it was all amazement and wonder, but then doubt came, and my enormous interest on different areas made me believe my path wasn’t there. I ended my degree with distinction marks – thanks to the degree coordinator who struggled against my wildness of being, and although all the opportunities I had right in front of me to apply to international contests with high chances of winning them, I thought to myself: “I’m bigger than this thing called fashion, I don’t want this, I want something else.” Then I thought that it would probably be in Art. And so life granted me another opportunity. After my degree I had the opportunity to work for a design / technology office, whose owner I later came to find out, was a very important art collector. And so, once again I had huge opportunities to achieve what I wanted. I met the most important people from the international contemporary art world, I started developing projects and then it all fell apart due to my lack of humility and once again my doubt. Me and my old boss had a huge fight and I got fired. Now, I stand in a point in life where I see I have messed everything. Seeing backwards, I see I have had 1000 beginnings, but nothing really concluded, I always managed to change what I was doing for something else – always thinking I was very certain of myself and of what I knew it was right.
I have this gift/curse that enables me to become whatever I want. I’m right now standing in my room in front of all the things I have done, all the projects, all the researches, all the materials and books bought and earned. And yet, I realise that all the models I have built were from the outside to the inside – like a mirror reflecting everything around me, all the models I considered successful. I never stopped for one moment, when things weren’t as I expected, to suffer and to question myself on the inside – or did, but never stuck long enough to get proper answers. I always continued in front, because I could always be something else. And so I have been many things, and yet I am none. From graphic designer, to writer, to art researcher, to fashion designer, to artist; aspired to singing, cooking; I don’t know., so many. I think all my life I have been the idea of something, but when I got to the point of becoming, I changed it for something else, or even ruined it. I feel stupid for this lack of certainty that seems to have grown on me along my “adult” path, as I never got inside me to ask “the questions”, and thrive along the solitary path for enough time to build the answers. And now, I’m full of nothingness.
On the outside, and to others I’m very confident and I always have the best advices to the situations of others, but inside the veil, I’m full of doubt, questions and lacking focus.
And today, realising all the things I have done, I see I have been no leader of myself, I had no humility along the way to actually delve into something for real. I now see that it would have been much better if my cultural interests where dumb, and with little vision. Maybe I could have applied my strengths with more focus and consistency. I know life is once again – oh how lucky I am – granting another opportunity by making me question my self and my path.
But as I start to realise this, I feel frightened – at this point I have no money, no answers, and everything is so unstable.
In my dreams, I’ve always dreamed of leaving everything and begin a journey along the world and along myself, discovering and learning with it – inside and outside together. I hope this is the beginning…
I don’t know what to ask you. But I ask only, do you have anything you could tell me? I’m here without reason beyond writing what this is – a testimonial to my doubts and inconsistency.
Please don’t take me as a negative person, for I am not. I’m just doubtful at this time and for the first time with the whole world in front of me but with no place or path to go…….
If you have read this, thank you!
My best regards
Francisco
I just picked up this book “Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better by Gina Trapani” for the purpose of optimizing how I deal with email. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to improve their technology time management skills.
Cheers!
this is how i see my self now .am one of the Anthony Robbin team working enjoying my whole life to the fullest .my role is helping my people understand one simple thing. laughing is not shameful (my culture see it this way)