---
author: Big Think
date: '2026-02-16'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0qq9R__XiQ
speaker: Big Think
tags:
  - attention-span
  - cognitive-load
  - digital-distraction
  - brain-energy
  - sleep-hygiene
title: 认知过载的根源：大脑局限与数字侵蚀
summary: 神经学教授Richard Cytowic深入剖析了现代社会注意力普遍衰退的现象，将其归因于大脑固有的能量限制和进化滞后。他揭示了数字设备如何通过劫持大脑的奖赏机制和耗尽认知资源，导致注意力碎片化和成瘾。文章进一步提出了通过调整技术使用习惯、优化睡眠、恢复真实社交互动以及拥抱“无所事事”的艺术来重塑认知能力和生活质量的策略。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: tech-trends
area: tech-engineering
project: []
people: []
companies_orgs: []
products_models: []
media_books:
  - 'Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with the Digital Distractions and Sensory Overload'
status: evergreen
---
### 认知过载的根源：大脑局限与数字侵蚀

我们普遍认同，现代人的注意力广度已严重退化。我将其称为“注意力的暴政”，因为来自四面八方的海量信息需求，让我们不堪重负，缺乏足够的心理带宽来应对。我是**Richard Cytowic**，乔治华盛顿大学的神经学教授，也是**《屏幕时代的石器时代大脑：应对数字干扰与感官超载》**（Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with the Digital Distractions and Sensory Overload）一书的作者。

与每隔几年就更新换代的洗衣机或电器不同，大脑的进化速度极其缓慢。进化不会说：“哦，是时候来个新的记忆模块或语言模块了。”现代人的大脑结构，与我们遥远的石器时代祖先相比，几乎没有本质区别。进化是通过“累加”实现的：一旦大脑找到了一个足够好的解决方案，它就会保留下来，然后在此基础上添加新功能。这就像“新英格兰式加建房屋”，房间一个接一个地添加，外观可能显得有些奇特，但功能是可用的。

**工作记忆**（Working memory）就像一个临时的“心理便笺”，用于暂存我们当前关注的信息，无论是记住一个简短的购物清单，还是尝试回忆一个应用的访问码。然而，它的容量是有限的。我们所做的任何事情，无论多么微小，都需要消耗能量。而**ATP（三磷酸腺苷）**，是驱动身体每一个细胞的燃料，是能量转化的基石。例如，即使你只是在考试，没有进行任何体力活动，仅仅是思考，在几场考试结束后，你也会感到筋疲力尽，因为你消耗了大量的脑力能量。因此，我们必须谨慎使用注意力，避免过度消耗，它就像一个银行账户，很容易就陷入赤字。

大脑的运行受限于一个固定的能量带宽，无论通过何种饮食、运动或数独游戏，都无法增加这个上限。我们只能学会与现有的能量额度共存。仅仅倾听一个人讲话，就可能占用我们大约一半的带宽；而试图同时听两个人讲话，则几乎是不可能的，因为这会超出我们的极限。你可能会认为，在滚动或滑动屏幕时，你并没有做什么特别费力的事情。但正是因为这种带宽如此狭窄，留给思考的空间所剩无几。大部分能量被用于维持细胞膜上的钠钾离子泵等物理结构，真正留给思考的能量微乎其微。

一个绝佳的例子是“奥斯卡颁奖礼”的那个著名失误，他们错误地宣布了最佳影片。就在艾玛·斯通（Emma Stone）走下舞台时，一位名叫Cullinan的人拍了一张照片并发布到社交媒体上。而就在那一刻，他本应丢弃信封并准备下一个奖项的颁发。他 фактически 占用了本应用于关键任务的工作记忆，导致了宣布错误最佳影片的混乱局面。

大脑和周围神经系统本质上是一个巨大的“变化探测器”，它会响应当前环境中发生的任何变化，尤其是对新奇事物做出反应。在过去的自然环境中，除了星辰和季节的变化外，其他变化并不显著。而如今，我们身处一个变化无处不在的环境中，这些变化都在争夺我们的注意力。屏幕就像“二手烟”，任何处于其视线范围内的人都会受到影响。我们在候车室或机场休息室都经历过这种情况：巨大的显示屏上播放着动态图像，它们强行吸引你的目光，而你试图忽视它们同样需要消耗能量。无论如何，我们似乎都处于劣势。

我经常说，屏幕就像“二手烟”。这是因为，无论谁在视线范围内，都会受到它的影响。我们都曾在候车室或机场休息室经历过这种情况，那些巨大的显示屏上不断变化的图像，它们强行吸引你的目光，而你试图不去看它们，同样需要消耗能量。所以，无论怎样，我们似乎都处于劣势。也许唯一的办法就是戴上耳塞，蒙上眼睛，这样才不会被这些东西分心。我将这种现象称为“强制观看”。

那么，看着屏幕上的我，这是否具有讽喻性？答案是：如果你只是专注于我此刻的演讲，那倒没什么。但如果你试图同时做三件事或五件事，那么你的注意力就会被严重分散。

我认为，“多巴胺奖励”（dopamine reward）这个词被过于随意地使用了，它似乎成了任何令人感觉良好的事物的代名词。比如，一顿美餐也会带来“多巴胺冲击”。我们整天都在接收这些“小刺激”。但实际上，大脑中有两个主要的愉悦回路：一个是与“渴求与奖励”（wanting and reward）相关的，另一个是与“愉悦与喜爱”（pleasure and liking）相关的。

这两个系统在触发的难易程度上有所不同。“渴求与奖励”系统非常容易触发，它的网络广泛分布于大脑的各个角落。但它却不可能被完全满足，这也是“享乐适应”（hedonic treadmill）的根源——一旦我们得到想要的东西，立刻就会想要别的东西。愉悦感非常短暂，甚至亚里士多德在很久以前就指出了这一点。

另一方面，“愉悦与喜爱”系统（如阿片系统）在大脑中的分布范围较小，触发起来更困难，但它可以被满足，这也是成瘾的根源所在。研究表明，行为成瘾，例如过度滑动屏幕或TikTok成瘾，会激活与物质成瘾（如酒精、可卡因等毒品）相同的脑区。许多实验都显示，当你拿走一个人的手机时，他的焦虑水平会随之升高。

科技巨头们深知一天只有1440分钟，因此他们会不遗余力地争夺我们的眼球，并希望将我们尽可能长时间地“粘”在他们的平台上，因为这就是他们赚钱的方式。Netflix的前CEO里德·哈斯廷斯（Reed Hastings）早就说过，睡眠才是他们最大的竞争对手，而不是亚马逊Prime、Hulu或其他流媒体服务。他们已经精通于利用“**正向间歇性强化**”（positive intermittent reinforcement）。我知道他们在做什么，但当我看到“下一集5秒后开始”的提示时，我还是会想：“好吧，现在几点了？哦，我还能再看一小时。”这与赌场老虎机使用的机制相同，目的是让我们持续玩下去。也就是说，我们滑动屏幕，看到一些有趣的内容或好消息，这就是一种奖励。于是我们想：“哦，再来一个。”然后继续下去。但奖励的出现是稀疏且不可预测的，这正是让我们沉迷于刷屏的原因。因此，你不仅在行为上成瘾，在生理上也可能成瘾。

<details>
<summary>Original English</summary>
Everyone agrees that our attention spans have 
gone to hell. I call it a tyranny of attention  
because there's so many demands on our attention 
coming from so many different directions that we  
are simply overwhelmed and we don't have the 
mental bandwidth to cope with it. I'm Richard  
Cytowic, professor of neurology at George 
Washington University and an author of “Your  
Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with 
the Digital Distractions and Sensory Overload."
Washing machines and appliances change every 5 
or 10 years. The brain doesn't do that. Evolution  
doesn't say, oh, it's time for another memory 
module, a time for another language module.  
The modern brain is no different than that 
of our distant Stone Age ancestor. Evolution  
precedes by accretion. That is, once the brain 
arrives on a solution that's good enough,  
it keeps it and then adds on new features, 
sort of like a New England add on house,  
where you add one room after another and it 
looks sort of funky, but it works. Working  
memory is like the mental scratchpad where we 
hold whatever we're focused on at the moment,  
whether it's remembering a short grocery 
list or trying to remember, an access code,  
for an app and, it, it's limited in what it can 
do. How much you can hold everything that we do,  
costs us in terms of energy expenditure. And ATP 
is the fuel that fuels every cell in the body.  
ATP stands for adenine triphosphate. Creatures 
all over the animal kingdom all rely on ATP.  
It's like the bedrock of energy transformation. 
So, for example, if you have to go take a test,  
you're not doing anything. You're just thinking. 
But at the end of 3 or 4 of our tests section,  
you're really beat. You're tired because you have 
expended a lot of mental energy. So we have to be,  
you want to be careful not to waste your attention 
or spend too much. It's like a bank account that  
can go into the into the read very easily. The 
brain operates within a fixed energy limit,  
bandwidth, and there's no amount of diet, 
exercise, or Sudoku puzzles that can increase  
that. So we have to learn to live with the amount 
that we have. Listening to one person speak takes  
up about half my bandwidth, and trying to listen 
to two people at once is impossible, because then  
we've exceeded it. Now, you might think that 
as you're scrolling or swiping that you're not  
really doing much, but because that bandwidth is 
so small, and narrow, there's not much left over,  
and most of the energy goes towards maintaining 
the physical structure by pumping sodium and  
potassium ions across membranes. And that 
leaves very, very little left over for thought.  
A great example is the Oscar fiasco, in 
which they named the wrong best picture.
Just as Emma Stone was walking off the 
stage. Cullinan took a picture and tweeted,  
and that's the exact moment that he should 
have been discarding the envelope and lining  
up the next one. Basically, he flooded his working 
memory, and that's what led to them announcing the  
wrong best picture. The brain and the peripheral 
nervous system is really one big changed detector.  
That is a response to any change in current, 
in the current environment. And so it responds  
to novelty. Now, back on the savanna, things 
didn't change very much except the constellations  
overhead and the seasons. Now, of course, we're 
we've got change everywhere. Bidding for our  
attention. Now, I mean, take in terms of attention 
and distraction, I often say that the screens are  
like second hand smoke. And so in the fact that 
who's ever in the line of sight is affected by  
it. And we've all experienced this in waiting 
rooms and airport lounges, those huge monitors  
with their moving images. They demand to be looked 
at and trying not to look costs energy as much. So  
either way we lose. I think the only way around 
that would be to put in earplugs and put on a  
blindfold so you're not distracted by this stuff. 
This what I call forced viewing. Is it ironic that  
good looking at me on a screen? And the answer is 
not if you're just focused on my talk right now,  
but if you're trying to do three things or five 
things at once, then your focus is really shot. I  
think the term, you know, dopamine reward is being 
thrown around too loosely. It's sort of shorthand  
for anything that feels good. You know, a good 
meal will give us a dopamine hit. So, I mean,  
it's we're getting we're getting these these 
squirts, all day long. But there are two pleasure  
circuits that exist in the brain. One related to 
wanting and reward and the other to pleasure and  
liking. The two systems differ in how easy they 
are to trigger. Now, the wanting and reward system  
is very easy to trigger. It's network is diffused 
widely throughout the brain and basically in every  
crevice. But it's impossible to satiate. And 
this is the basis of the hedonistic treadmill.  
As soon as we get something that we want, we 
want something else. Pleasure is very short  
lived. Even Aristotle pointed this out long ago. 
On the other hand, the opioid system is smaller in  
its expanse in the brain is harder to trigger. We 
can satiate and this is the basis of addictions,  
really. Studies show that, behavioral addictions 
such as, you know, excessive swiping at your  
screen or TikTok addiction, activates the same 
brain areas as do physical addictions. So alcohol,  
cocaine, other kinds of drugs. This has been 
shown in many experiments where the anxiety  
level rises minute by minute as you take your 
phone away. The tech giants know that there's  
only 1440 minutes in a day, and so they fight 
ruthlessly for our eyeballs, and they want to keep  
us glued to their platform as long as possible, 
because that's how they make their money. I mean,  
Reed Hastings of Netflix said it long ago. He 
said sleep is their biggest competitor, not  
Amazon Prime, not Hulu, not the other streaming 
services. They have become expert in exploiting,  
positive, intermittent reinforcement. I mean, I 
know what they're doing. And yet when I see that  
next episode in five seconds, it's like, okay, 
what time is it? Oh, I can I can watch another  
hour. This is the same mechanism that's used 
by slot machines in casinos to keep us playing.  
That is, we scroll and we get a hit or something 
interesting or a good piece of news, and that's a  
reward. And so we said, oh, let's get another one. 
And we keep going. And so, but the rewards come  
infrequently and on an unpredictable schedule. 
And that's what keeps us glued to the, to the to  
the scrolling. So you are physically addicted as 
well as behaviorally addicted.
</details>

### 重塑认知：策略、睡眠与真实连接

如何才能夺回我们的注意力呢？这是一个好问题。最有效的方法或许是关掉手机，但这恰恰也是人们最难做到的，因为他们普遍存在所谓的“**恐机症**”（nomophobia），即害怕没有手机。我们已经像巴甫洛夫的狗一样，对手机发出的提示音（那个“嗖”的声音）产生了条件反射。屏幕一亮，我们就听到那个声音，或者坐立不安地想：“有人给我点赞了吗？”仅仅是无法随时查看手机，就会让我们感到焦虑。

如果你不愿意放下或关掉手机，那么可以尝试调整设备设置，以减少射入视网膜的光子数量。在书中，我提供了一些具体方法。首先，在你的iPhone上开启“蓝黄三色盲滤镜”（blue-yellow tritanopia filter），并将亮度调至你觉得舒适的程度。对于电视，尤其是那些亮度极高的OLED屏幕，你可以将图像模式、对比度和亮度大幅调低（例如降低40倍），这样你仍然能获得出色的画面效果，同时又不会被过强的光线所轰炸。

另一个需要关注的是屏幕发出的光线类型，特别是**蓝光**。蓝光属于短波长光，其光子携带的能量比其他波长的光子都高，并且能穿透至眼底。蓝光还会向大脑发出信号，指示夜晚的开始和早晨的光线到来，从而影响我们的**昼夜节律**（circadian rhythms）。任何光感受器都可能进化出处理这种信号的能力，并帮助我们建立日出日落的生物钟。蓝光比其他任何波长的光都能更有效地穿透海洋，而所有生命的感光细胞最初都是在水中进化的，因此我们对蓝光特别敏感。

有人建议使用带有黄色镜片的防蓝光眼镜。如果对眩光敏感，黄色镜片或许能提供一些缓解。但就过滤蓝光而言，它们几乎是无效的。要有效过滤掉足够多的短波长蓝光，你需要的是深橙色镜片，但它又会黑到让你几乎看不清东西。所以，虽然在实验室里可以证明其效果，但在日常生活中，你会因为看不清而磕磕绊绊，甚至可能在家具间跌倒。

另一个关键因素是夜晚的活动。保持规律的睡眠和起床时间，是恢复注意力与专注力的最佳方法之一。为什么呢？因为当你入睡时，大脑并非处于被动状态。你不是一袋躺在床上的土豆。睡眠中的大脑代谢非常活跃，它忙于巩固记忆、清除白天积累的代谢废物，并处理情绪。如果我们因为睡眠不足而剥夺了大脑完成这些任务的机会，其后果相当于血液酒精浓度达到0.08%，第二天你会非常难受。而且，不存在所谓的“补觉”。你不能通宵不睡，然后指望在周末睡个懒觉就能弥补。这行不通，原因在于我们的昼夜节律和睡眠周期。

当我们躺下时，会经历四个睡眠阶段：第一、第二、第三阶段，以及最深的第四阶段——慢波睡眠，这是身体修复的关键时期。然后我们会依次回到第三、第二、第一阶段。这个过程大约在入睡90分钟后完成。接着，我们会进入第一个快速眼动（REM）睡眠阶段，这是我们做梦的时候。所以，我常常告诫我的医学生们，如果你早上需要做一次演讲，那就早点睡觉，设定一个早上5点的闹钟，然后在那时进行最后的复习和准备。因为那时你已经从充足的睡眠中恢复过来，记忆被激活，精力充沛，表现会比熬夜苦读要好得多。

那么，在**睡眠卫生**（sleep hygiene）方面，有哪些方法可以帮助我们建立健康的睡眠与清醒模式呢？首先，尽量减少科技产品的使用。卧室里最好不要放电视。尽量保持规律的入睡和起床时间。规律性越强，效果越好。卧室应保持凉爽，理想温度是18-20摄氏度。不要穿得太暖和，如果你发现半夜需要踢开被子，说明你一开始就睡得太热了。

晚上做什么也很重要。睡前沉迷于TikTok、政治或宗教等可能让你情绪激动的话题，都不是好主意，尤其是在睡前几小时。这只会让你的肾上腺素飙升，干扰睡眠。一旦睡眠受到干扰，你的专注力、注意力广度和记忆力都会受到影响。这最终关乎自我控制和情绪智力：我能否及时“切断电路”，不卷入争吵？如果你即将与人发生争执，最好的办法是双方都暂时闭嘴，好好睡一觉，第二天早上再谈。你会发现，早上醒来时，那些让你激动不已的事情，可能已经没那么重要了。这再次考验的是情绪智力和自我控制能力：你是否能“不接招”？你是否意识到正在发生什么，并选择“我不会去那里”？这需要极大的韧性，因为最终，当你被激怒并感到不公时，你伤害的只有自己。

解决方案其实非常简单：你需要回归现实生活中与他人互动。试着约朋友喝杯咖啡，或一起去公园散步。当你与另一个人或一小群人互动时，你们的交流会非常有意义，你是有目的而来的，并从中获益，感觉良好。你的身体会释放**催产素**（oxytocin），这种荷尔蒙能增强连接感。而当你盯着屏幕时，这种情况就不会发生。即使是在Zoom会议上看着屏幕上的20个人，也不会产生这种效果。事实上，这非常令人疲惫。人们谈论“Zoom疲劳”有几个原因：一是摄像头的位置总是不对，让你不确定该看哪里；二是你担心自己的形象，担心是否表达得当，是否看起来不错。仅仅是集中注意力就足以让人精疲力尽。另一个原因是视频和音频被分割成不同的流。当我们正常交谈时，身体语言和语调会传递信号，表明何时该我说话、何时该停止、何时该你回应。但在Zoom会议中，音频被分割，会导致对话出现“卡顿”，人们的注意力会集中在“我什么时候能插上话？”这种状态上，这非常累人。这就是Zoom疲劳的由来。

你可以做的一件事就是有意识地休息，按下那个“电路断路器”，停止所有忙碌，停止你此刻正在做的一切事情。荷兰有一个美妙的概念叫做“**niksen**”，意为“无所事事”的艺术。你可以离开电脑，眺望窗外，看看树木，听听鸟鸣，观察风中摇曳的树枝。这样做几分钟就足以“切断电路”，让你暂时从忙碌中抽离出来。你就像是处于“过载”状态，然后进行一次“niksen”时刻，降低你的参与度，这样你就可以重新开始。Niksen并非冥想，也不是强迫自己什么都不做，它只是一种自发的行为，让你抬头看看，或者在户外散步时，抬头看看建筑。你太习惯于只盯着地面行走，或者一边走路一边看手机，结果撞上灯柱。所以，放下手机，停下来，环顾四周，深呼吸。这就是niksen，这就是按下电路断路器。

我称沉默为一种必需的营养素。沉默之所以重要，是因为我们进化时，大约30亿年前，世界是相当安静的。你主要听到的只有风吹过树叶的声音。如果你听到树枝断裂的声音，那就会让你立刻警觉起来：“哇，那是什么？是危险来了吗？”任何非同寻常的事情都会激活你的变化探测器，它会让你思考：这是威胁还是机遇？是狮子在追我，还是有潜在的伴侣或食物？所以，大脑并非为24/7全天候运行而设计，它需要有休息的时间来恢复自身。

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<summary>Original English</summary>
How can you reclaim your attention? Good question. Well, the most effective thing would be to turn the phone off, but that also turns out to be the hardest thing for people, because they have what's called 
nomophobia, a fear of being without their phone. 
We are really addicted to the to the woosh that  
happens when a text message comes in. We really 
have trained ourself like Pavlov's dogs when these  
stimuli come in. The screen lights up, we get 
the woosh or we sit there wondering, gee, has  
anybody liked me? I, you know, you get anxious, 
just not used, not being able to hang on to it.  
One of the things you can do if you're not willing 
to put the phone down or turn it off, adjust the  
settings on it and your television so that you're 
not getting these this huge number of photons  
hitting your retina. In the book, I give examples 
for this. The first thing you should do is go to  
your iPhone and turn on the blue-yellow tritanopia 
filter. Turn down the brightness as much as you're  
comfortable with. On your television, which are 
really, really bright. Those OLED screens. You  
can to turn down the picture mode and the 
contrast mode and the brightness way down  
by a factor of 40 and you'll still have a great 
picture to look at. It's just you're not going  
to be bombarded by all this, this light coming at 
you. The other thing would be then what, the kind  
of light that's emanating from these very bright 
screens. And that is you're getting too much short  
wavelength light or blue light. Now, blue light 
packs more energy in its photons than any other  
wavelengths, and it penetrates all the way to the 
back of the eye. Blue wavelengths also signal,  
the onset of darkness and then the arrival of 
light in the morning. Now, any photo receptors  
could have evolved to handle this and give 
us our circadian rhythms of sunlight and  
sunset. Blue light penetrates the oceans 
more effectively than anything else. And  
that's where the photo receptors in all life 
first evolved. So that's why we're sensitive  
to blue light. People have suggested using blue 
light blocking glasses which are tinted yellow.  
Yellow tinted glasses are good for glare if 
you're sensitive to glare, for example. But  
those are really worthless. In order to filter 
out enough of the blue short wavelengths,  
you need a dark orange lens and it's so dark 
that you can barely see what you're doing. So,  
you know, you can show the effectiveness in a lab, 
but for everyday living and trying to get around,  
you'll be stumbling all over the furniture because 
you won't be able to see anything. Another thing  
that matters is what you're doing at night. Having 
regular hours of going to bed and waking up is  
one of the best things that you can do to reclaim 
your attention span and your focus. Why is that?  
Well, when you're when you're asleep, the brain 
is not just passive. You're not. You're not a  
sack of potatoes lying in bed.Our sleeping brain 
is highly active metabolically. It's consolidating  
memory. It's clearing out waste products that have 
accumulated over the day. And, it's processing  
emotions. And so if we don't allow it to do 
these things by shortchanging ourself on sleep,  
then it's equivalent of having a blood alcohol 
concentration of 0.8 You're really going to  
suffer the next day. And there's no such thing as 
catching up on sleep. I mean, you can't stay awake  
all night and then decide, well, I'm going to 
sleep in on the weekend. It doesn't work that way.  
And why is that? It has to do with our circadian 
rhythm and the cycle of sleep. Now we hit the  
pillow and we go through four stages of sleep. 
Stage one, two, three, four, which is the deepest  
slow wave sleep. And that's where all this repair 
process happens. And then we go back up stage  
three, two one. And that's about 90 minutes after 
we've hit the pillow. And then boom, we enter our  
first REM stage. And that's where we dream. So 
I tell my medical students, for example, if you  
have to give a presentation in the morning, go to 
bed, set an alarm clock for 5 a.m. if you need to,  
and cram and review and prepare your thing then, 
because at that point you're going to be refreshed  
from a good night's sleep. Your memory is going 
to be primed, your tanks are going to be full,  
and you're going to perform much better than if 
you had stayed up late cramming. So what are some  
of the things that you can do in terms of sleep 
hygiene, to establish a healthy pattern of sleep  
and wakefulness? Well, one would be to try to 
minimize tech. Don't have a TV in your bedroom,  
for one thing. Try to have regular hours of going 
to sleep and waking up in the morning. The more  
you can keep a regular period like that, the 
better off you are. Your room should be fairly  
cool. 68 degrees is ideal. Don't bundle up and 
get too warm. If you find yourself that you  
need to throw the covers up in the middle of the 
night, then you've started out too hot. Another  
thing that matters is what you're doing at night. 
Getting into TikTok and politics and religion and  
all these other things that can rile us up, are 
not a good thing to do after dinner. Certainly  
not in the in the hours before bedtime. Because 
it's just gonna, it's going to get our adrenaline  
up. It's going to interfere with our sleep. And if 
once it does that, that interferes with our focus,  
our attention span, our memory, all those kinds 
of things. So just deals with self-control and  
emotional intelligence. Am I able to throw the 
circuit breaker and not get into that argument?  
If you're about to have an argument, the best 
thing is for both of you to just zip it and have  
a good night's sleep and then talk about it in 
the morning. And you'll find that in the morning,  
whatever you were, you were all riled up about, 
really isn't all that important anymore. And  
again, it's a question of emotional intelligence 
and self-control is can you take the bait? Do you  
realize what's happening and say, I'm not going to 
go there. That takes a great deal of resilience,  
because at the end, when you get all riled up 
and indignant, who are you hurting? You're only  
hurting yourself. The solution is really very 
obvious is that you have to engage with other  
people in real life. Try to agree to meet somebody 
for coffee or to to take a walk in the park. Now,  
when you're interacting with another person 
or small group of people, your conversation  
interaction is very meaningful. You're there for 
a reason. You're getting something out of it. It  
feels good. Your oxytocin, which is the the 
binding hormone, they're being released. That  
doesn't happen when you're looking at a screen. 
And, when you're on a zoom meeting and looking  
at 20 people on the screen. That doesn't happen 
either. That, in fact, is very exhausting. People  
talk about zoom fatigue for several reasons. One, 
the camera is always in the wrong place, and so  
you're not quite sure where to look. You're also 
worried about how do I look? Am I coming across  
okay? Do I look all right? And just being able to 
focus attention like that is draining. The other  
thing is that the video and the audio are chopped 
up into different streams. So what happens is,  
when you and I are having a conversation, there 
are normal signals through our body language and  
through the tone of our speech of when it's time 
for me to talk, stop talking, and when it's time  
for you to respond. But with, when the audio 
is chopped up in zoom meetings, you get this  
sputtering. And so it's people's attention that 
they're really focused on like, okay, well, can I,  
can I get an f word in now? And that's tiring. 
So that's what the zoom fatigue is all about.  
One of the things you can do is just take a 
deliberate break, throw that circuit breaker  
and stop all the busyness, stop all the things 
that you're trying to do at this moment. The Dutch  
have a wonderful concept called “niksen” which 
means the art of doing nothing. So you get up  
from your computer and you stare out the window. 
You look at the trees. You listen to the birds.  
You watch the branches swaying in the wind. And 
you do this for, I don't know, three minutes is  
enough to throw that circuit breaker and, take 
you out of the busyness for a minute. So you  
have basically you here you are at tilt, and then 
you do a niksen moment, and you and you lower that  
level of engagement. And so you can start you 
can, you know, start over again. And you know,  
niksen isn't it's not meditation. It's not 
a forced moment of doing nothing. It's just  
a voluntary of just, you know, look up. You're 
outside taking a walk, look up at the buildings.  
What's what's out there? You're so used to just 
looking at ground level or walking along, looking  
at your phone and, know, running into lampposts. 
So just put the phone aside. Stop. Look around.  
Breathe. That's niksen That's throwing the circuit 
breaker. I call silence an essential nutrients.  
So, silence is an essential nutrient, because 
when we evolved 3 billion years ago, the world  
was pretty quiet.Mostly you heard the rustle of 
the wind. And that was it. You know, if you heard  
a snap of a twig. Well, that was, you know, you 
you put yourself on alarm. Whoa. What's that? Is  
that a danger coming? You know? So something out 
of the ordinary activated or a change detector,  
and it could be. Well, what is it? Is it 
a threat or is it an opportunity? Is it,  
you know, is it a lion coming to after me, or 
is it the possibility of a mate or a meal? So,  
you know, the brain did not evolve to be on 24/7. 
It needs periods of downtime to restore itself.
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