Zoë’s Reviews > Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again > Status Update

" 'What started to really concern me over the years,' he told me, 'was just watching my friends who had originally gotten into this business because they thought they could make the world better, [and now] were caught in this arms race to manipulate human nature.' "

My takeaway from this was to check my phone time, and try to reduce it. I already got rid of the Instagram app in August, and I know Facebook should be next.

"I looked at social media and thought, I don't want this. I flicked through Twitter and felt like I had stood on a termites' nest. When I looked up, three hours had passed.

I left it behind & went to eat. When I got back, people had started replying to my texts and emails, and despite myself, I felt a little rush of affirmation. In the next few weeks, I started to post... and I felt myself become cruder and meaner"

"I realized that email breeds email, and if you just stop, it stops. I would like to say I felt calmed and soothed by this. In truth, I felt affronted—like my ego had been poked by a knitting needle. All this mania, all these demands on my time, I realized, made me feel important. I wanted in a sudden rush to send emails in order to get emails back—to feel needed again."

Our bodies think that lack of sleep is an emergency, so they prepare by raising blood pressure, wanting more fast food, wanting more sugar for quick energy, etc.

Keeping that in mind, I paid attention to how I felt when I did get enough sleep, and I really did seem to eat healthier without effort, just because I felt like it.

It should go without saying, yet needs to be said: "you are more efficient when you are rested... it takes you less time to do things."

Rest is not the opposite of productivity; it's in many ways the prerequisite. Now if only I could learn to implement this in practice.