Breaking Your Lifes Infinite Scroll
[Music]
one day
i woke up with this inspiring feeling
my life had become an infinite scroll
it was affecting my personal life it was
affecting my performance at work
and it was accelerating it was going out
of control
you know we were accomplishing a lot at
work but yet i felt
somewhat lonely i felt untethered
which was surprising because given all
the technology i was connecting with
more people than i’d ever done before
i was having trouble getting a good
night’s sleep
it was one thing after another life was
just whizzing past and covid
made it so much worse
i wonder how many of you feel like i
have felt
that life just became an infinite scroll
one thing after another in an
endless cycle initially i just shrugged
and said i was growing older
and time appears to move faster as you
grow older but then i stopped and i did
some research
and what i found shocked me when i
looked at some of the youngest
populations that we have are teenagers
they’ve seen a massive spike in anxiety
and in depression starting in 2012.
some of our leading colleges have seen
that over 50 percent of their student
body
is accessing mental health services
and by some measures over half of all
americans
are feeling somewhat lonely and
untethered so i had some very open
conversations with my teammates
and i found that they were feeling very
similarly
and i feel that this is an incredibly
important thing because it not only
impacts us in our personal lives
but it also impacts our professional
lives
and the reason is to ignite our
potential we need to reach in to that
that is our most precious
thing which is human creativity
but to access that human creativity we
need our whole selves
we need to be centered and to do this
we have to break our
our infinite strong so why do we
feel that our life is in an infinite
scroll
i believe it started quite simply and it
started
innocently with positive intent this
effortless
frictionless technology that burst on
the scene
that helped us become more productive
and kept us more entertained
but that exact same effortless
frictionless
technology has turned us into addicts
we have become addicted to our
infinite scroll and like
every habit-forming drug we can’t stop
and we need more of it
we are no longer in control of the
technology
it controls us
we must break this infinite scroll and
i’ve found we can do that by injecting
what i call
intentional friction into our lives
now no one likes friction but it’s not
all bad
we have to remember that the purpose of
life is not to be 100
efficient and productive but it is to be
effective it is to be fulfilled
you know if you transported someone from
over 100 years ago
to the present and they saw us on our
treadmills
running and working really hard but
getting nowhere they would think we all
crazy
and that’s because at that time we had
what i call natural friction
in our lives we had to walk everywhere
and we could keep our bodies physically
active
the piece of life was also forced to be
a little slower
and so we could absorb our experiences
exercise is the intentional friction to
keep our bodies healthy
i now believe that we need intentional
friction in our lives to nourish our
souls
now i have done three activities that
has helped me
reduce the hold of the infinite scroll
in my life
the first is provoke accountability by
that i mean
i have to provoke in myself with effort
to take accountability that
i was in this infinite scroll and a deep
desire to provoke the deep desire
to actually break out of it it required
deep
self-reflection and
i had to own the fact that i had become
addicted
to the infinite scroll and that
i needed to take an effort to break out
of it
my second activity is nourish yourself
you know life’s infinite scroll has
an effect of hollowing us out
our inner core and it’s one urgent thing
after another and we put ourselves
last that has to stop
we need to take the time we need to
inject some intentional friction
to rehydrate to nourish ourselves
and to be still i personally
take about 30 minutes every night before
going to sleep to meditate
and initially that was intentional
friction
but nowadays i kind of look forward to
it with a kind of
inner smile
the third activity is to befriend
others and i know it sounds simple but
what i did was i chose three people
one from my family a person i don’t
normally connect with
one from work and one from the community
and then i chopped out some
very dedicated time that i would meet up
with them and have discussions not about
work
not about tasks but about things that
were meaningful to us
deep relationships need some friction
they need some give and take
to really create those lasting
relationships
and a foundation of trust and i found
that
taking this effort has helped me
reignite
some of my deep relationships and really
helps us
nourish our souls i know what you’re
thinking
more activities i don’t have any time
for it but you know that’s the point
we need to take effort we need to inject
that friction
to be able to achieve our potential
and this reminds me of a poem
from ancient india you know it all
starts
with invoking in ourselves this deep
burning desire to change
and this poem is from over three
thousand years ago
in one of the ancient texts the briyan
yaka upanishad and it says
you are your deep
driving desire
as is your desire so is your will
as is your will so are your deeds
as are your deeds so is
your destiny so let us achieve our
destiny
let us break this infinite scroll
let’s inject some intentional friction
in our lives and let’s unleash our
creative
potential