At the start of her Bates Commencement address, Angela Duckworth asked President Garry W. Jenkins to hold her phone, to avoid potential distractions.
Then, Duckworth asked Jenkins to give her his phone. And then she asked everyone in the audience to hand their phones to their neighbor — again, to avoid distraction.
There was a message to the unusual exercise. A psychologist and author of the bestseller Grit, Duckworth focused on the power of “situation modification”: how we can use “physical distance to create psychological distance,” especially the proximity of our phones to our selves.
It’s what successful people do, she said. “Achieving what you want out of life has very little to do with forcing yourself to act in one way or another. [S}uccessful people rarely rely on inner fortitude to resist temptations in the heat of the moment.”
Instead, they find ways to avoid temptations or distractions altogether. “Successful strivers…deliberately design their situations in ways that make wise choices easier.”
Here are 12 tips from Duckworth’s talk about how to pursue situation modification to live more mindfully:
1. Use physical distance to create psychological distance
“If you don’t like how your phone grabs your attention, directs your thoughts, triggers your desires, then push it away. On the other hand, if you want something to take up more of your conscious awareness — art, poetry, a really good novel — keep close, as close as possible.”
2. Out of sight, out of mind
“When you need to focus deeply — put your phone in another room. Out of sight is out of mind.”
3. Change your sky-to-screen ratio
“Get up and walk out the door. The blue canopy above, even on this cloudy day, while it has no marketing department, no fancy algorithm designed to keep you hooked — but whoa, what an awesome alternative to the glowing blue rectangle in the palm of your hand.”
4. Don’t let your phone ruin dinner
“When you’re having dinner with people you care about… agree to keep your phones off the table, ideally in a zipped pocket where your habit of reaching for it will be interrupted.”
5. Keep it out of reach behind the wheel
“Each year, distracted driving causes nearly 800,000 accidents, more than 300,000 injuries, and more than 3,000 deaths.”
6. Move your phone out of the bedroom
“Don’t keep your phone in your bedroom. As relationship expert Esther Perel says, if the last thing you stroke before bed and the first thing you caress in the morning is your phone, you are not moving in the right direction.”
7. Try intentional listening
“When you decide, deliberately, that you want to listen to something on your phone, look up the Ezra Klein podcast featuring the British author Zadie Smith.”
In the interview, Smith told Klein that the thought of having a phone, and being subject to intrusions and expectations of social media, was intolerable: “I cannot imagine what my mind would be, what my books would be, what my relationships would be, what my relationship with my children would be.”
8. Reclaim your attention
“Situation modification isn’t about abstinence. It’s about intentionality. It’s about creating space between stimulus and response, between notification and reaction. And it’s about reclaiming your attention.”
9. Be aware of digital junk food
“More and more, people are turning to chatbots for life advice, for companionship, and even for love…. [But] chatbots may be the equivalent of social junk food — providing short-term gratification at the cost of long-term nourishment.”
10. Design your life for connection
“Starting today, maintaining your friendships will require more deliberate effort. You’ll need to schedule time, travel distances, and prioritize showing up for the people who matter to you. All that becomes infinitely harder when your default response to free time is to dive into your phone.
11. You worship what you sit next to
“One of my closest friends… removed the flatscreen TV from the family living room. [Her] boys complained, but she reminded them of the Hindu proverb her own mother had passed on to her: ‘You worship what you sit next to.'”
12. Remember: how we spend our days…
“When you make your choices, remember what the writer Annie Dillard said: ‘How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.’”
Categories Academic Life
