Technology Isn’t Ruining Your Life
Phones are not ruining your life; what is ruining it is your inability to exercise discipline around their use, so the aim is that you use technology rather than technology using you.
Dandapani explains that most people cannot concentrate because they were never taught how and never practise it, while they practise distraction constantly. He describes learning how the mind works as the starting point, ties the amount of practice to how good you want to be, and pushes back on the idea that technology is the problem, moving to New York and using the day's ordinary moments as practice.
What this talk covers
- Everywhere he speaks, in Russia, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and across the US, he asks whether anyone was taught to concentrate in school the way they were taught maths and science, and no hands go up.
- What people practise all day is distraction, so they become masters at it, and when a parent tells him their child cannot concentrate, his first question is whether the child was ever taught how.
- You concentrate with the mind, so learning how the mind works comes first, and once you understand it you can harness and focus it, then practise.
- How much you practise depends on how good you want to be, the same as with the piano: twenty minutes a week to play for an aunt on the weekend, seven hours a day seven days a week to play for a concert audience.
- He left the monastery in Hawaii and chose New York City deliberately, to show that you can be an entrepreneur in the busiest city in the world, use technology heavily, and still practise concentration, taking the stairs instead of the escalator at airports as one of the day's opportunities to practise.
No, these things are not ruining our life. This is a beautiful piece of technology. What's ruining your life is your inability to exercise discipline around the use of it.Dandapani
Questions
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He says no. People hold their phones up to him and say these things are ruining our lives, and his answer is that the phone is a beautiful piece of technology and what is ruining your life is your inability to exercise discipline around the use of it.
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Start by learning how the mind works, since you concentrate with the mind. Once you understand it you can learn to harness and focus it, and after that it is practice.
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It depends on how good you want to be. He compares it to the piano: playing for a relative on the weekend might need twenty minutes a week, while playing at a high level might need seven hours a day, seven days a week.
Transcript
1,101 words · 5:32
We've actually just recently been talking a lot about digital wellness and the importance of that and why we think that's going to be a major conversation in the next decade or so. And I think you had a phenomenal talk.
So if I could start you there, that'd be great. Yeah, I know. Well, first of all, thanks for having me here at Mindpump. Glad to be here.
The talk was really titled Unwavering Focus, and it really was all about, you know, getting the concept across that most people can't concentrate because they've never been taught how to concentrate and they don't practice it. I travel all around the world and I speak and one thing I've done a survey everywhere
I go and I ask, has anybody here been taught how to concentrate when they were growing up in school the same way you were taught math and science and geography for like an hour or two hours each day in school? Have you been taught to concentrate and nobody puts their hand up?
And I've asked this in Russia and Africa, Middle East, Asia and Australia around the US, nobody. So if we don't learn to concentrate, and we don't practice it, or obviously you can't practice something you haven't learned, then how can you be good at it? And what we practice all the time is distraction. So the more you practice distraction, the better you
become at it. And people are masters at distraction. And they think it's a problem and people are being drugged for it and diagnosed with colorful alphabets. But I asked a simple question. You know, parents come up to me and they say, you know, oh, my kid can't concentrate. And they go like, okay, so you know, he's, he's got ADD or ADHD and we're drugging him.
My first question to them is, have you actually taught them how to concentrate? And they go like, oh, we have it. So imagine if I wanted to play the piano and nobody taught me how to play the piano. And they told me to play the piano and I couldn't play the piano because nobody taught me And they drug me for it
That's pretty messed up it is how how does one learn how to concentrate? How would you begin to teach that? By learning how the mind works first because we concentrate with the mind right so You guys lived right right? So wouldn't you teach people some basic things about the body you would right you just don't go well like hey pick up that way
and start swinging, you might teach them some basic stuff about the body. So the same way you concentrate with your mind, you have to learn how the mind works, and once you learn how the mind works, you can learn to harness it and you can learn to focus it.
And once you learn that, then it's about practicing, and you have to be practice, and you have to really practice. The next natural question is how much do you practice? And the question that follows that is, well, how good do you want to be?
You know, if I want to be a piano player, then obviously the first thing I need to do is learn how to play the piano. The second thing is I need to practice. How much do I practice? Well, how good do I want to be if I want to play for my aunt Ethel? I don't have an aunt Ethel, but if I do want to play for my aunt Ethel on the
weekend then I might practice 20 minutes a week. But if I want to play for Juliet, it might be seven hours a day, seven days a week. And it seems like especially modern life is not set up well for practicing concentration. It It almost seems like in order to practice concentration in modern times, you have to,
the same way you have to make time for exercise, you have to kind of carve out time to try, because it's so distracting. Am I off base or? Can I say yes?
Yeah. Yeah. And the reason is that, you know, part of the reason, so when I lived as a monk, as a celibate Hindu monk in a cloistered traditional monastery, Hindu monastery in Hawaii, you
know, we would share tools and teachings with people when they came to visit. And one of the things people would say to us is that, well, it's so easy for you to practice all of these things. You live in a monastery on the island of Kauai in Hawaii.
How hard is it to be Zen? And fair, I couldn't argue with that. So when I left the monastery 10 years ago, and I'm no longer a monk, I'm a priest now, and I live with my wife and my daughter in New York, and I'm an entrepreneur.
The reason I chose New York City is because I wanted to show people that you can live in New York City, you can be an entrepreneur, you can have a business, travel around the world and still practice concentration in the busiest city in the world. And I use technology a lot.
So it's not something that I'm shying away from. I think what people, people think technology is distracting. And they, you know, I've had so many people come up to me, hold their cell phones up into my face and go, these things are ruining our lives.
And I go, no, these things are not ruining our life. This is a beautiful piece of technology. What's ruining your life is your inability to exercise discipline around the use of it. So the idea is that you use technology as opposed to technology uses you.
And the same way, if you look at your whole day, how do we integrate the practice of concentration throughout everything that we do? So for me, I'm not a big exercise person. You know, go to gym or run a little bit, but I'm not working out for five hours a day.
But I still believe that it's important to exercise. So I travel a lot and whenever I'm at the airport, I never take the escalator. I always take the staircase. Even if I'm carrying a bag, I'll be the only person walking up three flights of stairs
while the whole escalator is packed with people. So I'm using opportunities throughout the day to practice.