{"id":176,"date":"2014-02-11T17:45:03","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T01:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/?p=176"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:12:38","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:12:38","slug":"distractions-101-the-smartphone-alarm-clock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2014\/02\/11\/distractions-101-the-smartphone-alarm-clock\/","title":{"rendered":"Distractions 101 &#8211; The Smartphone Alarm Clock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The following appeared two days ago in the Bits section of the NY Times (<a title=\"Bits | NY Times\" href=\"http:\/\/bits.blogs.nytimes.com\/2014\/02\/09\/for-a-restful-night-make-your-smartphone-sleep-on-the-couch\/?hpw&amp;rref=business\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>&#8220;Disruptions: For a Restful Night, Make Your Smartphone Sleep on the Couch&#8221;<\/strong><\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We\u2019ve all been there. You wake up in the middle of the night and grab your smartphone to check the time \u2014 it\u2019s 3 a.m. \u2014 and see an alert. Before you know it, you fall down a rabbit hole of email and Twitter. Sleep? Forget it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The problem? Distraction. The exact opposite of awareness.<\/p>\n<p>There must be a gazillion neural circuits in our brains waiting to spin out thoughts, issue orders, competing with each other for our attention. It doesn&#8217;t matter if you are piloting a supersonic jet interceptor or just checking what time it is, the thoughts come out: boom, boom, boom. Your first thought may have been, &#8220;what time is it?&#8221; but who can say what the next thought will be or the one after that? You&#8217;re distracted.<\/p>\n<p>I was talking about distraction recently with a student and I mentioned that it was possible to train yourself to notice when you were losing focus, when you were engaged in a secondary behavior. He said, &#8220;What! How?&#8221; I replied, &#8220;Meditation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Try it. I can&#8217;t tell you how long it will take to bring results, but I can practically guarantee that it will change the way you think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following appeared two days ago in the Bits section of the NY Times (&#8220;Disruptions: For a Restful Night, Make Your Smartphone Sleep on the Couch&#8221;): We\u2019ve all been there. You wake up in the middle of the night and grab your smartphone to check the time \u2014 it\u2019s 3 a.m. \u2014 and see an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}