Hoda Kotb Says She’s Always ‘Rushing.’ Jonathan Haidt Says to Change 2 Things on Her Phone

In a world where the news is 24/7 and we’re constantly connected, it can feel like we’re being pulled in all directions, all the time. Hoda Kotb says this constant pull on our attention is why she created her podcast. On the October 6 episode of the Making Space podcast, social psychologist and bestselling author Jonathan Haidt asked Hoda what she hopes people get from listening. “I feel like people need to make space in their life and slow down,” she replied. “I feel like I was on a dead sprint.” Her answer prompts Haidt to read her a quote from Marcus Aurelius about distraction: “Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile. Stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions.” It resonated with Hoda, who has been vocal about her personal struggle to be present and not feel like she is constantly rushing. “I’ve been saying this to myself, even on small things, like when I’m eating and I’m standing up and I’m wolfing it down…slow,” she said. “I’m calmer, and I feel like with everything, it’s a tap the brakes and slow down, and everything’s coming at us this way.” Haidt recognizes the role technology has played in putting “time pressure on every moment” “If I had to pick the one thing that has changed since 2006 … one of the most universal — we’re all facing it — is just if you ramp up the time pressure on every moment of everyone’s day, life changes for the worse,” he said. He used young people as the most extreme example, saying social media consumes hours of their day, forcing everything else to get squeezed into the remaining time. But it’s a problem that spans generations. “It’s not just the social media. We’re being texted. People get Slack. It’s LinkedIn. It’s everything,” he said. “If we all have hundreds of things coming in every day, that means we are always way behind. We never have three hours to just think or be or experience.” Hoda says this is the reason for her 4:30 am wakeup call. “If I don’t get up at 4:30 to take an hour, I don’t have that hour,” she said. Haidt’s response is simple: “That’s right. The world will take it from you. Your attention is the most precious thing you have.” “There is no limit to the amount of money that you can make in the course of your life,” he continued, “but you will never be able to get more attention than what you can have in the course of a day.” So, what can we actually do about it? “Don’t give it away for free,” he said. He explained that many people check notifications immediately after waking and again before bed because they don’t want to miss anything. “If you commit yourself to not missing anything, then you’re committing yourself to always being interrupted and to never being present and to missing everything in life.” He says cutting back on this distraction starts with making some simple changes on your phone. “These two are incredibly powerful in giving you a lot more attention,” he said. Tip #1: Turn off notifications Haidt’s first piece of advice is to turn off certain notifications. He conducts this experiment with all of his MBA students at NYU Stern School of Business: Find your most distracting apps. Open “screen time” and look at the five apps sending you the most notifications.Pick one or two to turn off. He specifically recommends doing this for email, social media or any news site. “You should consume the news once or twice a day, not 30 times a day,” he said.Conduct a 1-week check in: See how you feel after one week. At the one-week check in with his students, “nothing bad happened to anyone. They didn’t actually miss anything,” he said. “A lot of them said, ‘I felt lighter. I felt more present, like I could be in conversations more.’” This experiment has “the weight taken off of their attention,” he said. “They’re guarding their attention.” Tip #2: Identify your “slot machine apps” Haidt shared another practical rule: Remove addictive apps from your phone. “Do not have slot machine apps on your phone,” he said. “Just delete it from your phone.” Slot machine apps are “anything that rewards you on a variable ratio schedule. So, that’s especially all the social media sites, video games...” he explained. “For a while, I had crypto. I would check [constantly]. It was insane and I was addicted. So that’s a slot machine app.” He’s not saying that people need to quit these apps entirely, but he does say they should not be at your fingertips all day long. Instead, he recommends accessing them from a laptop. Removing them from your phone is “incredibly powerful in giving you a lot more attention,” he said.