I like my prefrontal cortex but it naps too often

Hello blog readers! It's a busy week, so this will have to be a shorter blog entry than normal, and I'm going to split it into two parts- one for today and one for the weekend.

I thought I'd write about something I've been very pleased about in the last 2 months. Today's entry will be about the problem I've been frustrated with for years, and the weekend's entry will be about the solution I discovered (I promise). For the last 5 years or so I always knew that I was wasting a ton of time on the Internet, often on mind-numbing things like stupid Youtube videos and memes. Amusing myself for a few minutes is a good thing, but doing it for hours is just silly. It doesn't have to be that way- if I can stay focused, the Internet becomes a great resource for educating myself, completing my goals, developing skills, and staying in touch with friends. Even the totally random stuff that is completely unrelated to my work can be useful if it stimulates my brain. In fact the Internet is sometimes my only resource, because I often don't need anything else to get stuff done. However, what happens in practice is that I will think, "Oh I'll just check this one page," and soon enough I've lost 2 hours and I don't feel like anything I did was interesting or useful. Those 2 hours are like a black hole, but I postulate that what's happening on the other side of the event horizon is that I actually lose my biological ability to make a conscious choice to shift gears and actually get some work done.

Sure, you can say, oh that's just an excuse. But really, there are a few things about the Internet that can create a perfect storm that, in my opinion, can rob you of your free will. And this is key- IMHO, the Internet is the best thing in the world if you control it. It's the worst if it controls you. So how might it actually rob you of your free will in practice? Mind-numbing Internet material, by definition I suppose, doesn't take much active thought to process. You plop yourself down and you are entertained- and your lower brain regions (the ones that evolved before the sapience of the frontal cortex) love those reward mechanisms to death, so it is perfectly happy performing it on auto-loop. It's a lot like TV. Your basal metabolic rate sitting and watching TV is lower than when you're just sitting, and that's because your brain goes into some sort of auto-hibernate mode and burns fewer calories. The seat of your free will- your frontal cortex- is forced to take a nap by the rest of the brain.

And then every page is littered with distractions. Every link and every image on the page can catch your attention and present you with a new page that is equally filled with links and images designed to distract you. Wasting time on the Internet is a habit that's hard to break because of the constant reinforcement. But of course, is this all bad? Doesn't everyone need some R&R? The average American watches like 6 hours of TV per day, so should I really be so concerned about losing my evenings to wasting time on the Internet? But in actuality, even though the Internet is activating reward circuits, it is not relaxing at all. The entire time, I'm anxious because I know I'm capable of getting my work done at a computer, and I feel guilty. And the computer offers LOTS of opportunities to get stuff done, which both makes me feel more guilty, and overwhelms me with work choices at a time when my frontal cortex is inactive, so I'm less likely to actually go do work.

So we're left with the fact that doing mind-numbing things on the Internet is unproductive, addicting, and provokes anxiety. It can be relaxing at the start, which is probably why we all chose to do it, but then it easily spirals out of control. Again, I will present something that's helped me with a lot of these issues in my next blog entry.

I'd just like to leave you with an observation. When I started this blog, I got a lot of comments along the lines of "how the heck do you have time to write a blog?" Simply put, I'm just shifting time away from mind-numbing R&R (which is not even so relaxing) in favor of creative and intellectually satisfying R&R (like online courses, Skyping, etc). And that is the type of rejuvenating activity that makes me more productive at work the next day because 1) I don't need to wake up my conscious mind again when I'm done (because it never shut off) and 2) it gives me a chance to reflect on my life goals so that I am more committed to my work.


Keep reading Part 2.