Do I Have To Know Something At Exactly The Moment It Comes To My Mind?
Trying to manage information sickness
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From middle school to senior year of high school, I spent a few days each summer at Villanova basketball camp, a sleep-away basketball camp at Villanova University. I actually grew to hate going there. It was basketball from 7:00 a.m. to about 10:00 p.m. at night, a schedule so unnecessarily rigorous that it basically applied all the tropes in today’s “millennials are burnt out” thinkpieces to high school basketball. Granted, I am a huge fan of working to the point of overexhaustion when there is a legitimate end goal to strive for, but nobody at this camp had a bright enough future in hoops to merit treating basketball like an investment banking job at age 15. For context, the best player on my high school team went to SUNY Stony Brook…to play soccer. And I’m fairly certain he never came to the camp.
Yet, there is one thing that stands out about this camp that I never realized at the time. I’m thinking particularly of one year—2004—when, right before the camp started, it was heavily reported that Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski was going to leave Duke to coach the Los Angeles Lakers.
For some reason—that current me is mildly embarrassed by—I was a gigantic Duke basketball fan. In fact, I wanted to go to Duke for college, and the fact that I got rejected remains one of the greatest blessings I have ever been granted by our non-sectarian (but in my opinion, Jewish) Lord. No shade on anyone who likes Duke or went to Duke University—in fact, the one person I know who went there is truly a great, thoughtful, intelligent guy and I’m slightly bummed that our lives have meandered in different directions (if you’re reading this, what’s up!), but I am fairly certain the place would’ve turned me into a monster.
Anyway. I was very obsessed with this verified rumor, in the way that a 14 year-old sports fan tends to be. Remember, this was 2004. This was the time of SportsCenter personalities and reading the sports section of the paper every morning. ESPN.com existed, but more as a fringe accessory. This was 2 years before twitter was even launched, and while the 24 hour sports news cycle was relatively established through television, it was nowhere near the level of today. People were fine not knowing things for long stretches of time.
People were fine not knowing things for long stretches of time.
So I went to this camp on a Sunday, not knowing if Krzyzewski was leaving Duke to go to the Lakers. I didn’t reveal my love of Duke to any of my teammates—because I (rightly) sensed it was embarrassing and wrong—and spent the entire camp in the news wilderness. Again, it was basketball from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Almost nobody had cellphones, let alone internet access, and I don’t recall ever seeing a newspaper. News of any kind wasn’t a priority for the camp. Even basketball news. It was a distraction from our collective end goal of focusing so much on basketball that we didn’t have time to do drugs, or form opinions about the Iraq War, or anything else parents and organized institutions are terrified teenagers might do when given a few minutes of free time.
Eventually I came home that Friday, went on ESPN.com (looking back, this might’ve been the first time I actively searched for news online), and discovered that Coach K had rejected the Lakers job. My beloved Dukies were safe. Phew.
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Why am I writing about this? Well, 16 years later, I find myself doing things like hiding my phone in random places in my apartment so I don’t feel the urge to look at it every second. Texting and instagram is bad enough, but something I’m realizing I’m increasingly succumbing to is this need to know things the second they come to my mind. Going to a restaurant in 3 days? Better drop what I’m doing and look at the best way to get there on google maps. Suddenly remember an article I started reading? Better immediately get to that. But wait, the Champions League is happening and I better see how AC Milan is doing against Bayern Munich. Better stop reading this article. Again.
Right before the pandemic I read a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. This book, combined with a bunch of podcasts and some other books1 had begun to solidify a line of thinking that I have long suspected, but struggled to put into words or understand fully; that we have attention residue (as Newport calls it) and constant switching of tasks is making us incapable of functioning effectively. On a macro level, I think this is turning us into personas instead of persons; today’s great art, as we all know, has become catching people’s attention in the quickest way possible, as we attempt to gain influence and eyeballs within the putrid, narcissistic sceptic tanks more commonly known as instagram and twitter. On a micro-level, it’s making me insane. After reading Deep Work I tried to put some of Newport’s recommendations into practice, only to find out that the active work it takes to resist the gravitational pull of the world—a world where not responding to an email in 2 hours might mean you’re dead, or at the very least, fired—and not responding to a text message in 45 minutes could mean that you’ve lost an opportunity.
The expectation that everyone is and always should be reachable is only growing. Resisting it intentionally and gracefully not only takes active, difficult, daily-if-not-second-to-second work, but it involves reformulating your personal and professional relationships, and your relationship to the actual world in which we inhabit.
I’ve increasingly been thinking about those few days at Villanova basketball camp. I remember I’d get pangs of wanting to know if Mike Kryzewski went to the Lakers; then, knowing I was powerless to find out until Friday, the pangs eventually passed and I went on with my day. I’ve tried incorporating this type of thing into my daily routine—only check email at given intervals per day, not rush to look something up the second I get curious about it, etc. Some days I’m successful, and find that, to use a computer metaphor, that my operating system is running much more effectively. I’m more at peace, my thoughts have time to marinate. I don’t constantly feel like I’m running into a meeting 10 minutes late and frantically need to get up to speed. Other days I’m not, and the doom scrolling and random google searches get the best of me. The whole day passes, and even though I was supposedly busy, I have no idea what I actually did.
What I’m saying is that it’s a shame that the default mode of being is this always-on, always need to know, push-notification normal that we’ve embraced (or have succumbed to?). I think it’s making us all worse off, it flattens a particular richness of life, and resisting while still remaining an effective person is increasingly difficult.
I would like to know if Mike Kryzewski goes to the Lakers, but not to the point that the information controls me. I’m the one that’s supposed to be in control.
I am thinking of 10 Arguements for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier, and Present Shock by Douglas Rushkopf. I’m sure there are a lot of others, too.