Constant Overstimulation: Problem & Opportunity

We’re in the most distracted era of human history: now is a time of constant overstimulation, and it’s only intensified since the advent of the smartphone 20 years ago. Think about that: never in the long history of our species (which dates back 100,000 years at the very least) have we been so saturated. Isn’t that crazy?

Let’s talk about constant overstimulation, the various ways it appears in our culture, and the problems it poses for our wellbeing.

In reading this and implementing some of these ideas, you’ll equipped to sidestep these issues, create more space in your life for important pursuits and wean yourself off the vices that afflict us in the modern day.

And at the end, we’ll talk about the great opportunities that await you when you go beyond the constant overstimulation that defines our time.

A Little Warning

This post is pretty disparaging about modern life, but I don’t want you to think that modern life is all terrible. We have a lot to be grateful for, a lot to be proud of. In fact, our constant overstimulation is built on some remarkable advances: the internet, instant worldwide communication, high-definition screens, social media and pocket-sized supercomputers (read: smartphones). Our technology is reaching Star-Trek level… and beyond.

But I see a lot of people getting caught in the trap of constant overstimulation. Having been there too, and still occasionally getting lost in it, it’s sad to see.

On a bigger picture, everything we do is to avoid pain and experience joy. This is one of the founding principles of Buddhism. Remember that so that you have compassion with yourself and others, and understand why this all happens.

All right, let’s get to the first way this constant overstimulation appears: constant titillation and comfort.

The Core of Constant Overstimulation: Cheap, Quick, Easy

We have an extraordinary amount of luxury available to us, luxury that our parents and grandparents’ generation couldn’t have imagined. And it’s all available very quickly and for very little money. We can access it whenever we want via smartphones and the internet. TikTok and YouTube shorts are the epitome of the “Cheap, Quick, Easy” mantra.

The problem is that we have got used to this comfort and have let it define our lives. It seems we have little tolerance for sustained effort over time, for uncertainty, for difficulty, for great toil and expense.

Have you seen advertising? It’s all about quick and easy and fun. That’s what’s valuable, that’s what we should aim towards: a more fun, quick and easy life. Look for this message infiltrating everything you buy and your own decision-making process.

The flaw is very straightforward. If you’ve undertaken any long-term project, you’ll know that the best things in life take time and are usually pretty uncomfortable, especially to begin with. Material comfort has not changed that fact.

I think we’ve started to believe that if things take effort, they aren’t valuable. Even if we do value them, we simply don’t have the discipline to pursue them.

This is nothing but a lie being fed to our lazy side, to the fat, lazy, lethargic monkey that lives in us. We’re being manipulated and exploited by marketeers, and it’s making us miserable.

The only person this benefits are the marketeers and entrepreneurs of the world. Our lethargy is lining their pockets.

The solution is quite easy. Ignore the advertisers and influencers, make long-term plans and goals, and get used to things hurting and taking way longer than you expect. Install powerful habits that take you to your goals, and chip away at them over months and years to slowly retrain your mind on valuable long-term pursuits.

Distraction: TV, phone, music, podcasts, videos, Netflix,…

We have a range of entertainment that previous generations could have scarcely imagined, so much so that we can entertain (read: distract) ourselves wherever we are.

But it’s really entertaining, isn’t it? YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, news feeds,… this is all fun and exciting. Why would we want to stop that?

Well, I look around me and see that:

1) people dread dead moments: the name conceals our attitude towards them;
2) even with this constant distraction, they’re still miserable. I can see it in their eyes!

The trap we’ve fallen into is that of habituation. It’s like with any vice: with time, you develop a resistance or tolerance to it, and you need more to receive the same high. We can’t escape this basic mechanism no matter how “entertaining” our “entertainment” becomes.

The more you drink alcohol, the more you need to get a buzz; the more we entertain ourselves to ward off boredom and emptiness, the more we need to be successful with it. That’s why videos are becoming ever shorter, more stimulating and more dumbed-down.

To be honest, I’m shocked by how bored and distracted people are. It’s disturbing to me. We get bored so easily, and we have no idea how to face boredom head on. It’s a scary trend, one that will require great collective psychological change to undo.

You have to wean yourself off of this. It’s actually making you profoundly empty inside. You reach out for your phone because it offers a quick fix for your emptiness, but because it’s not a real solution, you only become more empty over time.

In my case, I don’t really feel bored… ever. I think one of the main reasons is meditation, which has completely changed my relationship to stimulation and boredom.

Social Media

Closely tied to the first two is social media.

Here’s the deal with social: it feels like you’re connected and in the know, and to a certain extent you are. But you’re watching life, not living life, especially if you spend hours on it every day.

It also screws with your expectations, values and worldview, because you get an extraordinarily tainted and idealised view of other people’s lives. You’re seeing the surface, the 1%, the external appearances rather than their internal experience, and in any case a highly distorted version of them.

If you’re a heavy social media poster yourself, there are a few home truths I’d like you to consider:

• You’re more concerned with looking good to others and creating an image than enjoying life.
• You don’t enjoy things; you enjoy getting photos so you can get likes on social media.
• You get used to wanting highs all the time, because it seems like everyone else has them.

Social media also feeds into the two traps above: the comfort trap and the distraction trap.

In my case, I pretty much only use social for business, and even then I use it sparingly. I gave up the platforms about ten years ago, and I am so extremely glad that I did. I didn’t quite realise how damaging they were until I stepped back. Until that point, I was as much a slave as anyone else.

Let me make a bold claim, and you can quote me on this: you can’t be truly fulfilled if you’re a slave to social media.

The Upside of Constant Overstimulation

Okay, this all sounds pretty fatalistic. And though I think we should get very real about the damage this is causing us, I think we should also zoom out and look at the bigger picture.

For one thing, there is a lot of backlash against this constant overstimulation. It’s only been twenty years since smartphones came around, and people en masse are realising their dangers. There is an emerging culture of digital minimalism, dopamine fasting, and similar trends that are pushing back on our tech saturation.

I always trust that everything is working together for the long-term good of humanity, and I see this constant overstimulation as yet another act in that greater show. We’ll come out of the other end with the technology needed to democratise entertainment and enable instant communication, along with the discernment to know when to partake and when to abstain.