This is why you’re so confused... the hidden cost of short form content

If you've ever found yourself walking to the kitchen or having a conversation and in real time during the conversation you say something like, oh, what was I going to say? Chances are you are experiencing those symptoms because you do too much scrolling on social media. Now, I know everybody has heard the cliché thing that our attention spans are shrinking. Short form is bad for you, but nobody actually knows as to why it's bad for you. They just hear it from other people and repeat it. We've all heard the stat that says something about the attention span of a goldfish is now greater than a human's. Things like this are just catchy things online that other people hear and repeat. In this video, I'm going to tell you exactly as to why that's happening to your brain. And more importantly, I'm going to tell you how you can combat it and how I combated it so I can grow in life. The thing that I did to eliminate that is the very reason I am where I am today. If you don't know anything about me, I have a content creation agency, which I've had for the last 7 years, and we have scaled past a few million dollars in revenue, and I consider myself ahead of most, but also behind most. I'm doing well, and I wanna share some of the things that got me here, because we're living in the most confused era to ever exist. Before I go any deeper into the things inside of this video that I want to talk to you about so you can expand your mind and be more productive in your life, this video is a split test. You might be wondering where my studio is if you've seen any of my other videos. I'm doing a live demonstration of what happens when you're just authentic on camera. No gear, just iPhone. No script. Just Words, and I'm comparing the retention rates between two. 'Cause inside of my agency, one of the main things that we do outside of looking at certain metrics is we understand our retention charts and how well our creators are speaking to retain their audience. And in the last video I did just like this, this is the thumbnail, it was me rambling. And surprisingly, I got this comment, which is, which made me think I should continue this to see if it's really worth pursuing and maybe there is something behind just turning on the iPhone and speaking. That last video showed a little bit less retention than my more catered or tailored videos. But you can't make a decision off of one. Based on the results on this video, we'll have more data to make better decisions on if this is really still worth it and if people telling you to turn on your iPhone and just use that as the method to start a channel is effective or not. Enough of that. Let's talk about why you're confused. The reason you're confused is because, one, you are addicted to short-form content. You're so addicted, you opt into the addiction every single minute. Everybody checks their phone or self-interrupts every 3 minutes, and that's because we have become so dependent on dopamine. And a lot of people will say short-form content floods you with dopamine. But what's the mechanism behind that? Why does that actually happen? Well, think about it. What happens when you're going somewhere new and you're traveling? You get excited. What does excitement cause? Dopamine release. That's why when you have travels, up until the travels, you're way more in a better mood than when you're there. Yeah, you're still happy and yeah, you're still excited. Excited to be there, but nowhere near the feelings that you had prior. Or better example, when you get a new car, that feeling— getting the car, finding it, waiting to get it— that floods your brain with dopamine because it's novelty. Novelty is one of the precursors to dopamine. With that being said, could you compare what short form does with novelty. Think about it. Every 10 seconds, 20 seconds, maybe even 60 seconds, you go like this and it's a new video. You go like this and it's a new video. So your brain is in a chronic state of novelty chasing. I like to call this dope chasing because what you're doing is you're chasing dopamine, making you a dope addict. And of course, not the real stuff, but the psychological stuff. So that's the first reason you're continuously stuck on self-interruption roughly every 3 minutes and in the pursuit of chasing dope. Every single time you open your phone, you open up Instagram, TikTok, or whatever, and you feed it some dopamine, and then you go back to whatever you were doing. Now, here's a further problem. Which is the erosion of your prospective memory. Now, if you don't know what that is, and before I go further into what it is, I just want you to understand why I even know these things. The reason why I know this is because I made a video on this, and before all of my videos, I do extensive research into reasons, which led me to all this information that I'm just turning on my iPhone and organically shooting for you guys. Your prospective memory is the very mechanism in your brain that leaves an open tab on an intention. For example, let's say you wake up in the morning and you remind yourself, I have to do this email. I have to do X today. Well, your prospective memory is the very thing that holds X in place. Now, if you bring that— that's a very simple example— if you bring that out into bigger things in life, if your prospective memory becomes eroded by the plague of short-form content, eventually the bigger things in your life become eroded. For instance, if you have a goal of achieving some ideal image of yourself or ideal revenue in your business or even starting a business. If you scroll short-form content, every time you do that, you erode your prospective memory. Everybody that chases a goal oftentimes never gets to the goal because they just forget about it. They end up doing the things that are in front of them and not leaving that mental tab of their overall goal in the forefront of the things that they're doing. That's because you are chasing dopamine, and every time you do it, you're eroding your prospective memory. Your prospective memory is the very thing that you need to strengthen in order to achieve your goals. So now that you understand a little bit of the problems, what can we actually do about it? I don't know what we can do about it. I know what I did about it. And maybe this can help you. What I did in the pursuit of building my business was this. I substituted all short-form content for long-form content. I hid on my iPhone the short-form apps, Instagram, TikTok. They were not on my homepage. In fact, I never even really had TikTok until recent, but I made them very hard to get open. I would have to search it, get the app and do all that just to open it. But what I did was I left YouTube on the open screen, like, uh, right on the home, and I would only open YouTube if I wanted to do something. It got to the point where throughout my entire day, I would just leave videos in my headphones playing and learning. What I want you to understand is this: When you substitute short form for long form, you are doing the act of strengthening prospective memory. If you find it hard to finish long form videos, that pain, that hardness, that boredom of a long form video is the equivalent of the pain that you would feel in the gym for gains. You're supposed to feel bored. If you don't feel bored, you're not strengthening your prospective memory. If you're not finishing videos, you're not strengthening your prospective memory. So I would advise finish this video if you made it this far. And if it's not this video, the next video you watch, finish it. Practice finishing things. I know it's bored and I know you're probably thinking I'm not stimulated enough. It's because we're overly stimulated and we always seek new stimulation through the short-form content. But with long-form, if you just start doing that, I promise you you're gonna find a greater release of dopamine, and it's not going to be as frequent, which will allow you to be more present. And present is one of the most important things in life. A lot of the times if we feel anxious or depressed, it's just because we're not present. Another great solution is this. I know you've probably seen the funny memes on internet of kids or younger adults talking about raw-dogging an experience. For instance, they'll be on an airplane, and on the airplane they will use no headphones, they will do nothing to stimulate themselves, and they would essentially raw-dog the flight. That act is the filtered version of practicing presence. If you practice presence, by default you regain your dopamine release, you regain your clarity, you regain your focus. As funny as it sounds, start raw dogging your life. That's something I've been doing. Think about this. When you're at the gym, what do you see? You see people on their phone, working out, listening to music, checking Instagram, answering texts, sometimes on FaceTime, changing to new songs because the one that they're listening to is not the one. They're doing 6, 7, 10 things instead of just the workout. If you could focus on monotasking, just one task at a time, you will have so much more fulfillment in that single task that the progression in that task will be exponential, especially in comparison to everyone else. Multitasking is a lie. There's no such thing as multitasking, and there's lots of research that even backs it. What it really is is task switching. And what you don't understand about task switching is that every time you change from task to task, you lose 40% of your efficiency in that direction. And to regain that 40% back, it takes upwards of 23 minutes. So if you're in a flow state and you get an email or you check your text or you open Instagram, you've broken the task, you've eliminated 40% of your efficiency, and then for you to go back, it's gonna take almost half an hour to be as effective as you were prior to breaking it. So monotasking eliminates that. Focus on one task one time a day. I would say focus on one task for your whole day. Time block each task and do not think about anything else until that task is done. But obviously you can't run before learning to walk. So let's start with one thing. Your next gym session, just go to the gym, feel the muscle, mind to muscle connection. Or start here on this video, finish this video. It's not this video, which I would really appreciate it. Make sure it's the next long-form video. And the more you do that, the more monotasking becomes a normal thing of yourself, and it broadens your ability to stay present, which will allow you to regain clarity and be more effective. If you want to be successful, that's what you have to do. In the world of content creation, that is critical. A lot of people don't ever start content because it's very hard for them to start. They don't know where to start because they're focusing on all the starting points. I want to talk about this. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about that. Monotask. Talk about one, and try to get it out. I could apply this to everything in life, but I think you have a good understanding. And if you enjoy leveling up as a human so you can be more effective in your life, subscribe to this channel. And if not, thank you for watching.