The Diet Nobody Talks About When They Talk About Resilience

Roughly ten years ago I settled on a model for resilience that I’ve used ever since, for myself and the people I work with. I called it PRIME. Five elements: how we look after ourselves Physically, how we Rest, what we take in as Intake, how we tend to our Mind, and how we manage our Energy.  It’s stood the test of time well. Until recently I wouldn’t have changed a word of it.

But something has shifted. Over the last couple of years I’ve been noticing a new pattern in what’s impacting people’s resilience. Something the original model didn’t account for because frankly it didn’t need to. It sits within Intake. And it isn’t food or drink.  It’s the digital content we consume.

It’s important that I clarify what I mean by content. This is the diet of digital content we consume in all its various forms, personally and professionally. Just like food or drink we have choice about what we consume. Over the last five years there has been a shift, the array of streaming services, social media and news outlets have all taken what they do to a new level. Professionally, and particularly for knowledge workers, the ability to consume work content at any time of day or night adds another dimension. Whilst there is lots to be potentially gained from this access to content, unmanaged there is a risk of collective negative impact to our resilience, which at the very least requires some of our awareness to help manage.

Here's five common themes I am seeing

The shift from social to interest media

The original concept of most social media platforms was exactly as the name suggests, seeing and interacting with content from your virtual social circle. This was the case for a decade or so before along came TikTok and with it a very different form of interaction. Content served up in an unlimited supply of things that you find interesting. The TikTokification of social media platforms has unleashed an unlimited supply of content. I don’t know exactly when it happened but the term ‘my feed’ is now common parlance. This can lead to an overindulgence of things your index finger will pause your scrolling for. Which leads to the next point.

The design of systems to make them more sticky

The sophistication of the platform algorithms means they are all in a race to grab your attention and to do that they want to make their offering as friction free and sticky as possible. This has seen collaboration between technologists and neuroscientists to ensure the tech is tapping into our psychology and our brains’ ability to produce dopamine as we look to seek out the content we believe we want.

At this point I feel it’s important to broaden the source of our content consumption away from social media. The producers of programmes are also aware of the need to grab our attention. What now seems commonplace, the autoplay of the next episode, was first introduced by Netflix in circa 2014 and exists in all streaming services. I know I’ve been caught out by the cliffhanger of an episode leading to the autoplay kicking in, the next episode starting and a later to bed than is best for my resilience, particularly on a school night.

The programme makers themselves are also using algorithms to understand what they need to keep our attention before the lure of the smartphone and its rich array of content pulls us away. There’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that more people are watching and swiping at the same time, one study cited two-thirds of users of US social networks are watching and swiping simultaneously. Rather than compete with social media, increasingly programme makers are taking advantage of the dual screen opportunity. Programmes like I’m a Celebrity and Strictly Come Dancing have really embraced the second screen not just to provide more content between shows but also to influence the actual show themselves. People are also using their smartphones to make purchases of things they might see whilst watching programmes or adverts.

The design of content to appeal to our narrowing attention spans

Such is our desire to fuel the need for dopamine that we will quickly move on if we perceive our cravings are not being met. To me this makes sense from a biological point of view, when there was a scarcity of things we craved, an increase in dopamine would help provide the motivation to seek out more. The difference is that our expectations and biology have not kept up with the abundance of content we can now access. Therefore, content providers are required to hook us quickly, deliver a message, before we swipe and move on. Whilst this can make for compelling fast-paced content it also leads to an overload of dopamine which our brains will want to counteract. Part of the approach to achieve a better balance is to produce dynorphin. This can explain why excessive fast-paced content consumption will often leave us feeling flat.

The ability to focus on things requiring cognitive difficulty

I’m seeing another element which relates to the previous point. There’s a knock-on impact to our ability to focus on things that we find cognitively challenging. There’s always a distraction to take us away from the more difficult thing with a compelling rationalisation story about why the distraction is more important. I’ll draw on Stephen Covey who I heard say “it’s funny what Rational-Lies we can convince ourselves of”. He was using this in a different context, but I believe it applies well here. How does this element relate to our resilience? What I observe, and I include myself in this, is that as a result of being distracted the important things can get deprioritised. Which only comes back to bite us, or plays on our minds in an unhelpful way that erodes our resilience.

Always available technology means we have access to content

My final example of why we need to consider our content consumption relates not so much to the content itself but to our accessibility to it. Professionally and personally the barriers to accessing content are reducing and in some cases have disappeared altogether. This results in blurring the importance of the other areas of the PRIME resilience framework. I’ve already mentioned watching programmes later into the night. There’s also scrolling in bed, accessing work content either side of what would once have been the core working day. We are also far more likely to be accessing content at the same time as eating. This has implications for our ability to digest food properly or give our brains a break from processing content, which can drive cognitive fatigue.

There’s a risk that laying out the case for managing our content consumption in this way comes across too negatively. I really don’t want that. What I am putting forward is the case for giving more emphasis to managing our content consumption in the same way as the foods we consume. Deciding on what you might do to raise your awareness of content consumption and where necessary what you might need to do about is something I’ve not seen anyone regret.

You don't need more resilience. You need less in the way of the resilience you've already got.

How about picking one area of your content intake this week, your evening scrolling, your streaming habits, your inbox before bed and simply notice the value you get from it against the time it takes and wider impact. You might decide it's exactly right. You might decide it isn't. Either way, that's a choice worth making consciously rather than by default.

As always I am interested in how you get on. 

Damian Piper CBE is a performance, productivity and resilience coach who works with ambitious professionals and leaders who are capable of more but keep getting in their own way. You can find more of his thinking at effectivechallenge.com