#1930 Cuckoo Birds

In our last +1, I interrupted my AM meditation so we could all talk about the smoke in the room.

I shared a research study Jonathan Haidt shares in his GREAT (and sobering) book The Anxious Generation.

I didn’t mention the fact that I read THREE of Jonathan’s books in a single week.

I started with The Coddling of the American Mind (all about “How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure”), then I read The Righteous Mind (all about “Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”) then I wrapped up my tour through the last decade of his writing with The Anxious Generation (all about “How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”).

It was nearly 1,000 pages of perspective-building wisdom.

😳 🤯

Now…

I already respected Jonathan after reading his first book called The Happiness Hypothesis and seeing him in The Social Dilemma.

And…

After spending the week with him, he is now one of my absolute favorite thinkers.

I deeply admire just how hard he has worked over the last three decades to become one of the world’s leading scholars on moral psychology and political psychology.

He inspires me to give back in equal measure.

Today I want to chat about another idea from The Anxious Generation.

It’s about cuckoo birds.

Let’s get to work.

Did you know that cuckoo birds are “parasitic nesters”?

I didn’t.

Here’s the short story on what cuckoo birds do.

A female cuckoo bird will lay its egg in ANOTHER bird’s nest. Then it will often kick an egg that was already in there out so the other mom doesn’t notice.

The cuckoo bird tends to hatch faster than the other birds in the nest and it will kick some other eggs out and eat all the food the new mom brings.

Jonathan uses that cuckoo bird’s cuckoo behavior to describe how SMARTPHONES are pushing out a ton of things from our lives.

We’ll talk more about those things in the next +1.

For now…

The next time you pick up your smartphone today imagine a cuckoo bird just landed in your hand.

What is it trying to push out?

Is it reducing the quality of your social interactions—whether that’s with your kids or your spouse or your colleagues?

Is it pushing out the sleep you need to feel super energized?

Is it fragmenting your attention so you can’t focus on ANYTHING with sustained concentration the way you want?!

Pay attention.

Remember the cuckoo bird.

And make sure you’re feeding the parts of your life you want to see flourish.

TODAY.