If I start the day touching my smartphone, I know that's probably not going to be a great writing day.

I come to my most interesting insights and I'm able to do the best work and the most kind of

connective work when I have long uninterrupted periods of time.

I'm Jocelyn K. Gly, and this is Hurry Slowly, a podcast about pacing yourself,

where I explore how you can be more productive, creative, and resilient through the simple act of slowing down.

Today, my guest is Craig Maud, a writer, designer, and technologist whose work I've long admired.

He creates gorgeously designed limited edition books, and also has a degree in computer science

and loves geeking out about the future of technology.

And it's these twin obsessions, a deep appreciation of the slowness of handcrafted analog objects,

coupled with a vast curiosity about where the lightning fast progression of technology is taking us, that gives him such a

unique perspective. I came to Craig's work through his writing, and in particular, his meditations

on how advances in technology are changing the quality of our attention.

As any of you listening who are already familiar with my work know, I am obsessed with distraction

and how the apps and tools that we use on a daily basis are slowly eroding away our ability

to concentrate our attention on much of anything for extended periods of time,

which has a substantive impact on our ability to tap into the deep focus required in order to create truly great work.

So it's no surprise that Craig's writing resonates with me.

In this conversation, we talk about how smartphones and social media are lulling us into, quote-unquote, attention, slavery,

and how we can start to break out of this toxic cycle of addiction and regain control over our powers of concentration.

For Craig, the answer lies in regularly going off the grid, with smaller

no-internet sprints during ordinary workdays, punctuated with deeper offline sessions during

writing and meditation retreats. We chatted by phone, 13 time zones apart, with me in New York,

...