How to Resist the Attention Economy — with Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

In the first of a two-part special Office Hours series, Scott Galloway is joined by Stanford educators and bestselling authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans to help listeners fight the attention economy, build better habits, and live more intentionally. To learn more from Bill and Dave, get their latest book How to Live a Meaningful Life at: https://designingyour.life/how-to-live-a-meaningful-life/ Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [email protected], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:36Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to Prop G on Getting Your Life Together, a special series where we're joined by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Stanford educators and bestselling authors of Design Your Life and, most recently, How to Live a Meaningful Life. Gentlemen, welcome and thanks for doing this.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having us.

• 0:52Scott Galloway?

  Thanks for having us. We went to our listeners with one question. What's the biggest thing holding your life back right now? Today, we try to help. We talk about burnout, distraction, purpose, and building a life that feels more intentional. All right, let's get into it. Our first question is, how do you build a meaningful, intentional life when your attention is constantly being pulled apart by phones, doom scrolling, and the attention economy? So just some data here to set the table. In 2025, Americans reported spending an average of 5 hours and 16 minutes per day on their phones, a 14% increase since 2024. A study by Vision Direct projects that the average American adult will spend 44 years of their life looking at screens.

• 1:34Scott Galloway?

  In 2025, researchers found that randomly moving internet access from smartphones produced a range of benefits, including improved mental health, subjective well-being, and the ability to sustain attention. So, Bill, you go first, and then I'll ask for Dave to build on it.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, this attention economy, and it's horrible. I mean, I'm teaching at Stanford, and the undergrads can't get off their phone, the grad students can't get off their phone. We're really focused on trying to figure out how to...

• 2:04Speaker 02

  How to help them with that. So one of the things is this, this whole doom scrolling thing, it's a dopamine hit. Every time you get a new page, it's a dopamine hit. So my, my advice is let's, let's get on a better dopamine diet because we know we're talking in our new book about flow, about wonder and awe. If you can get into a flow state, that's a dopamine hit. If you can have an experience of wonder and wonder is literally all around, you just got to look for it a different way. That's another way of, of, of rerouting this need to have this dopamine hit. It's a, it's just a better dopamine diet to be on wonder, awe and flow and, and to try to, and that expands your access to things like nature, things like relationships, things like other people in the room. I think we should design a little app that just gives you that sort of a sense of, of flow because

• 2:49Speaker 02

  then you'll get off the phone, walk outside and notice how beautiful, you know, the sunset is.

• 2:55Scott Galloway?

  Touch grass, so to speak. Dave?

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I think what's keeping in mind, you know, there are 10,000 really sharp, incredibly well-paid people working for multi-billion dollar companies spending, you know, 60 hours a week thinking about how they can pound your amygdala more effectively. So you've, you've got a fairly substantial resource coming at you wanting to keep your attention. And people keep talking about how do I stop doom scrolling? You know, oh God, there it was, my phone again and I couldn't get off. And so if you start there, you, you are doomed because it's too late. And so what you really need to do, there's a concept in psychology, the theory of replacement. You can't stop anything. Don't think of a blue horse right now. Whatever you do, do not think of a blue horse, certainly not a blue horse with a pink mane. No one, no blue horses with pink manes. Not now, at

• 3:36Speaker 03

  all. You're screwed. So what you have to do is build things that are more attractive than the doom scrolling over time. And it's not going to happen right away because again, that dopamine hit is there. So this is where the whole design thinking model of prototype iteration, we say, set the bar low and clear it, iterate, iterate, iterate. So if you start having these habits and practices, or second, but we talk about less about life as a project and more as life as a practice. So I find these little experiences and it's a lighter lift than you think. You know, to drop into what we call the flow world, which is the present moment, and find ways to experience your humanity, whether it's the nature, or whether it's music, whether it's, you know, just enjoying what you're actually doing, rather than being worried about what the screen has to say to you.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  You start doing that more often, then what you actually start building is a different neural pathway that's attracted to this other behavior. And you can start having the good stuff crowd the bad stuff out. The bottom line is, the good stuff has to crowd the bad stuff out. If you're all leveraged on stopping bad stuff, you're doomed.

• 4:35Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, just to add to that, it's not just young people. I'm addicted to my phone. It's difficult for me not to pick it up and check my text messages right now. So I empathize with, I think big tech is essentially evolving a new species of asocial and asexual males who opt for relationships that are frictionless. And the hacks I've tried, somewhat unsuccessful, well, sort of. It sounds lame. I'm trying to watch more TV. I'm just, put my phone away. There's so much amazing streaming media content. I'm trying to get more into 80s music again. I love 80s music. I'm trying to listen to more music. And whenever I do these things, I try and put my phone away.

• 5:18Scott Galloway?

  And I have decided, and this is hard for me, I no longer sleep with my phone next to me. And I used to do that. And then when I go to dinner, the other thing I would say just more, men aged 20 to 30 are spending less time outdoors than prison inmates. And I realize there's some money involved in here, but I'm trying to say yes to more. I'm going out for, tonight for dinner and drinks with two guys who are in town, who I don't especially know. Quite frankly, I'm not sure I especially want to know them, but they invited me out, so I said yes. And I'm going to turn my phone off, and I'm just going to go out and, you know, probably, you know, drink and eat and not be on my phone. Anyways, let's move to question number two. Our next question is about productivity and discipline. Why is it so hard to stick to routines that we know are good for us?

• 6:03Scott Galloway?

  There's a popular stat that says habits take 21 days to stick, but according to newer research from UCL, habits actually take 66 days on average to form. That's 21, that 21 days figure is a myth traced back to a plastic surgeon observing post-op patients. Adjusting to their new appearance. The same study found that missing a day doesn't break the process. The early days are hardest, then it gets easier regardless of occasional slip ups. Bill, thoughts on productivity and discipline?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and getting stuff done in what we call the transaction world. We do a reframe in the class and it's going from trying to do time management, because I can't make more time, that's just not possible, to managing your energy, because really what your experience is, is what you pay attention to. What you pay attention to is what your neurons are firing on. So that's the energy you put into something. And if you can map, we do an energy map. What do we do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? We look at all the events that occur regularly. We look at whether they're energy sustaining or giving, or whether they're energy draining. Like my budget meeting is an energy draining meeting. My office hours with students, positive energy every time. So once you know where you're actually spending your energy,

• 7:15Speaker 02

  which is your attention, then you can start moving things around. You know, if you do, there's a thing in psychology called the best last effect. The only thing you'll remember in the week is the peak thing that happened and the last thing that happened. So I manage those things in my week to make sure I have a peak experience somewhere around Wednesday or Thursday. And my Friday experience is always a positive exit. So when I come to the end of the week, I go, how was the week? I go, hey, it was pretty good. I really managed my attention, my energy. And I got a lot of stuff done because I was paying attention to the things that give me a positive boost. So that's how we reframe it. It's energy, not time management.

• 7:49Scott Galloway?

  Dave?

• 7:50Speaker 03

  I think the whole issue of repetition, when you're trying to build a habit, you know, you have this goal in mind. We're very goal driven. It's all about outcomes, it's all about impact. And you drop the ball, or it doesn't work, and you go, oh crap. And then I did it again. And then you're depressed. What do you do? You want to go look for another dopamine hit, and I feel even worse. So one of the things we really emphasize on this prototyping mindset. You can prototype anything. And so, you know, we'll, we'll actually have a thing on a, a life balance dashboard. We have an exercise to rebalance your life, you know, kind of go, what's one little thing you could do a little different for two weeks and then decide, did that work for you? You know, and so you, you create a low bar and clear it. Everybody's

• 8:33Speaker 03

  trying to get inspired to become their Olympic self. We were talking in Chicago, Chicago Ideas Week years ago, and I'm talking to, you know, Amy, the, the captain of the US soccer team and two-time gold medal winner. I said, can you be your Olympic best all the time? She goes, oh, God, are you kidding? You just hope to, you just hope to peak the right week of the year, you know? So we're, we're all shooting for things that are kind of unattainable. So if you say, okay, I'm gonna try this one little thing, see how it works at the end, reevaluate, I'll try it again. I had a small group, young professionals group working on these kind of things, said, okay, I think we could handle getting together for six weeks. So we got together for six weeks, conversation wasn't done. I said, do you guys want to keep going? They kind of go, well, yeah. I said, should we just keep meeting on Tuesday nights? They kind of go, oh, no, no, I can't do that. I go, okay. Well, how

• 9:17Speaker 03

  long you want? Another six weeks. We did a six-week renewal 50 times. We were together like four years. And 35 six-week renewals and I said, can we just commit to this? They kind of go, no, I can't handle. So that, fine, whatever it takes. So you really do need to kind of game yourself and recognize, don't set yourself up for failure. Take the time and make the process of acquiring the habit as successful as having the habit itself. If you declare yourself a loser too soon, you'll quit.

• 9:48Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like I lack the discipline for habits. What I try to do is, I find deadlines are great for lazy people. I'm fundamentally a lazy person. And so I like deadlines, hard deadlines that I commit to, whether it's my publisher giving me a deadline, or they'll take back their advance. One of the things I really enjoy about teaching, you really can't be late for your class. I mean, if you do, there's 180 people who spend $7,000 to take that class. That's good for me. So I, I like that. I, and this again, as a story of privilege, I have a trainer, because when he shows up at eight, I gotta go outside and train. So I like self-imposed deadlines. The other

• 10:31Scott Galloway?

  thing I find is, is really powerful is, is

• 10:36Scott Galloway?

  Cohort, and that is if you decide you want to run, try and find someone else to run with. All right, we're meeting at 9 a.m. tomorrow. You know, if I'm hungover and it's just me running, I'm not running. But, you know, my buddy Dave's out there in Regent's Park at 8:55 stretching. So challenges with each other. I find that peer pressure also works, also works pretty well. Any follow-up thoughts on that, guys?

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, structurally, I, I learned that I'm both undisciplined and a workaholic. And I finally came to the conclusion, maybe alcoholics shouldn't work in liquor stores. And I was a startup guy, and I worked infinite hours. And my father died when I was a child. I wanted to be a good dad because I didn't have one. And I'm working 90 hours a week and I can't stop. So I actually finally found my way to begin. I went into gig work, you know, in my late 30s. And I outsourced responsibility to my client, which was I had very tight scopes of work. I concocted lots of deliverables with deadlines, just like you're describing. In order that when I was done, the client would say, "Stop, go home and have dinner with your kids. We're not paying you anymore." And I didn't have the capacity to stop myself. So I delegated it to my customers.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  And that is what I call, "Don't try to work through it, work around it." When you're failing at something over and over again, if you accepted your foible and designed around it, "I have to run to friends because I can't get my own ass out of bed," then you start designing a life where the game of life is learn how to play you to win. Accept your limitations and design for them. Don't keep trying to overcome them.

• 12:13Scott Galloway?

  And we love deadlines. We just set a deadline. In fact, we just launched a new training program and our new book, and we didn't have a single slide done. And we said, "We got, we got to have this thing ready by May because a bunch of people are coming." And I'm hustling to get the last slides done. So yeah, set a deadline, force yourself, you know, that exposure of social embarrassment, I guess, to get stuff done. Works great. Also, something, it sounds really lame, but the just do it thing. Whenever it's exercise, I now have a practice. If I think about exercise, I just grab my shoes and go down to my gym. I just, I don't think about it. I'm just like, oh, okay. Just, just literally like, grab your shoes and go. Just like, don't, don't think about it. Just do it, so to speak.

• 12:57Scott Galloway?

  So with that, we'll be right back after a quick break.

• 13:07Scott Galloway?

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• 13:53Scott Galloway?

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• 14:13Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back onto our last question. How can you build a more meaningful life without getting a whole different job or reinventing your life? This is obviously ground zero for your question.

• 14:27Scott Galloway?

  Dave, I'll ask you to go first.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Well, it's really, really, you know, we didn't intend to write this last book, which is a pretty different animal, but, you know, we helped people redesign their lives and then redesigned their careers, wrote two books. And we got a lot of feedback that it worked really great. And then, right after the pandemic and the great resignation, 52 million people walk off the job because it's not good enough. What we kept hearing is, I'm doing all the stuff and I'm still not fulfilled or it's as meaningful as I want. And we looked into that. And we found two things. Well, people were looking for to make life meaningful is it had an impact, I changed the world, I did something important, I mattered, I created a legacy, a lot of language around that, or I feel fulfilled. And we think both of those are actually all by themselves. If you've got all your meaning eggs in those baskets, impact or fulfillment,

• 15:12Speaker 03

  you're screwed. That's a dysfunctional belief because impact is a thing and you're not. And even when impact works, and most of the time, even if you do everything right, it doesn't work because the other eight billion people might go off script when you're not looking. And if you're lucky enough to have an impact at all, the glow doesn't last very long. So that's not a sustainable, that's a hedonic treadmill problem. And fulfillment, we know that all of us contain more aliveness than your life permits you to express. You can't be fulfilled as in expressing your entire self, which is what Maslow told you in 1943, you should do by being self-actualized, and you can't get there from here. So that's why we came up with, oh, that's all about the transactional world. You got to expand into the present moment in the flow world to add other forms of meaning. Otherwise, if you're trapped in transactions

• 15:57Speaker 03

  all the time, you can't get there from here. And Bill can talk about where in the flow world you can get your hands on that stuff.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Well, you can get it all over the place, but the trick is, if you're looking for more meaning, then look right where you are. You don't have to cram more into your life. Our book is all not about like, oh, there's five new things you got to learn, you got to have mindfulness practice, and you got to, and you got to work out and do all sorts of stuff. Do that if you want to, that's great. Mindfulness is a good thing. But there's a lot of meaning just lying around right away. And so the whole idea is to become a meaning-making designer, a designer of moments that are meaningful. And it's about getting more out of what's right in front of you, not trying to cram more in because we're all too busy. So you don't need a new job. You can find some satisfaction in the job you've got. You can

• 16:43Speaker 02

  always make it better. But, but, you know, better is, better is about the future. The experience of meaning is right now. It's in what you're doing right now. It's putting on your shoes and going out to the gym, you know, and then, and then, and then walking away feeling a little bit of a glow from the workout. It's about, you know, waking up in the morning and looking outside and, you know, taking a few, a few deep breaths and noticing that it's another beautiful sunny day here in California. So it's about getting more out of, and we've had tons of techniques for doing this. And by the way, the whole idea that flow is this kind of peak experience. We know now from neuroscience, there's twenty, at least twenty-two neuroscience triggers to flow, and flow is the experience of being right here, right now.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  And that's where you experience the more meaning that you're looking for.

• 17:30Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I struggle with this because I struggle with anger and depression. I'm constant for a long time was thinking about how do I, you know, find meaning as I mean, happiness reward. And everyone has to figure out the discipline and the skills and the market dynamics such that they can take care of themselves and then, you know, operate in what is a fairly, sometimes unfair capitalist society. And I, you know, that's just the reality. And there's so many books and graduate programs on how to, how to refine those skills such that you can be viable in a capitalist society. What I've found is that even after I'd find, I've been working so hard to get to some sense of relevance or economic security that once I got there, I'm like, am I really

• 18:15Scott Galloway?

  that happy or do I really feel I have meaning? And where I have found it is in what I call, uh, purpose and perspective. And purpose is different than I think what, I think I thought when I was younger, some bolt of lightning would hit me and I'd just be so good at something, I'd find purpose. What I've found is that purpose comes from you invest so much in something, you'll never get an ROI on it. And what do I mean by that? Veterans are never gonna, I don't think most veterans are ever gonna get a real ROI on their service, leaving their family, um, putting their person in physical danger. But that's, what they get is something greater, they get purpose, they've served their country. Like, no one can match that sacrifice.

• 18:56Scott Galloway?

  What I have found is that I will, I have two boys, fifteen and eighteen, I will never get ROI on them. They will never be up at 2am worried about me, no matter, if I decide to go back to graduate school at Stanford, they're just not gonna pay for it. I'm never gonna get the return in terms of time, love, anxiety, money that I have put into them. And what I realized is then, okay, that's my purpose. My, my, you find something, whether it's a nonprofit, your country, other people, that you invest so deeply in it, you're never gonna get what we think of as a traditional return, and that's your purpose, that's why you're here.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  We get asked that question all the time, you know, and we're not trying to assist you in finding the meaning of life or figure out how to design what is the purpose of my life, because those are outcomes, those are its, and you're not an it. Our definition of the human person is you are a becoming. If you're becoming, your future self may be differently oriented, but purpose is an aspirational valence. It's a trajectory. It's not an outcome. And in this technologically enabled, capitalistically optimized world, everything's about optimizing for outcome. So, did I accomplish it? Did I find it? Did I get it done? Have I reached? Have I achieved it? And there is no it. There's no right. There's no done. And there's no it. There's just getting on with it.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  So, we encourage people to look purposefully and experience their days meaningfully. Those are descriptions of the manner in which you're walking this thing out. And your definition of a purpose is it's a direction worth going toward. And going toward again, and going toward again, and going toward again. Not because eventually I'm going to get there, but because going somewhere meaningfully, even productively, is worthwhile. And, you know, so we have a compass tool to make sure. Well, you don't know where you're supposed to go, but you can figure out whether or not you're on the right direction. Are you going north? We can go north. Let's keep going.

• 20:53Scott Galloway?

  I want to get your response to, I have something called, people talk about a gratitude practice. And I never, I never really, I didn't have the discipline to keep up with that. What I have, though, is a perspective practice. And I want you guys to respond to this. I think it's, I think a lot of us lack, quite frankly, perspective or appreciation, or, you know, framing things to realize. Most of us don't have problems. We have inconveniences. And I don't own art, but I spent a ton of money for me on a photograph. And it's a photograph of Otto Frank, who's the father of Anne Frank. And it's a picture of him when he returned to the attic that his family hid in in Amsterdam and was eventually betrayed. And all of his family was murdered.

• 21:38Scott Galloway?

  And I have a picture of him after he returned to the attic, after he survived Auschwitz. And I have it outside my bedroom. And every morning, when I leave my bedroom, I stop and I look at it for 10 seconds. And it's this very contemplative, intense photograph of him just sitting there. You could tell thinking or staring, and I try and imagine what's running through his mind. And then I start my day. And then the last thing I do when I'm going to bed is I again stare at this photo for 10 seconds. And the same thought just comes up. I have no problems. I have inconveniences, but I have no problems. That is my perspective

• 22:19Scott Galloway?

  practice, and it's helped me a lot. It helps me get me out of my own bullshit and my own anxiety and realize, and I just feel stupid. And it's a good kind of stupid for the bullshit that I'm worried about, or I occasionally let ruin my day. Thoughts on a perspective practice.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  I love it. I think it's fantastic. And it does, and again, it puts in perspective that most of our lives have a lot of little annoyances in them, but nobody's shooting at us. We got food, we got shelter, right? We got all these things. And I also talked about self-explanation, but later in this, before he died in his diary, he said, no, that's not it. It's actually self-transcendence. It's going beyond itself. His purpose is going beyond myself, not for an ROI, but for the goal that I believe is either valid or noble.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  So, you know, I like that practice. I have a thing on that side of my door. This is my studio, my art studio. It's from a quote from a guy named Robert Henry. He said, "The goal isn't to make art. The goal is to be in that wonderful state of mind that makes art inevitable." And so I read that as I walk in to them in the morning, and read that as I walk out. Am I in that state of mind that makes art, joy, beauty inevitable? Or am I just pissed off about some little thing that, you know, that happened, you know, because somebody at Stanford, some bureaucrat at Stanford didn't, you know, get something done. So I think, I think, I like your idea of that kind of a practice. And I like the idea of something that forces you into a perspective larger than yourself.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  What you're hitting on, Scott, you know, we, we talk about mindset a lot in design, and we talk about mindsets in all of our books. And the mindset around the meaning-making approach that we're talking about now, there's five of them. And one of them, the power topher in the mindset is the combination of what we call radical acceptance and availability. And radical acceptance is

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Reality is the only place anything is going to happen. Certainly, the most generative or interesting thing is going to happen. So I have to be here. Like on my plane, it's like, oh, wow, wow, wow, wow. You're living in a fantasy called your head. No, the plane's late. Now what? And there's neutral acceptance of, well, oh, okay. And then there's acceptance with availability like, oh, this is what's happening. And what's here for me? What invitation do I discern that allows me to live generously into this? So that orientation, you know, that I get to choose how to respond. Right? Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, you know, also another Holocaust survivor. The one choice you always have is how to react to your circumstances.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  That humanity is always, always, always available to you. And so choosing what is the stance I'm coming from. That's our fourth mindset, which is create your world. Life is a story we tell ourselves. Pick your story very carefully. It has to be reality based, so it's not magical thinking. But it has to be reality based with a generative invitation for you to be the kind of person you want to be in the world. So right now, my 52 year small group, my formative community, we call them. I just turned 73. Two years ago, we started talking about what it means to become 70. And the question was, what does it mean to be an elder? And I thought it, and I came about, oh, I'm moving from production to presence as my

• 25:44Speaker 03

  primary ministry or gift of life. I'm not here to produce. I'm here to be present. And if I'm doing present well, what does that mean? Oh, people being in proximity to me should be experiencing their belovedness. I want people to go away knowing they've been loved, genuinely. That's kind of the fundamental task I'm on now. So when I walk into a room, I walk into a room like I had a bunch of CEOs who have the startup accelerator I'm a part of, you know, I got there late, nobody knows me. And the little brain kind of goes, oh, well, everybody talk to me. Is this, is it going to make a difference? Why the fuck did I come? I shouldn't have been here. And then they're like, stop it.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  Can you go, can you, is there anybody here you could love? Changes everything. Mindset matters. And what you're doing with auto is you're setting your mind on a broader point of view. That's beautiful.

• 26:39Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. I want people to walk away knowing that they've been loved. Let's leave it there. That's all for this episode. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans are Stanford educators and bestselling authors of Design Your Life and most recently, How to Live a Meaningful Life. Bill, Dave, really enjoyed this. Thanks so much for your time today and your good work.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 26:56Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janer. Kami Rieke is our social producer. Brad Williams is our editor. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from Prop G Media.