Michael Pollan

When's the beeper going to go off?

So the experiment was there's a psychologist at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, named Russell Hurlburt.

And he's been sampling inner experience, as he calls it, for 50 years.

And the way he does it is he equips you with a beeper.

You wear this thing in your ear.

It emits a very sharp beep.

You know exactly what it was and when it was.

There's no, like, reaching for your phone or any doubt about what you're dealing with.

And then you're supposed to write down what you were thinking at that very moment.

And then you collect a day's worth of beeps, which could be five or six beeps.

And...

You know, it's got various kind of observer effect problems.

You wonder, you know, God, if the beeper went off now, what would I have to say?

Oh, that would really be embarrassing.

So there is this self-consciousness, but you forget about it over the course of the day.

Suddenly you get a beep and you write it down.

And, you know, I was struck by how banal my beeps were.

I mean, I would be like the one I describe in the book is I'm waiting online at a bakery and I'm deciding, should I buy a roll or use the heel of bread I have at home to make a sandwich for lunch?

This is not profound stuff.

And then he interrogates you about them to try to make sense of it and help you become a better student of what's going on in your own mind.