Sahar Yousef
Cognitive neuroscientist at UC Berkeley and founder of the Becoming Superhuman Lab, specializing in productivity and cognitive neuroplasticity
Sahar Yousef (Cognitive neuroscientist at UC Berkeley and founder of the Becoming Superhuman Lab, specializing in productivity and cognitive neuroplasticity) has appeared as a guest on 1 episode in TMT. Topics they speak about most include Persuasive technology and engagement design, Artificial intelligence, Focus sprint.
In their words
Positions and remarks grouped by topic, each with the exact quote and where it was said.
Persuasive technology and engagement design
Yousef recounts that a tech company recruitment offer to work on engagement paid four times her academic salary.
“The compensation for that particular role was four times my annual salary doing public research at that time”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:51:00
Yousef argues that big tech copied the food industry's playbook for creating addiction to sugar and processed food.
“it is eerily similar to how the food industry got us addicted to sugar and processed food”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 33:04
Yousef argues that technology default settings are designed by neuroscientists working at tech companies to make users hooked.
“These are cognitive neuroscientists, behavioral neuroscientists that work at these companies to get you hooked”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 17:57
Artificial intelligence
Yousef argues AI is taking thinking away from people because they allow it to.
“AI is taking a lot of the thinking away from us. And I'm using my words quite carefully there. It's taking it away from us because we're letting it”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:55:36
Yousef warns, based on meetings with AI leaders, of a future in which a small 'thinking class' runs the world while others are not expected to think.
“there will be a very small subset of the human population that is educated, that has the attention span and the ability to focus such that they can think critically on their own”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:52:53
Focus sprint
Yousef advises against wearing noise-cancelling headphones for more than three to four hours a day, recommending them only for focus sprints.
“I don't recommend listening to noise canceling or having noise canceling headphones on for more than three, four hours a day”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:18:41
Yousef says her lab's research shows focus sprints let people do up to twice as much work with fewer mistakes.
“has allowed people to do up to two times as much as they would otherwise do while also reducing the number of mistakes”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 55:51
Smartphone addiction
Yousef advocates making scientific attention and digital-dependence assessments freely available to the public.
“I'm extremely passionate about making scientific assessments available to the general public. I think science should be for people, not profits”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 2:11:35
Human multitasking
Yousef says the average knowledge worker now wastes over two hours a day bouncing between screens and tasks.
“over two hours a day is the estimated average now for the average knowledge worker just bouncing between screens and different tasks”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 2:05:42
Chronotype
Yousef states that her lab's global data puts PM-shifted chronotypes at about 16% of the population.
“According to research from my lab, we're at 16% from what we've gathered around the world”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:42:08
Rumination
Yousef argues that repeatedly rehashing traumas strengthens the associated neural networks, and recommends redirecting attention instead.
“we've made it okay to continue to rehash and exhaustively talk about and think about our traumas. When you do that, you're just deepening the damn neural networks”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:33:34
Brain breaks and boredom
Yousef cites a 2024 Nature paper finding nature exposure was the best break and TikTok-style scrolling the worst.
“It turns out the best kind of break is, in fact, no surprise there, being exposed to nature”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:27:24
Task prioritization (MITs and LITs)
Yousef recommends identifying one to three most important tasks each day that would make the day a success.
“Your MITs or your most important tasks are the one, two, maximum three things on any given day that you would want to accomplish if you want your day to be a success”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 1:01:23
Grayscale phone display
Yousef reports that her lab found putting phones in grayscale for three weeks reduced phone use by about an hour a day.
“And we saw, on average, people spent one hour less on their phones every single day”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 45:31
Social media algorithms
Yousef claims feed algorithms withhold the content users will love until they are about to leave, then deliver a 'jackpot'.
“It knows the moment you're about to do that and right before you do that, Hits you with the jackpot”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar Yousef (Oct 15, 2026) · Listen from 36:05
Appearances
Phone Addiction Scientist: Doing This Gives You An Hour Back Every Day! | Dr Sahar YousefThe Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett · Oct 15, 2026 · 2 h 14 min
Steven Bartlett and neuroscientist Sahar Yousef discuss phone addiction, tech design that hijacks attention, focus sprints, chronotypes, multitasking costs, and AI's threat to independent thinking.
Often appears with
- Steven Bartlett · 1 shared episode