I have been using electric Oral-B toothbrushes for over 20 years now, and have been pretty satisfied. However, habit and familiarity is a strong indicator of and influence on satisfaction. A couple of months ago, I was in the market for a new brush as the old wasn't holding charge anymore, and instead of getting the same oscillating head type, I went for a sonic Oclean brush, which is significantly cheaper than the comparable Philips. It is gimmicky, with a WiFi enabled app I don't use, but it also has a screen on the brush that gives AI-enabled quick feedback on how successful the job done was.
This is where the lessons come in.
Thumbs up for a job well done.
It gives a score out of 100 with top marks being a thumbs up. The first time I used the brush, I scored in the 60s with the "quick"90 second setting. I use the "deep clean" of 180 seconds a few times a week, normally scoring a thumb or 97 and up. But when there isn't full marks, there is also a little picture of teeth indicating what was neglected (orange bits) and missed (red bits). The accuracy will not be perfect, but close enough for purpose.
As far as teeth brushing goes, within a couple days and since, I have concentrated on adjusting the way I brush my teeth, paying attention for the minute and a half and with the quick clean get between 85 and 95, sometimes higher.my teeth do feel cleaner.
This is not really the lesson though.
At 47, I have been brushing my own teeth for over 42 years now and despite the rest of my body being a disaster, have decent quality teeth.i have always thought that I am pretty good at brushing and through highly repetitive action, I must have built up a pretty strong and healthy habitual process. Yet, here I am at almost 50, relearning how to brush my teeth.
But it is in the habit where the lesson lays, because when we form habitual process, we stop paying attention and when it is something as automatic as brushing teeth, we feel we don't have to, because our habits will apply the process consistently. Yet, what I have noticed is that when I am thinking other thoughts, my score decreases. Yesterday, I was deep in thought and for the first time ever, I scored 55.
Something as automatic as brushing teeth, and my subconscious forgot how to do it properly.
Yet while I was brushing and thinking, I had no idea I was doing such a poor job. It wasn't until after I realised it was a bit like those tiles driving and not really remembering if stopping for redlights. I must have stopped, right?
Habits save us a lot of the time, but lack of attention is still going to affect the quality of performance. But if we are never brought to pay attention, we make an assumption that we must be doing it right, because we did it right when paying attention.
Attention is put most valuable resource, which is why it has been so detrimental that our attention spans have been reduced so drastically as adults, and many children are never building one to begin with, as they flit from short-form content to the next useless and disconnected piece fed to them. And while this might seem obvious, the brushing test was a stark reminder about how we can fail at such simple tasks through lack of attention. I failed at something I have done at least over 30,000 times in my life.
How many of those other times were failures too?
We aren't designed to multitask. It is a myth. Yes, we can do multiple things at the same time, but we can't focus on two things concurrently and when we try, they both suffer. Yet, we have developed behaviours that have us sitting watching a TV show, and scrolling a phone screen. Cooking, and listening to a podcast. Working, and watching something streaming. It is like we can no longer feel content paying attention to a single thing. Perhaps it is a fear of missing out, even though much of what we are consuming and doing, is valueless.
This article might not resonate with you at all. You might see it as silly to compare so much of where we spend our time, to brushing teeth. But try it. You don't need a smart toothbrush. Just put on a 90 second timer and pay attention whilst brushing your teeth tonight. Pay attention to ensuring you adequately hit all areas, all teeth, all sides.
And pay attention to how often your mind wanders.
There is a large difference between an active mind and an overactive mind, and what we pay attention to matters, as it is the experience we have of this life. Perhaps automating repetitive tasks works to our advantage at times but it is also possible that we stop paying attention too soon, before we are truly competent enough to set and forget. The cost of error depends on the task, but when we are no longer paying attention to the things that matter for a good life, acting on default feeling like we are doing the right things, we are going to pay the consequences. It might be bad teeth, or it might be the breakdown of our health, relationships, and everything that makes life worth living.
Just a thought?
Was it worth the cost of thinking?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
BTW, my wife started using the brush soon after and realised how terrible a job she was doing, and has adjusted. Smallsteps has also started using it recently on a gentle setting, and has completely changed the way she brushes. She originally learned from me - Bad habits can be hereditary.
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OMG they've got an app for cleaning our teeth 😂.
Having said that and after reading the explanation of the use of the visual aide to indicate the effectiveness of our tooth cleaning regime.
I'm sold on the idea and will look at buying one of these toothbrushes. I'm currently using an oral b and have done for years.
Who ever thought we'd live to see the day?
The mindfulness toothbrush.
I've often driven for miles without registering the actual places I've driven through.
Habit is an amazing map reader, at least on familiar journeys.
Edit typo
At least it is a legit health reason :D
At the very least, start paying attention whilst brushing now :)
Yes. The problem is when there isn't a clear destination, so we don't know we are ending up in the wrong location.
Our brush has bluetooth I think and I still don't quite understand why. It's funny how they are trying to make pretty much everything connected these days. I had pretty mediocre dental health before I met my wife. Enough to get by, but not great. It's improved greatly over the past couple of decades.
Why so do you think? Is that common?
No, I just didn't brush twice a day all the time. Now I do.
It was interesting with one of my clients here (early 60s) who still doesn't brush twice a day - even though he has so many issues with his teeth.
I didn't have a ton of issues back then, but I have even fewer now.
An AI enabled toothbrush :) Now I have seen it all :) Well on a more serious note, while I wonder how accurate those scores are, it might be worth checking those out. Our Sonic toothbrushes from Costco are getting pretty old...
You will love AI toothbrushes I am sure! The app is a bit dodgy in my opinion, but still :)
That's quite amazing to hear you using digital toothbrush for your tooth and with Ai and Bluetooth.
While I'm still working around with manual toothbrush lol daily.
Nothing wrong with manual brushing - just pay attention :)
Yeah but I will love to see and try the electrical toothbrush too, it will be nice to try too.
I don't think it's available in my country now, but later in the future it might be.
This post resonates with me. A few days ago I hurriedly brushed my teeth(not with electric brush), after brushing I looked at the mirror and wasn't satisfied with the outcome. That's because I never paid attention to the task. This is common with my kids too, as most times I ask them to repeat the task due to poor outcome. When I relate this to real life experiences in terms of our jobs, relationships, tasks etc, you find out that there's no difference.
There's no doubt about that, I totally agree with you that we tend to lose focus whenever we fail to pay attention to something. I think this habit is even more common now as a result of the internet and social media...a lot of distractions.
a lot of distractions for sure. No one is going to fix it for us, we have to fix it for ourselves. Switch off the crap.
Absolutely! It's our sole responsibility to fix.
Jesus H. Christ on a stick, we have AI toothbrushes now? I resist gimmickry at every step, more so as I get older and grumpier. But I will brush my teeth today with a little more attention. I do hold a wall squat in the bathroom as I do it - that's an easy multi task.
Gimmick sounds like mission accomplished XP
Meanwhile we're plebs still using manual brushes and I am forever telling the boys (including the one I married) to GET BACK IN THE BATHROOM STOP WALKING AROUND THE HOUSE CONCENTRATE ON BRUSHING YOUR TEETH. It's kind of a game for Youngest who now comes out specifically to get a rise out of me like he's been doing since half his lifetime ago XD
My brain is a bit glitchy so running tasks concurrently (basically jumping from one to the other whenever I start losing focus on any of them) usually at least advances all of them if not getting at least some complete. Basically procrastinating by doing other things that also need to be done.