The Apex Podcast

Digital Detox: The Reality of Technology, Promoting Mindful Usage, and Enhancing Human Connection in a Screen-Driven World

• Apex Communications Network

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Are you feeling overwhelmed by technology? Have you ever wondered if there could be a healthier balance between our digital and physical lives? Join us in this powerful dialogue with our guest, Forrest Bronson from Digital Detox, an organization that sparks a healthier relationship and balance with technology.

Get ready to be inspired by Levi Felix's story, the brainchild of Digital Detox, who went off the grid following a health crisis that stemmed from overwork in a tech firm. His journey of renewal led to the creation of this organization, which has evolved into a global force.

We tackle the gritty reality of technology and its profound influence on our society, especially our youth. We shed light on shocking statistics and delve into the State of Advisory for social media declared by the Surgeon General. Discover just how many people are motivated to make a change and the profound effects social media has on teens.

Being present, they say, is the best gift you can give to someone. We discuss practical tips for more mindful tech usage, emphasizing the importance of being present and minimizing phone distractions. Get insights on how to enhance human connection in a world driven by screens.

In our final segments, we explore the impacts of social media on screen time, the toxic environment created by 'likes' and 'scrolls', and how it hampers our ability to focus and express ourselves authentically. Don't worry, we don't leave you hanging with the problem; we've also packed this episode with practical and executable tips to take control of your tech usage.

If you'd like to learn more about Digital Detox, visit their site here:
https://www.digitaldetox.com/

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Jan Almasy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-almasy-57063b34

RJ Holliday: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-j-holliday-jr-b470a6204/

James Warnken: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswarnken

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Speaker 1:

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Apex podcast. As always, I'm your host, john Almassy, and today we're going to be diving into a lot of the things that you hear me talk about in Preach on a regular basis, but I'm really excited to riff on it with somebody who I'm super interested to talk to, mr Forrest Bronson. So some of those topics we're going to cover include the background of his organization that he's leading right now called Digital Detox, some of his journey into that organization, thoughts on balancing technology and real life, and then also the benefits of disconnection while in community around other people that are going through a similar experience. So, forrest, thank you for jumping on the show and being willing to come spend some time.

Speaker 2:

John, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

So I think the best place to start really is with maybe a little bit of the history of Digital Detox. I know that's kind of kind of being like our focus today and I always advocate you know it's not just the history of the company, also the history of you. You know why you're passionate about it, how you got involved, what that story is, and then we can kind of let the conversation take us where it will from there.

Speaker 2:

No, that's great. You know we have a 30 second version and a couple of minute version on the on the history. So if we want to dive in, I'll give you a history of the world.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we'll go for the. We'll go for the couple minute version. Let's, let's go for it.

Speaker 2:

Great. So you know, the company has this beautiful history and I think it's helpful to go back in time to set the stage for how we got here with Digital Detox. So a fellow by the name of Levi Felix, good buddy of mine, we went to middle school together, high school together. We played in bands together, toured around, had a ton of fun. We went our own ways. After high school and after college, circa 2007 or so, 2008, he was working in Los Angeles at a tech firm and he just collapsed at work one day and they rushed him to the hospital and he'd been bleeding internally for for a couple of days just from overwork. He was working literally like 90 hour, 90 hour weeks and he said you know, this isn't healthy. So this is 0708. This is before Instagram. This is, you know, pretty iPhone was just released or just coming out, so this is early days. And so he left the country. He lived in Cambodia for a couple of years. He traveled around, just went completely off the grid. And he comes back circa 2011, 2012, and reunites with his brother and one of our other friends from high school and he starts this company called Digital Detox. And he calls me up. He said Forrest. You know we're launching this company. I want you to come to the first retreats at the War Hot Springs. It's just going to be 10 adults. We're going to have this unplugged three night experience. I said let's do that, so I went. It was this amazing experience. The company kind of evolved into just these amazing experiential events so he launched Camp Grounded summer camp for adults 300 adults in the woods for three nights. You can't use your real name, can't talk about work. You turn in your tech.

Speaker 2:

I brought my company. I was, I had a digital agency before I got involved in DD and I brought my company three years in a row and it was just this life changing experience for the whole team. And Levi was on top of his game. He was consulting around the world. The company you know was growing to multiple countries and tours everywhere, and he had a book deal and he was in a meeting with his literary agent and he goes blind. And this is you know. He was 31 at the time and they rushed him to the hospital again. So it's kind of a bad flashback to 07 and they realized he had a brain tumor and he died seven, eight months later at 32.

Speaker 2:

So this was 2017, just this beautiful, amazing human that was changing the world and the company went on hiatus. They did one more event in 2017, late 2017, and kind of went on pause for a little bit. And I my previous company I was I had a digital agency. We exited in 2018 and late 2019, I reconnected with some of the other founders of digital detox and they said we need to bring this back. Like this is so important, this is impacting so many people, is pre COVID, and so I acquired the company and took it over and had a whole new direction, and so this was January 2020. And we had global events sold out and 45 days later COVID hit and and shut that down.

Speaker 2:

So the last couple of years we've been focusing all on research and other products and services outside of live experiences. But the company started as this live experience company and now we've evolved into we could talk later about our door score. We work a lot with schools, work a lot with individuals. We're launching this other service for this kind of very personalized experience to help improve habits and you know, it's something I'm wildly a passion about. I have kids age nine and six. It's something that's just seriously impacting all ages teenagers and high schoolers in particular. But it's fascinating.

Speaker 2:

I travel the world meeting with communities and meeting with individuals to really understand the problem and you can't go anywhere in the world without seeing the impacts of tech and you can't really meet any age group or demographic rich, poor, doesn't matter, what race you are, it doesn't matter how much your education level is. You're impacted in some way or another. So that's the kind of two and a half minute version of the company. It started a long time ago and it's had a couple of different chapters and now we have customers in over 80 countries and we're we're trying to do some good and help people just get a little bit more time back. And I think it's important to note we're not anti tech. So you know the story of Levi moving to Cambodia. That was amazing and special. We're not. We're not promoting throwing your phone in the river and living in the woods not at all. We just believe that almost everyone can benefit from getting a little bit of time back and being more present and not letting their tech own them.

Speaker 1:

I like that, that last sentence there, right, I think there's a lot of I don't know what we'll call them tech naysayers or, you know, doomsday tech conversations that go on. It's like we have to reverse and this is terrible and you can't halt the evolution of technology. Technology is going to continue to advance. That's its job is to is to continue growing and becoming more integrated. It's our responsibility to figure out how to interface with that tool and I think something that you just mentioned right there at the end is really people waking up to the idea of the fact that attention is something that could be mined right, and if you are using a product and it's free, you are more than likely the product of that technology.

Speaker 1:

There's there was a documentary that I think came out that really sparked this conversation in the circles that I interact with, called the social dilemma. It came out in 2020. It was on Netflix. That seemed to really spark a lot of conversations around this and kind of push people back into that arena. Did you see I know you said that you know chapters have to be changed and covered. You know, cause a lot of shifts. I'm was. Did you notice that an increase of an awareness around our relationship with technology over the last couple of years starting to develop With with the people that you're interacting with. I know you said that you travel around and you're talking to a lot of these communities and things of that nature.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the awareness is certainly there. The improvement, I would say, isn't so much there. Yet folks are recognizing wow, it's impacting my life. I don't want it to impact my life but it's slower on the actual agreement side. It depends, depends who you're talking to, but in terms of the awareness, absolutely, I mean just the surgeon general couple weeks ago at a State of emergency for social media and youth and schools are waking up some some states of banned social media for people under 18, so that there's definitely Wake up an awareness. Our data and what we can talk about doorscore later over over 55% are highly motivated to make improvements and over 90% of people that have taken our assessments Are we somewhat motivated to make improvements. People recognize that it's impacting them and teenagers also. It's a whole different topic talking about the impacts it has on on our youth. The teenagers, I think, contrary to popular belief, are actually very aware of how it's impacting them and they don't like it. They don't want it and we're trying to help them get there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I see that. I see that pretty frequently in in groups when I go to like universities or do like little round tables and stuff with that demographic specifically. It seems that a lot of the conversation centered around why I'm not on X Y, z platform. I remember the last time that I had that conversation is probably a month or two ago. It was tick tock, seem to be really under fire inside of that. You know they're like 18 to 21 was that age range, and they were. They said I stopped using it because I noticed how much I was using it and they opted to just delete the platform completely because they realized, no matter how much they tried to self police themselves, that they would find themselves doing scrolling or in these rabbit holes. So I think it's actually probably a great place to transition into the idea of this door score and this assessment and what it's meant to help people with as they take it and what the score actually tells somebody after their finished taking the assessment.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and to your point on social media. So the average team, depending on the study you're looking at, spends nine plus hours on social media, which is the average adult is really high.

Speaker 2:

You know, common thing the algorithms are just so good in terms of content display to get you to stay on. So you know most adults you know they'll go in with good intention of you know spend 20 minutes on on Instagram before bed and that turns into three hours. So Social can be used in good entertainment purposes, you know. Think of Netflix. There might be some great content that brings value to your life and entertainment to your life, but Netflix wasn't intended to be watched for nine hours a day. Right, right, we need to be careful with that. So yeah, so the door score you know there's, there's a lot of digital Addiction assessments online. They're kind of quick, cute little things. And the door score we spent months on.

Speaker 2:

We were some of the top behavioral psychologists and mental health professionals in the country. We paneled thousands of individuals around the world for Validation studies and it's a simple, free five minute assessment. It's about 25 questions. It's a solid five minutes. I want to set that expectation. If you're going in thinking one minute, you're going to be very disappointed. So plan for five.

Speaker 2:

And it's scored on a scale of zero to 120 and there's four different risk levels, or in a green, yellow, orange and red, and it's meant to provide perspective on where you stand, you know, on a larger continuum, how much is Technology and your habits impacting your life, and, interestingly, most folks that take it they'll. They'll respond and we've had a lot of qualitative feedback. Just the questions are pretty eye opening to them. Wow, I didn't even realize I was doing this behavior Behind the scenes. There's a lot of math going on and I don't think we need to get into the science of it, but every question and every response is scored differently, and this is where just a lot of science went in to develop the score. So, depending on how you're answering each question, it might be weighted differently based on impact, and so we're really proud of it. It's it's providing a lot of value to folks to give them at least a baseline of where techs impacting the life, and then from there it's about finding areas to improve.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think bringing some Quantitativeness to that awareness is really, really important for to be able to identify ways to change or think paths that you can take.

Speaker 1:

I know that there's this ambiguous feeling that one simple thing that that I know somebody does on a regular basis that I ended up adopting is just checking screen time on your phone and noticing okay, if it goes above a certain number of hours, I feel more depressed, or I feel more anxious and that's a really simple variable to say, okay, if I can get that screen time down, I'm not actually super anxious or depressed as a person.

Speaker 1:

If I just get my screen time down to below X number of hours per day, then my mood starts to increase. And I thought it was a little bit, you know, hokey at first when I first heard that a couple of years probably two years ago now that I first implemented that. But it's one of those things that what I was reminded of when I took the assessment on the website and it asked you do you sleep with your phone next to your bed? Do you find yourself wanting to check it multiple times throughout the day? You know all of these kind of indicators. I think seeing it was also was very validating while taking it and then getting the realization at the end it's like all, I'm not as bad as I thought I was. There's also some cool room for improvement, and now I have this quantitative thing to look at that can kind of point me in the right direction to start asking the right questions.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, I want to be clear that no one's bad, even if you're a red one. Nineteen, you know that there's areas for improvement. I have room for improvement, everyone has room for improvement, and you know the screen time, that's an interesting topic. We could probably impact that more. It's a big one that comes in from parents how much screen time should my kids have? And that used to be the big question, probably three, four, five years ago, and now we're finding that out, of showing it.

Speaker 2:

It's more important. I mean, yes, the screen time total is important at large volumes, but it's more important what you're doing. I'd rather my son, nine year old son, spend an hour on the iPad doing an anatomy lesson than on TicToc. He's obviously not on TicToc, but and even for adults you know, there's a parallel. If you're reading a book on your phone because the book hasn't come in, your Kindle's broken or what not, that's very different than doom scrolling or endlessly scrolling through TicToc. So the quality of the screen time, or the content of the screen time, is equally, if not more, important than the total time spent. That said, it's very important to watch total time spent because, no matter what you're doing, if you're spending 20 hours a day on on the screen. That's right. It's not a not a good sign, right.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, and that's. That's that extra layer. Once you've been doing that first step for the, if you're not tracking anything at all and you just start tracking macro screen time, that's like a great easy first step. And then, after you track it on your iPhone, you can open up and see what apps, what percentage of that time, you're looking at and, to your point, you know if you're spending 80 percent of that time on TicToc and 20 percent of that time Netflix, youtube, watching, you know, educational material or reading a book, your Kindle, you can start to look at. Oh OK, maybe if I was actually spending more time on my screens for this productive purpose, my association with it starts to change a little bit. Is that kind of like the idea behind it?

Speaker 2:

Sort of it's a little bit more nuanced. I think one takeaway is that you know screens aren't going anywhere. It's probably unrealistic for most folks to switch to a flip phone, right, even though that would probably arguably bring us a decrease in loneliness and an increase in happiness and decrease in stress. But realistically it's not going to happen. So, yeah, would we advocate to be spending four hours a day watching Netflix on your phone? No, right, but when you're thinking about so, first step, yeah, look, total, total screen time is important, breaking it down by app and quality. You know if you're working and a lot of your work is via your phone while you're on the road you know your screen time total hours is going to be high answering emails, texts, etc.

Speaker 2:

But it's nuanced in terms of what you're spending on and also when you're spending. You know that we advocate for an hour before bed, at least an hour before bed, completely shutting off the screen, but take the phone out of the bedroom, don't even look at the screen. Get a. Get a cheap clock if you need an alarm and and a time to look at. The exception would be if you're a surgeon on call or you're a psychiatrist that has patients that might need to get old. If you yeah, of course there's exceptions. If you're caring for someone that might need to get a hold of you in an emergency yes, there's exceptions. You could still have the phone near you for those emergencies and not be scrolling and going on tiktok, right. So the time before beds a key one, just for there's just endless amount of sleep studies on how that impacts and the better quality sleep we have, the better quality outcomes we have in a lot of different health and wellness categories.

Speaker 1:

Right, and yeah, I see that consistently across conversations I've had. I see that hour before bedtime and, like that's, first 90 minutes after waking being very critical time periods to avoid that that tech interaction.

Speaker 2:

So 90 minutes after a wake, if you could do that, that's amazing. Most people are within five minutes of waking up, so 90% of people they're checking their phone within five minutes. So you can start with 15 minutes and then let's get to 30 minutes. So if you could get to 90 minutes in the morning, having your morning routine phone and kind of technology free here in a really great spot.

Speaker 1:

Right, right. Yeah, that's kind of like the end goal. I definitely did not start there, like I definitely started at the 15 minute mark when I first came into that awareness. It takes work rewiring some of those habits once you become aware of them, for sure which actually kind of brings me to this oh, go ahead.

Speaker 2:

No, no, go ahead. I'm just going to go in the same spot.

Speaker 1:

So go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say like we might as well just start unpacking they were already kind of doing it but technology transform pretty much everything that we do. You know the way that we interact, the way that we work, all of these types of things. So there's these delicate balances and in your you know journeys throughout this digital detox, you know the research and everything else. What are some of the downsides that you've heard consistently of, like being over connected or being connected constantly? And then how, how does digital detox, or how can we start to like, helpfully find this balance? Because, to your point earlier, we can't. They're not going anywhere, the screens aren't disappearing, technology is not going to stop advancing, so how do we start to try to figure out what that balance looks like.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a lot to unpack there. So in terms of you know it's definitely an addiction, right Social media and technology. It's a different addiction profile than heroin, though, right, and you know so Both you could improve and detox from. It's easier chemically to detox and to make improvements From social media and phone addiction. Then you know a very, very intense chemical drug addiction. So that's the good news. You know a lot of what we talk about.

Speaker 2:

So what we've talked about so far is screen time and what you're doing on the phone. A big thing that we promote is presence right and picking the right situation. So at the dinner table there's no room for the phone. At the dinner table there just isn't out on a date, no reason for a phone unless it's at the end of the date and you're confirming schedules for the next date, something like that. When you're with your son and you're doing something very meaningful or your daughter, you shouldn't have your phone, you shouldn't be distracted by a notification and you should be present in the moment when you're out with friends, etc. So the list goes on.

Speaker 2:

So a huge thing of what we're getting folks to really start to realize is the value of Experiencing life in more meaningful ways without the distraction of their devices, right? So that's. That's way beyond. Just how much time am I spending on the phone? How much time am I spending on tick-tock? It's. How much is it interrupting real life experiences that could even get more nuance to. When I'm at the concert, am I enjoying the concert or am I viewing the concert through my phone? It's a very different experience to actually watch the concert of the, the sports game or whatever, to your daughter's dance recital With your eyes, then through the, through the device. So a lot of that's getting people back to experiencing life in more meaningful ways and and very few would argue against that Most people want to want to experience life in kind of richer ways.

Speaker 2:

So one question we ask people to to think about at the end of the day or the end of the week, but starting at the end of the day, is ask yourself, was I happy with how I spent my time today? Right, you know it was a happy with how much time I spent on my phone. And if and if you are and you had feel like you had great balance and it worked for you great, maybe, maybe it's not an issue right now Ask yourself tomorrow, am I content with the choices I made with my time. You only have a finite amount of time within a day, within a week and within your life, and most people their. Their biggest fear, at least in this conversation, isn't so much. Am I going to spend two hours on tick-tock or is it going to make me sleepy? It's? Am I going to wake up in 10 or 15 years and ask myself what did I do with my life? I just spent equivalent of three years of my life on On social media, and is that a good use of time?

Speaker 2:

And so once, once, people start to kind of think about it in those terms at a very specific level one day, and then extrapolate it out 10, 20 years. And then they start thinking of the opportunity cost. What could I be doing with that time? Replaced hobbies that I don't do anymore, whether it's reading, hiking, spending time with friends. Maybe it's working more and earning more. It could be different for a lot of different people, but when they think about that opportunity cost, that's sometimes the light bulb moment of wow, okay, yeah, I would much rather put in the time to improve and get time back, not only to feel better, but to have more time for these other things that are important to me. So how we get there? We could unpack, but I'll pause there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I, um, I like the idea of really rooting people in something so simple and something Infinitely complex is just being present, right, um, I like to, uh, think about my grandmother. So she was born and raised under soviet occupation in slovakia, um, and has this like amazing Peace and level-headedness about her that is just absolutely uninterruptible, um, and I couldn't put my finger on it. For a lot of my child, like, why is she so like? Her presence? Just Bring safety right. And I'm like, okay, I'm her grandkid, that's probably why.

Speaker 1:

But as I got older, I realized that she is just so present all the time that it's something that I really admire about her. So I asked her at one point you know, how do you, how do you maintain this presence? Like, what is, what is this key behind stuff for you? And she told me that it was for her. It's being able to create memories is one of her favorite things. She's like we couldn't hold a lot of pictures. You didn't get to spend a lot of time with relatives. You know there was. No, we didn't have albums and albums and albums of peep things in our pockets To be able to like conjure up a memory. So memories were very, very important she was like anytime I would catch myself like, oh, I really I'm enjoying this moment. She's like I'd take a step back and Notice a kelp on the table, or the color of the shirt that somebody was wearing, or the smell of the food that was in the air and all of this other stuff, and then that would like really cement the memory for her. And she was like that's. What keeps me present is when I noticed those moments, I kind of bet myself out and I allow myself to fully absorb it. And Let me to your point, let me to your point in earlier in the conversation no phones at dates, no phones at the dinner table. Like there's no, there's no reason for tec to create that barrier in that moment.

Speaker 1:

Um, and being able to find that presence is a really cool place to go and with that presence is something that can be very foreign If you've been, you know, engrossed in tech for a long time. It's something that I find I have to work on pretty consistently and my younger brother, who's eight years younger than me, him and his friends, when we've had conversations about it, are in a completely different ball game. They, you know, have trouble picking up the phone and calling the pizza shop to interact with somebody to put in a pizza order because they're so comfortable behind like the app, or going out in public. You're sitting at the table and everybody's on their phones, sometimes even texting each other while they're at the table. So what are some? What are some simple ways, I guess, to become more mindful. Or like, how do you start that journey back towards presence if you're somebody that is so used to kind of using tech?

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, I want to answer that to your grandmother's point, though, on memories. Memories compound, so the earlier you could create amazing memories, the better, right At the younger you are you're going to.

Speaker 2:

You're going to remember those for for a long, long time. So that's, that's very important. You know, it made me think of. We had this focus group about two weeks ago for this product that we're launching and one of the dads in the group he said one of his biggest fears is I'm going to paraphrase it but having his kids remember their childhood with their dad always on his phone. Right, and that just broke my heart, right and wow, and it made me. Made me think as well, like that's the and I'm very cognizant about that with my family but that's, that would be a nightmare for me if, when my kids are my age and they're talking to their friends, yeah, I remember my childhood my mom and dad were always staring at their phone and that's wow what a profound thing to realize.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's not. That's not the exception, that's the norm right now. So, yeah, and in terms of I think New York Times had an article last month 50% of people meeting on a first date from a dating app report that their companion was on their phone the majority of the time.

Speaker 1:

So it's it's a good one.

Speaker 2:

I'm glad I'm out in the in the in the swipe dating scene right now, but happily married for 15 years. So but yeah, it's, it's wild. So, in terms of you know, how do we start making those improvements? Your example of calling the restaurant instead of using Yelp is, funny as that sounds. That's actually a pretty advanced and complicated thing Because for most people it's just so convenient and the the the value and the impact of changing that up is going to be a hard habit to change, right, and I'm the same way. You know a lot of times it's just easier to order DoorDash or to order online.

Speaker 2:

If you could try sometime making that phone call, you'll find it's interesting actually talking to someone, not just for the human connection, but sometimes it makes the experience better. You could request a certain table or find out more details about if there's a musician playing tonight or what's on the menu, etc. So you know whether it's a restaurant or booking your hair appointment or whatever it is. Try picking up the phone, not all the time, but that that's an interesting one. But it rather, you know we we like to focus on on small fundamentals first. So the product we're launching in about a month and this isn't a shameless plug, but what we're launching is exactly this. It's a kind of systematic approach to very individually help improve habits. So you know, for Yana it might be different, for Forrest it might be different, on what you're struggling with and where there's areas to improve. And you know, let's start chipping away. But that aside, just high level, you know, start on fundamentals. You know, if you're not, if you're not putting your phone down before bed and you're having your phone out at the dinner table, those are just basic, one-on-one items you need to get off the list and then from there, once you get some of the basics down, then you could start getting more human and more personal. So you know, having your phone away when you're at a concert, I promise you the concert will be more enjoyable.

Speaker 2:

Concert when I say concert, I mean basketball, game, concert, any kind of live experience. We talk a lot with parents about that and if you know, if you have kids or your age, you kids. But you know, at a kid's recital, every parent is recording it on their phone. How often do you actually go back and watch that shaky poor recording on your phone? Maybe once. Maybe you're sending it to grandma and grandpa. But you're going to enjoy the experience. You're going to remember it more without the recording. Let someone else record it or just get you know. 10 second recording. When I was in Spain last month, they had this interesting policy at one of the. I went to a Flamenco show and I could get on board with this. It was a 90 minute show. They said for the first five minutes take all the video you want, but then it's a hard stop. Phones are away. If they're out, you're kicked out, can that?

Speaker 2:

make sense you know, get your, get your footage and get your memories in for five minutes. But then everyone become present, because it not only interrupts your experience, it interrupts the experience around you. You know a lot of hotels are actually transitioning now to having phone free zones by the pool. You know, if you're lounging at a pool in Hawaii or home springs or wherever, and everyone around you is just glued to your phone, it kind of kills the mood and the vibe of your own experience. So be a good community member, but yeah, from there, you know, just think about how much more meaningful it is talking to someone in person and how much you like actually receiving a phone call. Maybe you don't, but try it. You know, pick up a phone call a friend that you haven't spoken to in a while to schedule something. Call out of the blue. It doesn't take 14 emails and you know six calendar invites to make a phone call. Worst case you leave a message and they're delighted by that message.

Speaker 2:

Write a thank you note. That's one of the most powerful things people could do and it's one of the long lost arts and it could take as little as two minutes just a simple thank you note. I try to do that if I have just exceptional service at a hotel or a restaurant or I have a wonderful meeting with a long lost friend, just a sin to thank you Like, hey Jim, it was just awesome seeing you. I hope it doesn't go this long before we can hang out again. Congrats on the promotion, whatever it is, and that goes a long way.

Speaker 2:

I remember when I had my agency and I wrote a thank you note to a vendor of ours. They said it was the first note they had ever received in the history of their career and on, sorry, it was a prospect and that's what closed the deal. Actually that stood out so much. So you know it could be sales. A lot of folks are transitioning to that a little bit more for kind of different motives, but the human connection with writing a note is powerful. So we could keep going on kind of quick tips and whatnot. But I'd say first start with the inventory. Where am I at? What habits am I doing that either aren't productive to my life and my goals or aren't making me feel healthy and what's? Chip away at those. And then from there, how can we get more advanced and start kind of getting more connection and introducing new habits. So it's habit breaking of bad habits and then habit forming of new, better ones.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I like In the idea of the whole, like memory, compounding what you just talked about presence and taking those moments to find gratitude. I mean there's so much to impact just behind, like the science behind gratitude practices throughout the day and what it does and how it, you know, opens up your perception. The example I always use is when you start to be purposeful about those little acts of gratitude. It's like buying a car and then driving around on the street and realizing there's a lot more people that own that vehicle Now that you're aware of it. And you find these moments throughout the day where it's a little note on the back of a receipt or it's something that was an amazing conversation that you had with somebody, because you weren't A distractor to you, were in another place while you were in that person's presence, and I think the power to behind just showing people my phone is not as important to me as this moment with you speaks volumes when forming relationships, the depth of relationships you can form, people's feeling of safety and having a conversation with you and how deep the topics will go. I find that keeping my phone away has really opened up those conversations as as that has become more and more present in life and you start to notice it more. So I think presence as well kind of has this compounding effect that as you start to implement these practices you start to notice more. And then you implement more practices and you start to expand even more and the next thing you know, it's normal for you to go to a concert and want to put your phone away.

Speaker 1:

You know, it's kind of this journey that you end up on and one day I find myself now at two years later. It's been, you know, work trying to get those habits moving. But I get to like nine o'clock at night. The sun starts to set. I feel myself reaching for the do not disturb and making sure that my Walmart alarm clock is set for my morning and plugging my phone into the living room. But that was not the very beginning of the journey.

Speaker 2:

No, absolutely so. A couple examples to piggyback on that. So the in terms of presence next time you go for a walk or a workout outside, just leave your phone. If you need your phone for emergencies, like, bring a backpack and just throw it in there. It's a very different experience just holding your phone on a walk versus not having it physically touching you. I promise you're just going to see new things in your neighborhood and your community and you're going to feel different. Same with workouts and we're working with a couple physiologists and workout professionals and actually the varsity golf team at the college level, the.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting how phones are impacting athletics and chemistry of muscle building and we're seeing negative impacts just from like, even on bricks. So in the golf example and I can't speak to the science of this yet, we're still researching it and working with this team but in between some of their practices or in between I'm not familiar with golf terminology yet but in between their swings or what not, kids are on their phones and that's throwing off their focus and their concentration for the rest of the sport. So it's absolutely huge in the gym. There's lots of studies there and you know, on your, on your rest periods in between sets, not looking at your phone, has big impacts on on how your muscles atrophy, etc. Another presence example, though and you mentioned it on giving your attention is with kids, and I'm wildly passionate about kids. I have two young ones.

Speaker 2:

When you're and it's become so common when you're with your kid, whether you're doing Legos or playing a video game or whatever it is, admit there's a ding. Whether it's a text or notification or something coming in, you stop that interaction. And that's doing two things One, you're missing out on the interaction it's interrupting, and then, two, it's telling your child there's something else more important than this interaction right now, and that might sound a little dramatic. In some cases it might be an emergency. I get that. But when you do that over and over again and it's always ding, okay, hold on, let me look at my phone. Or, oh, ding, let me go get that that's not a good message growing up and that's not something I grew up with and I could only imagine the impacts that's gonna have longer term. Same thing when you're out at lunch, you know if someone's making the time to have a meaningful meal with you. You owe them that respect and they owe you that respect to not be distracted by the phone.

Speaker 2:

Don't even have the phone on the table. Some people think, okay, I'm gonna just turn it off and have it physically on the table. You can't even see it. If you see it there's lots of studies here too it just raises anxiety because you're worried that the other one's waiting for this call and it's there. So have it out of sight, out of mind, and you're gonna enjoy the conversation more.

Speaker 2:

And for a lot of people that's difficult We've become used to. So over 65% say that they pretend to check their phone to avoid talking to people, and a lot of times that might be in the subway or in transit or at the soccer pickup. They don't wanna talk to a mom, they don't like whatever it is. So I get it, but that's pretty scary. Over 65% are pretending to check their phone to avoid talking to people.

Speaker 2:

So a lot of folks are very uncomfortable with interaction and human connection. That said, I don't think they want to be that way. I think that they just don't know how, and especially with COVID, they've lost the ability, or they've hurt the ability, to have those connections and to communicate. My last point there, and I'm gonna go up off track a little bit. One thing we're seeing consistently with teenagers is not being set up for success on real world communication. So we're seeing decreases of empathy and decreases in communication skills because they're growing up getting phones at a very early age, getting social media at a very early age, and they're not learning how to resolve conflicts in person and not learning how to communicate. So they get out of high school, they get to college and it's a mess. So we're seeing that a lot.

Speaker 1:

So I went off track there a little bit, but yeah, well, I think to just double click on that point.

Speaker 1:

I had a conversation with my well, she was my intern.

Speaker 1:

She now is a part-time employee with the agency, but Alyssa's 20, I'm gonna say 20 years old, 21 years old, and she was telling me the other day she feels like she has this fear of saying like what's on her mind when she's in person with people, because she's like what if they react like it's a Twitter thread?

Speaker 1:

Her idea of having a contentious point or a conversation in person is so like people are just gonna go off the wall, things are gonna degenerate really quickly, everyone's gonna get agitated and we're gonna just argue about this thing where I know that in-person conversations typically don't degenerate like that on a regular basis and that there's more opportunity for those types of maybe a difficult conversation or a question that you're a little bit nervous about asking in an in-person setting, because we have those body cues, we have tone of voice, we have all these other mechanisms that are meant to help us communicate in person. So I thought it was interesting that, like her perception of what the conversation could turn into was giving anxiety to the point where not even wanting to ask the question in that setting because she's assuming that it's going to emulate the way that conversations will go on social sometimes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I would say that feeling is real. I agree with you, and that's a technique to diffuse. Actually, the more in-person you can get, the less likely someone's going to react, Rachele, if you will. So email is better than social, phone call is better than email and person's better than the phone. So the more you can get that interaction, the better you're going to be able to kind of control the environment and not let things get out of hand. But yeah, that's a real emotion. It's a toxic environment. So some other folks in our focus group and a lot of our studies say one reason so one reason they're leaving social or cutting down social is because the impacts of time and screen time. But another is just it's become such a toxic environment in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2:

And it's easy for people to be mean on social. It's much harder to be mean in person. Yeah, you're still going to have folks that could be real jerks and really hurtful in person, but it's much more difficult and just human nature. It's much less likely. But to her point, yeah, I mean you've spent years in a toxic Twitter environment and Facebook environment and I empathize with that and that's tough and it takes some time to start getting that confidence level, to be able to have those conversations and to be able to speak up. But that's something that we need to work on as a community and the more that you're around like-minded individuals, the easier it's going to be.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So I want to rewind for just a split second, just for my listeners' sake. I always talk about, like the some of the deeper science behind principles and why the brain actually, you know it makes sense physiologically as to what's going on, and I want to dissect that golf example a little bit and then we'll can spend the last couple of minutes here. I always like exchanging advice. I think both of us are very focused on actually walking the walk and trying to live these types of lives of balance with tech, so I'd like to exchange a piece of advice at the end of this, just things that we do in our personal day and our personal lives that really impact us. So with this golf, I thought that was so unique, especially the way that you set that up. It's somebody having to do a task that requires an intense amount of focus and what's called proprioception. Proprioception is just a very fancy word of saying awareness of your body, which takes an additional layer of focus. Right? You're not just thinking, you're controlling muscle and there's all sorts of things happening in your nervous system, so your brain only has a certain amount of fuel. The word that we're gonna be dealing with right now are the hormone or the neurotransmitters called dopamine, right? So dopamine is one of these chemicals that allows you to move in and out of focus. It's the chemical behind pursuit and we only have a finite amount of it to dedicate to attention. It really heightens our ability to provide attention. So you're hitting those golf swings.

Speaker 1:

Traditionally, in between those swings you would be giving your brain a chance to refuel or reboot. What happens when you decide to start checking your phone is that dopamine, instead of kind of rising up and coming back down so it can hit another spike, it rises up and then it just kind of flutters at that top peak because you're scrolling or you're checking messages and our phones are giving us those little dope, a big hits. I've seen it can compare to like A phone. A smart phone is a modern day hypodermic needle for dope me. So you're now in between those sets, you're scrolling, your dope me level don't ever drop.

Speaker 1:

You're very much so likely to exhaust your ability to physiologically Prompt your body to even have the ability to focus Within maybe two or three rounds at that point where, as if you were giving your body that natural break in between those shots, you can last a lot longer at your body's natural rhythm and you can progress throughout that call set. So that's something that that really hit me when you were talking about that specific example. I'm like, wow, that is such a perfect Perfect I'm not, the only word that's coming to mind is the perfect example of what that principle actually implies, with the sequence of events that happens when you're practicing golf.

Speaker 2:

We have a new hit spot on on the medical science side. I think that other anecdotal side would be there's things to learn when you're not up at bat, so to speak, by watching the coach work with other players and listen. So yeah, your surroundings and be there for your teammates as well, and you know similar in the gym.

Speaker 1:

So you know if you're, if you're doing strength training and you're doing three minute rest between sets, whatever it is that you know that that's time to be focusing in and it could be boring, but your body is going to perform better and your workouts are going to be better, being less distracted, so yeah yeah, there's a body build I work out with that forces us to lock our phones in the locker when we go to work out, because he swears that by mind muscle connection for hypertrophy training and he's like you are not capable of forming mind muscle connection if you're even thinking about your phone in your front pocket, like you need to be fully focused on the contraction extension of the muscle group While you're lifting up, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

One thing you said, though, about kind of science of dopamine, made me think about. One of the innovations of the last fifteen years was endless scroll. So I don't know if you're old enough to remember pagination, where you had to click through page two, page three. Once that changed and that change not just for social, it's news, it's everywhere I don't think pagination exists anymore. E-commerce, wherever it is, I mean, that that's, it's a dopamine slot machine, so that there's never End. There's effectively never an end to the scroll. That's. That's a massive change, just in terms of how the brain interacts with what's going on in the screen. So that was one of the two big, big changes that really messed things up. The other one was the like button. In two thousand eight or nine, I think, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Amazing what to and I talk about this all the time on when I'm talking to developers will bring software engineers and people of that nature on the show, and I always find it fascinating. They tend to talk about the ethics of future implementation at this point, where you know we know things like infinite scroll, the like button, they had these effects and stuff and how much weight there is when you're working for somebody, like a meta or a twitter, or you know this large social platform that has billions of people and what goes into actually deciding is this feature going to be beneficial? What are the unintended consequences, which was not a conversation in two thousand eight when those features were originally being developed.

Speaker 2:

When I phone was released, steve jobs was promoting it as a better way for visual voicemail. Know if you remember the very first one?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was the.

Speaker 2:

That was the key feature being able to look at your voicemail. Great, this is. This is life changing. So At least on on that pitch it was. It was more primitive than we're using it now.

Speaker 1:

Right, right, well, okay, so our everyday lives and things, that things that you do, that you find help, bring you balance or keep you present, I'm super curious about, like something that's been impactful for you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I don't always succeed, but I but I try.

Speaker 1:

You know, there's several things so specific to phone use or just anything just anything as far as like in this digital detox land, with our interactions with tech and finding balance.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'll get into the tech side. I think three fundamentals for me just in general with life are sleep, exercise and personal health kind of falls into those two buckets and those are. Those are absolutely critical to me. Nothing will ever get in the way within my power of keeping my exercise routine and getting good quality sleep. Nothing else comes above that. I mean, yes, family emergency, for for sure, but those are critical In terms of tech use.

Speaker 2:

You know it's a bunch of different things for me. So one I deleted A lot of apps off my phone. I don't have any notifications outside of SMS and my alarm system and maybe one other that's, you know, non, non regular and SMS. There's only like three people that text me and my mom, my wife and a couple friends, so that's not active. So removing notifications is key. There's a caveat we can talk to about that if you want to. But Moving notifications, removing apps I don't have any social apps on my phone. Sometimes I'll have linked in if I know there's a critical thing that I need. If I'm on like a linked in live and I'm gonna be traveling, I'll put it on just for that trip, just that.

Speaker 2:

Use no phones in the bedroom is one leave, I taught me at the very first retreat in 2011. In the bedrooms meant for a lot of other things intimacy, sleep, recharge, focus. It's not meant for phones, right. So no phones in the bedroom. That's a pretty hard role. No scrolling before bed, no phones before, but I really try to have an hour to really wind down and get into my sleep routine. Sometimes more try to get a couple hours before, but If it's a busy day or there's some things going on, it might be an hour. Absolutely no phones at the dinner table. That's just a hard stop. No technology that in a table. If I'm out, I leave my phone in the car, I bring it back or put it in just no, no phones out.

Speaker 2:

When I'm interacting and I think one of the bigger things is with my kids I'm just being very mindful of trying to be present with them and also lead by example. One of the problems that we have with middle schoolers and high schoolers adopting A lot of bad habits and I'm not shaming parents by any means. It's hard as a parent, especially now. I get it, but when you grow up seeing your parent constantly on their phone, it's hard to criticize a teenager for being constantly on their phone. So I'm trying to set that example. I'm not always perfect, but I try to set that, to be present and pick those times. And sometimes that means saying, look, I can't hang out right now because I really need to work or do this project or do this podcast, but when it is time I try to.

Speaker 2:

I try to be very deliberate with my time. So when I'm working, I'm extremely focused on my work and I don't want any distractions. And when I'm with my family or my friends, I'm trying to be intimately focused on that. So, one activity at a time, no other things. You know, gratitude is a huge, huge part of my life.

Speaker 2:

I, I, I try to do, you know, whether it's graduate journaling or just gratitude thinking when I'm on my runs or workouts. That's extremely important Handwritten notes and it's. It's hard sometimes. You know it's. It could take time and you don't have the, you might be traveling and not have your stationery etc. But I try to do that. That brings me a lot of joy.

Speaker 2:

And I think the last thing I mean there's lots of little sub things with the, with the tech rules of my settings on my phone, little things like that. But At the end of the day. You know what I mentioned. I every night I asked myself, like am I happy with how I kind of spent my time today, regardless of phone, just in life? I'm happy with the hours that I use today as a human, and then I'm happy with how I used them with my phone. If not, like okay, let's, let's identify, let me do better tomorrow. I think I could do better. Some days it's like wow, I nailed it today. Other days it's Wow for us, like you have to pick up your a game tomorrow, you're gonna be better. And baseball memory we start fresh tomorrow and and we do better. So there's probably a lot of other things I'm forgetting, but those are. Those are some fundamentals for those helpful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. I am, I think, the the only one that all that I'll throw in as we're wrapping up here as a piece of advice from my side of the house is when you have those days Like for us to saying, if you're listening and you're like man, I've had a couple of really rough days with tech or just being present. I'm gonna expand it beyond just tech because I think that that's like the wrong Lens, necessarily, but like I've had a rough couple of days of trying to be present, my mind feels like it's somewhere else. I'm anxious about Something to do with school, or I'm anxious because of technology, know whatever that trigger point is.

Speaker 1:

There's a really interesting and easy to access type of meditation practice called yoga. Need to, you can you tube it. It's a very, very simple practice. There's a woman in alley booth road. I'll link her in the description that I use when I'm starting to feel way overwhelmed 10 minute meditation.

Speaker 1:

If you can find a place to kind of lay down or sit, you can do this 10 minute. It's a very simple body stands of deep breathing work and it'll take you through your head to toe, bring you back down to center, and I found that that is a really great way if you feel yourself kind of stumbling and running off into the Into, that kind of my chest is tight, my shoulders feel tight and I'm, you know, second guessing decisions. I can't decide where. I even want to go to lunch because I'm so, you know, overwhelmed. That is one of those things that I've used as a tool to kind of get me out of that headspace and allow me to take that step back and say I need to get back to my gratitude practice or I need to, you know, x, y and z, so that's, that's something that I've used as, like a reversal agent of sorts will say I love that.

Speaker 2:

I think that's great and I think the add to that try not to be so hard on yourself. You know if your parent and you know parenting is really hard. Parenting teenagers with tech is extremely hard, one of the Parenting challenges of our generation. Nobody's so hard on yourself individually. We're all trying to improve in a lot of different areas exercise, nutrition, sleep, tech, etc. Do your best and try to make improvements. I think it was peter teah that was talking to the world, but more focused on nutrition and exercise. But you know it's. It's not so much about what. My consistency is obviously key, but what makes the great athletes great is being able to bounce back. Everyone's gonna have bad days, bad workout days, maybe even bad weeks. How fast can you Get back? Have that baseball memory and then focus on the next day? So same thing with tech and I might have a horrible day today and I run a company called digital detox, but I'm what I am good at is recognizing that and resetting pretty quickly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that. So if people want to find you or learn more where, where some places on the interwebs that people can connect, yeah, digital detox comms the best site for resources on on dd and products and stuff we have coming out.

Speaker 2:

Score that digital detox comms want to take the door score. For me personally, linkedin my main jam right now for spronzin on linkedin and I'm on facebook once a year, so don't get back there. I think it's been two years since I've logged in or posted on facebook. So there might be a social test on instagram at some point for for a book I might be writing, but for right now, linkedin is the main jam if you want to connect with me socially rocker roll.

Speaker 1:

Alright, brother, well, I appreciate your time. This is definitely I lived up to the height of the conversation I had in my head and hopefully this is the last time we'll have you on. I think that there's a lot of other areas that we could have spent some time on and and explore, so looking forward to talking to you more.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, look forward to that as well. Thanks for your time today.