Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 207: A Digital Minimalism Intervention (w/ JAMIE KILSTEIN)

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

In today’s episode, we try something different: a special two-part conversation in which Cal coaches his longtime friend, comedian and podcast pioneer Jamie Kilstein, through a digital declutter. The first part of the conversation ends with Cal’s prescription for Jamie, while the second part picks up six weeks later to check in on how things actually went.Thanks to our Sponsors:Miracle.com/CalGrammarly.com/DeepBetterhelp.com/deepquestionsStamps.comThanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, and Mark Miles for mastering. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 207. I'm delighted to be back at my beloved Deep Work HQ. I spent the last couple of weeks hiding out up in the mountains of Vermont. Because of this trip, though, you'll notice two things different about today's episode. Number one, it's a little late. I wanted to wait until I was back for my trip to record. so we had the push the schedule just slightly. We'll be back on our normal schedule again next week.

The other thing you'll notice is that it is not a standard episode format. It is not me and Jesse answering questions. Instead, I am experimenting with something a little bit different. It is a two-part interview. Unlike a standard podcast interview, which is more about just interviewing the guest about their ideas or what they're known for, this is something more personal.

It is a messy real-world case study of digital minimalism in action. So let me give you the quick backstory here. This two-part interview is with a old friend of mine named Jamie Kielstein. And I really do mean old friend in the sense that we were friends in elementary school. That's when we first met. We grew up in the same town. During junior high school, we played in a rock. band together. So it's someone I knew when I was a kid. Now, Jamie dropped off the radar at some

point during high school because he actually literally dropped out of high school altogether. When he next came back into my life, he was a successful working comedian. I remember going to a big show he was doing. It was probably up in Davis Square in Somerville in Massachusetts, right outside of Cambridge. It was a show that I think also featured Janine Garofalo. He was a successful comedian at this point. I knew vaguely he was also early in on podcasting. He was a co-host of one of the first really popular political podcast citizen radio. Then he sort of dropped off my radar screen again. And I next encountered him much more recently. When I was in L.A. on the book tour for digital minimalism, Jamie and I turned out to share friends in common with the minimalist. And so I was there.

I was hanging out with the minimalist. And Jamie was around. and it was great to see him again. We caught up. This was back in 2019. And I learned that Jamie had gone through a pretty tumultuous up and down roller coaster of a life in the intervening year since I had last seen him. He had first been on one extreme, had gotten really into sort of a scolding variant of progressive politics. His radio show was very progressive that he co-hosted.

there's a sort of, I don't know if it's cringy, but there's a somewhat infamous Joe Rogan interview with Jamie you can find from years back where it's Jamie lecturing Joe about being insufficiently feminist. So as he went that way, he sort of burned some of his connections with the world of comedy. And then things swung back the other direction. There was some sort of controversy. I don't, we don't need to get into the detail, some sort of controversy with his co-host and ex-wife. There was a sort of real early version of a cancellation. It looks kind of minor by the standards of what came later. But it was very, I know it was very difficult for Jamie. So then he lost that, his connection to that world as well. So he was sort of thrown adrift. And by a time I met him again doing the book tour for digital minimalism, he was talking about how social media and Twitter in particular had really become a dark force in his life. Because of the various public

controversies and arguments and shamings that he's been in. Social media, especially Twitter, had become really quite toxic for him. And so we began talking about this issue. We stayed in touch and we had this idea more recently. Why don't you go through some sort of a digital declutter? Like the type of thing I recommend in my book, Digital Minimalism, to rebuild a healthier relationship with technology and to free yourself from its darkest grasp. And so last fall, he seemed ready to try something like this. And he had to suggest. He said, why don't you interview me? I'll walk through my problems with social media. You give me your prescription. So we did that. In December, I interviewed him. And we talked through, okay, what's going on? Let's hear your life story a little

bit. Let's hear about your story of social media. I gave him my prescription for digital declutter. All right. We then let a month or so pass. And then in the new year, I interviewed him again to find out how did it go? This is what I mean about the messy realities. of digital minimalism. This is a real life, a complicated life. It's having real struggles with social media. We get those details. Then we get to jump forward in time. And we're going to hear the second part of the interview where we get to hear the messy reality of the results. Not one of these cookie cutter 300 word anecdotes you see in airport self-help nonfiction where it's everything was bad. And then I did this and everything was great. This is a real or more

messy story. So anyways, this is an experiment because I was away from vacation and missing my normal standard recording session, I thought, why don't we release this two-part interview? So that's what we're going to do. But first, I just want to quickly note, Jamie is an incredibly talented comedian. This podcast is about, in particular, his struggles with social media.

But I want to emphasize that he is very talented. You should check out his stand-up. I want to point out in particular his podcast. Excuse my rare instance of cursing here, but the podcast is called a fuck-ups guide to the universe, a fantastic podcast funny and deep. So you will get in this podcast, Jamie's world-class ability to do comedic storytelling rants.

I think he's one of the best in the business at it. He also has on guests. He has a real following for this podcast in particular from people who appreciate his really raw and honest discussions of his own issues with mental health. I think he's helped a lot of people who are struggling with mental health issues as well. So I think it's an important show as well as a funny show. So again, I'm going to be talking to Jamie about Twitter. But he's a talented guy.

Check out his podcast. It'll make you laugh. It'll make you think. All right. That's enough about that. Let's talk about a sponsor real quick before we jump into our interview with Jamie. there are few things in life worse than being hot while you try to sleep. Now, maybe being dragged into the water and killed by an alligator, that would be worse, fair enough.

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and use code Cal-25. You might not be able to avoid being drowned and devoured by alligators, but you can avoid a hot night sleep. with the miracle comforter. I also want to talk about grammarly. There are a few things more important in the world of work than being clear and correct in your communication. If you can do this, people will take you seriously.

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and helping you communicate the way you want to. So get your point faster and accomplish more with Gramerly. Go to Grammarly.com slash deep to sign up for a free account, and when you're ready to upgrade to Gramerly Premium, you will get 20% off just for being my listener. That's 20% off at G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y.com slash deep. And now the first part of my interview with Jamie Kielstein. All right, Jamie Kielstein, it finally happened.

We are podcasting together. it has been a while since you and I have performed together, but it has happened before. It has. By the way, you're cool if I scroll Twitter during this entire interview, right? Just keep up on what's happening. Is that your brand? Hold on. Yeah, yeah, but hold on.

I'm just pressing publish here on my TikTok. Okay, what are you saying? Well, actually, if you can hold on one second, I want it to Instagram story, you publishing on TikTok. I think that could be quite a, quite a scandalous headline. Yeah, my clubhouse group is going to my other year here, so I have to hold on. Let me, let me mute. Clubhouse. Ooh, I just got a like on Tinder.

Clubhouse was one that clubhouse is that not a thing anymore. Tinder, I'm pretty sure it's all like Russian bots that are like, you want good time. And it's like all scams. I miss the window on Tinder. Clubhouse, I don't know, man. Clubhouse, I remember a musician who I very much respect, send me an invite like, hey, I know you don't want to be on more social media or new social media, but this is like some elite. And I fell for it for like five minutes.

And I was like, this is terrible. I'm getting off it. And then TikTok, everyone tells me I should do because I started over quarantine making sketches on Instagram, like comedy sketches. And I just do, I just, I can't. I can't. I just can't do it. So I'm still stuck on Instagram.

Twitter, but yeah, the other ones, the other ones I can't do. Not to cut you off, buddy. Yes, we have performed together and not in a TED Talk-esque capacity, but in a you rocking out on guitar. Does your audience know that? They know very little about me. So let's set the stage. Sure. Let's set the stage with trepidation. So Jamie and I grew up in the same town. The mean streets of Pennington, Pennington, New Jersey. Sure. And we played in a rock band together.

So let's get, let's get into what happened. Okay. With the story, let's fill in now these beats between middle school gym and giant theater. Yeah, I can jump to comedy. I'm also sadly realizing that I'm always the person that's like,

hey, let's do this thing. Like when I started jujitsu 20 years ago, I started with five friends. And very quickly, I was the only one left. right i'm always sort of like the psycho who's like hey like we're going to do this or let's start a sketch group or let's do that and and and and usually uh people bail i started stand-up comedy

so that i couldn't get left behind like i started stand-up because i'm like okay i'm the only one who can make or break this i'm not going to have a band bail on me and so i dropped that the stage but i wanted the stage that was the only thing yes that was the closest you could get Without interesting. Exactly. It was the only thing that I knew how to do. I mean, dude, I had a teacher, when I made the decision to drop out, this is so wild that it should have gotten him fired. It's made my life great.

But I had a teacher take me aside and go, I just want you to know you're the smartest kid I have in here. And you have a 12 in my class. And now for everyone listening, we didn't go to a school where we didn't go to like one of those like hippie schools where we were like there was a different grading system. I had a 12 out of 100. But he could tell I was smart because I wouldn't read the book, but I could figure out enough about the characters by listening to the other kids answer the questions that, you know, if he asked something about the Joy Luck Club, I could be like, I don't know. She should have divorced him. And he's like, I know you didn't read it. Like you're right.

But I know you didn't read it. And so he took me aside and he lit, dude, he literally told me he goes, I just want you to know that school's not for everyone. And then like a scene from Goodwill Hunt, he gave me his copy of Jack Kerouac's on the road and then said nothing else. And I was like, message received, buddy. And that was so helpful for me because I would have, I would have dropped out anyway. But, you know, perception, man, it. Still, to this day, let alone when you're that young, when I thought, before he said that,

and, you know, I really looked up to him, I thought that dropping out just meant you're a drug dealer or a criminal or just some kind of scumbag. And so when he kind of saw that I was going down that route and told me that, no, it's not for everyone. And that's okay. what happened was I started treating comedy like a job. And so I started taking the train in every day to do horrible open mics at the time. I was just like terrified.

Now you're taking it seriously because this is it, right? It's it. And then I just I just did what you're supposed to do. I just did open mics as much as I could. And then, you know, the next up of shows with such a scam, which they're called bringer shows. where not only do you not get paid, but you have to bring a certain amount of paying customers in order to get five minutes of stage time. So I was dragging people in from New Jersey thinking it would be good shows because all New York

Comedy Clubs lie and they're like, you'll never know who's going to stop by. I know who's going to stop by 100 bad racist comics. These shows were just like these three-hour train wrecks of just nightmares of brand new comics like trying to do their best Andrew Dice Clay or whatever and you know people were taking New Jersey transit an hour and a half to into the city

to see a show at like some horrible comedy club and so I did that and eventually ended up me and Pete Holmes who did that HBO show about this about we handed out

flyers in in front of the Boston Comedy Club and And again, started getting unpaid, you know, stage time. We would hand out flyers in the cold for four hours in order to get five minutes at 1230 at night after Dave Chappelle just finished and the entire audience left with him except, you know, two tourists who didn't speak English and had no idea who Dave Chappelle was and did that for a while. And you just, you know, it's like everything, right? You just, you do it. You try to get better at your craft. You bomb a lot.

then the right person sees you. Mark Marin took me out to open for him a couple of times and some other comics did. And then word got out that, you know, Mark liked me. But this is the important part. So first of all, just briefly explained to craft a comedy. People don't understand it. A lot of people out there who are funny in the sense of conversationally, they're funny. This seems very remote or distinct from like the very specific craft that is comedy.

So what is it that makes it when you move up to that next level and you start opening for people? What is it? What is the thing? What is the thing that is being mastered there? What makes the professional comedian versus the people stuck on the bringer level? There's a craft piece, which is timing and I don't know the terminology, but like tickers. Well, I mean, I mean, you can use regular writing, right? Like economy of words.

I mean, the same you would as a writer. You don't want to like give too much. You don't want to give something away. There has to be callbacks. Call back. Yeah. And but, but even simpler than that,

like some sort of surprise, something that's, you know, the best jokes are something that's relatable, but relatable in the sense of like, oh, I thought I was the only one who thought that. Or sometimes you tell a story that,

you know, I've actually been talking, I never, I used to be way more political. And I still talk about sort of tribalism and stuff like that. But I'm talking. a lot about relationships because I never talked about relationships before and being single at

39 I think is more interesting than being 22 and talking about like I'm sleeping around. And I'm talking about relationships and some of the stories that I tell that do the best are so ridiculous that I'm like, how are they relating to it? And I realize that they're not relating to it because they also dated a crazy girl like that or they also hated themselves the way I did. They're dating it. They're laughing because they recognize that shame or they recognize that desperation or they recognize and it just makes them feel, oh, like I'm not as crazy. So somehow it's like being relatable but also not being obvious, not being hacky, right?

Like there's a bunch of stuff like that. And then yes, I assume your other one. It's just being yourself, being authentic. Right. So I'm going to make it three parts. Let's try this. So part one, there's like a, there's a, there's a, I'm just going to throw it out here and then you tell me what's right, what's wrong. Sounds like there's, there's a peer craft piece of just like word choice and timing and what makes a good joke.

And I've never done stand up, but we've talked about before, like in college, I made a pretty serious run at comedy writing. Because, you know, there's Ivy League comedy writing societies are into it. And it's, it's, that's just the word craft piece of it. So, yeah, I can't use this word again. And I also really quick, I want to say this in the beginning, but it wasn't appropriate. And every time I talk to you, even if it's on text, I immediately call my family or text them and go, hey, just a reminder, Cal Newport is my funniest friend. Like more than any of the famous comedians. And like, we just have a similar sensibility.

Yeah. But the keys are such a difference between that. And this is what I'm very fascinated to hear what you're talking about is like, yeah, so there's like the written word. There's like the craft of word choice and surprise or this or that. then it sounds like you're saying there's a content craft, which is like the content relatable, what you choose to talk about has to hit people in the right way.

They can understand it like you don't, you know, so then there, and then there's the third piece, what seems to be the piece that differentiates to people who make a real run at it, which is the authentic voice. And you put those three together because you see a lot of comedians and comedy clubs that have the first two,

you know, it's like, yeah, like great, they have the craft. down. Oh, that's a well-constructed joke. And he took me that way and they went that way. And you just are like, okay. And I've seen you perform. Like I would say like last time I saw you perform in DC. It's, it's fine. Like opening act. I know that I know of the guy's funny. But like you came on and there was a person. Like it was something elevated. Just to get back to my Jamie self-hate, I think another reason that I like being a writer first is because I just want to know. know something's going to work. I want, if I'm doing a new joke and I don't know how it's going to go, I want to know that my next joke is a banger and just kills. And so once I have the safety net

of that laugh, I can try to throw on tags and extra lines just to, because I'm riding the wave of that laugh. And if, you know, a little tag or a little throwaway line I come up with doesn't work, It doesn't really matter because that bit just killed. And then I move to the next joke that killed. So I specifically am a writer and then I leave room to extend and to improvise. Or, you know, a lot of times if the comic before me says something or I see the audience do something, I'll write a line in my head where I go, oh, I'm going to open with that. You know, like in Tampa, I was talking about, you know, Texas's reaction to COVID and was making fun to Texas. But then I had a line where I was like, oh, no, sorry, I was making fun of Florida's reaction.

But then I had a line where I was like, I can't judge. I'm from Texas. You guys are pretty much like the same. I think I called Florida like the Texas of the sea or something. And that was just a line I thought about it will only work that week. You know, if now the cocaine thing, that was like. like a big thing. But if I if I got back to Austin and I was

like, hey guys, I was in Tampa last week and I called them the Texas of the sea or if I did a show in New York and was like Texas and Tampa like no way is that going to get a laugh. That was just something that was fun for that couple days

and that's it. Does that make sense? Yeah. Well, so it's a hard job. I mean, because it sounds like there's like this whole writing aspect, which is constant and hard. And then there's this whole, I have to somehow craft,

especially what an actor has to do. I have to craft this authentic persona that I can inhabit that comes across as relatable, even though it's in an incredibly artificial environment. There's spotlights on me and I'm holding a microphone for some reason. And somehow,

and somehow I have to create a character there that feels conversational or what have you with all this hard writing. Oh, and then I have to, do writing on the fly because it's the only way to get new information. So then I have to throw in the terror of having this crowd. And it's not always very nice crowds. I mean, it's a really hard job.

So then to get to the original motivators for this conversation, a big thing to change while you went to your comedy career was the arrival of social media. Complicated, right? What is today for a comedian today? What is the role of social media? What is the role of it in your life? In my life, it's hell. Absolute hell is the role.

For most comedians, it's great. I mean, there are people who have never done comedy who are selling out comedy clubs because of TikTok videos. Most of those people learn very quickly that they can't just suddenly construct a stand-up show and they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, bomb and that's that. I'm not one of those comedians that will be like, oh, I can't believe these people get to do comedy clubs. It's like, it is what it is, man. Everyone's trying their best.

If you get an audience, cool, do your thing. But, you know, so many people got discovered by just doing, you know, one-liners on Twitter and they blow up and they get a book deal. Right. So that was a big thing, right? What's it called comedy Twitter or something? I don't know what the name? Probably.

Yeah. Right. So Twitter was a big thing. I just remember when Conan used it to resurrect his re-energize his career after. Yeah. Night show. It started with MySpace. And MySpace is how I started to get fans.

When I lived out of my car for two years and just played coffee houses. And I would just post my political stuff on MySpace. And I reached out to, you know, Doug Stanhope on MySpace. And that's why I opened for him. And, you know, it was before it was talking. The most toxic thing that happened about MySpace is you were mad at someone for not putting them in your top eight or whatever. And yeah, and then Facebook. I mean, Rogan discovered me on Twitter, you know, back before he was sort of huge, like he saw a bit of stand-up of mine.

And now it's really interesting because people are breaking. But I also feel like we're also just trying desperately to stay relevant. It's super unhealthy. And I kind of wanted to like, like pry you into using me as a test dummy to like get me off social media. If I tweet something negative that's funny, it'll do so much better that if I just tweet like, hey, I really liked Hawkeye and then I'll get like one like. And so you're not really like on Twitter, you're not really incentivized to be like, here's something good in the world. Right. And so that's a bummer.

you obviously have all the stuff that you've discussed. You have, you know, comparison. You're getting mad at people. There's fear of missing. What's like, why am I not on this festival? Why is that guy? Oh, that guy's not funny. Like, you can just torture yourself. The thing I noticed that really wanted me where I was like, the timing of this podcast could not have been more perfect is, okay, if somebody tweets something terrible at me, it's not fun, right? If somebody posts something about me, that's not true. Not fun. It makes sense why I'm upset, right?

And people go get up social media. The really interesting thing that happened to me is, and look, I've been dealing with depression and stuff like that. But I went to see my family for Thanksgiving. And it was two of the most lovely days of my life. And my brother, Mark, just had a baby. She's precious. She loves me.

We have the same birthday. They have a dog. The dog also loves me. It was just as good of a scene as possible. And when I got there, I go, you know what? You know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to resurrect my stand-up career. So I've been on my phone a lot. I'm trying to hype up the podcast.

So I've been on my phone a lot. And I was like, I just want to be present with my family. So I turned my phone off the second I walked in the door, gave it to my sister-in-law. I said, hi, this for me. Not going to have it for two days. And it's great. It was everything I thought it would be, right? There was no part of me that even wanted to check it for a minute.

And the night before my last day, I have to check in because my flight was on Southwest where they make you like hunger games your way to a seat. And so I had to like check in like on the dot. And so I get my phone. and the next day I have been a full-blown depression, existential crisis. I'm checking my phone over and over again. And the thing that kind of freaked me out was nothing bad happened, man. No one said a negative, I just had a bunch of really nice comments about some mental health post I made on Instagram.

A couple like famous people I look up to. A pro wrestler wrote me a really nice thing. Like it was nothing but good. but yet and granted obviously some of it's going to be family right could it could it be that i felt like a failure because my brother's doing so well and not resent you know like there are always family dynamics it's always weird but the way i kept suddenly wanting to go back to my phone the second it was unlocked again was in that very attic way it was in that very i'm just going to have a sip of alcohol give me give me give me give me it was barney again i just wonder like is there a way that someone in my

position can get off social media because, God, I would do it in a heartbeat. Well, I think it's an interesting question. I want to push on it first because I think you're emblematic of lots of different positions and lots of different situations people are in where it feels terrible and it feels necessary. So I think this is good. So you're a stand in, you're a stand in, I think, for a lot of people who write me. But I want to pick a part just briefly. Let's pick apart briefly what you actually said.

He said, I'm trying to get my, let's say, stand up going again. So I need to be on my phone. You mentioned email. You mentioned getting your fans out. But then you contrasted that to like, well, Rogan can just post things and not have to read it. I don't know. I didn't hear anything in what you said. And I'm actually honestly curious about this, that where you seen comments.

comments from other people actually plays really a critical role. Yeah, I mean, for me, because I was so political and divisive back in the day, like, if someone posts something that's like libelous about me, I'm like, I don't like, I want to get rid of it. That doesn't happen that much anymore. But also, I mean, what is what's the thing that gets to you? I mean, it tends to be with a lot of people. It's the weird simulacrum uncanny valley of social back and forth interaction on these pseudo-anonymous

platforms. It activates all the relevant circuits, but it's not quite right. And it's sent you into a weird place. It's like this, you know, these neon colored whatever sugar balls. Like, this looks like food. I'm hungry. Food's good. We have to eat.

And you're like, this is. It's not quite right. You know. And like my stomach is completely screwed up. Yeah. And that used to be me. And like I talked about it on Rogan when I was like. like super political and I would yell at people online to get the validation and like, um,

you know, and I was obsessed with it because I was really depressed. And now it's not even like I'm fighting with people. It's, you know, I think part of it is all of my connections I've made from social media. Best case scenario, I'm talking to a cool girl on Instagram. I'm DMing with a celebrity on Twitter. Um, what do you do while you're waiting for them to write back where you're scrolling and what happens when you're scrolling well it's people making themselves look better than you or better than they are it's people understandably bragging about things it's really divisive toxic news it's zero nuance zero gray area it's all if you believe this you're a nazi if you believe this you're a communist and so then yes you can use it for these professional things but in between

you're just being fed this just like just a buffet of just garbage. Yeah. Well, what if we threw digital minimalism at this, right? Which, you know, it's a philosophy that based on its name,

it's often misunderstood. So people think it's digital minimization. So, okay, you've got to minimize as much of these tools out of your life as possible. But minimalism, I mean, we're both,

this is our mutual friend. Like, when we were hanging out in L.A., we were hanging out with the minimalist. We both know them. Oh, yeah, yeah, Joshua, right? So if you think about what they talk about, like minimalism really is,

is about hyperintention, right? So digital minimalism, I'll throw this out here, but that philosophy is saying, okay, you start with what are the things that are important, what do I want to, what I want to spend my time on, what I want to get after, like, what's important to me in my life? What am I trying to do with my life? What are the things that really matter, right?

You figure that out. And then you can say, okay, like probably for these, there's ways tech can help. So let's figure that out. Like for this thing that's really important to me, you know, how could tech amplify it? But now you're coming back to tech with a purpose. Like, oh, in this case, I'm trying to whatever.

Like, Jiu-Zitsu is really important to me. There's probably some ways that tech could kind of amplify that. But because you have a specific reason why you're using it, it's very easy to come in and say to kind of optimize it. Like, well, I don't need this on my phone and I just would have this account that I just do this with. And let me stay away from these type of things. And you end up with a bespoke set of tools and rules that are all working backwards from like,

these are the five things I want to spend my time doing it. And so like let's just spitball on being out there for people. I mean, you're a great advocate. Your podcast is fantastic on this about helping people through mental health issues because you talk about your own and it's authentic and it's funny. And so it's very important to you, right? I want to be able to talk about it and have dialogues about it and actually help other people. But if you go backwards and figure out, okay, so how can tech amplify that?

Well, of course it can, right? And like your podcast is an example. It's a very intentional deployment. Here is a thing. I have this podcast. I can deploy it. People can listen to it. It's an intimate forum where we can talk for a long time and it's not not quick things. And you could start thinking through other technologies like, well, what else could be a real cost benefit win here? You know, like maybe there should be a community where like it's a big Facebook group or it's a, you know, a slack. I know guys who do this with, it's a Slack thing where it's like just the members are on it and they're there for them.

But anyway, it's like, once you know what you're using the tech for, it's, you can start to think, well, how do I actually want to use it? Which is the opposite, not the preach, but it's the opposite of what the social platforms want. They hate that thinking. They want there to be this weird binary thinking of either you don't use any of these

technologies at all or you're all in in the ecosystem. You got to just in my thing. my veins. Yes. Yeah, you're either here, you're not. And then once you're here, and that's the discussion. Like, it's the discussion Mark Zuckerberg always wanted it to be. Social media is completely bad versus, you know, welcome to my, my evil nerd panopticon.

You know, it's got to be one of the two, you know? Yeah, because that's where I get caught is like these little things that in theory you tell yourself will help your career where it's like, okay, there's this like famous dude who started following me because I followed him and I have a blue chain. and he just wrote something. So I'm going to tag it with a joke. And then he laughed at that joke. So now, oh, cool, I can DM him about coming on the podcast. But again, in between all that, like you said, you're just kind of there. You're just hanging out.

And you told me once, too, that you were reflecting on it that like every big break you had came from someone seeing you just, perform really well. You know, it was actually being so good, you can't be ignored, like doing things at a high level and someone say that's good. But what scares me, dude, is like today, I still feel the pull like any addict for the times that I know I shouldn't be on it. Like today I was depressed and I just couldn't, I would just go Twitter, Instagram email, Twitter, Instagram email.

And I wasn't even doing anything. And then I would go, this is bad. So I would put my phone on airplane mode and I would put it on the other side of the room. And then I'd go, oh, wait, but I have this idea I'm going to email myself off airplane mode, Twitter, Instagram email. What that highlights there is something that showed up when I was doing this experiment for my digital minimalism book, right, 1,600 people go through a 30-day period without using these technologies. It's my literal dream. Yeah, well, we did it, but not everyone made it through. And the subgroup that had the hardest time was the group that tried to white knuckle it.

So that came out from the negative perspective of this stuff is bad. I want to do it less. So I'm just, I don't, from a moralistic standpoint, I'm not going to do it. And I'm just going to sit here and not use it. And it would, they would descend into existential despair, especially the young people. Like, what am I supposed to do? Like, I'm alone with my thoughts. And it's terrible, right?

Because like I said, those two days, but again, it's just two days. Those two days in Thanksgiving, there was no part of me that wanted to check it. But I will say today, I tried to go for a run without my phone today because I mistakenly listened to that one Andrew Heberman podcast about dopamine that everyone sends to their depressed friends because like five people sent it to me. And I would only check my phone during like little breaks, but even just not having. a podcast to distract me or music to distract me. I would say the first mile of my run, all of this like Buddhism, love everybody.

I've done psychedelics. I was, dude, I was the inner monologue of my head, everybody I saw. I was like, that person's fucking trash. I hate this person.

And it took me like halfway through my run just to be like, yo, your thoughts are terrible. And so I felt that. Yeah. Which everyone's thoughts are to some extent. But it's terrifying, especially if you're not used to it. I mean, and this is the big, like you at least have a, you're my age, you have a significant portion of your life before this was here.

So you can kind of remember what that's like. If you're 23, you don't. So it's harder. But the people in the experiment that had the easier time were incredibly active. So it was like, great. This is all going to be like experiments and activities and rediscovering this and going here and trying that and joining this. It was incredibly action focused, trying to rediscover what really matter, what really didn't it, what, what pressed the buttons, what didn't, what didn't it. That was the group that had a much easier time with it.

So it fills, the phones help paper over these pits of sort of existential despair, which are deeply human. And it's, they can help paper that over. And so that's why it's hard to just say, stop using the phone. And the people who are able to rewire those habits, say, I got to do something about the damn pit. You know, like, we got to work on that. We got to get this pay. We got to build a thing over it and understand it and it's kind of hard.

And then they don't, they're like, then I don't need to, I don't need to avoid that, right? Like that purpose goes away for the phone use. And there's still, there's also just, there's a sheer addictive element that takes about 10 days to go away. So the reflex takes about 10 days, 10 to 14, depending on how ingrained it. It's like the reflex are like, I have to look at this. There's an addictive, just brain wiring piece to that. That can go away pretty. quickly. It's the later, the conceiving of, this is not the thing I go to to deal with this

very real issue. So practically for people who are listening to this, because over Thanksgiving, I did, it wasn't just I was with my family. It was, I was running with my brother. We were lifting weights. We went down to the beach. I made sure I started meditating twice a day again instead of once a day. Then family time. And in fact, the one time I felt myself. go to my pocket was when one of my parents started having a very serious conversation with me. And I was like, uncomfortable, which, of course, that's when you would reach for the phone. And so something I've tried to do. Like another thing I did is when I'm at the gym now, I turn my phone off.

I'm like, I don't want to in between sets or when I go to the bathroom, look at it. Or I don't want to look at it before I go in the sauna. Like, I want to, that is my gym time to get healthy. meditation is my meditation time. You know, when I go on walks, I'll try to put it on airplane mode and just listen to music. But what is the practical advice for? So let's say I catch myself, right? So right before I was doing this interview, I was depressed, I was on the couch,

I was waiting for one piece of good news, and then I just keep scrolling. And I feel myself making a worse. I put my phone down at least three times on the table, kept picking it up without even noticing. Is it shut it off? Is it move it to another room? Is it sort of accept it and go, okay, well, at 6.30, I'm putting it away. Is it, like you said, instead of white knuckling it, instead of putting it on the counter

where I can still see it, is it go do something cool. Go meditate. Go take a walk. Okay. All right. So let me leave. I'm going to leave you with some things. All right.

So here is the challenge. challenge. Yes, this is what I want. Like the Jamie challenge. Okay. And anyone listening, feel free to do this with me, especially creators or whatever and message me about it. No, don't message me.

I'm not going to look. So number one, we're going to do some just a physical detox element, which by itself is not going to be enough. But let's just put this as the foundation. Your laptop, I want your laptop to become the thing that you essentially access the internet on. So taking the social media apps off your phone. on the Safari browser on your phone, log out so you don't have your password in there,

make the password a pain. So it's really not something you can easily log back into. I would start practicing at home, something like the phone foyer method where it's the phone gets plugged in by your door. And that's where it is. And you can have the ringer on. And so it's like if someone calls or you can go over there, but it's not with you as a default.

Oh, that's great. Yeah, I always have my ring around silent, which is another excuse to have it. Yeah. Yeah, you go 95 style. It's like it's a phone that rings. You go in the kitchen to. get. And then at the gym or something like this, you do, you leave in the glove compartment.

So I'm a big believer in that. Like, if there's an emergency, right, like you can go get it. But, but it's not on you. So this is just physical detox stuff, right? So it's making it harder. It's just not there as the default. Real quick. Is there an Instagram hack?

Because because I like Instagram more than Twitter, I've been making more like videos on Instagram, but you can't really do that from the computer. Instagram really wants you to be on the phone. I don't know if there's a hack to that. Yeah, it can make it like I do Instagram content like on Monday and then take it off. Just like I'll just do less. So I knew a fitness influencer once who had this issue. And so Instagram's so devious because of exactly that.

And he's going to phone now. So he started doing all of his content on a separate camera. I think he used a GoPro. And then they would upload it somehow. And so I don't know exactly how he did it, but he had the same problems. Yeah, look into it. But then that's what I'm going to suggest then too is basically for a couple week period, put your content production onto a schedule. Conan O'Brien it for a while.

It's like here's my content production. It gets posted if I can auto. There's tools like tweet deck and equivalence for Instagram where it's actually queued up and then it posted for me at certain times. And I don't want to see a comment. I don't care. I don't know about a like. My thing is putting my energy into the videos on producing, making them this one better than the last, like trying to innovate there, trying to do interesting stuff. And the tweet so you can Ryan Holiday it where you just sort of queues those things up.

And it just doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, do me. He has no idea what's, you know, who's saying what on his Twitter account. Right. So professionalize, I talked about that in digital minimalism, professionalize your social media presence where it's like a thing you're setting up on your computer. the thing goes out there. And so you're separating, using that, that spread the best possible content

from the elements of actually interacting with people and seeing what's going on. This is just an experiment, right? So you just say, like, I can do this for a couple weeks and maybe I'm going to lose all these gigs, but you're not.

So I think it'll be okay. That's really cool. Then third is the thing that made all the difference in digital minimalism, which was rebuilding the other parts of focusing on other parts of life. And like I'm going to, this is the, let me think about what's going on with, you know,

the fitness piece of it. You've done this before. But the social thing, I'm in the new city. You moved to Austin not long ago, getting plugged into this, finding things you can get plugged into where it's you sacrificing non-trivial time and intention on behalf of other people. That plays into our social circuits in such an incredibly profound way that gives a sense of connection and belonging to resilience that it just, you cannot simulate with,

bitmap characters on a glowing screen. So then it's like the Jamie project is starting to build out and structure my days professionally and personally. You know, I've been pushing you. I think you're brilliant in comedy and working that and getting back into that world. But from a really focus on the craft aspect. And that's a really interesting thing too because so I bailed on this Austin show the other day.

And I wonder if subconsciously part of me is like, yeah, but if I'm on Twitter, there are more people. I posted a video on Instagram and thousands of people saw it instead of these 30 people at a club. But it's like, who knows who would have been at that club. Plus, it's real.

And I am going to get more out of it. And craft is, I think, is very important. There's refuge in craft. There's interesting philosophical backstops for this notion. But honing your craft,

just in itself, the effort of woodshedding and honing the craft in itself is a a source of satisfaction and resilience. I mean, I just like that aspect of it. It's in the professional life becomes more craft honing back to that innovation, pushing forward on what you're doing. Your interactions with people happen in the real world.

I love that word. So I'm writing all this down. I just wrote rebuild my life. But I wrote it down and I love the word craft because, you know, I can actually give some advice now as well, which is like, if you're anybody who's trying to quit something, you know, for a New Year's resolution or you're trying to eat healthier, you're trying to exercise more, you're trying to stop drinking or whatever. For me, whenever you can frame it with something positive, like when I'm like, get off

my phone, you're being a piece of a needy piece of shit. I'm being mean to myself, which obviously makes me want to continue with that addictive behavior, right? So if you go to the gym just because you're like, oh, my wife called me fat, it's like, like, you're not going to last. but if you start doing jujitsu because you always wanted to learn how to fight, or instead of me being like, I'm getting off social media because my dumb brain can't handle it,

I'm going, no, no, no, I'm going to focus on my craft. Like that makes it sound so much more positive. And now I'm excited to become a better artist instead of feeling like I'm, I'm just too broken to handle social media. Yeah. And that was the punchline of that experiment is the, the people who have the sustainable change is because they're coming at it from the reason why I'm doing this with my technology is because it's part of this vision for my life that I love.

That's incredibly motivating. If there's something we feel really good about, like this vision of what I want my life to be, it's very positive and I want this. Then it's easy to say, well, why? That's why I'm not going to the phone and putting, you know, Twitter back on or this or that because it's not part of this plan. And I love this plan and what I'm going for. It never lasts if it's just I'm doing this.

too much, that's negative. Let me get negative out of my life. That doesn't last because you just negotiate. You're like, it's negative, but it's not completely negative. And I suck anyways because of this and let's just go on. Like, it doesn't work. I mean, we, the addiction world knows this and all sorts of other substance addictions. You don't, you don't kick the habit by just trying to convince yourself, I want to stop doing the bad thing. It's you, you kick the habit because you convince yourself of it's not part of this really good thing. I'm all in on the really good thing. And that was 100% what we observed when we're trying to help people with phones. I love this because, and I really didn't know, I knew I wanted to ask you about it,

but especially because, you know, I did step away from stand-up for a while. And so if I'm not getting a phone call, my instant is like, I guess I got to be tweeting more. But if I actually look at, yeah, the opportunities I've had, it's rarely from a tweet. And maybe I've gotten some fans and I enjoy making sketches on Instagram. but I'll put that on a schedule. And, you know, part of me was almost like cynically going to ask you. She's like, yeah, man, how am I supposed to make a living without social media?

Like, you want to get me on your buddies? You want to get me on Ryan and Tim's podcast? And yeah, sure, I'll get rid of Twitter. But, like, the way you just phrased it is so beautiful where it's like, just become the best artist in the world, which was every piece of advice you would get back in the day, you know, about comedy or, you know, It should just be a great artist. And that is what it should be about in like the purest sense. Very curious how it's going to work in this day and age, you know, but.

But it was literally Steve Martin's advice for comedians is be so good they can't ignore you. Like that trumps everything else. And then all this other cool stuff will come along and it's kind of fun and they'll find you. They'll find you. I mean, it's never, it's never going to be there's such a desperation for talent and stuff that's good. There's such a desperation for that. that no one's ever going to be like, ah,

he's awesome. I love it. I love his show, but it's kind of inconvenient because he won't DM me on my whatever. So like, I guess we won't work with him. You've seen the mindsets of like agents and managers and talent workers. I know.

Okay. I mean, they need good stuff. And they want to be their first. Even before social media destroyed me, I remember Robin set me up with a meeting, like a general meeting. And they were like,

what's your goal? And I said, uh, they got famous enough to get off social media. And that meeting I could just see in the eye. was over. So you're going to try it? You try it. Try it. I'm going to try it today. I'm literally about to go out and write and I'm going to take the apps off my phone right now. All right. This is Cal in the present. According to us here in the

summer, we just finished part one of my interview from last December with Jamie Kielstein. We ended that first part with Jamie saying he was going to take the social media apps off his phone and try to make it a much smaller part of his life. We will check in in just a minute with part two of this interview, which takes place six weeks later and see how things actually went. But first, I want to mention what I think is an appropriate sponsor for this episode, and that is Better Help. We know that how we take care of our mind affects how we experience life, and we just saw

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All right. Well, thanks to our sponsors. Let us get back then to our two-part conversation with Jamie Kielstein. Here we go. Part two. All right. And we are back now with Jamie Kielstein. A month has passed between what you just heard and now.

Where we last left it was Jamie was going to attempt to step away to the extent possible from social media and see what happened to his life. So, Jamie, how much time. in prison are they giving you to be on this phone call right now? Well, you're my one call, and I was hoping you would call all of my other calls for me so I could kind of like beat the system. I have five minutes. You murdered a Facebook executive. Okay. I look, dude, Zuckerberg is buying out all this land in Hawaii, which is where my family is from.

I don't like it. And he has to pay. Exactly. All right. So it's been about a month. What's the, uh, Let's get the emoji headline. We have a happy face, unhappy face or one of those weird looking up quizzical faces.

It's like a bunch of shocked faces. Here's what happened, everybody. I went a little, I went a little off the deep end. What I did notice is there was still a habitual need to click things. So Instagram and Twitter and Facebook on our minds. phone. Great. But when I'm waiting in line, when I'm, you know, any time where I would be checking that, I found myself checking my email. That makes sense. Checking my texts. That makes sense. I would check YouTube and my podcasts, which I've never done before and just kind of refresh and be like,

oh, I wonder if there's a new video or I wonder if there was a new podcast. Now, it didn't feel like it had any sort of like the toxic effects of social media but it was interesting that my like brain and hands were still like must click on something like dude I checked the weather more than I've checked like in a very long time like I was just like okay it's still 50 and Austin you're not the first person to say that that that's actually from digital minimalism when I because in that book I had 1,600 people do what you just did yeah and I talked about this one young woman, she took everything off the phone. But the weather app doesn't come off the phone.

And so she was compulsively checking the weather all around the world. She's like, I do the weather in Shanghai. Yeah. That's the correct. All of the world to see what the weather is. But about 14 days for her. And then she lost that, she lost that tick. Yeah.

Totally. But let me, there's something you said in there that's worth unpacking just a little bit more because it's an angle. I don't think we talk about as much, which is you, you were saying, yeah, the negative we all know is bad. But you were, you began to imply the positive has its cost too. What did you mean by that? The sweetest thing I do.

So right before COVID, my cat, Talib Kiti, named after the rapper, Taleb Kali, died. And I was wrecked, just absolutely devastated. And I was living kind of in this like little mountainy town in Arizona. And I just started, I mean, dude, to the point. where, like, I hired a cleaner just to vacuum everything because, like, I didn't want to see, like, his hair. Like, I was, it was really bad. And I would just sort of, sadly, take these walks around my neighborhood. And my neighborhood, for the most part, was old widows.

It was, like, old lady widows in Arizona, in Oro Valley. And what happened was I would start, I would ask them if I could play with their dogs. I'd be like, hey, can I pet your dog? and then we would start chatting, me and me and this woman. And I knew they were widows because what would happen is I would be petting their dog. And they'd be like, oh, peanut loves you. And then they'd be like, why don't you get a dog? And I was like, oh, my cat died.

And I'm still pretty upset about it. And they're like, oh, my Gerald died. And I'm like, oh, okay. And then I would strike up this friendship with some old widow. And I literally had like probably like four or five that I was like, became very close with and was actually sad to say by to them and their dogs when I left Arizona. And so I started to do this thing just on my Instagram stories where every time I pet a new dog, I would just like do a pose and say like I pet one new dog today with a very childish smile and like holding on however many fingers up in the air of how many dogs I pet. And what was really cool is I just thought it was some silly thing. And at first I kind of did it in the pose of like, you know, the teenage Instagram like tongue out, eyes closed, holding up the two fingers like a piece sign.

and then like a bunch of people. And again, I have a lot of fighters that follow me on Instagram. So like a lot of like dudes, like tough dudes who don't talk about their emotions, started posting I pet one dog today. And because I also talk a lot about mental health, it kind of turned into this mental health thing. You know, what I talked about was like, hey, we have to look for the good things in life. We have to, you know, instead of being on our phones all the time, instead of just dwelling on past mistakes, like there's always a dog. to pet, right? That was kind of the gist of it. So that is the purest thing that I do on social media. And I would have to just, yeah, I get an interrupt you and ask a naive question about that from the, from the point of view of I don't know social media. Is it possible for like a normal person? So you are in, you're in entertainment. And like your profiles play a role beyond, you know, it's you have a persona and your comedy before that you're in a podcasting.

in politics. I'm a writer, have a profile, but let's say you had none of that. Is it possible, you think, today, to have that solely that peer relationship with social media, or is the stuff that the negative, the positive? Like, is it the insiduous nature, even if you're just, no one knows who I am, no one cares who I am, I just want to find friends that are, you know, who like petting dogs or something like that, is it impossible, basically? Like, it will, it will creep in.

and, you know, someone will be, you will be accused of being a Nazi at some point. Or what I don't know what happens. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know it better. Not petting any black dogs. Yes.

Do better clap hands. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's a really good question. Because just the only reason I went on that dog tangent was because I would have these moments where I would pet dogs and I'd be like, oh, I got to post it. And then I didn't post it. And then I just literally, dude, would take a deep breath and go,

huh, I just got to pet some dogs. And no one needs to know. And it was great. And I bonded with the owner and I didn't need to take a picture. And so to your question, oh, I see. So that was positive what you were posting. It wasn't like people were yelling at you. No.

But it was still in some sense taking something away. And that's why I brought it up because that is the most positive thing I can think of that I do on social media. And even that when I took social media. media away, I was relieved. And so like I always wonder, to your point, I always wonder and kind of get sad when I go to someone's Twitter and they just have like, you know, as many tweets as I have with zero responses on any of them. Where it's like, what are you looking for? Do you just want to put your thoughts down and have them recorded?

Another data point I want to extract from your experience. I'm using you as like an experiential guinea pig here. No, this is awesome. Yeah, so you pulled back very heavily from posting and in particular reading when you did post, reading what happened there. But I'm assuming you were still consuming content about the world. So one thing I'm trying to figure out is even after you remove, like, what's the ratio of harm here between there's the interactions about you, which we've just gone over. over and is a big negative aspect of social media. Then there is the just the nature of the content you encounter that has nothing to do with you.

Like the running joke on the podcast is, you know, you think you're in Twitter for a very focused reason. And then you see that headline about white supremacist using Omicron to accelerate climate change or whatever. Right. Like there's always that thing that hits you. It's not about you. Yeah. No. But you're like, ah, you know what I mean?

So many. Yeah. So what did you experience with that? So when you take out. I'm going to be honest with you, buddy. I have no idea what's going on in the world right now. I started, and this kind of goes to, I started meditating 45 minutes in the morning. I've never done that before.

That is a very long time. I was like shaking the first time I did it. And then a half an hour at night, I have only been consuming books about Buddhism for the most part. I've been doing jihitsu, like doing my normal. normal thing. There, I have been taking walks. So, all right. So how would you describe, then, I'm assuming your average stress level.

Oh. Must be like an order of magnitude less than basically everyone around to. This, I'm literally giving away my possessions. This is what happened. People heard the podcast and they go, hey, they heard you be like, hey, this will be a fun thing. And then we're a month later, even though they're hearing it two seconds later. And I'm giving away my possessions.

I am literally getting off social media forever in March. I'm going to continue to do the podcast on Patreon, maybe, but the podcast is going to be on a three-month break, and I'm going to travel the world and stay in temples and farms and teach jiu-jitsu. Wait, but this is a big deal. So you stepped away from social media, but actually did some revisits to it, which actually made the lesson even stronger

because you were putting your toe back in the water. And it's not, you're leaving now not because like, oh, I want to further escape from social media. It was that your moment escape from social media gave you enough space. You nailed it. From the simulacrum of life, you know, that was what was happening before. They're like, you know, crap, I got to like actually go rediscover human life in an analog substratum. And this is what was so interesting, which was like, I. I thought, as I'm sure plenty of people who have done this, I thought that the hardest part would be staying off it.

And even when I did go back to check it, sometimes, and look, I mean, there were times where I would go, because, you know, like a lot of the, like the promotion, but also like the celebrity contacts I have for the podcast and whatever are on social media. So I'd go there. And then I just catch myself, you know, going back to old habits. just scrolling and reading comments. And nothing bad happened. But it was, I would just be like, oh, you're doing it. And then I'd be able to, you know, put the phone down pretty easily. But I thought the struggle was going to be, oh, once I went on once, I would be, you know,

I would just be hooked again and I'd have to detox again. And it was like an alcohol or something. Yes. And it was the exact opposite. And this is different than like an alcohol addiction or something. The issue is like if I have that one drink, it's going to be the bender. You're saying something I've heard other people say before, which is once you've gotten that distance from that virtualized version of your life, when you go back and get exposed to it, you don't go on a Twitter bender. You instead are a little embarrassed.

Yes. When you're thinking about your past self, which is fascinating. Exactly. Even with the Cleese thing, this isn't really social media, but this is, um, Fame, which really, we're all trying to be a little famous on social media, right? Whether you're a public persona or not, that's kind of what you're doing. We're all shouting my voice. With none of the followers and all the tweets, that's what they're doing, right?

Like, you're trying to be heard. I think social media helps people who are producing stuff, not typically when they write about what they're producing, but because if they produce something awesome, it helps other people discover it. Not because the creator of the awesome thing talked about it, but because the stand-up routine was funny and people started sharing it. And then they know about you because they saw something they liked. And then when they see, oh, he's coming to whatever, you know, Tampa, when I live here,

they're like, oh, I want to go see the person, you know. Same with books. Social media has a laughably low book sale conversion rate. If you take your social media follower numbers and say, what percent of them are going to buy a book? I'm going to slam them with post about the book or whatever. It's really small. Email newsletters do better.

For sure, email newsletter do much better. But that can only do so much. Even the very biggest writers, what they get out of their personal appeals to buy is on the order of thousands, which these are typically writers that are going for, you know, a couple hundred thousand units is going to be what they need to hit a single, you know? And so, yeah, they get 6,000 sales from their list or this or that. And that's it. You know what I mean? So why does it sell? Because a lot of other people have read one of their last books and they really liked it and they know the name.

And then when they see it talked about or written somewhere and reviewed somewhere, they're like, oh, okay, I'll give that a try. You know, like it all comes down to, the funnel all comes down to you did something awesome. And awesome stuff spreads. And then once it spreads, people are more aware when you do something else. Like, I'll give that a try. Like, that's my incredibly sophisticated marketing analysis. No. And I totally, you know, I totally think you're right.

And, but of course, the problem could be what happened with me, which is then you get off social media and you go, oh, it's all an illusion and we're all one. And I have to disappear into the jungles of India. Because, dude, I'll tell you. But you might come away with something really cool from that. Dude, no. It is the. So when I started telling my friends, so I told a couple. So I told a couple like celebrities with dope lives.

And then I told one of my coaches who would call me out of my bullshit. I told one of my brothers. I told my therapist. Like I told people who would be like, you are running. This is insane. And literally every person from the celebrity whose life I thought I wanted to my therapist who was in charge of my mental health. That's not her job. But you know what I mean?

All of them were like, this is the coolest thing I've ever. So that's a, so this is like a amplified. example of what you think probably most people would feel. So for you, you're saying, even after a reasonably short break, you don't feel that need to, I need to leverage everything into my career. Even if you didn't have a career like that, even if you're an accountant at a big firm who's using social meeting, got away from it, there's probably still that leverage pressure that goes away. It's not leverage, you know, my comedy career, but just like, I could leverage this experience to get some likes. I could leverage.

this to, you know, gather some attention from, you know, people I know. So in other words, like leveraging is what you're trying to say here, I guess. It's an approach to life that's like incredibly artificial, or it used to be very artificial except for like a very small number of aspiring professional entertainers. And social media basically puts everyone into a version of that mindset. You know, like, wow, can I leverage this meal? Because if I took a picture of this, like people would probably like it or I have a clever quip and, you know, my 99 followers, like some of them might like it or something like this. And you're experiencing that amplified, obviously, because of your work.

And by the way, everything you're saying, this is not foreign to my listeners because it's, you don't realize, but you've just rediscovered digital minimalism. The whole idea is you step away, this is why I push you towards it, you step away from the behavior, the digital behavior. During that time with, you do a lot of reflection and experimentation and try to rediscover yourself and what's important to you. And then that allows you to rebuild a life. on a foundation that actually makes sense.

And then you look back and say, oh, what role should technology play in this life? And you can make really good decisions. Like, oh, I want to use Instagram for doing this, or I have this Facebook group for like a jih Tjitsu gym that I belong to or something. And now you're using the tools for a purpose and they lose their grip on you and everything, everything is better. Like that is that is digital minimalism 101 that you have to,

this is one of the big ideas in the book is the people who tried to white knuckle the break from social media part all failed. Like the people who said, here's what I'm going to do. I don't like how much I'm using social media, so I'm going to stop using it. And that's it. Didn't make it. But the people who said, what I'm going to go do is seek out what do I want to do instead. They were much more likely to succeed. But what I was going to say is the people who had the hardest time with this, especially what you're talking about, what you were discovering through meditation.

Let me be alone with my own thoughts and get used to that was young people. Like you and I did not have phones when we were young. Dude, we played in the woods. We literally played in the woods. I had my boys back in the woods over Christmas. We were stopped by my parents' house. And remember those woods by Tolgate Grand School? Oh, we built like a tree.

I was the first place I smoked pot. Of course I do. It was the best. Exactly. Yeah. And I'm saying woods is, you know, this is like 19 trees. But I was hiking. It's literally like it just went into Brady's backyard.

But yes. It was Brady Weston's backyard. Yes. I took my bullies back there. We were hiking back there with my dad. I was like, I spent so much time back here. We knew every creek and how it changed with the seasons and we built like an incredibly dangerous tree house with just like old lumber we found.

And you know what I mean? Like it was so much time we spent back there. But anyways, point being for the generation that it had phones starting at early adolescence, the hardest thing they had when doing what you went through right now was being alone with their own thoughts. Like, that was killer. And that's also, like, the most important thing that every human should be doing. Like, that has nothing to a Buddhism that just has to, like, I mean, dude, I would like to think I'm a pretty aware human.

And the first time I sat for that long with meditation, the things I saw that I had never seen before on my block. Right. But the bigger point being here, it's another thing that this. integrating social media into your personhood can cause, like an affliction it can cause, is that as you discovered and a lot of people discovered, you get the natural instinct, you're afraid of something or what have you, and then you can, that emotion can be warped into anything. Because once you feel a strong emotion, that can be warped into anything.

You were afraid of the vaccine and the social media was like, come on in, Jamie. We have what you need, right? But it's the same thing on the other side. Like I think a lot of the very militant, like I just, the people should die who don't get vaccines or this or that. These are people who are just feeling, and I get this completely, super strong anxiety about the virus. And social media is like, welcome. We will help you like have an outlet for that fear and that anxiety. And like there's these bad people.

And, you know, it's that'll feel better. And it can, there's a warping function that's entirely emergent. I mean, it's not, again, I don't, Zuckerberg's not sitting there in a tower like, you know, twisting a mustache. Like, ah, I can make people mad or like, you know, it's just this emergent property. It's weird. It's a weird technology. It's too homogenized and at scale and there's all sorts of issues about, you know, low friction feedback loops, etc., etc. But it does that, right?

It was an accident, but it does that. So whatever you feel strongly about, it will help validate the fear and help you sidestep it. giving you things and outlets. And it's not just a social media thing. I think right-wing talk radio was maybe like one of the first mass communication mediums that sort of did this. 100%. Right.

And then Cable, like earlier and then MSNBC had to compete with it because they were down in the ratings. And Fox was doing it. So then they started essentially taking the same playbook. But there was a documentary that was a while ago. I don't know what it was called. I don't know what it was called actually too. So this is a terrible endorsement.

for this documentary. So, yeah, you're all going to rush out. It was chef's table. Yeah, it was chef's table. Yeah, it was chef's table. Those Nazis. No, so it was, it was a documentary that was done a long time ago with low budget.

But basically it was a woman like our age following, like her dad had started watching a lot of Fox News and was just like, look, it completely changed and warped them. And at the time when that documentary came out, it was like, oh, wow, I didn't realize like this was doing things to people. Today, it's like, yeah, this is what all phones do to all people. Yeah. You know, just on different types of issues or whatever. So there's something about, we can take the thing that you're anxious or afraid or mad about

and then aim it at something. So we found that out with talk radio and cable news. But social media is just an order of magnitude more efficient and flexible at doing that. It can do it for anything, anything you're anxious and afraid about. And they can do it better than like those blunt instruments of just, you know, it's Rush Limbaugh and a golden microphone. Like, no, no, we can target, like get you exactly at this person, don't see this person, bring in this. Oh, we see where you're clicking over here. So what if you look at this over here? Okay. So here's what I'm hoping. First of all, thanks for sharing this story because you're making clear and articulating well, these core ideas that are in digital minimalism or motivated digital minimalism. But this makes it concrete, like this notion of when you rediscover you, you can build a life around you. And it has nothing to do with Luddism, right? It's nothing about I don't use technology or I don't use technology or I

do use technology or I'm taking one of these political stances. It's like hashtag delete Facebook or whatever. It's no, it's, I know me. I'm building a life around me. There's some tech in there. But being used for a purpose. So here's my wish. Here's what I'm thinking for you.

And I don't know if this will work out or not. So you're going to temples. You're going to farms teaching monks how to do jihitsu. Yeah. So that I assume they can destroy their rivals. Oh, yeah. that and therefore conquer more land for their monasteries. I told my brother, and you'll totally be one of the only people who can relate to this super hard since we grew up the same.

My brother goes, dude, you're like living out our childhood fantasy, like training martial arts at temples. And I go, the only thing that could make it more of a fantasy is if the temple was invaded and it was up to me to defend it. Yes, yes. And by like aliens. And you're in a power range. Oh, the dream. Okay. So your actual prediction.

That's prediction A. That's one route. Yeah. And you marry the pink power ranger. Oh, God. Then you're set. I'm in. You're set.

Okay. Then prediction B. So this resets. Resets you rediscover life. And then what I'm hoping for after that for you is that there's like one or two things you do. And you're not super trying to necessarily promote it. and maybe writing, maybe comedy, I think you need to revile.

I think there's such an art to comedy. I think you have such a skill there. I keep putting that out there. But you just do it. You come back and you're someone who's doing it, be it writing, be it comedy, whatever it is,

you know, just to do. And in doing that, actually, it becomes the foundation for like a very sustainable and really interesting life, you know?

Yeah. That it's not, it's not, you're not posting about it all the time. You're not on whatever. but you innovate and it's interesting and you love it and interesting stuff comes out of it and you meet cool people and you hang out with those cool people and you still notice the white trees makes you think about Japan you know yeah and you know what you actually pitched it in a way that I for the first time because the two people who were kind of like you should write about this it was very and like sort of businessy voice you know but the way you just said it from the angle of creativity I'm actually going to sort of like mentally book market. I think that, yes, being off social media, I'm just a little more clear-headed, but also this idea of just being okay with chapters in your life instead of just desperately

trying to extend a chapter that should have ended 100 pages ago. I'm starting just to look back on even the stuff that ended shitty and being like, no, man, there is still good in there. And the bad in there you learn from and you change. But the good in there, you're, still sort of allowed to appreciate. But I do think being unplugged and not seeing what all of my other very successful friends are doing has really helped with that as well. That was just like another thing that I wanted to throw out that I, that has been like super life affirming that I got from this experiment.

When your community and you're socializing is largely analog and diverse, like these are people who live near me. And I know them and they're from all different weird walks of life to that crowd. when you know these people, you love these people, you sacrifice your time and attention on behalf of them, etc. To them, it's like,

oh, that's so cool that, like, you played the Sydney Opera House at some point. Like, we never did something like that. And you're like, oh,

and that's so cool that like you were, you know, you were in the military and, like, saw this crazy stuff in Iraq. Like just, it's like, yeah,

you were trained to be a seal. Like, oh, my God, what was that? Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. What's, what's you're right. And it's very artificial when it's like, No, no, no, I just want to hang out with other people who did the same thing as me and now have gone farther. Or like, I trained as a CEO. Let me just go watch Jocko videos. You're like, oh, I suck, you know.

Anyways, I think that's that maybe is a great place to bring it into a landing, this notion of when you're living in the real world with real people, helping real people, sacrifice about real people, creating real things, doing things for the creativity of it and for the usefulness of it and not living in this weird. unnatural digital world. Not that you don't use those tools for things. Use those tools for things that are useful. Your cycling group uses Facebook group. Like, use Facebook groups, right? Everything seems to work better.

And that is not a surprise because we have hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that has been pushing on human wiring. And it expects us to live in like relatively small groups of diverse people with different skills and backgrounds to which we find great belonging and connection and build interesting lives upon. Like, we've been evolved to do that. That brain cannot handle 26,000 followers.

You know, it can't handle the fact that, like, Pete Holmes is vacation photos, you know, or somehow showing up in your thing. And, you know, if it makes you feel better, that picture that he posted of his family on his vacation, like right after that, an alligator aged his kid. So, you know,

it's a, right, right. Oh, that's another thing, dude. The amount of people who are posting like romantic pictures where you go, oh, I wish I had a girlfriend. And they were fighting five minutes after that picture. Or you can always like, I've started to notice the couples I know are in the most trouble are they post so many pictures of themselves. And the caption always starts with like, babe, we've been through a lot. And I'm like, oh boy. The thing you do on that glowing screen with the bitmap images, the brain doesn't see that as socializing. They doesn't see that as relationships. It doesn't know what that is. And so when that is filling your time, you're like, well, I'm social

of just doing other things. Your brain does not understand anything except for this is my brother or this is my symbolic brother at the gym and I'm talking to them right now. Like that's all I'm doing or I'm helping them move. Yes, that's so much worse because we think it is a replacement.

Yep. Yeah, yeah, man. Well, listen, I have to think you so much. Look, I love that we got any chance I get the rant to do digressive rants about social media is a chance I always appreciate.

But I appreciate the bigger story here because I think what you're going through is a perfect instantiation amplified because your whole life is amplified man. That's the thing. It's like, of course I was going to go this route. Yeah, you, I mean, but you worry about like I didn't become the very top of the comedy, this or that.

But I'm telling you, like most people, your life is incredibly interesting. It's like, well, I went to university and then I got a job at a number 12 account. firm and like that's going okay i started biking a little bit but stopped it's like it all sounds really interesting right so um but i just think it's really important so it's amplified there's someone out of number 12 firm right now and their little biking shorts with a tear going down their eye um i yeah man well thank you and like i honestly cannot thank you enough um i mean one just like

superficially i've been telling people that i never promote podcasts i do but i've been telling people since our part one where I'm like it was just so fun on so many levels and I I think now doing part two like oh this actually kind of important too um but I mean like you can actually literally say like oh you're at the beginning of like saving my life like completely I was so depressed in around the holidays and you know I think I even texted you where I just was at a complete I don't know what I'm going to do um it was really bad I mean shit I may have just wanted to go on your podcast just to like promote my shit. And then the fact that it just so naturally turned into, I mean, I also think deep down I

knew I was like, let's make this like an intervention. I'll get off my, but I never knew it could go into, oh, for the first time of my life, I actually have the chance to find happiness. And you know, one of my coaches, what he said to me is like, dude, it was impossible for you to find happiness with so much noise. And again, he didn't mean negative. He just meant all of it, just noise. But like I couldn't do jiu-jitsu without posting about it or whatever.

And yeah, man, I mean, you fucking kind of made this happen. So if I get killed in a temple war, I mean, no, fuck that. If I could kill him a temple war, what a cool way to die. I stand by that. That is awesome. You with the pink power ranger at your side. Oh, holding my hand as I take my last death. holding your hand as you get a nun chuck to the temple.

I think that's it. I think you track the secret of life. If I survive that, I will get on Lex Friedman's three-hour podcast. We're going to talk about that. Then I'll be like, I'll call my manager, like, as it's happening and be like, all right, fine, I'll go. I'm Rogan. Yeah, let's do it. Let's give me back on Rogan.

Book it. I love it on Twitter. also much. Well, so I mean, you and I are going to be keeping up the date. I'm very excited just to personally know what's going on. But we will, there will be a part three. It'll be a separate episode. When you get back from the epic journey, we're going to have to be back on.

Everyone's going to hear how it went. So part one and two are coming out together. I'm excited to hear in real time how things unfold. And then when you get back, we'll, we'll share the update in the saga that is Jamie Kielstein. And we all know where it's going to end. It is not you dying in a temple wall. It is going to end in at the age of 40, maybe 41,

how long this takes. Yeah. The band gets back together. Yes. Go back to Hopewell Valley, Central High School. They're having to battle the band. They're the first time they did. They're excited about it. You jihitsu, the guy at the door trying to keep us out.

We get up on that stage. We play Hey, Hey, by Neil Young. We win it. I'm arrested for assaulting a minor at the door. You're arrested for assaulting a minor at a door, but we win it. Freeze frame, life complete. So we all know that's where it's heading. Oh, God, I can't wait.

Thanks again, Jamie. And thanks again, everyone. Yeah, for listening to this episode.