Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #50 How Social Media Could Be Making You Ill with Cal Newport

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

How did this happen? We’re all living ultra-connected lives. In our pockets we have tiny technological miracles through which we can communicate, instantly, with anyone on the planet. Yet we are lonelier than ever before. Research has shown that levels of anxiety and depression have exploded, especially in the younger generation, who push time spent connected to the extreme. Professor of computer science and author on this subject, Cal Newport, explains why. We have evolved to be part of a mutually supportive human tribe, where being isolated, meant danger. As far as our brains are concerned, digital interactions do not play the same role as real conversations. Instead, they pull our time and attention away from real-world interactions and our brains react as if something is wrong. In addition, constant connection means that downtime is being eroded from our lives and we are losing the ability to just be. We discuss the concept of digital minimalism and how we all need to spend time doing what Cal calls, ‘high quality leisure activities’. Finally, Cal gives some brilliant tips on decluttering your digital world. This is a thought-provoking conversation – I hope you enjoy it! I cover these issues in my new book, ‘The Stress Solution’ and suggest simple ways in which we can all bring back real-life connection into our lives. Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/50 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you think, who are the healthiest people I know? Almost certainly they have some sort of philosophy around their health and fitness that's internally consistent, that speaks to their values that they really believe in, right? Like maybe they're vegan or they're paleo. There's something that is bigger than just assorted tips and tricks. And so I think that's a really good analogy because that's what motivated me to think, well, what was the veganism or paleo of the digital world? Hi, my name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, medical doctor, author of The Four Pillar Plan,

and television presenter. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome to episode 50 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Ron Ganchastji and I'm your host.

I can't believe that we're up to episode 50 already. It just feels like yesterday that I started the podcast, even though it's actually now been a full 12 months. In this time, the podcast has become one of the most listened to health podcasts in the UK. It's had over 3 million downloads, and Apple has announced it as one of the most downloaded new podcasts of 2018, which is simply incredible. I had the great pleasure of meeting many of you on my recent UK book tour for The Stress Solution, and I've been really touched to find out how many of you are using this as a weekly dose of inspiration to make positive changes in your life. I really appreciate you all listening each week. I have to say, I'm really sorry that I missed this week's

Wednesday release date, but I was actually following my own advice. I have been incredibly busy over the last few weeks and done over 15 live dates all around the UK as well as in Sweden. And all that travel and work has really caught up with me. For those of you who do have my new book, The Stress Solution, you will know about the concept that I outline of micro stress doses. I have had a lot of micro stress doses in my life over the past six weeks or so. And I decided that trying to push myself to get this podcast out at the regular time would literally be too much and pushed me past my own personal stress threshold. I decided to prioritize my own health instead, which is why this episode has been put

out 48 hours late. I've also decided that after this episode, I'm going to take a short two-week break from releasing podcasts so that I can rest a little and reset. Many of you have said that you actually want to catch up with previous episodes, so perhaps you may get the chance to over the next two weeks. Just make sure that you have pressed subscribe so that you may get the chance to over the next two weeks. Just make sure that you have pressed subscribe so that you are notified when the next episode comes out, which will be in just over two weeks. So today's guest on the podcast is Cal Newport, professor of computer science and author of a brand new book, Digital Minimalism. This episode is a great reminder of how much social media has taken

over our daily lives. Humans are social animals. We've evolved to be part of a mutually supportive human tribe, where being isolated meant danger. As far as our brains are concerned, digital interactions do not play the same role as real conversations. Instead, they pull our time and attention away from real-world interactions, and our brains react as if something is wrong. In addition, constant connection means that downtime has been eroded from our lives, and we are losing the ability to just be.

We discussed the concepts of digital minimalism and how we all need to spend time doing what Cal calls high quality leisure activities. This is a thought provoking conversation and I hope you enjoy it. Now, before we get started, I do need to give a very quick shout out to our sponsors who are essential in order for me to be able to put out weekly podcast episodes like this one. Athletic Greens continue their support of my podcast. Now, I prefer that people get all of their nutrition from foods, but for some of us, this is not always possible. Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across

and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. If you're looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20

servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. So Cal, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. Oh, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So obviously, Cal, we're doing this, recording this conversation using modern technology. And I think that's going to be very relevant in the course of our conversation, because you wrote a book called Deep Work, I think a few years back, which really sparked a movement and an idea that unbroken concentration has far more value than electronic busyness, which something in that

deeply resonates with me. But you've now written a new book called Digital Minimalism, Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. So I'm just wondering if you could maybe give us a bit of background as to, you know, what Deep Work was about and how this is a follow up from that. So I wrote Deep Work, it came out in about 2016. And as you mentioned, the central premise of that book is that in knowledge work, the ability to focus without distraction was actually becoming more valuable at the same time that due to technology in particular, we were becoming worse at it. And so this was a classic supply and demand mismatch where if you are one of the few individuals or organizations to systematically cultivate the ability to focus, you are going to have a sort of disproportionately large competitive advantage. So, you know, I'm a computer scientist.

I also write books about the impact of technology on culture. And so this was, in some sense, a book about, you know, unintended consequences of technology in the workplace and what we could do about it. So I went on the road. I was talking about this book and meeting lots of readers and hearing from lots of readers. And one of the most common pieces of feedback I got was, let's say I agree with you about unattended consequences of technology in the workplace. What about what these technologies are doing in our personal lives? What about what's happening when we're not at work on the weekend, in the evening? And they were expressing a sort of sense of urgency about a perceived negative influence

of digital technology in the personal life that they really wanted to see addressed. And this was something that had shifted. I've been writing about these issues for many, many years. It was really right around that 2016, about two years ago, that I really began to notice this shift where people were going from telling self-deprecating jokes about how much they look at their phone to actually starting to get concerned about the impact of those phones and their ability to thrive as human beings. And so once I got that feedback from Deep Work, it became clear the next frontier to tackle when it comes to the intersection of technology and culture was going to be what's happening in our personal lives and our quest to live meaningful and satisfied existences. How are new digital and online tools played in this particular arena? Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I'm also seeing in my work, both as a doctor, but also in the work that I do in the media, I'm just getting that sense more and more that people are aware now that actually digital media, for all its benefits, or for all its perceived benefits, I should say, and we're going to cover that in the course of this conversation, no doubt, there have been some unintended consequences. I'm meeting more and more people now who are choosing to go offline for a significant part of their recreational time, their personal time, their downtime. And actually, the funny story there is that when I first got introduced to the idea that you had a new book coming out, because we share a mutual publisher in Penguin. I thought, oh, great. I did see your TED Talk, which I thought was brilliant. And I thought, I'm going to look you up. And I looked you up on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram. I couldn't find you anywhere. And on further investigating, I realized that you actually have never had a social media channel. Is that correct? Yes, that's true. There are, I should warn you, some fake Cal Newport accounts out there. So don't believe them if you see them.

Okay, well, I think that's a great place to really sort of dive in a little bit, because I think for certainly the majority of people who I see day to day, and who I interact with, the idea of not having any social media presence at all feels like quite a revolutionary act in the 21st century. So I wonder if you could explain why you don't have a social media account. Well, it's because I work backwards from this philosophy of digital minimalism, which is essentially what I'm preaching. And what this philosophy says is you should figure out what's really important to you in your life. What are your values? What are the activities that are a deep source of media satisfaction? And then work backwards from each of those to say,

what's the best way, if any, to use technology to support this value? And then just let the answer to those questions decide what technology you use in your personal life. So it's a very intentional and selective approach. So there's things in my life that are important. I use technology to support them. But when I ask that question for each of these important things, what's the best way to use technology to support this thing in my life, the answer was never Twitter or Instagram or Facebook.

So that's why they didn't make the cut. Now, I think for most people, the calculus they do is actually the opposite. I think most people, especially the consumer West, are used to a maximalist mindset where you look at things only in terms of the potential value or convenience they could bring you, and you really worry about missing out on any of that potential value and convenience. And so I think that's how a lot of people think about their digital lives. They're just worried about missing out on something that could bring value. The idea of not using Facebook, according to this mindset, is worrisome because you think about potential sources of value for Facebook that you're missing.

It's like walking by the proverbial money on the ground and not picking it up. But the minimalist says, actually, that's not how things work. If you focus exclusively on a small number of things that are very useful and very valuable, and you keep your focus exclusively on those, you're going to end up better off than try to fracture your focus about many, many different things that offer you only small wins. And so that's how I ended up never signing up for any of these services. Yeah, I mean, Kyle, I've got to say it feels like a very revolutionary thing to do. I think many of us have stumbled into the digital world. You know, there's a new technology. Oh, yeah, I'm going to sign up for it and use it.

And I guess in some ways this is really about purpose, isn't it? It's about what is the meaning and purpose in your life? What do you want to achieve? What brings you happiness? What gives you your values? And therefore, how does technology support that rather than just, you know, you go all in with all technology

and then figure out later how to, you know, how to unwind it. Is that a fair summary of what you are trying to say? I think that's a good way of looking at it. I mean, the reason why minimalist philosophies work is because there's a real cost to say. I think that's a good way of looking at it. I mean, the reason why minimalist philosophies work is because there's a real cost to clutter. And we often miss this. But when you clutter, whether it be your house or your digital lives, you can't just think about the value that each individual thing might bring you. Because if you go into the house of a hoarder, you know,

someone who just has their rooms filled to the ceiling with junk, right? If you go into the house of a hoarder, someone who just has their rooms filled to the ceiling with junk, right? If you go to the house of a hoarder and point to any one individual thing, let's say an old birdhouse that's in a pile or whatever, they'll have some reason why there might be some value in keeping it. Oh, I need it because you never know. I think my sister has this tree and she might want it or maybe someone will need it or I might hang it up one day. They have a reason for everything that's in their house. But the negative impact of all that clutter far swaps out all those positive benefits. And so it's the same thing in your digital life. Like what minimalists recognize is that there's a real cost to all this clutter.

If you just sign up for everything and you have all these different things pulling out your time and attention, the little values that they're bringing you can't compensate for the overall negative cost of having such clutter and in particular it's all this uh pulls on your time and attention is taking your time away from things that are much more valuable that you could be investing in and so minimalists understand this basic mathematical formula that focusing most of your energy on a small number of very high-value things is going to return in your life much more value than if you take that same attention and spread it out over a lot of lower-value activities. So less really can be more. This is an idea that goes back to the ancient. Thoreau articulated it beautifully in Walden.

We saw it through the 20th century, the voluntary simplicity movement. We saw it in the online minimalist movement. I mean, it's an idea that comes up again and again, because it's true. Less is more. Less things, higher value, bigger return. Yeah, I think that's the overarching sentiment in your philosophy that deeply, deeply resonates with me so much. I think it's interesting talking to you. I recently released a book called The Stress Solution, Cal, and there's some very similar themes. I've written about it from a different angle, but I talk about the impact of these things having on our relationships, the problem in society,

where now that we almost need to teach delayed gratification now to ourselves, to our children, because our attention has been fractured so much by the way that we're living our lives today. And I think the point you mentioned there, which is when you talk to people about the potential negatives of technology or in particular social media, potential benefit, the potential negatives of technology or in particular social media. Like I posted a video on my Instagram a few days ago in terms of how we can, you know, how we can start to reduce the digital load on our lives, yet still get some of the value. And, you know, I saw there was one negative comment saying, oh, so much anti-technology all the time. I'm sick of it. What about all the benefits that technology brings? And first of all,

I'm not anti-technology, but it's really interesting that whenever we talk about these things, people often go to the benefits straight away, which is understandable, but you're saying that we're not taking into account the negatives enough. And so what are some of those negatives when our attention is constantly being fractured by our devices, by our notifications, by our email inbox, by whatever distraction we have in our life? What does that do to us? Well, one of the primary complaints I hear from people about their current digital life

is not really about the specifics of how useful is this particular tool or how useful is that particular tool. The real complaint seems to be more about autonomy. So what people are recognizing is that they're spending more time using these devices and looking at their screens than they think is useful. They're spending more time than they know is healthy. And they're increasingly feeling like what they believe and how they feel is being manipulated by sort of faceless algorithms. So I think this is where the sense of urgency came from. The question is not, oh, is this useless or useful? It's really about autonomy. Otherwise, smart and disciplined people are realizing that they're spending way more time than they want to on these devices. And these devices are having an impact on their beliefs and emotions that feel like

they're out of their control. And of course, we know from human psychology that when you start to lose autonomy, when to use the technical term, the locus of control is shifted from the intrinsic towards the extrinsic or away from the intrinsic area of the scale, people start to get unhappy. And so at the high level, I think this is what's going on. It's a loss of autonomy. And then at the small scale, there's lots of sort of short-term negative impacts that are specific that these behaviors are creating, such as the loss of solitude. So if you strip away from people any time where they're free from input from other minds, if you strip that out of your life, it's not good.

You're not able to process what's going on. You're not able to self-reflect, and your brain begins to burn out. And there's also the really big impact that digital interactions do not play the same role in our mind that actual real-world conversation does. actual real-world conversation does. So people who spend more time doing digital interactions spend less time doing real-world conversations because they feel like, oh, I'm already checking that box. I'm being social. Look, I'm on Facebook all day. But our brain doesn't agree that those are the same things. And so people are becoming increasingly lonely and increasingly anxious and depressed as they use social media more. Not because social media is making them anxious or lonely. It's because it's replacing the social media is making them anxious or lonely.

It's because it's replacing the stuff that was keeping them from being lonely. So there's the big picture issue of autonomy and then a bunch of small scale acute wounds that this behavior is causing. Yeah, I mean, I guess there's a certain irony in the name, isn't there? Social media in terms of what it's doing. I like what you're saying about solitude,

and it's something that I've thought about a lot, which is this whole idea that downtime is being eroded from culture, from society. So, you know, for argument's sake, 10, 15 years ago, I think if many people were standing in a cafe waiting for, you know, to be served by the barista, maybe they're waiting for five minutes in line, You know, they might have been people watching. They may have been, you know, sort of talking to some random people that they met. They might have bumped into one of their

best friends. But now the majority of us have got our heads stuck in our smartphones. And actually, we're oblivious to everything that's going on around us. And we're sort of filling every bit of downtime with noise. And so therefore, solitude and the ability to just self reflect and, you know, daydream, these things are, you know, are sort of being removed from society slowly and insidiously. And you think this is having a negative impact, don't you? It is. And it's a radical experiment. If you step back and think about it, never before in the history of the human species have we really had the capability of banishing every moment of solitude from our day. I mean, this required technological miracles to basically be possible. cover the entire world with high-speed, ubiquitous, wireless internet access, design these sort of semi-magical devices that could fit in your pocket and connect to this and at any moment give you any number of distractions or connections or thoughts from other minds. I mean, it took really technological miracles to even try this experiment of can we banish every moment of solitude from our lives. And I am worried about it because as you mentioned, there are, of course, well-known positives of solitude. So if you don't have solitude in your life, you're losing those.

But also the data, I think, is worrisome. So for me, I think looking at the mental health statistics of the young generation is useful because they take this independent variable of time, spit, connected, and they push it to the extreme. So if you're going to see the dependent variable being mental health outcomes here, if you're going to see what is the impact of badgene solitude, the place you're going to see whatever that is most pronounced is if you study the mental health lives of young people because, of course, they're the most connected. And the data there seems really alarming.

There really does seem to be a strong increase in anxiety and anxiety-related disorders among the youngest generation. It's pretty clear that this is probably not just a reporting effect because hospitalizations for suicide attempts have gone up along with these increases in these statistics. And the demographers and psychologists who are looking at this have been, as far as I can tell, not able to make any of the other hypotheses stick outside of this lines up exactly with the rise of caustic connectivity. So I see what's happening with the young people today as the digital canary in the coal mine. Bad things happen the more you try to take solitude out of your life. Yeah, I guess before we go into some of the sort of solutions that you propose in your new book, I'd just love to cover a little bit about, well, cover a little bit that you mentioned in deep work, which is this whole idea that constantly distracting ourselves, jumping from task to task is a burden on the brain. It's

actually, it's causing problems and it's not allowing us to do deep, meaningful work. And I wonder if you could just explain what some of those problems are and how, obviously, you've made that choice that you think you can get an edge in your career by actually not having these distractions so you can focus on deep, meaningful work. And I've got to say on a personal level, when I, you know, I've released two books now. And so there's two moments in my life in the last three years where I've had to sort of shut off for a period of a few months and really sort of dive deep. And I've got to say, it's one of the most satisfying parts of my year because it feels less transient, less superficial.

It feels as though I'm really actually trying to go deep inside myself, trying to create something fresh and new and exciting to put out into the world. And I wouldn't be able to do that if I was constantly being distracted. So, you know, what are some of these problems that you see maybe with colleagues, with the public, with young people, by constantly being distracted? Well, I think the number one negative impact in the world of work right now when it comes to attention is that we have drastically underestimated the cost of context switching with our attention. And this is something that the psychological literature essentially rediscovered only recently. So there's researchers like Sophie Leroy who came back to psychology after spending time in the business world and actually as a consultant and see the changes that were happening as tools like email became widespread.

And she came back into psychology. She's now a professor and said, wait a second. We have to study this. And so she helped kick off this modern study of what happens to your attention when you do things like switch it very frequently. And the conclusions there are pretty clear. There's a drastic hit to cognitive performance when you change what you're paying attention to from one thing to another, and when you bring it back from that thing to the original target, your cognitive capacity significantly diminishes, and this effect could take a while to dissipate.

And so what's happening is we have this, it's almost comedically, or at least darkly comedic, we have this profound mismatch between how we designed work in the age of digital networks and how our brains actually function. So once we got tools like email or Slack or SMS that allowed us to very easily with low friction communicate with people, what we tried to do was take the old paleolithic model that we used to use where there is three or four of us hunting a mastodon, which is just unstructured ad hoc conversation. Let's figure this out on the fly.

Hey, the mastodon is going that way. You go there. I'll go here. You throw the sphere, right? This instinctual small group-based coordination, and we tried to scale it up to big organizations. And we ended up with a workflow where people are just constantly communicating unstructured ad hoc conversations with people in your team, people not in your team, with your managers, with the HR department, with whatever.

with people in your team, people not in your team, with your managers, with the HR department, with whatever. And this is fundamentally a mismatch with the way our brains work because it forces us to continually context shift so that we can manage these conversations. And the constant context shifting is like taking a reverse nootropic. It's like taking a drug that's going to make your brain perform significantly below its capacity. And so that's why people are very frustrated with work. That's why people are burning out so that's why people are very frustrated with work. That's why people are burning out. That's why people aren't getting as much done. This is why the non-industrial productivity metrics have stagnated throughout this whole period, where we made unprecedented investments to make communication in the workplace more fast and more flexible.

And so this is sort of the broad view here is that this work based on constant attention switching to manage all of these ad hoc conversations is just using the brain in a way that the brain was not meant to be used. And so it's causing lots of negative consequences. We think we're being futuristic, but we're actually just being paleolithic and trying to scale it up in the modern workplace. So it's having a huge impact on our work productivity. What about our personal lives? What's it doing there? Well, there's a couple of things happening in our personal lives. I think one of the biggest, really the two biggest costs that all of this glancing and

looking at our screen and interacting on our screen, there's really been two big costs. One is that it has allowed us to actually avoid having to invest the time and resources necessary to develop more high quality leisure activities. But it turns out we really need higher quality leisure activities. This is an idea that goes all the way back to Aristotle, writing the Nicomedean Ethics, that we need activities done just for the activity's sakes, if we want to be able to find joy and beauty in a life that's often full of hardships and things that we can't control. So we have this craving for quality, and it creates a void if we don't have it in our life. But we have these constant distractions that can distract us just enough that we can tolerate not having this quality in our life.

And I think this is causing real issues in people's resilience and happiness. And then the second issue of all these sort of quick interactions is that we're unable to actually focus on a moment. So a social interaction, actually get all the benefit out of that social interaction or being outside with a beautiful sunset, actually fully extracting all the beauty that we've evolved to appreciate and enjoy. And so in multiple ways, it's impoverishing our daily experience of life. I gave a talk last year at a very high profile technology company in London, and I

was talking to them about health and happiness and how one of my recommendations has been always to see if you can switch off your modern technology for ideally 90 minutes, but if not, maybe 60 minutes before bed, just to help you not be exposed to the blue light so that you're not being overly stimulated so that you can start to switch off a little bit. And what was incredible is at the end of my talk, a young chap, maybe sort of mid to late 20s came came up and he said, hey, Dots Chassie, look, I really enjoyed your talk. But I was still a bit confused. You know, if I switch my phone off for 60 minutes before bed, what am I going to do? Yep. And he wasn't kidding. He was being completely sincere. He's obviously very fit to get a job there. I'm sure he was very able, very competent at his job to get such a high profile job. But at the same time, it really struck home with me that actually there is a new generation now of people who are growing up unable to actually spend time without being switched on and without

their devices. So that was extremely worrying. Is that something you've seen or you've come across in your work? Well, people are terrified. I mean, they're terrified about being alone with their minds. I mean, it's not just that they don't know what to do, that it actually could be really scary. We shouldn't underestimate the degree to which some people use the constant distraction to just stay away from things that are distressing to their life or things that really require work they need to think about. Or also just to stay away from the hard self-reflection that's needed to, let's say, transition into adulthood and figure out the structure of values and principles around which you're going to structure your existence. Time alone with your thoughts is difficult, and avoiding it is not a solution. So I think what that young man brought up at the end of your talk is actually a very widespread and serious problem, especially among younger people who grew up

with these technologies and have avoided that sort of solitude. And I think it's very problematic. And I have to say, it's hard. We could talk about it more, but I ran this experiment last January where I had 1,600 people leave all of their optional technologies in their personal life for 30 days as part of doing it to clutter, to transform into a minimalist lifestyle. And a lot of them reported that same concern, that at first it was really hard. But by the time they got to the end of the 30 days and they had done the self-work to

get comfortable with their mind and they had put in the effort necessary to cultivate some high-quality analog activities, by the time they got to the end of just 30 days, they had largely lost their taste for a lot of that low quality digital, mindless, tapping and swiping. And so it seems like a very attractable problem. But the solution might actually be closer in the temporal sense that most people might actually guess. Yeah, so a couple of things keep coming up here in my head. One of them is um you know you mentioned at the start the intention the intention behind what you want to do with your life therefore that should dictate how you use technology

but it's sort of you know in many ways it's similar to lifestyle choices that people engage in so let's say you don't like your life or you don't like your job and it's super stressful, then you will often use alcohol, let's say. I don't mean you, one might use alcohol to help numb that so they don't have to think about the harsh reality of their life. Some may use sugar in the evenings to deal with the stresses in their life and therefore trying to consciously give up sugar or reduce it ultimately is destined for failure unless the underlying stresses behind it are addressed. And I guess it's how you use it. You know, if someone has got very calm, stress-free life and they're using alcohol, let's say, intentionally to help, you

know, to enjoy a social interaction with their friends, that's probably going to have a very different impact on their body than if actually they're using it to escape from various things in their life that they don't like. So that's one sort of similarity I can see between what you're talking about and sort of these lifestyle choices people make. But also, you mentioned this trial that you did, and I'd love to hear more about this, about these 1,600 people who gave up. And I'd love to find out a bit more what exactly they gave up for 30 days. But it reminds me again a little bit of when people come off sugar and they are, you know, some people say, I need to have three spoons of sugar in my coffee. But once you've actually kicked that habit 30 days later, your taste buds

have changed. And now if you have a coffee with three sugars, and it's going to taste disgusting and super sweet, whereas four weeks ago, that was your norm. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that you're this is a message of hope, isn't it? You're saying that actually, we can do things about this. And it maybe is not as tricky as we think it might be. I think that's absolutely right. This is the shift that I've observed. Maybe about two or three years ago, we were comfortable saying, hey, if someone I know is drinking too much, the dub to pay, that that's a problem, they should fix it. If someone I know is addictively eating and becoming morbidly obese, our culture says that's a problem, we should fix it. Three years ago, we weren't thinking that way about numbing yourself with digital technology.

It was like, no, that's a kid. Like we use screens. Isn't it funny? You know, oh, I'm addicted to my phone. It was a self-deprecating joke. And that's really shifted. One of the reasons I wrote this book now is that among my readers, I'm starting to see a shift in the culture in which they are starting to see this behavior going on with their devices

as not just innovation and fun, but actually worrisome. And so to me, I think that shift is really important. And I think the analogies to health and fitness is very useful. And this is why the premise behind my book is that tricks and good intentions and tips is not enough, that you need a philosophy like digital minimalism, something that's grounded in your value, something that you can believe in, something that you can base your decisions on. I'm motivated in part by watching what works in health and fitness.

We saw in the 20th century the rise of highly processed foods and along with that in the West came a lot of health issues, heart disease, obesity, metabolic syndrome, more broadly. And what we noticed was that tips and good intentions weren't enough, right? I mean, the NHS could put out some good guidelines, but how many people was that actually bringing back from really unhealthy lifestyles? But on the other hand, if you think, who are the healthiest people I know? Almost certainly, they have some sort of philosophy around their health and fitness that's internally consistent, that speaks to their values that they really believe in, right? Like maybe they're vegan or they're paleo. There's something that is bigger than just assorted tips and tricks. And so I think that's a really good analogy because that's what motivated me to think, well, what was the veganism or paleo of the digital world? What's the name,

the philosophy that you could buy into and make a lifestyle? Because I think that's what we need. If we recognize the scope of the problem, nothing short of that is probably going to lead to good solutions. Yeah, absolutely. So what did these 1,600 people that you took through this 30-day digital declutter, what actually did they have to give up? So the terminology that we used to declutter was optional personal technologies. So we weren't dealing with your professional life. So as I told them, you can't use this declutter as an excuse to stop answering your boss's emails, unfortunately. And we used the term optional to mean this is something you can stop using without serious negative consequences. So for example,

you know, social media, reading news online, video games, streaming media. For most people, you could easily step away from these without a serious consequence in a 30-day period. But there's other things like, oh, I use text messaging to know when my daughter is ready to get picked up from school after practice. That would be a non-optional use of technology. If you stepped away from that for 30 days, your daughter is going to have to live at the playing field for the next month. So that's not optional. So that was the terminology we used. And then the other caveat I added is, okay, if there's a broad technology in your personal life in which there's just a few specific uses that are not optional, specify them. So say, okay, I will use text messaging, but only for ABC and for nothing else.

And so we're really trying to strip out everything in terms of digital behavior in your personal life that you really could get away with taking a break from. Okay, so people did this, and did they find it difficult to, you know, to cut these things out of their life? People reported it was hard for somewhere between 7 to 14 days, and then it got less difficult. One young woman, for example, said she was so used to checking stuff on her phone that after she took off all these apps from her phone at the beginning of the declutter, what she found herself doing was compulsively checking the weather app. updating information. It actually had information you could check. And she said for the first week, she could tell you like hourly updates on the weather in a dozen major cities around the country because she just had this compulsive need, I need to see information. But the same young woman said by day 10, there was no problem. And then the important thing was, it wasn't just that you were detoxing. That's sort of the beginning of the declutters. You detox from the compulsive

need to use these technologies. Where the real value starts to come in is that you're also supposed to use this as a period of reflection to figure out what's important to me and also to rediscover alternative analog activities. And it was really this latter thing, the alternative analog activities, that made a really big difference. This was a surprise for me. As people rediscovered the type of analog activities they used to love, they correspondingly found that their taste for low quality digital distraction began to diminish. This sounds like a really key point. So it's not just reducing the use of the technology, it's finding alternatives. i guess what you're saying

is this what what you mean when you're talking about high quality leisure activities is this kind of in a nutshell what you're what you're teaching these uh people to do yeah so things that you do just for the sake of doing it just for the enjoyment of doing it and the more that it actually has a component of socializing or skill to it, it tends to be the more value that people get out of it. And so this was really the secret sauce to the clutter was you figure out, OK, here's what is really important to me. And then second, you match those to some analog activities, right? OK, this is really important to me, so I'm going to go do this. I'm going to join this community group.

I really enjoy – like fitness and health is important. I'm going to join the pickup football team or whatever it is. It's this value-driven, high-quality analog activity. This is what it seems like, and again, this was a surprise to me. It's like this is what all these billions of dollars were invested in trying to trick us out of a different getting. in trying to trick us out of indifferent getting. This whole digital attention economy is largely based on let's push that out of people's lives and then we'll be the thing that fills the void. And so to the point now that after this experiment, I changed the way I talk about this to people.

I say, you know what? You can make this much easier if you actually spend some time before you do the declutter. Start with the analog. Because if you already have those in place, you're actually going to find the stepping away from the technology piece much easier. And so that's one of the lessons I learned and was surprised by, by that particular experiment. Yeah, that is super fascinating. And, you know, when you mentioned analogue, it got me thinking about music. And I think there's something in the way we consume music, which is very reflective of the whole digital revolution. And that, you know, I remember as a teenager, you know, I couldn't wait to queue up and buy the latest CD for one of my favorite bands. And, you know, you'd bring it home.

You'd have a lot of pride in the CD and the artwork. You'd spend hours in the evening listening and actually, you know, seeing, you know, who recorded which songs and who wrote the songs and all this kind of stuff. Really, you know, taking real pride in it. And, you know, over the last five, ten years, probably longer actually, as music has become a lot more disposable and easy to access, we've become very blasé about it. You know, very few people now, relative to the past, listen to albums in their entirety, the way the artist has actually put 12 songs together for you to go on a learning

experience, you know, a musical odyssey, a musical experience. And a few years ago, actually, I'd had enough. And I thought, okay, I'm getting back to basics. And I went into a music store and I said, well, I want to buy a CD player, high quality CD player. I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to sound quality. And he goes, yeah. And he was showing me all these ones with Wi-Fi connectivity and Bluetooth capability. I said, have you got anything that doesn't have that capability? And he just looked at me and said, well, yeah, we do. But why would you want that? You know, you won't be able to stream.

You won't be able to do this. I said, that's exactly what I'm looking for. And he was really surprised. And I bought an old school, you know, really high quality CD player. And I now listen to CDs. And I'm hoping, I'm trying to teach my children to actually not constantly flip between songs that hey let's just press play let's listen to these things um you know from start to finish and obviously CDs are digital but would this qualify as an analog activity for you?

Well yes I think it definitely does I mean a lot of people reported to me that getting back to things like playing vinyl records or CD albums, but going from albums to streaming was one of the activities that they had forgotten. There's actually a large movement. The journalist David Sachs has this great book from a couple years ago called The Revenge of Analog. And it really shows the surprising way in which some of these analog leisure activities, in particular, vinyl albums are increasing. Album sales are up for the first time in decades. And so I think it's an example of a high quality analog activity. It's also a great metaphor for the experience of high quality analog. Because if you sit down and

listen to an album, in the moment, it could be more difficult or require more effort than just streaming songs you love from a streaming service, for every song you like, every song you're excited to hear from. But somehow the experience in totality of going through the whole experience with the album, sitting there, getting lost in the music, getting a sense of what the artist was trying to do, in totality, you come away much, much more satisfied. And so that's a great metaphor for high-quality analog versus low-quality digital distraction is that, yes, it requires more effort. And yes, at the moment, you might not have, you know, whatever, the same sense of, I love this, there might be more negatives. But the overall experience of high-quality leisure, just like when you sit down and listen to that whole album, the whole overall experience is just much, much better and more humanizing.

So this is why I'm not surprised that a lot of people are doing what you're doing or what I did and actually getting back into albums because it's a microcosm of this larger truth. Yeah, absolutely. And it's something that I'm, as a father of two young kids, you know, I'm, you know, there this, if I'm honest, this digital world, sometimes it's fast paced, everything now, you don't have to wait for anything, sort of pace of life. It concerns me. And, you know, I, like all parents, I'm trying my best to do what I can for my children to help, you know, protect against it or navigate, it's probably a better term, navigate this digital world. And so, you know, let's see how far I get on with that.

But I'd love to hear some of your tips on that. But I think on that, you mentioned in your new book about Steve Jobs and his original vision for the iPhone. And obviously, we're talking about music a lot and phones. And, well, 20 years ago, phones made phone calls. Nowadays, phones do a lot more than just make phone calls. And so I'd love to hear more about what was Steve Jobs' original vision. But before you answer that, I'd love to know, do you have a smartphone. It's quite old. My wife wanted me to get it around the time our first kid was born. And I like it because we can send photos if I'm away. She can text me photos of what our kids are up to, and it has this Google Maps thing on it, which is great. which is great. But I have no games on it. I have no social media on it. I don't have the email app set up on it. And so I'm probably using this phone a lot like Steve Jobs actually originally envisioned. And how did he originally envisage the iPhone? Yeah, here's the interesting thing about Jobs. I went back and researched this. So I talked to one of the original team

leads of the iPhone team leading up to its release in 2007. Then I went back and I rewatched the keynote release of the iPhone. And the surprising thing you learn if you go back and look at this is that the way we use our phones today, which is primarily a source of delivery information that we check a lot, we check 85 to 125 times a day, this was nowhere to be found in the original vision of the iPhone. What Steve Jobs was trying to do was take two things that people love to do already and had loved to do for a long time, which is listen to music and talk to people on the phone and make the experience better. This is what Jobs was about,

was not trying to teach people new behaviors, like, hey, you need to be clicking on this or looking at this screen. He was all about taking things that people love and giving them an even better experience. So the original iPhone, there was two main pitches for it. One, you don't have to carry a separate iPod and a separate cell phone. We're integrating them together, so now you only need one device. So here's these two things you're already doing.

We're making the experience better because you only have to have one device. And two, this is a better phone than any other phone. The interface is better. The voicemail works better. It's easier to find someone in your address book. Jobs was really essentially almost personally insulted by how clumsy he felt the interfaces were on existing cell phones at the time. And so that was the vision. It's a really, really good cell phone that integrates a really good music player.

Two things that we already love to do put together to a more beautiful experience. There's no app store. There's no idea that this is something that you would check all the time. Did it occur to Steve Jobs that you would you would you would check all the time did it occur to steve jobs it really is count to hear that because i think many of us probably just assumed that this was the vision and the vision is now here and part of our day-to-day lives so that's that's fascinating makes me think of a friend of mine actually who recently told me that he's sick of being distracted every time he listens to music on his phone. So like many of us, we might be listening to something, but we'll, you know, obviously it may not apply to you because you don't have social media platforms,

but he said, you know, I'll be listening to something, but I'll also be flicking on Instagram and Twitter and then I might check my email. So, you know, multitasking whilst listening to music. And so what he's done, and he says a lot of his friends are doing this, he's bought a portable music device, you know, where he can actually, when he's listening to music, actually he puts his phone off or an airplane mode and puts it in his bag, and he just concentrates on the music he's listening to. You know, in many ways, what I'm sort of talking about, what you're talking about is trying to get back to what existed in the world not that long ago. Yeah, we're not talking that far back in history. What we're doing today that feels so fundamental is so new. It's so arbitrary.

It can be hard because it's like a fish that doesn't know what water is because it's always been all around it. This notion that you're constantly checking a screen that's delivering sort of algorithmically selected news and intermittently reinforcement social approval indicators. This is like so arbitrary that to a time traveler from 15 years ago, it might even look dystopian. We just became used to it because it gradually slipped up on us. And actually, most people, as you mentioned earlier, it's not like they signed up for this. I mean if you bought an iPhone in 2007, you didn't buy it because you're like, I want to check this thing 85 times a day. I mean you put it – the music player was beautiful right um and you signed up for facebook in 2004 like a lot of my my friends did they're like this is a novelty mainly i'm just kind of interested in what the relationship status

is of various people at my school yeah you got 20 minutes of time a week right this idea that you would uh you would check it on facebook all day long, no one signed up for that, right? I mean this is stuff that emerged over time. So now we're in this weird state where to an observer from 15 years ago to Steve Jobs from 2007 is almost horrifying. I think we're just starting to realize that like, oh, this isn't fundamental. This is actually a lot weirder than we thought. I mean we're just too used to it. but this is weird what we're doing right now. Yeah. I mean, you know, we did stumble into it. We didn't know this is where things were going. And I think in the first chapter of your

new book, you mentioned that these tools are not as innocent as they seem, which I found a very interesting phrase. And that's possibly something that I think society is becoming more and more aware of. But there's a lot of people who I think, who I talk to think, you know what, they're really not that bad at these things. There's plenty of uses for them, and they don't see the potential downsides. So I'd love to know why you say they're not as innocent as they seem. And also, you mentioned the phrase, I think you're quoting a former Google engineer saying when he talks about these devices as being, you know, a slot machine, quite a provocative term. And I wonder

if you could explain. Right, that's Tristan Harris, a former Google engineer who has become essentially a whistleblower on the digital industry saying, hey, this is what we're doing or what we were doing. Well, I used to try to get you to use these devices a lot more. So to give you a little context, there was a big shift in the way that a lot of these social media platforms in particular operate right around the time that they shifted from the desktop over to mobile, which was also right around the time that they shifted from the desktop over to mobile, which was also right around the time that the investors of these companies got pretty antsy and said, we want IPOs. We want big IPOs so we can make a big return on our investment. And so companies like Facebook

said, okay, we have to significantly increase our revenue now. How are we going to best monetize our users? And the answer that came back is, if we could put this on a mobile phone, users. And the answer that came back is, if we could put this on a mobile phone, that means our users, in theory, could be accessing this all the time, which is not the way people use these things before that, right? But they said, in theory, that's possible. The question is, how do we get them to do it? How do we get them to pull out our device and load up our app and enter in information about themselves and be shown ads? This is a really odd behavior. This is not the way that these platforms work on the desktop. People checked in on them maybe once a day or a couple times a week. And so one of the things they did was attention engineer the services to try to

induce more compulsive use in their users. And in doing so, they borrowed some ideas from Las Vegas Casino Gablead, and and in particular slot machine design. So what they learned from slot machine design is that if you could give intermittent reinforcement in terms of the rewards that you get for clicking on the app, then people are going to find themselves to be disproportionately compelled to click on it. So if, hey, if I click on this button on my phone, I sometimes get a reward. And if I click on it, sometimes I don't. Or maybe even sometimes I get a near miss, like something kind of interesting, but sometimes it's a jackpot, like something very interesting. That plays with our dopamine systems in a weird way that slot machines have long since exploited

that makes you click on that thing way more than you need to. But their problem was there's not enough rewards generated by our social media service because the way people used to use social media was you updated your profile sometimes. And so there wasn't a lot to see. You might log in to see what your friends are up to, but then there's no reason to log in again until the next day at least, right? So they said we need more rewards. And this is where they innovated things like the Like button or the heart in Instagram or photo auto-tagging. So you could get a notification that, hey, someone has tagged you in a photo. The primary purpose of these things soon emerged that it created a much richer stream of rewards.

There was more things for you to see when you clicked on the app. And not only were there more things to see, but they would sometimes be there, sometimes not, to the point where there's rumors that both Facebook and Instagram will actually artificially batch likes or hearts to deliver to you to make sure that the stream of these rewards is more intermittent so that you'll have more of that effect. And then the final thing that makes these really, really compelling is that most of these rewards are social approval indicators. So they're indications that someone was thinking about you. And the way our brains have evolved is there's few rewards more compelling than encountering evidence that someone is thinking about you or saying something about you. And so this whole social media experience where all day long you're getting retweets and likes and tags that are all social approval indicators arriving intermittently.

That was all constructed. None of that was in the original social media experience. None of that is necessary for the claim, the values of social media, which is connecting to people and see what people are up to. And these were primarily developed to, A, hijack your brain so that you compulsively click on the app, and, B, to give them a much richer stream of information about you so that they could sell you much more expensive ads. Yeah, it's incredible once we hear the background as to how this is all being created. And really highlights the point you make so beautifully in the book that technology is not neutral, which I think is a really important theme for all of us to remember when we're using it. Just to be clear, Cal, you're not anti-technology, are you? No, I'm a computer science professor. I sort of

make a living researching and advancing technology. Yeah, so it's not about saying tech is either good or bad. It's almost really getting back to what you said right at the start, which is, you know, what's the intention behind your use? And I think if we all got a little bit clearer on that, we could probably get more of the upsides with less of the downsides. One thing I just wanted to touch on before we sort of close down the conversation is you talk a little bit about the impact on your relationships when you stop clicking like, and I found that fascinating. What is the impact on your relationships when you stop clicking like. And I found that fascinating. What is the impact on your relationships?

Yeah, I argue that if you stop clicking like or leaving comments on social media, almost certainly your social life will significantly strengthen. And the reason this is true is, as I mentioned earlier, the literature is making it increasingly clear that digital interactions just don't scratch the same itch as real world conversation this is why when people replace real world conversation increasingly with digital interaction they get lonelier because it's not that the digital interaction makes them lonely it's the they're losing the massive benefits they would otherwise get from real world conversation so what a lot of minimalists do is they try to reframe the way they think about digital interaction so that they don't see it as just another form of being social and instead see it as something that's maybe just logistical.

Like a way to find out a friend is in town so that I could get in touch so we could meet up or text messaging is a way to help coordinate, hey, I'm over here. Do you want to come over for a drink? But not a substitute or alternative form of social interaction. So one way to force that mindset shift is stop interacting with people on social media to the extent possible on text messaging as well. So don't click like. Don't leave comments. If you do that, your mind can no longer use the excuse of, well, I've been interacting with this person, so I'm being social.

If you're not interacting with people on social media, your craving to be social will drive you to the real-world conversation you need. And so this will much strengthen your social life. It's true. If you stop clicking like or leaving comments, there's a lot of weak tie friendships that will disappear, the friendships that exist only in this digital space. But we have no reason to believe that weak tie friendships are at all important to thrive as a social human being. So I think that's fine. You need to relocate your social life to the real world. Tech tools like social media or text messaging are mainly useful in this context only in that they can help you do more, better, and richer real-world interaction. That's really the only type of interaction that's going to satisfy your need to be social. Yeah, I think it's the evolutionary biologists.

Professor Robin Dunbar, I think, talks about how our brains have evolved to really know only 150 people. have evolved to really know only 150 people. And it's incredible that the majority of people have way more so-called friends on this or followers on their social media channels, which really begs the question, how many of these are high quality interactions? And these things can always be misconstrued. I want to make it clear to people

that I appreciate that I am on social media and I'm not trying to be a hypocrite here. I'm simply trying to raise awareness of the great work that you're doing, Cal, but also just to highlight for people, how are they consuming their social media? What impact is it having on their lives? I argue the case in the stress solution about that. As you just said, really, I didn't really think about it from this perspective. But the fact that if we're constantly seeing what our friends are up to, their baby photos, their holiday snaps, where they've been, what they had for dinner last night, we feel less of an urge actually to see them in real life, because we sort of think, you know,

we've kept up to date with them, sort of think, you know, we've kept up to date with them, even though actually, you know, digital communication is not the same as real, deep, meaningful human interaction. So I think I really like that. You stop clicking like and your relationships improve. Before we wrap it up, Cal, you also mentioned the Amish community in your book. And I think many of us would feel that the Amish don't use technology much, but you're saying that it's a little bit different than that. Yeah, they're an interesting case study because it turns out that the popular belief that they just froze their technology at a certain time period in the past is actually not right. In fact, if you spend time among Yarmouth, you'll see that there's a lot of modern technology they use. I mean, they'll have disposable diapers, there'll be diesel generators,

they'll have powerful tractors, they use chemical fertilizers. I mean, there's really nothing. You'll see, my favorite example is you'll see young Amish children rollerblading, right? So what's going on? What they're doing is taking intentional living and pushing it to an extreme. So the way that the Amish encounter technology is they say our primary goal is to keep our community strong. That's our main intention. Everything else is supported to that. So when new technology comes along, they say, all right, the question is, will this make our community stronger or weaker? And that's how they decide whether or not to

adopt it. In fact, they'll typically choose a sort of alpha geek to try it out for a while and observe what's the impact. Does it make our community stronger or weaker? And that's how they make the decision. So that's why they're happy to have disposable diapers or a solar paddle, but they're very worried about the automobile because that leads people to drive away, leave the community, go other places, and that weakens the community. So why are they relevant? Well, I don't think that we should all join old order Amish communities. There's obviously a lot of issues with what's going on with that particular

lifestyle. But I think they're important because they're an extreme version of a principle that's useful for medievalists, which is this idea that intentionality trumps convenience. So for the Amish, it's incredibly inconvenient, all these technologies they don't use because it would hurt their value of strong community. And yet somehow against all odds, this religious order has survived into the 21st century. And the reason it has in part is because the value that people get from feeling like they're living very intentionally far swaps the negative cost of, say, inconvenience. And I think that's a really important value when you're thinking about a minimalist approach to your digital life, is don't underestimate how much positive return you're going to get just by simply saying, I'm in control. I'm making choices that are based on my values. That's going to carry you much, much farther than the little occasional inconveniences or missed value that that intentionality is going to incur.

Yeah, Cal, that's so profound. I've written that down, actually. Intentionality trumps convenience. I'm going to be pondering that, I think, for the next few hours. There's something really powerful in that. And just hearing that phrase has already had an impact on me. So thank you for that. Look, Cal, I would like to finish off the conversations with people with some sort of hopefully some inspiring thoughts or some actions that people who are listening can use to immediately improve the quality of their lives. and obviously I would highly recommend that people buy your book Digital Minimalism choosing a focused life in a noisy world to really hear the background but also some really great suggestions on what we can all do or think about doing to help improve our interactions with the digital world but you're someone who you know is very productive is happy got a family life got strong relationships yet is also you know doing really well with their career yet you are managing to do all of that in spite of not having any social media

channels and i think that's very empowering for people to hear so that it is possible to be successful um and and happy and productive and not be on social media so that is a possibility for people who want to go down that route. But of course, not everyone is going to want to go down that route. So can you leave the listener with some top tips that they might think about applying in their own life? Well, if you're interested in digital minimalism, I mean, I'm convinced the most effective way to make this transformation is to do something like the 30-day digital declutter. But if you're looking to experiment with it a little bit before taking that plunge,

there's a few small things you can do right away that are going to give you big results. So the first is take off of your smartphone any app in which someone makes money every time you click on it. So transform your smartphone into a useful device that does not have those tempting distractions. So I'm not asking you to quit anything yet. You still have access to all of those new feeds and social media through your browser. I'm just getting rid of the ability

to check those at any moment. So that could have a big effect. The second small tip that gives a big reward is start engineering more occasions in your daily life in which you do things without your phone. This can be scary at first, so maybe you want to start small, like I'm going to the corner store and back. But try to have more and more occasions of longer and longer times where you are just without your phone. It's just you and your mind out there encountering the world that's going to give you huge benefits. And third, right away, start systematically cultivating those type of high-quality analog activities we've been talking about again and again. Put those back in your life.

Few things are more effective in reducing your taste for the unnecessary or low-quality digital distraction than having these type of of high quality pursuits, right? High quality leisure. So take any app off your phone. There are people make money when you click on it. Go places without your phone. Start adding back high quality analog leisure. This will get you a long way towards minimalism while you're still pondering whether or not the declutter is right for you.

And hopefully that'll give you a strong enough experience that you'll go all in and make the final transition to this type of lifestyle. Yeah, Cal, that's brilliant. Really three fantastic tips. It's a really good sort of jumping off point for people who might feel a little bit intimidated, but think, okay, I'm just going to, you know, just dip my feet in the water and see how it feels. I think those three things will have really, really high impacts very, very quickly for a lot of people. And I just wonder if you could just expand finally on these analog activities. Have you got a list of some, you know, various analog activities? The reason I ask this is because no doubt there will be some people listening, very much like that chat at that technology talk I gave, who are confused as to what can I do if I don't have my phone? Clearly, that doesn't

apply to everyone. But just for those people who might be concerned, have you got a short list of potential analog activities that they might be able to do? Sure. Well, at the high level, what's important is that there are activities that you do just for the sake of the activity, so the value is intrinsic. And if it requires you to develop, apply, get rewards for having skill, that's good. If it has a social component, that's good. So in my experience, for example, there's lots of things. Just to give you some short examples, actually reading, you would be surprised. A lot of people rediscovered the library.

This idea of just going and serendipitously discovering an assorted variety of books and then bringing them home and reading. Music is certainly something. So your experience you talked about earlier is not rare. So going through the effort of building up a really high quality sound system, finding like analog albums, sitting there and listening to them, learning the whole repertoire of a particular musician. This is high reward. Sports activities is something that comes up often. People join leagues or pick up teams and start to relearn various sports skills. A lot of people got into like art and poetry.

So people who used to paint got back to painting. People who used to write got back to painting. People who used to write got back to writing. Board games was a big thing. People got back in the board game night, having a regular group of people to get together to actually sit there and play games. And then skilled hobbies was the other thing that was really big. So woodworking or this whole DIY maker culture, you know, where you make interesting things, potentially with electronic components and 3D printing. And this whole maker movement is something that was really big as well. I mean, so that's just a short list among a lot of possibilities.

But these are the types of activities I'm talking about when I say high quality. Yeah, I love that. And I think that just gives a few examples to people who may not know where to start. And I'm a huge fan of the whole board game idea. That's something that as a family, my wife and I are putting a lot more focus into because I think it's it just is a great way to spend time together as a family. It encourages concentration, mindfulness, you know, having to wait for things, having to, you know, really, you know, I think that's a high quality analog interaction that we experience benefits from as a family. And, you know, if anyone's listening to this and thinks that they might want to get back into that with their own kids or their partners or whoever with you, their friends, I would highly, highly encourage it. I think it's a lot of benefits.

Cal, I could talk to you for another two hours because there is so much that I'd love to find out about this topic. And it's something that I'm really, really interested in. So I know you're incredibly busy. I really do appreciate you sparing some time to talk to me. Thank you for all the work that you're doing. Thank you for writing these incredible books. And I hope to have the opportunity to get you back at some point in the future. Well, I really enjoyed it.

And I'm honored you had me on. And it was a great conversation. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. I hope you found the conversation enjoyable. And that perhaps it has resulted in you reflecting on your own relationship with the digital world. Are there any tips that you heard from Cal that you can start implementing into your own relationship with the digital world? Are there any tips that you heard from Cal that you can start implementing into your own life straight away? And what high quality leisure activities do you have scheduled in for this week? I think that is a great question that

we can all ask ourselves at the very least on a weekly basis. As always, I love getting feedback as to what you thought of today's show. As Cal is not on social media, you will be unable to let him know what you think. But please do let me know using the hashtag feelbetterlivemore or hashtag FBLM so that I can easily find your comments. There's a lot of information in today's episode. If you go to the show notes page, which is drchastity.com forward slash 50, so that's five zero, you'll find all the topics that we discussed today, including some really interesting links to some fascinating articles and blogs, so that you can continue your learning experience now that the podcast is over.

The show notes page is drchastity.com forward slash five zero. Many of the themes we discussed today are covered in my new book, The Stress Solution. I discuss the importance of meaningful human relationships and how they can help lower our stress levels and improve our health. I also have a large section on how to guard your digital borders. And there's this menu of about 15 different tips that you may want to consider to help you reset your relationship with the digital world. I know from the feedback already that many of you have found this section really helpful. So if you've not picked up a copy of my book yet, you can pick it up in all the usual places in paperback, ebook and the audiobook which I am narrating. If you enjoy my weekly podcasts, one of the best ways that you can support them

is by leaving a review on whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels. Or you could do it a good old fashioned way and simply tell your friends and family about the show. Your support is very much appreciated. That's it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back very shortly with my latest conversation.

Remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.