Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1477: Is Social Media Killing Your Gains?

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin discuss the negative impact social media can have on health and fitness and provide ways to minimize the downsides of living in the social media age. How social media may be affecting you more than you realize. (3:00) The positives of social media. (7:14) How social media may be killing your health and fitness gains. (8:25) #1 – Making a sedentary lifestyle look cool. (9:52) #2 – Body image issues are becoming more mainstream and disguised as motivation. (14:00) #3 – Becoming aware of its addictive properties. (23:18) #4 – The rise of poor sleep with our children. (25:17) The practices and key takeaways to tackle these issues. (27:35) #1 – Setting time limits and boundaries. (27:50) #2 – Shut off ALL notifications. (31:26) #3 – Keeping your phone in a designated space. (34:14) #4 – Create scheduled breaks. (36:29) #5 – Only follow people who provide you with the most/good healthy value. (39:18) The origin story of #squatandscroll. (43:01) Related Links/Products Mentioned January Promotion: MAPS Fitness Starter Bundle 50% off! Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked Mind Pump #1140: Nir Eyal The Key to Fitness Success is Self-Love – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Adam Alter Nir Eyal (@neyal99)  Instagram Enzo Coglitore (@enzocog)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You're listening to the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Now, today's episode we talk about social media and how it may be killing your gains. That's right, social media, a very powerful tool might be causing you to not build the muscle you want

or get the body you want or burn the body fat that you want. So in this episode, we talk about all the problems that social media might be causing you. And then we teach you how to develop behaviors or steps to create better behaviors and boundaries around social media for a healthier, more vibrant, meaningful life. Now, today's episode is brought to you by our sponsor,

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irresistible right all the time. I touted that book for a good, solid year and a half. Do we figure out how to pronounce the last name? Alter. Yeah, I was saying atler. I know, yeah, I was always gonna say that. Yeah, it's Adam Alter, right? So anyways, so that we went on that kick for a while

then we sought out the opposing view, which was near I.L., right? Which of them pronouncing that correct. Who he came on the show kind of blew all of our minds. And you know I felt like we eased up on the, you know, being so scared about tech. I feel like I've kind of come back full circle though with that, even after that conversation.

I think initially he did such a good job of defending tech and then the reminding me of the thank you for smoking. I totally, I was just going to say that, dude. I literally was going to go that direction, reminds me of that movie. He was so good at arguing the defense of tech and comparing it to newspaper. You know, a newspaper came out. We thought that nobody would ever talk to each other again and television was going to rot your brain. And I just think that even though he brought up a lot of good points, where it is today, I just don't think we've ever been there.

I think it's better related to when we bring up the analogy of highly processed foods to like regular food. I think that where we're at, it's more than the average person can control. Yes, if you can put boundaries in place and do these things, but if you don't even think about it, and you just mindlessly go about your day and you're not realizing how much it's,

I think it's affecting more than people realize. Well, I think what I mainly agreed in why it was such a compelling argument is because you brought it back to personal responsibility. And that's pretty much everything. And, but what was kind of neglecting that conversation was the immense draw towards this compelling technology that does have addictive properties.

If you're not managing your time with it and really checking what those behaviors look like. Yeah, I think you make a mistake if you paint social media as bad or good. It's an amoral thing. It's not good or bad. It's a tool. It's a very powerful tool.

Look, I can make the argument that fire can also be very bad, probably responsible for, you know, countless deaths throughout all of human history, but also important discovery for us, an important tool. And social media is a very, very powerful and effective tool. Now, short of living in a society that's totally controlled, the cat is out of the bag, in other words, it's there. It's there forever.

We're not getting rid of social media. The key is going to be in how to maximize the good and minimize the negative. And it does require a level of self-awareness. And this is the problem with new things, right? Like you brought up the analogy of processed foods. You know, that really, that started happening very quickly, especially around the 70s and 80s,

it started to really ramp up in the 90s. And it was faster than we had the awareness to deal with. Now today, there are far less parents, far fewer parents that give their kids a run of them, you know, just run of the mill with processed food. Now when I was a kid, even in my household, my parents were both immigrants, my mom made homemade dinners every night,

but we had access to processed foods whenever we wanted. And they weren't as aware of some of the issues that they, that they, I remember going trick-or-treating, for example, for Halloween. Most of my friends who have kids don't let their kids trick-or-treat come home and then just eat as much candy as they want. Now, I did that. Nobody, nobody told me have 10 pieces or five pieces

and then save the rest. It was like, okay, go to your room and then, scarcity, it's like, let's get it in while we have it now. Yeah, so I think what we're dealing with with social media is a very, very, very powerful tool, very alluring as a result of how powerful it is, which means we need to bring awareness around it and develop some practices and healthy behaviors around it

so that we can reap the benefits and mitigate or minimize a lot of the negatives. Now, social media, let's talk about some of the positives, right? Obviously, this podcast in our business would not exist if it wasn't for new media. Social media is kind of under that umbrella. If we started a podcast 25 years ago

where we were gonna dispel myths and fitness and talk about how the promises of the fitness industry, many of them are false and how it takes things like hard work and effort and nutrition, all that stuff, it would have never gone off the floor, it would have never gone anywhere. Nobody, first of all, would have never gone off the floor, would have never gone anywhere. Nobody, first of all, would have put us on their channel. Nobody would pay attention.

Because corporate sponsors would have never put us on, because you're not saying what we want you to say and whatever, this allows us to reach lots of people with our message. Media allows you to do that. Social media allows you to connect with people. Very, very easily, I can connect with family overseas that I normally would, you know, almost never talk to.

I can see pictures, so we form bonds. I can find forums and groups that I can talk to and learn from, the information, the way it spreads information is like nothing we've ever experienced. So there's a lot of good there, but then there's a lot of negative. And I think we should bring it back to, of course, fitness and how the negatives affect

people's health and fitness. Well, I'm glad you said that because I always feel guilty for bashing the tool that has created our success, right? I mean, how hypocritical is that sound? It's something that I don't think it's so much. It could come off that way, right? It could come off like we're bashing or saying it's this evil bad thing. But like you said, it's not a bad or good thing.

It's simply a tool. And it's one of those things that I think that many people right now, because we're still kind of in the early stages, just the level of awareness isn't there. I mean, I still catch myself doing this almost every day where the intent, when I first go in to, you know, Instagram or Facebook or whatever or my email, the intent is right or pure, but really quickly I can get distracted.

I'm guilty of that daily. And I think if you're somebody who doesn't think that's a bad thing or doesn't see how that can lead to other things, then you don't care. You don't really go, oh shit, I got sucked down the rabbit hole and that wasn't good or try and put boundaries up. You just go with the flow. And I think that's kind of where we're at right now

is there's still a large part of the population that isn't aware of the behaviors that this can cause. And my biggest concern being in the health and fitness space, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is just the sedentary lifestyle that we're already in, heading into this tech generation and social media generation. And I find that it's only progressing that. It's only making us more sedentary

and talk about an even greater uphill battle we have for the health epidemic. Yeah, well now you're even more entertained sitting there. That's the thing, there's a fantastic job figuring out how to entertain us and how to sort of fit that in between time when you're just kind of staring at the wall normally.

When you're standing in line, when you're going to the bathroom, like you're doing mundane tasks and things, you know, that's almost, it gets to a point now where I like freak out, where's my phone? Because I want to fill that space instead of just, you know, being okay with being bored for that second.

Yeah, you know, there's no better example, I can think of how clear this powerful this tool is than with my own kids or just kids in general, just this generation of children. You know, when we were kids, going outside was, there was literally, there was no competition. Hey, do you wanna sit here on the couch or would you like to go outside? Yeah, exactly. There was no, I mean, do you want to sit here on the couch, or would you like to go outside?

Yeah, exactly. There was no, I mean, it was always go outside, because sitting here in the house was super boring. There was nothing to do, but if I got up and went outside, there was a whole adventure and so many possibilities. So it's literally the opposite. So I'm gonna challenge that a little bit, right? Because I do find that interesting and not completely true,

because television did exist. You know, we had television. I can't compare the two. Well, that's why I want to go, cause I know near did, right? That's, he used that example of like television and newspaper and these other, there was always these things that we can.

It's not an infinite loop. It is not, and it's not, and there's not an infinite amount of entertainment and distraction. I mean, look, I tell you what, you talk to the average 10 year old today, and when they get in trouble, do their parents send them to their room

or do their parents say, turn off your electronic squad side? They complete opposite of what happened to us when we were kids. And look, I can't blame them. If I was a kid today, I would be way more want to sit and be on social media and reading things

and watching YouTube and watching videos and playing video games, then going outside and trying to figure out what's going on. So it's definitely made being sedentary, far more alluring and entertaining, whereas before beating sedentary, you know, could be boring for people. You know, I'm just gonna sit here, I got nothing to do. I don't know, I might as well get up.

Well, and how about when you're watching television, right? So going back to my argument, like, you're watching television, you're at the mercy of the network, whatever comes next, right? Like, I remember as kids, like, you had that two or three hour window of cartoons and it switches over to it. That's right. Boring assets. It's programmed, yeah, by the time.

And so you had to know, like, Friday at this time was the only time you're gonna see that show. And I mean Netflix is another example of like how they've totally like interrupted that entire thing and just allowed you to binge for as long as you possibly want. Dude, I remember as a kid, Saturday morning cartoons, this was when, this was really the only time entertainment was dedicated to children.

And I remember I'd watch the cartoons and then I would see the train for soul train come on. That meant that the cartoons were over because that was the next show. It's over. Yeah, things had like endings. Yeah. Same thing with video games.

Like I was tripping out on this the other day because I was going back and doing some nostalgic Nintendo and playing some Mario and, you know, like the physics and everything. It was like very, you know, simple graphics and whatnot. But it's like, it was really challenging and you had to work really hard to pass levels. And the games now are just catered to hanging out with your friends and just cruising around and creating things and it's like fully immersive and there's no end to it.

Yeah, so what this does is it can make you much more sedentary, or at least encourage you to be sedentary. And so this is a problem, of course. They compare being sedentary to smoking cigarettes or having diabetes. That's how big of a health risk it is to not move most of the day. Here's another thing that I think social media can, in a negative way way can cause, especially in our space. And I see this more now than I ever did. I've been in fitness professionally for over 20 years.

I've trained people in RAND gyms. And the body image issues that I'm starting to see now are becoming much more mainstream than they were when I was younger. Now when I was younger, before social media, you still had magazines, you still had music videos, so you still had these things that were kind of putting these images out that were showing girls

in particular, but boys as well, that this is what you're supposed to look like and they were these kind of unhealthy body image images that they would portray, but you were only exposed to them so much. You weren't immersed in them all the time. Well, now because social media, again, is so entertaining and so easy to get to, a lot of people are on there

all the time, and this has serious ramifications in my opinion, because you're not just looking at a magazine for 30 minutes and seeing bodies that your body might not never look like, but you're seeing bodies like that like crazy and they seem more real because I can talk to them. They comment, there's so many of them it seems, and your brain starts to paint this picture that the average person looks like this, which is totally not true. And so you get this unhealthy, you see more body image issues that are becoming a result of this.

You start following somebody you're really impressed. Like this is an ideal physique or this is somebody that I'm like looking up to and then you get recommended right away to another person, another influencer and then it just keeps like it seems like everybody looks like this and you know you walk in the real world. Where are they? They're nowhere to be found. Well and the most dangerous part to me about this is it's disguised in motivation, right? So you know kids see this or even adults and they I follow this person for inspiration and they're they're inspired by this body not knowing anything about this person really

but other than what they portray on social media, not knowing this person might have all kinds of mental issues might have all kinds of eating disorders themselves Probably right and they or or if these photos are Shot at one period of time and then dripped all year long and they really don't even keep their body that way You don't know how so what leaked out a few years back was all these influencers that were doctoring photos to look a certain way and Filthy we got I mean there's over what I think I can't remember the last time I saw that app that allows you to years back was all these influencers that were doctoring photos to look a certain way and fill in and we got, I mean, there's over what, I think I can't remember the last time I saw that app that allows you to change your face and your butt.

Yeah, that had like super easy because in the past, you know, Photoshop was available to like, it was very expensive and it was available to editors of top magazines. And now, I mean, I could, I could get an app right now that'll let me change the way I look. And we've normalized that. Like, when I look at my niece and nephew and their relationship with social media,

it's like everybody owns that app. And it's like, it's okay, right? It's, well, as long as I don't change this, but I can lighten my skin up a little bit or I can brighten this or wrinkles here. So we've normalized doing that and I just don't think we realize the consequences of aspiring to be like these bodies

or these people when it really is not normal. It just feels like it when your entire feed is filled up. That's right, if you see it all the time, then yes, your brain, whether you realize it or not, starts to perceive it as normal. And then you start to compare yourself to this new normal, and you can never compete with the normal that's presented on media, on social media. So, you get this kind of distorted image of what normal is, and you start to get this bad

body image, and it can lead to body obsession now because now that is your value. This is what's good, this is what gets followers, this is what gets attention. I look nothing like this. I hate myself, I hate the way I look and you see this really negative spiral going downhill and the fitness space is now just getting inundated with this.

I mean if you look up the hashtags on Instagram, for example, around fitness and health, it's a lot of this kind of stuff. And so if you're, you know, 16-year-old kid or, you know, 22-year-old girl and you're like, you know, I want to get into fitness, I'm going to start following these pages on Instagram. You know, not realizing you're going down a rab, You know, not realizing you're going down a rab, and it can cause some serious issues. It also, you get a lot of these bad advice from a lot of these people. I mean, it's, okay, fitness,

the fitness industry's always been filled with bad information. It's just as long as I can remember, you'd read the articles and magazines and stuff, you'd be like, oh man, once you start to figure things out and learn things, especially when you become educated in health and fitness, you start to realize a lot of it is just to market supplements

or to push some product and it's just false and it's fake. Well boy, the social media allow that to explode. Now you have someone who's got 100,000 followers, so he's got that authority or she's got that authority because almost so many followers, and this person's giving out advice On nutrition and exercise and this person has no business training or coaching anybody They might have figured it out for themselves and who knows how they got there

There's a lot of unhealthy ways to get to that point, but they definitely don't have what it takes to advise other people Well, most of them have just hacked the algorithm. They've figured out whether what Instagram or YouTube, how it promotes you, or what people are clicking on and looking at, whether that be, and we know that sex sells. So, you know, images of your body half naked or booty picks, like these types of things are attracting people and then like you saying so,

then it's also giving these people authority that have no business giving this advice out. Meanwhile, you have the educators that are putting out really good information, but it's so dry. It's so dry. It's not sexy. And so they are getting, no, it's not popping up in anybody's feed. You have to actively go out and seek these people.

And if you don't know where to look, it's really tough to find this really good information. Instead, you're gonna inundate with all these influencer type of people that have gotten famous because of the way they look or how they present themselves. I remember two even seeing like some of these influencers, they got so big because they do a show and they show their body and their transformation

through all this. And then they were actually just approached by so many people that wanted to do exactly what they're doing and have them, you know, you know, given the formula and I'll pay all this money for this. And this is what the demand was there. And so it's, you know, it's one of those things, it's attempting thing, even if you're not educated

completely in health and fitness. It's like, well, the opportunity is there. So maybe I'm just gonna take advantage of it. Well, I felt, I mean, I got early on when I first turned on Instagram, what, seven years or eight years ago, I was in this predicament, like I knew that, ultimately I wanted to build this e-commerce business

that didn't know exactly what it was look like, I had no idea about you guys yet that it was gonna turn into this, but I just couldn't get any traction or get anyone to listen to me if I wasn't showing my body, if I wasn't showing, look at me, look at me, look what I can do with my body. And so, it's a challenge, very challenging if you're a coach or someone who's trying to get attention.

It's even more challenging if you're a consumer how to decipher what's good information and what's bad information. Now, lucky for us, I was presenting a lot of counter information during that time. We all got together. We eventually did podcasts. The little bit of fall I had was able to get us started

and get some traction. But I was in that weird place of, man, how do I do this? How do I get this good information out without having to present it this way? And sometimes, you can't get into the algorithm. You can't get seen by anybody because it's so inundated with so many of these influencers

that are putting all these pictures out, just to get this information. Meanwhile, 90% of the content that they're putting out is terrible information. It is. There's a dangerous aspect to it, too, which is where you might have a bad idea. And in the real world,

it would be very, very hard press to find another person with that bad idea, or let alone 10. But when you get an internet land, all of a sudden you get a flat earth movement, for example, like all of a sudden, all these people found each other, and then you start to get people who believe that the earth is flat, or if you think that,

eating a particular diet, like, hey, I just ate a potato every day for 40 days and I lost 30 pounds and then you might be able to find some, and you develop this kind of gossip echo chambers of anecdotes that, you know, you go into them and you see 30 people saying the same thing, and you think, well, this must actually work. It's not dangerous.

It must be true. Yeah, it must be true. I know they said that this thing is dangerous. I know I've heard this before, but look, I got 30 people right here saying it's totally fine and nobody had any negative side effects. So I think I'm going to listen to them. So it just flourishes online.

And so this becomes a big problem, especially in the fitness space. I've seen so much crap come out of the fitness social media space in recent years. And it's because of that. It's because somebody puts out bad information and then one person says, it worked for me. And then another, and the next thing I don't believe waste trainers made their way back. It's like a clear example of that.

Ex-out there's a phenomenal example. Here's another thing. You know, this kind of media, remember, this is a marketplace. And what they're competing for is your attentions, right? And the way that they get your attentions by making their product more and more engaging, there's another word for that, it's called addictive, right? So, these social media platforms and apps are extremely addictive.

Now, does this mean that they're bad? No, just be aware of their addictive properties so that you can maybe set up some barriers to prevent yourself from abusing them or using them for too long. Well, this is the part where I feel like this relates so much to processed foods, right? I mean, we all admit that we utilize processed foods

almost on a daily basis in our own lives, even though we talk about the dangers of them all the time. And so I feel like it's the same thing. It's like it's a kind of a necessary evil, right? You're not going to probably build a business today and not use social media. You're probably going to have to do it, but at the same time being aware of the addictive properties of it and that it's been engineered to get you. Well, there's just a few examples of that, right? Like when you know you have a package coming to your house, like you get excited about that, right? Like they've figured out how to do that with like your inbox and showing a number that

pops up and you know somebody wants to chat right now or you know it's just very compelling. Like it's something that you feel and so like that's a really hard thing to just be like oh well I'll just you just get to that later. Well, to give an example, to use the processed food, I'm very aware of how addictive processed food can be. So, I don't have it in the house, right? Because if I have a full-size bag of chips, for me potato chips is the worst.

If I have it in my house, I know it ends up happening to me. I end up eating it and I have it in my house, I know it ends up happening to me. I end up eating it and I eat it more and more and until I eat the whole damn back. So I just don't have it in the house because I'm aware of its addictive properties. Something else to start to pop up and you said this earlier Adam, I thought you're totally on point. We're seeing more and more kids have issues with sleep and sleeping disorders more than ever before You've heard the term sleep like a baby or sleep like a kid well Kids normally should be able to sleep very well sleep issues didn't usually pop up until people became adults

But now we're starting to see it happen in kids and they think it's connected to social media media and electronics because You know if you're up at night, you're on your phone, your iPad or whatever, and it does such a good job, not just with the blue light that's shining your face, but it's a ability to keep you engaged and stimulated that you end up getting poor sleep. And poor sleep is, you know, it's like poor diet or not being active. It's terrible for your health. You're not going to build muscle or burn body fat or improve your fitness if your sleep is really bad. Yeah, I really wonder how many parents are actually monitoring how much

They allow kids to actually take the phone into their bedroom because you know as a young Teenage boy or girl even if my mom or dad said hey Son when you go to bed no more phone, you know You're gonna lay in bed and you're gonna yeah good luck is right I'm gonna lay in bed. I'm gonna I'm gonna sit on my phone till probably midnight or one in the morning So I wonder how many parents right now do you guys do anything do you guys keep it out of the room? Is there rules or what's how's that when they go to bed? They put their they have to put it outside the room Okay, yeah, and there's like a dresser that I have them keep it on yeah, I just keep it upstairs

They have no access now do you guys know if that's common practice with your other friends that have kids? Do you guys, have you ever asked that? I, I, I know, like Jessica's niece and nephew just have, they just have it in their room. Yeah, so they'll stay up all night. That's what I do. The few people that I know that have kids at the age that have phones, they kind of have full range.

I mean, I've seen their parents like, razz them if we're all sitting in the living room like socializing and they're like, glue their phone, like, hey, you know, tell me, put your phone away or whatever. But I never heard them have like, rules or boundaries or say, you can't take it in here. I do it for myself. I keep my phone charged downstairs.

When I go upstairs and I usually go upstairs into the bedroom, these days around 8 or 8 30 because we have the baby, so we're going up or setting up whatever. I'm not going to sleep at that time, but that's the time we go up in our room. My phone is charged downstairs. It's not with me.

Well, we've made a good, we've made the case for why these things to be hurting your progress with health and fitness and how it can be addictive. And so now I think we should talk about some of the, maybe the practices that we've all put in place, whether with ourselves or with our families, and give people some takeaways to solve that. And the first one that comes to mind is like what you're alluding to right now is just setting a timeframe in boundaries of like, yes, how long I can be on it or use it.

And so I know that when I'm good about this, I'm really good about sticking to that. When I'm bad and go, oh, I'll get around to it, I break all the rules, right? So I end up going, okay, you know, for me, we kind of finish podcasting doing our thing here about three o'clock or so, we're done. I say, okay, from three to five, that is my time to answer my, my emails, respond to my DMs, do any sort of social posts or anything that I need to for the business. And then by five, I'm done. I'm hard, it's a hard stop and I need to be home. Now sometimes I'm earlier, if I can, if I get a done in an hours time, that's great. But I a lot that like two hour window to get that done.

And then I shut it down after that. Now, the truth be told, is there times where I pick it back up at seven or eight or six o'clock? Absolutely. And those are the times I get sucked in. I've already broke that first rule of allowing myself to have the bag of chips in the house. And I've already had 12, why not 20, why not have to be, oh, fuck it, I'm just gonna finish the bag.

That's kind of how it feels like. Yeah, no, I think setting time limits is a very smart way to prevent yourself from abusing social media. And there's a couple ways to do it. You could do the, I'm only gonna be on it for this much time during the day or I think the, what you said, Adam,

is a better approach. That's what I do is where I say, at this time I don't use it anymore at all and I'm off of it or I only check it at this time and I'm off. And I think that's a smart way to do it because look, it's like the old, believe it or not and I'm not advocating for this but believe it or not, and I'm not advocating

for this, but believe it or not, one of the more successful diets out there was when people would say, I'm not going to eat past 6 p.m. and people thought, oh, it's the time, it's the magic of the, you know, I'm not eating late and that's why, no, the reality is when people stop eating at 6 p.m. they just stopped eating garbage because a lot of the garbage that they was at the end of the day when they're watching TV or before bed. So setting time limits is a very black and white, simple way to do it. Oh, you have to do is stick to that, right?

You just have to stick to that one rule to make the difference with that. You know that the iPhone now has this option, I don't know about the other phones, but I know iPhone has the ability to, you can set limits on all these things. They could lock you out. Yeah, you can set limits on all these things. They can lock you out. Yeah, you can set a thing on your iPhone and say,

okay, you know, 90 minutes a day is all I get, and it'll lock you out of that app once you hit that. So that's another way to do it. Now, for me, I've tried that, by the way, I've tried the locking out thing, and I just, I doesn't work as well for me. Yeah, because I want to get in there, so it's just over there. Exactly, then you just put the pass code in

and it's just like all I find myself doing is putting the pass code in all time and unlocking it where I do better of just, just like with my workout. I know that my workout time is set for this time. I'm most likely to get to workout time if I a lot that time for it. The same thing goes for social media if I know that I'm trying to stay off of it

outside of this window. That's my time in that window. That window goes, I'm done. I do much better with that. And it's not gonna magically just work out right away, like putting these boundaries in place and these parameters. Like you can't punish yourself either. I know for me, for instance,

like just even like having my phone in the car with me as I'm driving because I have a longer commute. You know, I have a tendency to then wanna look and check and see who's messaging me, what that noise was. It took a long time for me to actually be able to put my phone and then hands off and put restrictions on it. So I wasn't getting myself in trouble.

I mean, I got a ticket and I'm like, I can't believe I've gone to the level where a cop saw me on my phone and it's just like, it just happened. Well, you just alluded to the second one that I think has definitely helped me out. And honestly, I kind of fell into it by chance because of the growth of MindPump. Before we were even talking about this conversation

the early years of starting the business, when we started to kind of really grow the audience, it got so ridiculous that my phone battery would die from all the notifications all day, from all the different platforms coming in. And so I shut it off for those reasons. I didn't shut it off because I think I needed to be less addicted to it.

But what I saw as a result of that was, oh wow, I'm less likely to be checking the inbox of Facebook, checking the LinkedIn ad, checking in this. Because it got so overwhelming I just shut all notifications off so I don't get any of those alerts I think that's a key because what you just alluded to just and like man you heard that ding You know and it's like oh was that the message was that message? I'm waiting for you

You need to turn off a note. I don't think there's very very few cases where it's smart to have notifications I mean imagine this you're you're trying to reduce your sugar intake. You've got an issue with candy, but every 30, 40 minutes. They tell you where this is. Your friend knocks on the door and says, hey, you want a candy bar? Yeah. It's like, how is it? A whiff of fresh baked cookies just comes right past your nose.

Yeah, like how successful. But it's right in front of your face. You sure you don't want this? Okay, I'll walk it. Your family candy is half off today. Yeah. I'll be back in 30 minutes, okay? I'll see you in about 30 minutes. So super, super challenging, super difficult.

So if you're trying to set good boundaries around social media, turn off your notifications. It makes no sense to hear your phone go off. It just makes you wanna check to see what's on that phone. It makes you wanna check to see who said what to you. And again, if not that important, you can keep the stuff that's important on like your phone, your, you know, if someone calls you or texts you,

maybe if that's important, but everything else, you don't need to check your Instagram likes, you know, everything as soon as it comes in. That just gets you to, and that's by the way, why they did it. They put those in there because they know it'll make you visit the app more often. And then when you go and check the like, what do you do?

You check the like and then you go and you go to the floor page. Well, it's even a step further. I mean, the algorithm, Mike, with Instagram is designed around that, same thing with YouTube, right? So that's why so many YouTube people and Instagram people talk about turning your notifications on and then they do giveaways in the first like 30 minutes

of a post. So at which sucks people writing, because I'm like, oh man, this is my favorite influencer. He tells me I turn on the notification because he's gonna give away Some free gear within that first 30 minutes So I want to be one of those first people to do that and they do that The and the reason why the influencers do that because it promotes their their post and it's more likely to be found on the explorer page So it's in their best interest to encourage you to turn the notifications on

You're tempted to do it because you might have a chance to win something for free. And so it's this monster of like, oh man, I should turn this off because I shouldn't be able to. But oh, then I'm going to miss out on this. It's pretty fun. Now, here's another one that you can do. And this one I, you know, I experiment with and I need to be more consistent with this because when I do it, it's very effective. And that's to keep my phone in a designated space. So if I'm at home, I keep it on the counter in the kitchen. So what does that do? Well, that means that I have to get up, walk over to it,

and actually check it. I have to get up and move if I want to check it. And what that does, it creates a barrier. It gives me enough time and space to prevent myself from just reacting, from being impulsive, right? So same strategy when I give people with nutrition, I say, look, if you want a cookie, then you have to drive to the grocery store

to buy one cookie, don't have it in your house. And usually what happens sometimes, I'll get up to check my phone, but sometimes I, I don't feel like getting up or, ah, you know what, I should actually be on my phone less because now I have that break, right? I have that barrier, which allows me to become more aware of my usage.

Of all the things, this one helps me the most. So, when I do it, right? So there's been times when I don't, but like a perfect coming home from work day, looks like from me, like I've done my two hour limit, right? Finished off work with getting everything. I need to get done from that. I walk in the door, the first thing I do,

is I wash my hands down the downstairs bathroom. I walk upstairs where my son always is at. Walk over to him, pick him up, give him a big ol' hug and kiss and say hi to him in Katrina. Then I go one more flight of stairs, go straight to my bedroom, plug my phone into where my night stand is at, and then walk away from it,

go back downstairs where we're at all the rest of the night. When I do that, I'm rock solid. Like it's... It's out of your fifth con. to where my night stand is at and then walk away from it, go back downstairs where we're at all the rest of the night. When I do that, I'm rock solid. Like it's- It's out of your fifth con. I've done what I needed to work, right? Because I've accomplished what I need it for because it's a necessary evil for this business.

Like it is probably for a lot of people. So I've accomplished what I need to for business-wise. Now the only thing is just pure temptation of me wanting to scroll or respond to somebody or follow up on something. And so if I can get it out of sight, take it upstairs. I can't hear any notifications. I don't see anything. I don't see it.

It's not an end. Like you said, Sal, it's like, it's so far away that even if I go, oh, you know what? I wonder if someone so got back to me on my email from that email. I said earlier this morning, it's like, it's all the way upstairs. Fuck it. I'll check it tomorrow. Unless it's really important in which case, you just all the way upstairs. Fuck it, I'll just, I'll check it tomorrow. I'll check it tomorrow. Unless it's really important, in which case, you just walk upstairs.

Right, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. Now, the next one, this one I do with my kids, which are scheduled breaks, and I'll let them know ahead of time. Hey, you guys, 15 more minutes, and then we're gonna be off electronics for the next two hours.

I think this is important to have scheduled breaks to let yourself know if you're really deep in the social media addiction thing, or really, really, you know, if you don't have any very good boundaries with social media rather than you know maybe doing all the other stuff maybe just schedule breaks this might be a good place to start so okay rather than saying I'm putting my phone away and not going on it or do this all stuff I know from seven to nine p.m. is a break so it's so any other time

I can use the phone, but there's two hours that I definitely won't be on social media. So it might be a good place to start, I think. I think that this is a really good place to start, and I wouldn't have thought it would be that great of a place until last, I was, I was born in the last year,

it was a couple of years ago, back when Inzo used to work for us. So we had a high school intern that was working for us for a little over a year, shout out to Inzo. I know he listens to the show, I love that kid. And I loved it too because he was the young generation that was able to keep us in touch with what was going on at his age level, really, really smart kid.

And we talked about this way back when, and I remember him telling me that like he had never even thought to try and create these boundaries or take breaks from it. And he said that he had severe anxiety after 10 minutes of not having his phone connected to him. Which is a very common amongst a lot of these kids

growing up, not knowing any different. And I think that there is a little bit of a difference there in terms of generations with not having that growing up with that and then seeing it, how we've interacted before this versus not even knowing what that looks like, it is very scary for them to just put it away. Well, this is what really originally got me

so scared about it was because I did grow up without it. I mean, it wasn't until, I mean, my mid-20s before, So this is what really originally got me so scared about it was because I did grow up without it. I mean, it wasn't until, I mean, my mid-twenties before, like, my space and then it wasn't until, like, almost 30 that I even turn on Facebook, YouTube, and Scram, any of those things. So I spent most of my life without it and realized how hard it was for me to break some of these habits and to say no to it. So imagine being somebody- That's all you know. That's all you know.

That's all you know. You were the minute your friends are there. Yeah, the minute you were interested in even having a phone, you may have gotten one at God knows what age. And then yet's just been a part of your life. It's become like a limb on your body. So yeah, of course, no wonder it's straight. But I mean, to me, I was like, that was what scared me,

was I was realized, oh wow, this is such a pool for myself. And it's not like it's something that I ever had in my life before. Wow, if it's that hard for me, I can't imagine somebody who's grown up with this being just normal for them to do that, how difficult it must be. Yeah, and the next one I think is very important.

And I think this one allows you to kind of choose how you're influenced, to choose to kind of choose how you're influenced to choose the kind of content that you see. And that is to only follow people or pages who provide you with true value. And you have to ask yourself that question, is this really providing me good, healthy value? And if the answer is yes, go ahead and follow up. The answer is no.

And I hate to say this, but most of the time it's no, you just don't follow. You know, who's really good at this is my wife. She's exceptional at this. Like she'll follow a handful of pages and it's only the ones that she finds the most value. Everything else, she just unfollows it. She's like, if I really want to see it, I'll look it up. You know, later on, otherwise it doesn't belong in my news feed. It doesn't belong in my face all the time because I notice it doesn't really bring me you know, later on. Otherwise, it doesn't belong in my news feed. It doesn't belong in my face all the time because I notice it doesn't really bring me real good, healthy value. Yeah, I think it's a healthy practice

to just come back and assess like what you've been taking in, what your input is and go through all that. And really like, you take the time to evaluate each one of them, like what that actually is adding to your life, it's not adding anything in terms of something of value then just get rid of it. It's cleaning house, it's like spring cleaning,

but I think it's a practice that people have to consider doing constantly because it changes. When the last time you guys have done that, have you guys thought through and just change it? No, I haven't. I haven't, and I'm due for that. It feels really good. I'm well overdue for that. I think I'm following like 2 saying that I have it. I have it and I'm due for that. It feels really good. I'm well over due for that.

I think I'm following like 2,000 people. There's not even 2,000 people I talk to on a regular basis. So what the fuck am I doing following on? Right. So just follow me in Justin. That's it. That's really cool. I don't even know if I follow you guys.

I'm tired of hearing your shit anyways. Yeah, I need to do this. Like this is something that, you know, take our own advice and go through and actually clean up all that. So I haven't had a chance to go through that doing a long time. I'm pretty good about following the other stuff too of not getting sucked in as much.

And so I know that that would just be one more step that I think that would help that from happening that way. Even if I am caught up with going through my feed and reading stuff, the content that I'm reading. And I think that's kind of partnered with this, right? Pay attention to even the way algorithms are designed, like what you like and comment and you engage with. You engage with, you get more of.

So be cognizant of that. If you are trying to stay with positive information, things that are growth-minded, things that help you out, well do your best to only like that stuff and be careful of all the other things that you're liking or commenting on because these machines don't know who you are or what you're best interest. They just know what your behaviors are. And so a lot of times the stuff that you're getting in your feet is just a reflection of

what you're constantly looking at. I did that way better on Facebook than Instagram. On Facebook a long time ago, I went through and just was just very harshly cut all these people that I really didn't need to be friends with on Facebook. It wasn't important. And what I did is I belonged to a lot of groups on top for topics that I'm interested in.

You know, there's groups on science and the brain, neurobiology, some economic forums I belong to. And so then that becomes my newsfeed. Instagram, I'm not nearly, I haven't gone through and cleaned it out in a while and I think it's time to do that because, again, the people that you follow, the people you give your attention to,

they're the ones that start to influence you. And again, all these things that we're talking about are really just modifications to help your behavior, to encourage you to gain more of the positives from social media and less of the negatives because it is a powerful effective tool and it can provide you a lot of value. You just have to use it the right way. You know, this is, this also reminds me, I feel like I should address this because I

get asked to still a lot for people that just come into Mind Pump. This is kind of the, where the creation or the beginning of for squat and scroll was for me, was it was like, okay, if I'm gonna be on social media and scrolling through my feed, can I get down and work on my mobility at the same time? I so improve my squat depth, my ankle mobility, my hip mobility, my hip mobility.

And so that's kind of something that I also did. And I see other people doing things similar like that where it's like, okay, if I'm going to sit on my phone and look at these things, can I do it and be productive with something that's actually positive in my life at the same time? And so that is kind of where the, you know, where the origin of it, how it started was with me going, okay, if I'm gonna be scrolling on my feed, I should be at least practicing it in my deep squat that I'm trying to get better at. Look, my pump is recorded on videos while audio confindes on YouTube, my pump podcast.

Also, look, we have a lot of free guides that you can learn, a lot of things about. You can learn how to have a better squat. You can learn routines to develop your arms or your back or your shoulders. Even guides for personal trainers to help you become more successful. You can find them all, and they're totally free.

They cost nothing at mindpumpfree.com. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels,

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