Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Power of Fun & How to Have a Happy Inbox

Starting point is 00:00:00 The search for truth never ends. Introducing June's Journey, a hidden object mobile game with a captivating story. Connect with friends, explore the roaring 20s, and enjoy thrilling activities and challenges while supporting environmental causes. After seven years, the adventure continues with our immersive travels feature. Explore distant cultures and engage in exciting experiences. There's always something new to discover. Are you ready?

Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, why do people sometimes choke when they swallow? Then the power of fun. In fact, you may be looking at fun all wrong. If you actually carve out time for fun, if you prioritize, far from taking away time and energy from quote unquote important things in your life, you'll actually have more energy.

Starting point is 00:00:52 You'll find yourself more productive, more creative, more pleasant to be around. Also, what could prevent your mail from being delivered? You should know, because you wouldn't want that to happen during the holidays. And how to control your incoming email so it doesn't get in the way. If you need to check your email once every hour, then check it once every hour, but don't just let it call you away

Starting point is 00:01:16 from the thing that you're doing. I'm right in the middle of this thing and oh look who's that from? Is that an emergency? Do I have to deal with that? No, I don't. Okay, where was I? That's really detrimental to our productivity. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can

Starting point is 00:02:08 use in your life today something you should know with mike carothers hi you know one way i come up with ideas for things to talk about on this podcast is from experiences in my own life and here's a case in point. The other day I was eating something and I, you know, went down the wrong pipe and I started choking and I wondered why that is. Why does that happen? So I looked into it. And it turns out we swallow about 600 times a day.

Starting point is 00:02:39 And usually we don't think about it much except when something goes down the wrong way. Then we notice. Swallowing is actually pretty complicated and requires coordination between the mouth, the tongue, the neck, and the throat. Certain medications or certain medical conditions, and even your age, can weaken your swallowing skills. The trickiest types of food to swallow are mixed consistency foods. Cereal with milk requires two types of swallowing at the same time.

Starting point is 00:03:12 The same goes for fruit with the skin on it. If you're the type that experiences occasional hacking fits when you drink and the beverage goes down the wrong way, here's some advice. Lower your chin to your chest a bit when you swallow. It seems to help, according to Joel Herskovitz, author of the book Swallow Safely. And that is something you should know. What does it mean to have fun? We talk about fun a lot, but what is it?

Starting point is 00:03:44 Is it a feeling? Is it a sense? What is it? And is it really important to have fun? After all, fun is just fun. So how important could it be? Well, according to Katherine Price, fun is essential. At least the right kind of fun is essential. Katherine Price is an award-winning science journalist and speaker. She's author of a book called How to Break Up with Your Phone, which she talked about here on a previous episode. And she has a new book out called The Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again. And she has a really interesting take on fun and why you likely need more of it in your life.

Starting point is 00:04:27 Hi, Catherine. Welcome back to Something You Should Know. Thank you so much for having me again. So I think to many people, fun is the thing you do after all your work is done. It's the reward. Fun is, in a way, just frivolous. Far from being frivolous, I've come to conclude from my research that fun is actually absolutely essential for both our mental and our physical health. And that often when we push back on fun, it's because we're assuming

Starting point is 00:04:54 that you can't prioritize something like fun and yet also be conscientious citizens or responsible adults. But what I think we fail to realize is that life is not that zero sum. So sure, you do need to have your basic needs met in order to begin to think about and prioritize fun. But once those needs are met, it actually is really important to start thinking about it. Because whereas we often think that fun is only achievable when we're already flourishing,

Starting point is 00:05:19 we think it's the result of human flourishing. What I've come to conclude is that actually fun can help us to flourish. That it's a cause of flour flourishing. What I've come to conclude is that actually fun can help us to flourish. That it's a cause of flourishing, not just a result. So I guess a really important question is, what is fun? I mean, people use that word a lot. Oh, this is fun. That was fun. But what is, what does it mean to have fun? That is a very important question for us all to ask because it's one of those words, as you're saying, that we use all the time. But if we're really pressed and forced to answer, we realize we don't actually know what it is. There's not a good agreed upon definition of fun.

Starting point is 00:05:57 It's something that really surprised me when I started to research this because I thought, how is that possible? I mean, it's such a common word. The closest thing I found in the dictionary was that fun is lighthearted pleasure. But if you actually reflect back on your own experiences from your own life that you'd, you consider to have been the most fun to you, lighthearted pleasure might sort of describe them, but there's likely to be something deeper going on. And I know this not just for my own personal reflections, but because as part of the research for my book, The Power of Fun, I recruited a whole group of people. I called it a fun squad, over a thousand people who agreed to help me out, you know, give me feedback on my ideas. And I asked them to share with me three anecdotes from their own lives that they would describe as having been truly fun. And when I

Starting point is 00:06:39 read through those anecdotes, I noticed that, you know, sure, I was smiling, there was a lightheartedness to them, but I also often teared up, which was very interesting. And it led me to conclude that the definition of fun goes way beyond lighthearted pleasure. And the definition that I propose of what I call true fun is that it's actually the confluence of three psychological states, playfulness, connection, and flow. Playfulness, connection, and flow. Okay, so explain those three things in a little bit of detail. By playfulness, I don't mean that you have to, you know, play charades or like make-believe or something we traditionally think of as a form of play. Adults really freak out when they hear the word play, so I like to clarify this. I'm talking about playfulness, which is more about your attitude, about having a lighthearted

Starting point is 00:07:28 spirit and not caring too much about the outcome. Then in terms of connection, you can feel a sense of connection with another creature, like a dog, for example. You can feel it with your physical body. You can feel it with the experience itself. But in the vast majority of instances, based on the anecdotes people shared with me, the connection you feel is with another human being. Very interesting. Even for introverts, that's something that holds true. And then flow refers to the psychological state in which we're so absorbed and engrossed in our present experience that we actually lose track of time. So the most common example is like an athlete in the midst of a game. So all three of those states, playfulness, connection,

Starting point is 00:08:05 and flow are good for us on their own. But I argue that when you have all three of them together, the result of that is what I consider to be true fun, which is this very life-affirming and energizing state. It seems that fun is often the thing we do after we do all our real work. Then we can have fun. Fun comes later. And often we say we're going to have fun later if we get our work done, but often the fun is the first thing that gets cut off the list. Yes, that's a very common mistake. One that I used to fall into myself. Yeah, I think everybody does where, you know, it's easy to put off fun because life has a lot of serious things we need to accomplish

Starting point is 00:08:45 in it. Right. I mean, I think we also kind of buy into the bumper sticker maxim that I used to see all the time when I lived in California, which was if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. And I think that's really a bad way to look at life because it's possible to be paying a lot of attention to things in life, just not only choosing to focus on the things that outrage you. And going to your point about, you know, we tend to think that it should be at the bottom of our priority list, kind of like dessert, nice if we have it, but we've got all sorts of other important things that we should do beforehand. I found a lot of evidence suggesting that that's the wrong approach, including the fact that if you actually carve out time for fun, if you prioritize opportunities for playfulness and connection and flow,

Starting point is 00:09:27 far from taking away time and energy from quote-unquote important things in your life, you'll actually have more energy for those things. You'll find yourself more productive, more creative, more energized, more pleasant to be around. So it's not just that fun is its own reward, which it certainly is, and that itself should be reason to prioritize it. But it actually can help us achieve all sorts of other goals that you would never think that fun would have an effect on. So let's talk about what it means to have fun, meaning I'm having fun because I'm doing what?

Starting point is 00:10:02 Because you, you know, you were here a while ago talking about your other book, How to Break Up with Your Phone. And a lot of people, when they have time and think they're going to have fun, they get on their phone. They go on social media or text or whatever. But you're not a big fan of that as fun. Well, it depends on the person. But you bring up a really, really important point with that question. Your listeners may have picked up on the fact that I was referring to fun as true fun. I kept putting a true in front of it. And the reason I do that is that I came to

Starting point is 00:10:35 realize that the fact that there's not really a good definition of fun means that we're very vulnerable to any company or person who wants to try to sell us their product or activity by calling it fun, when in fact it might not be fun at all, at least in the definition we're talking about of playful connected flow. So I call it true fun to distinguish that kind of fun from what I call fake fun, which are activities or products that are marketed to us as fun, but that ultimately leave us feeling empty or vacant or numb or kind of dead inside. And so what you just described about, you know, typical things we do, quote unquote, for fun, they do include things like scrolling through social media or,

Starting point is 00:11:15 you know, getting lost in a TV show for seven hours at a time. Some of that might be enjoyable up to a point, but I would argue those are not forms of true fun. In many cases, they're forms of fake fun and that we need to learn to distinguish those two types of fun from each other so that we can prioritize the type of fun that's true and deprioritize the fun that's fake. So to answer your question about, well, okay, well, how do you find that true fun? That's when I think things get really interesting because, you know, whereas I would argue that the definition of true fun is universal, that it's the confluence of playfulness and connection and flow, each of us finds true fun through different activities and with different people and just in different ways. So what I always encourage people to do is to reflect back

Starting point is 00:11:59 on your own life and call to mind a few experiences that you would describe as having been true, truly fun in the life-affirming sense of the word that we're talking about. And then also notice moments of playfulness and connection and flow as they occur in your everyday life, even if they're tiny and fleeting. It doesn't have to be big true fun, does not have to be like a life-changing vacation to Hawaii or something. It can happen in everyday moments. And then once you start to collect these anecdotes and these examples, you can start to mine them for details and look for themes that emerge and notice activities or settings or people that are

Starting point is 00:12:36 frequently associated with you having true fun. And I refer to these as fun magnets, right? The activities, settings, and people that are conducive to fun for you personally. And the reason that's really important is that you can actually put those things on your schedule in a way that you can't put fun on your schedule. You can't be like, on Saturday, I'm going to have fun from 7 to 9 p.m. That's, you know, absolutely ridiculous and you're going to fail. But you can put a fun magnet on your calendar. So to answer your question about, you know, how do we actually have more fun, we need to figure out what our personal fun magnets are, and then we need to prioritize them. And just as a personal example, one of my biggest fun magnets is playing music with this particular group of friends. So I actually can put that on my calendar. In fact, I can tell you right now,

Starting point is 00:13:15 this coming Sunday, for about four hours on Sunday, I'm going to spend time with those friends. And I can't guarantee it's going to be totally mind-blowingly fun, but I can totally guarantee you it's going to be way more fun than if I spent that same amount of time scrolling through memes on Instagram. We're talking about having fun and why we might need to redefine fun and probably need to have more of it. My guest is Katherine Price, and the name of her book is The Power of Fun, How to feel alive again. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals,

Starting point is 00:14:00 be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind.

Starting point is 00:14:23 Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. So, Katherine, when I think of fun experiences that I've had, it's often because of the people.

Starting point is 00:14:47 Yes, maybe the activity is fun, but that same activity might not be anywhere near as much fun with somebody else. That it is the people that make it or break it. Yeah, I think you're touching on a really important point, which is that activities themselves are not fun. They just can be conducive to fun. Fun is an emotional state that really very, I would say it depends on context. And so there's certain, as I was saying, like people or activities or settings that's more conducive to fun for each of us than others, but they never can be guaranteed to produce fun. But yeah, I can tell you for sure, I'm having more fun when I play with this particular group of adult friends than I would if I were leading a music class for toddlers. Maybe that would be a different kind of fun, but it wouldn't be the same as what I'm talking about. But I can also say I could get together with a different group of adults

Starting point is 00:15:40 and try to play music and not have fun at all. It really is contextual. And I've thought a lot about what some of the characteristics are that are more conducive to fun in general. And I think a really big one is just going to that spirit of playfulness we're talking about, not caring too much about the outcome. You know, if you had me get together with some people to play music and they were like, Catherine, you can't mess up these chords, we're actually performing and recording this and it matters. That wouldn't be fun. That would be nerve wracking. But with this particular group of friends, we just get performing and recording this and it matters. That wouldn't be fun. That would be nerve wracking.

Starting point is 00:16:10 But with this particular group of friends, we just get together to do it truly for fun. We don't care about the ultimate result. And I think that's a really important distinction to make for yourself. When I think about fun events in my life, I think often about the ones that were surprisingly fun, that those are the most memorable, that they were not just fun, but I didn't expect it to be so much fun. Yeah, I think that the surprise can definitely add to it, because I think there's an element of delight. I'm really into the concept of delight these days.

Starting point is 00:16:37 You're kind of, yeah, unexpectedly delighted about how fun something is, and that in turn makes it more fun. But I'm curious, can you share an example of something, one of the experiences you're talking about? Well, yeah. I mean, just like going out to dinner and then you run into somebody that you weren't expecting to run into and the conversation is just magical. And my God, that was so much fun. And partly because I wasn't expecting that right right and i love that you use the word magical because i find myself using that word too and then i think oh i'm a science journalist i shouldn't be using magic but there is something and that's a word that

Starting point is 00:17:15 pops up repeatedly you know when i talk to people about this there's something that feels magical about it that makes me smile just to hear you share that little anecdote it's it's infectious and i think that that is what we feel when we feel playful connected flow and yes if it's That makes me smile just to hear you share that little anecdote. It's infectious. And I think that that is what we feel when we feel playful, connected flow. And yes, if it's unexpected, that can be even more delightful because we're surprised by it. But I think also you bring up kind of maybe this is a little tangential point, but it brings up the importance of not being distracted, of actually paying attention to our environments. Because you can't be delighted by something if you're not paying attention. So maybe instead of paying attention only to the things that outrage you, pay attention to those little moments of playfulness and connection and flow.

Starting point is 00:17:55 Look up from your devices, going back to our previous conversation about my last book, How to Break Up with Your Phone. You've got to look up from your devices if you want to be open to any possibility for playfulness and connection and flow. Because if you're just staring down at your phone, you wouldn't even notice that friend in the restaurant. You wouldn't have the opportunity to connect with them. And you wouldn't have had that moment of fun. One of the things that being part of a family that I find is that when you want to do things fun as a family, it's often hard to find something that everybody wants to do, that not everybody thinks everything is fun. And therefore, and then what happens a lot of time is nothing happens because

Starting point is 00:18:31 somebody says, no, that doesn't sound like much fun. Well, yeah, I would say, first of all, to have more fun, it really helps to have a yes and attitude to borrow a term from improv comedy to try to agree with things as much as possible and then build on them. So if someone, your kid says, I want to go to the zoo, instead of saying, you know, you say, oh yes, and what if we also brought a picnic or something? Like, try to see if you can add to it. And also just open yourself to trying stuff without prejudging them, prejudging the experience. Like you were saying, you might have prejudged that dinner as, I'm just going to go out to eat, whatever. Then you end up having this delightful experience that you didn't

Starting point is 00:19:06 anticipate. In terms of parenting in particular, I think, you know, I have a kid myself. I think it's really important for us as adults to prioritize our own fun because the more fun we're having for ourselves, the better able we'll be to have fun with our kids. Because let's be honest, like a lot of things kids like doing are not necessarily things that I at least would gravitate towards. I hate make believe. I hate pretend. I truly do. It makes me feel so dumb. And I find that if I haven't had fun for myself recently, and my daughter wants me to engage in one of her fantasy worlds, I have a lot of resistance and almost resentment at times, just not into it. But if I actually have filled my own fun tank, as it were, I mean, my husband says this all the time. He can tell

Starting point is 00:19:49 the difference when I've had fun because I'm more able to just roll with the punches, follow along with other people's ideas. And then if you have that attitude, if you have what I think of as a fun mindset, to kind of use an adaptation of Carol Dweck's term, growth mindset, a fun mindset, you'll find yourself having of Carol Dweck's term growth mindset, a fun mindset, you'll find yourself having more fun in context that you wouldn't expect. And then I'd also just say really to focus on the fact that the activity itself is not where the fun's going to come from necessarily. You don't have to do some major outing as a family to have fun or go on some big trip. There was actually a really lovely example someone shared with me recently about how he was this guy who was sitting on a park bench

Starting point is 00:20:25 with his nephew and they had two hours of true fun just trying to catch leaves as they fell off a tree and I just loved that example I mean as I told him I was saying I like to think that metaphorically there are opportunities for fun floating around us all the time we just have to grab them and in his story he made that literal. But I think it's really a useful image to keep in mind. It's not so much what you're doing in the moment that causes the fun, it's the attitude you bring toward it. Sometimes it seems like when you talk about fun, when, oh, you need to have more fun, you need to schedule time to have more fun because fun is important. Then it becomes like a chore. It's like work. And, you know, if having fun is a chore, well, how much fun could

Starting point is 00:21:12 it be if it, you know, feels like work? Yeah, we definitely, okay, if you're feeling like fun is a chore, you're taking the wrong approach. It shouldn't feel like work because that's not the point, right? So that's why I really like to do everything I can to help people turn fun from this abstract nebulous concept that feels like a burden to something much more concrete that you actually can put on your calendar. And that's why I'm emphasizing the importance of identifying these fun magnets. Because if you do know the activities and settings and people that most often generate fun for you, you can start to work in little places in your calendar for that. Another thing I'd really recommend people try that I love is the concept of playful rebellion. So when I was looking through

Starting point is 00:21:54 the anecdotes that people on the fun squad sent to me, I noticed this theme of deviance, not like deviance, like they're, you know, picking up a drug habit and starting to race sports cars, but just little things people were doing that went against some part of their definition of themselves as their responsible adults. So it could be as little as deciding not to listen to the educational podcast you were going to listen to while you were taking a walk or driving in the car, and instead picking some song that you loved when you were 16, playing it a little bit too loudly,

Starting point is 00:22:26 and depending on the context, maybe even singing along as loudly as you can. Well, I can't endorse that. I want them to listen to a podcast. Listen to this podcast in its entirety every episode, and then after you do that, then go sing along to something. But people would tell me about things that seem so silly, but there was just this... Actually, one example I loved was that – I'm not necessarily endorsing this either, but it was hilarious. Someone told me that as a result of being part of the fun squad, they found themselves this summer afternoon standing on the – they were standing on the diving board of their parents' pool for some reason, totally clothed.

Starting point is 00:23:00 This person was talking to their mother, and they had this urge to just jump into the pool fully clothed. And in the middle of a sentence, they just did so. And I laugh even thinking about that. It's just so silly and so playful. And it made them laugh. It made their mother laugh. And then they wrote to me about it. And then I laughed.

Starting point is 00:23:18 And now hopefully some people out there were delighted by that as well. But it's something that, you know, like what responsible adult with half a brain is going to jump into a pool fully clothed? But it's not very consequential. You just get wet. So I think just finding little moments throughout your day to do something slightly unexpected, you know, try something new. Other examples people told me just were doing things out of context.

Starting point is 00:23:39 Like someone told me about some party that they'd hosted where they lived in Seattle and it was the middle of winter and they had an ice cream party on this freezing cold day where everyone got together, bundled up, and they ate ice cream. And that element of rebellion, which I realize might just sound silly to people listening, but that little twist on the normal way of behaving adds fun. If you notice something that would give you a kick, that you get a kick out of, do that thing. And so when you incorporate more fun in your life, what's the payoff? As obvious a question as that is, because fun is fun, and I guess that's a payoff. But you had started this conversation talking about how having more fun can help you achieve your goals and other things.

Starting point is 00:24:21 So what's the big payoff of more fun? Well, let me push back a little bit first and say the big payoff is the fun. The big payoff is getting to enjoy your life. The big payoff is getting to feel alive for your brief moment on this planet. So that, that's the big payoff, right? In terms of other payoffs, there's a lot of other payoffs ranging from the fact that if you are having more fun regularly, you're going to find yourself with more energy and that in turn is going to make you more productive. I get a lot more done if I take a break to do something I find enjoyable and then come back to the task at hand than I do if I just keep keep my nose to the grindstone, which is my normal way of doing things, and just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. But I also found that there are some very interesting benefits of fun that you, at least I, never anticipated, which is to say the effects that fun can have on our physical health. So basically, there's not good research on fun itself, in large part because, as we talked about

Starting point is 00:25:22 before, there's no agreed upon definition of fun. But if you look at fun as the confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow, and then you, in turn, look at each of those elements individually, you'll find there's a ton of research on each of those, and that each of them, playfulness, connection, and flow, is enormously good for our mental and our physical health. So just to highlight a couple ways that that happens, one is stress reduction, playfulness, connection and flow all reduce our perceived stress levels, which can lead you to the surprising conclusion, which I truly do believe that having more fun creates a physiological response in our bodies that's actually good for our long term health. Well, I think this is good for people to hear because

Starting point is 00:25:59 I think a lot of us believe that fun is, you know, frivolous and really unnecessary. And you've clearly pointed out that fun in your life is not just fun. It is necessary and that it helps for all kinds of things. My guest has been Catherine Price, and the name of her book is The Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Also, there's a link to her website. She has a lot of really interesting and fun stuff about fun, including a quiz and all kinds of things that I think you'll enjoy.

Starting point is 00:26:38 And there's a link to her website, howtohavefun.com, also in the show notes. Thanks, Catherine. Oh, no, thank you so much for having me on again. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet.

Starting point is 00:27:09 Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today.

Starting point is 00:27:34 Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how

Starting point is 00:28:23 taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just think for a moment about how much time you spend handling all the incoming text messages

Starting point is 00:29:04 and emails and notifications that you get every day. It's probably a lot. And I bet you've thought at one time or another, there has to be a better way so that all of this incoming barrage doesn't distract you and eat up all your time. Maura Neville Thomas has given this a lot of thought, and she has researched the problem and the solutions that can help us all get a better handle on all these things coming in at you.

Starting point is 00:29:31 Maura is a speaker, trainer, and author who has written a book called The Happy Inbox. Hi, Maura. Thanks for having me, Mike. I'm happy to be here. So describe and explain, from your point of view, what seems to be a fairly universal problem of just too much stuff coming at me every day. Part of the problem is that we are drowning in communication. We have so many communication apps and they all have these little notifications that say

Starting point is 00:30:01 you owe three on LinkedIn and you owe 700 on email and you owe 27 on Twitter and all of these things. And I quote an entrepreneur named Henry Poidar. He calls it communication debt, that we're always in debt and we are struggling to get out of it. And common advice is, well, you just ignore the messages that aren't important, but you have to read all the ones to see which are important and which aren't. So that's a challenge that I see people really struggling with. I like that idea that it's debt because it feels like a debt. And yeah, you can ignore those, but every time you see that little red number next to your email or LinkedIn or Facebook, you feel like, yeah, you're right,

Starting point is 00:30:48 you feel like you owe somebody something. I thought it was a great way to describe it. And it encompasses not only the situation that we're in, but how we feel about it. Because you're right, we have that kind of guilty or stressed out. I'm not sure what that is. I'm not sure how important it is. And as you said, we can ignore it. But what I recommend is that people just shut off those notifications so that they don't show on the phone because then, you know, maybe leave a couple of strategic ones if they serve you.

Starting point is 00:31:22 But most of them don't serve us. Most of them are designed to get us to interact with the app and to cause that uncomfortable feeling that makes us want to open that app. And I think one of the best examples of what you're talking about is setting a notification to let you know when you get email. Well, you're always getting email. It comes in all day long. So if you're notified every time a new email comes in, it's another chance to get distracted into your email and pulled into that. Turning off all of the notifications on email is really important because, let's face it, you have email. The notification is worse than useless because it creates this feeling in us that we're so far behind. The other notifications,

Starting point is 00:32:14 LinkedIn and news sites and other social media and all these other communication devices, they usually are not urgent. If somebody has liked your LinkedIn post or wants to connect with you on LinkedIn, that'll still be there whenever you decide to check it a few times a week or however you want to manage it. So filtering the messages in your inbox and turning off the notifications on your devices help relieve that burden of communication debt. Well, I'm anxious to hear your advice on filtering emails because, you know, I get, like a lot of people, I get a lot of unsolicited emails. You know, the kind of, you know, we've been trying to get a hold of you about your car warranty kind of emails, the junk emails, and just a lot of business, you know, you're eligible for a loan.

Starting point is 00:33:06 And the only way I know how to deal with them is to just handle them one by one, unsubscribe from that list and tell that person you're not interested. And I don't know how else to stay on top of it. What you're doing is helpful. Unsubscribing does help if it's from a real email marketing company that has the address and the information at the bottom, and you're on this list because of this, and here's the company, and here's their address, and click to unsubscribe. If it has that on the bottom, unsubscribing should get you off the list forever. And it is worth it to unsubscribe. Here's another thing you can do. One of my favorite tools is called Throttle. There's another one called Bulk Club. But these tools allow you to create kind of a throwaway or a guardian sort of email address. I think of it as

Starting point is 00:34:01 this guardian between other people or other companies and my personal email address. I think of it as this guardian between other people or other companies and my personal email address. So they have a browser plugin. And so when you need to sign up for an email for something on the internet, you're buying something from some random store that you might never buy from again, or you want some sort of free thing that they're giving away. So you have to provide an email address on the fly. You can create an email address that is specific for that site. And then any messages to that email address go to this other place. And then you can review that other place through an app on your phone

Starting point is 00:34:42 or through their website or and I guess and you can get one daily digest every day at a time you determine that says here's everything that came to these throwaway email addresses. And if you decide I don't want to be on this anymore, you just click revoke access and then they can never message you again. One common piece of email advice I've heard is to only check your email a couple of times a day. But for my job, and I think for a lot of people's jobs, that doesn't work because there are people emailing me that need things fairly quickly and that if I waited seven hours, it would be too late. And maybe that doesn't happen all that often, but knowing that it can happen makes me check my email often.

Starting point is 00:35:34 Email is not a synchronous communication tool, right? Email was never designed to be a synchronous communication tool, meaning real time. I send you something, you get it now, you respond to me now, and we're having a live conversation in real-time over email. That email is an asynchronous communication tool. That's what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be, I send you something, there's a delay, you read it whenever you read it, and you write back whenever you write back. So the sort of big way is to define for the people in your life, the people that you interact with to the extent that you can, if this message is urgent or timely, please do X, please text me. Please call me. Please call my assistant. Please open a ticket. Write whatever you want. And we need to train the people around us that this is how we work. And there are two

Starting point is 00:36:33 ways that we train people around us. One is implicitly and one is explicitly. So implicitly is you train people by your behavior. They see how you behave and they adapt, right? We all have the friend that we know or the colleague that we know doesn't respond immediately, but responds, you know, eventually a day or two. We know that we can count on them to respond, but we also know it won't be immediately. And people will come to understand how you operate as well. So teaching by your behavior is really important. If you respond to messages urgently, then people get the message that you respond to messages immediately and they'll keep doing it.

Starting point is 00:37:14 It works. So I'll do that. Explicitly is the other way. We actually tell people. So for example, you could put a line in your email signature that says, I only check email periodically throughout the day. However, if your request is of a more urgent or timely nature, please call me, for example. And so as you interact with people and they get messages from you, they see that over and over and over and over. And then they go, oh, right.

Starting point is 00:37:41 Mike wants me to call if there's an emergency, so I'll do that. So that's sort of the big way. Admittedly, it's not something you can flip a switch that happens right away, but you can work in that direction. And the little way? What I tell my clients is check your email as often as you think you need to check your email. Just do it in between other things, not during other things. So if you're doing some sort of task on the computer, close your email, do the task. Or if the task involves your email, go into offline mode in your email client. So no new messages come in, deal with whatever you need

Starting point is 00:38:21 to deal with in your email inbox or the other tasks that you're doing and then check your message when you're done. The problem with having our email open and notifying us all the time is that it creates in us a habit of distraction. And that habit of distraction starts chipping away at our attention span and our patience. And it makes us so, so we have a hard time staying focused for any period of time. And we don't even want to because we're so impatient. So that constant notification is really detrimental. So if you need to check your email once every hour, then check it once every hour. But don't just let it call you away from the thing that you're doing.

Starting point is 00:39:03 I'm right in the middle of this thing. And oh, look, who's that from? Is that an emergency? Do I have to deal with that? No, I don't. Okay, where was I? Right? And so we spend our days going back and forth like that. And that's really detrimental to our productivity. Well, one of the things I like about email is, you know, my phone doesn't ring anywhere near as much as it used to. I mean, and I like that. I mean, because that way I don't get interrupted by the ringing phone and most of the emails can wait 10 minutes, an hour, a day, whereas a phone call stops whatever you're doing because you have to answer the phone. So there is

Starting point is 00:39:37 a positive, I think, to this, that the email can sit there if you so decide that it can sit there. Well, you also could shut off your ringer if, you know, if, if you wanted to, I usually, you're right. My phone rarely rings, but my ringer is almost always off because I'm always checking my phone. You know, I'm, I'm checking my phone often throughout the day for whatever, what's my next appointment or, um, you know, do I have my phone often throughout the day for whatever, what's my next appointment or, you know, do I have any messages or what's the weather going to be or whatever. So it's not like I am ever going for hours and hours unless I intend to without checking my messages. But to your point though, if every email, if any kind of email can come to you, right, anything from it's spam,

Starting point is 00:40:29 it's marketing, it's important, but not urgent, it's urgent. If any message could be any one of those things, right? If every message could be an emergency, then you have to treat every email like it is an emergency until you know it isn't. And so that's why I think that that big way of sort of training people around you to say, email is not, in my world, email is not for emergencies. And if you need me right away, and right away could be different for different people, right? Some people say, if you need me within a day, you have to call me. But for some people, it's if you need

Starting point is 00:41:05 me in less than an hour, you have to call me. Or if you need me in less than two hours, right? Most of us are checking our messages often. I do agree with the advice to check your messages in batches, but that's the point, right? It's check it when you decide, now I'm going to check my messages instead of just letting every single email interrupt you all day long. Here's my problem with that. So you just said, right, if this is urgent, call me.

Starting point is 00:41:39 But you also said, but my ringer's always off. So if I call you, I'm going to get your voicemail. And if I turn my ringer off, you're going to call me back and get my voicemail. And we're never going to connect. Okay. So instead of turning your ringer off, put your phone in do not disturb. And when you put your phone in do not disturb, you get a couple of options. One is do not disturb except for these people that I've designated.

Starting point is 00:42:07 Another, and you can do both, is do not disturb unless the same number calls me twice within a minute. So you can put that in your instructions to say, if this is urgent, please call me. And if I don't answer, please call me right back. I understand that this might sound like a lot of work. The problem is the alternative is worse. The alternative is we completely relinquish all control over our attention, which means over our days, right? Over our moments. And we just accept that anyone in the world can reach me anytime, in any way. And I am just going to be at the mercy of that. It's interesting. I remember there was a time when people were saying, oh, you know, email's dead. Nobody's using email anymore. But that's never been my experience.

Starting point is 00:43:06 Email still is, at least in business anyway, is the primary way to communicate. There's no other way. I mean, I think people text, but I think that's more for personal stuff. Yeah, I think the other way to communicate that we're in business that we are struggling to figure out is these team communication tools, which in theory work really well. All of the communication related to this issue or this project or this discussion is all right here. And people are adding comments as they see fit. And, you know, we're having this ongoing discussion. And if anybody wants to come back and catch up on what's happened up until this point, the whole thread is there. In theory, that's great. In practice, we're not very good at it. Because what's happening is that we are treating that. And again,

Starting point is 00:44:07 sometimes it might need to be, but we're treating that as real-time communication. So every time somebody adds something to a thread, everybody on the thread gets notified and feels like they need to read it right now and respond to it right now. And so then you end up having, you know, hundreds or dozens, maybe hundreds of slow drip conversations about 20 different subjects all day long. Well, even putting junk email aside, I think for me, I see more emails than I need to see. I see emails that have very little to do with me or don't need me at all, but I'm BCC'd or I'm CC'd on them. Right. And that's another thing that I tell my clients is set a rule for that. If I'm in the CC, put it in this folder. If I'm in the BCC, put it in this folder automatically. And then you can review those folders at your convenience because at least in theory, and

Starting point is 00:45:05 I think it's reasonably safe to believe that if I am not in the two line, then this is just sort of FYI. And if it's just FYI, then I can read it at my convenience. So setting up those kinds of rules. And one of the things that I teach my clients is how to use those team communication tools in a really productive way. I will tell you my favorite one of those team communication tools is called Twist. And since my team adopted Twist and specific rules for how we use twist, the volume of communication has gone way down. It's gotten much more efficient. And the volume of the emails I get has gone dramatically down

Starting point is 00:45:55 because all of the relevant stuff about each conversation is being captured in twist. And so on my team, we have we have the situation that everything. It everything is asynchronous. And if an emergency does come up, we text each other. And that almost never happens. It seems that so much of the trouble with email and communicating electronically is anxiety driven. It's not really that there's a problem. It's just that there could be a problem. And until we know, we don't know. And that creates this anxiety that we have to know. And that's what's driving this all. It is. I think we all believe that the world expects from us an immediate response to everything. And while that might, I suspect it isn't true, but even to the extent that it is true, if each of us live our lives trying to

Starting point is 00:46:53 conform to the world's expectations, it's going to be really challenging for us, right? We, again, we've relinquished all control and said, I guess, you know, I guess communication, I guess my phone rules my life. And personally, I'm not willing to accept that. Now, when it comes to business, one of the things that I help my clients with is this, it sort of becomes this sort of unspoken part of culture. Leaders will say things like, you know, our customers expect, you know, a timely response and we need to be responsive. And they use those kinds of words, but they don't really define them. And they also don't train their customers. So anything from a routine request to an emergency might come through email. And again, if every email could

Starting point is 00:47:46 be an emergency, then you have to treat every email like it is an emergency. And so if it's acceptable to send emergencies through email, then you're essentially, I tell my leadership clients, you're essentially chaining your entire company to their email and making it so that they can never get any other work done in a thoughtful way because they have to check every message as it arrives. Well, you know, I haven't really thought about it before, but you nailed it in that if you're set up so that every email could be an emergency, then you have to treat every email as if it might be an emergency and then you're trapped and then you're just constantly distracted, and that's the

Starting point is 00:48:26 problem we have to solve. Maura Neville Thomas has been my guest. She is a speaker, a trainer, and she's author of the book, The Happy Inbox, and there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Maura. Thanks, Mike. This episode is being released around the holidays. And like most people, you may be expecting some important mail, some important packages in your mailbox. And you likely take comfort in the fact that your mail will be delivered. Because after all, as you've probably heard, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. That sure sounds good. People believe that's the motto

Starting point is 00:49:13 of the U.S. Postal Service. But your mail carrier is not bound by that motto at all. In fact, the Postal Service has no real official creed or motto. That verse is actually an inscription on the James Farley Post Office in New York City, and it refers to the courier service of the ancient Persian Empire, not the U.S. Postal Service. In reality, U.S. mail carriers are instructed not to deliver mail to boxes that are obstructed by snow or ice or anything dangerous. So if you want to make sure you get the mail you're expecting this holiday season, make sure your mailman can get to your mailbox. And that is something you should know. And in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season,

Starting point is 00:50:01 I do hope you'll take a minute to tell someone you know about this podcast and help us build our audience. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial.

Starting point is 00:50:19 And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures? You got this. No, I didn't.

Starting point is 00:50:52 Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying. I'm so sorry. You win that one. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic,

Starting point is 00:51:06 check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine,

Starting point is 00:51:36 wherever podcasts are available.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Power of Fun & How to Have a Happy Inbox

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.