Something You Should Know - The Awesome Power of Pure Joy & Hidden Distractions That Suck Your Time
Episode Date: October 19, 2023Wi-Fi being what it is, sometimes it slows down and things get glitchy – shows stop streaming, games glitch out and other weird things seem to happen. Wouldn’t it be great if you could prioritize... which devices in your house get first dibs on the bandwidth? Well actually there is a way. This episode begins with an explanation of how to do it. https://www.popsci.com/diy/prioritize-devices-on-your-wifi-network/ What is the difference between joy and happiness? They are definitely not the same thing. You can make the case that joy is what creates happiness. There is so much to joy and those special moments in life that create it, that it is worth understanding how joy works. For instance, there are things that are universally joyful around the world. Things like balloons and bright colors bring joy to virtually everyone. Ingrid Fetell Lee is an expert on joy and has a blog called The Aesthetics of Joy (https://aestheticsofjoy.com) . She is also author of the book Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness (https://amzn.to/3a4f8GM). She joins me to discuss how we can all bring more joy into our lives and why it is so important to understand the science of joy. Most of us spend more time on our electronic devices than we realize – way more time. The statistics are staggering. What’s worse is that all the time you spend on your phone or other devices is time you are NOT spending doing something else and not spending time with other people. Joseph McCormack has studied this, and he is author of a book called Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus (https://amzn.to/3cbgeTS). Listen as he explains the ways technology has become a “weapon of mass distraction” that negatively impacts our lives. He also then offers some simple strategies to help combat the problem. Do you rinse off all the food from the peanut butter jar and other recyclables before you put them out for collection? Should you? Do you have to? Listen as I explain just how clean it has to be and how some recyclables (like pizza boxes) actually can’t be recycled. https://residentialwastesystems.com/blog/do-i-have-to-rinse-my-recyclables/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! PrizePicks is a skill-based, real-money Daily Fantasy Sports game that's super easy to play. Go to https://prizepicks.com/sysk and use code sysk for a first deposit match up to $100 With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Go to https://HelloFresh.com/50something and use code 50something for 50% off plus free shipping! BetterHelp is truly the best way to make your brain your friend. Give it a try. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/Something today to get 10% off your first month! Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them! Go to https://Zocdoc.com/SYSK and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Let’s find “us” again by putting our phones down for five. Five days, five hours, even five minutes. Join U.S. Cellular in the Phones Down For Five challenge! Find out more at https://USCellular.com/findus Planet Money is an incredible podcast with stories & insights about how money shapes our world. Listen to Planet Money https://npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money wherever you get your podcasts! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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The search for truth never ends.
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Today on Something You Should Know,
how to prioritize which devices in your house get more Wi-Fi bandwidth when they need them.
Then, understanding joy.
There's some real science here that can make you more joyful.
For example...
I discovered that there were certain things that were universally joyful.
There are things like bright color, round shapes that we see in bubbles and balloons,
and things that float and fly.
Little moments of joy that are embedded in our surroundings.
Also, how well are you supposed to clean glass jars and other recyclables before you put them out for collection?
And we spend so much time on our smartphones,
it makes you wonder what we aren't doing so we can do that.
People on their smartphones swipe it between 3,000 and 5,000 times a day.
70% of the people that we research,
the first thing they do when they wake up in the morning
is check their phone, and the last thing they do at night. All this today on Something You Should Know.
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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical
advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know
with Mike Carruthers. Hi there. Welcome
to Something You Should Know. Has this ever happened to you? You're watching
TV or maybe you're on a Zoom call and the
Wi-Fi connection seems off.
You know, the picture fuzzes out or it pixelates
or the Zoom call gets all glitchy and drops out.
If so, and a lot of people don't know this,
I didn't know this until I just read this,
that on most home routers,
you can prioritize which devices in your home
get the most signal over other devices.
Routers that come from major players like Netgear, Google, and some of the others
have something called the Quality of Service feature.
Simply put, it lets you prioritize certain devices and certain types of traffic on your Wi-Fi network
so they're first in line for a high-speed connection whenever the bandwidth becomes limited.
Some companies call it something else, but if you look at the manual online
for your router, you'll probably figure it out.
If you have a lot of Wi-Fi-enabled devices and have experienced that glitchiness,
it would be good to understand how to use this feature.
This information comes from an article I found on Popular Science's website,
and there's a link to it in the show notes.
And that is something you should know.
I always love it when a topic and a guest come along,
and it's all about something I never knew or ever really thought much about,
and it turns out to be really
interesting.
Well, here comes one of those right now, and it's coming at a good time, too.
The topic is joy.
We tend to lump joy and happiness together, but they're not the same thing.
That's why we have two different words.
Joy is something different than happiness.
And in some ways, it's a lot easier to be joyful, which I think of as being kind of a temporary thing,
than it is to be happy, which is more of a state of being.
When you find joy and bring joy into your life, great things can happen.
Joy can make you happy. And while that might sound
kind of obvious and maybe a bit fluffy, there's more to it than that. Meet Ingrid Fatel Lee.
She is an expert on design and joy, and she's been featured in the New York Times' Wired
and Fast Company. She has a blog called The Aesthetics of Joy, and she's author of a book
called Joyful, The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness.
Hi, Ingrid. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
Hi. Happy to be with you.
So if you ask people to define joy, I think most people could come up with a definition of the word joy,
and everybody has experienced joy in the sense that they've experienced the joy of a sunset
or the joy of sitting around a fire with friends or whatever it is.
But what is that thing we're experiencing?
What is that feeling?
We often confuse the ideas of joy and happiness in our culture.
And I think that's actually helpful to pull them apart.
So happiness is a broad evaluation of how we feel about our lives over time.
It involves things like how we feel about our work, whether we feel like we have a sense of meaning and purpose in life, how connected we feel to other people.
Whereas joy is much simpler and more immediate. When psychologists
use the word joy, what they mean is an intense momentary experience of positive emotion. So it's
that little burst, those little moments that we feel in both our minds and our bodies that let us
know we're alive and we're happy to be alive. But they are usually somewhat momentary, right? They don't have any big lasting effect, or do they?
Little moments of joy might seem trivial and small in the moment, but they add up over time.
I think that's what's really powerful about these little moments of joy.
So, yes, each one is a fleeting moment, might last a few seconds or a few minutes and maybe an hour at the longest. But when you
add those moments up, they have big effects. They can influence our stress levels, our physical
well-being. They can make us feel more connected to other people. When we share joy with other
people, we feel a greater sense of trust and connection and intimacy in our relationships.
They can even make us more productive.
When I think of those joyful moments, you know, the beautiful sunset,
oh, look at that view, or you taste something that tastes like so good
you've never tasted anything like it before.
There's a surprise element to it, that those moments just kind of creep up on you,
and then they're gone. So how do you make this more deliberate, more a real part of your life?
Let me make it really concrete. So when I first started studying joy, I thought of it as this very fleeting and intangible thing.
And as I started to talk to people about the experiences, the things that brought them
joy, I discovered that there were certain things that brought joy the world over across
genders and ethnicities and ages.
There were certain things that were universally joyful.
And as I started to look at those things, I noticed that there were certain patterns,
certain repeatable patterns.
I call these the aesthetics of joy.
There are things like bright color and round shapes that we see in bubbles and balloons
and merry-go-rounds, hula hoops, round shapes are something that's universally joyful.
Things that float and fly are often considered joyful. So there are certain things that if we start to pay attention,
we can notice that as we look around us, there are these little moments of joy that are embedded in
our surroundings that are almost hidden in plain sight. And as we start to look for these things
and bring them into our lives, we can actually create more moments of joy for ourselves and for others.
And so how do you look for them?
How do you, like you say, I mean, it's balloons and bubbles and round things and bright colors and all that.
And, you know, I can see that.
I can look around the room and look out the window and I can see some of those things.
But in my mind, I'm probably thinking about something else.
I'm not really focused on that.
They just, they are there and they are what they are.
I call this practice joy spotting.
You can go out into the world.
Maybe it's while you're walking your dog, or maybe it's just in the room that you happen
to be in this moment right now and start to tune your senses, start to
see where your attention goes and notice the things that bring you joy. A pop of bright color,
maybe it's something out in nature that you see like a sunset that gives you this uplifting
feeling and start to notice the connection between what you see around you and what you feel happening inside of you.
If you feel a sense of a little lift, if you notice yourself smiling without really realizing it, bring your attention to the connection between the things that you see around you and the feeling you get and start to reinforce that connection. I want to go back because you said that there are some things that are
universally joyful, that everybody finds joy in them and they're like, you know, bright colors
or bubbles or balloons. But what is it about those things that inspires this joy so universally?
That was my question when I first started delving down this rabbit hole of trying to
understand what are the things that bring us joy. And what I discovered as I pulled on that thread
is that there's a really good reason why we find joy in things in our surroundings, and it has to
do with our evolution. We evolved to find the things in our environment that would help
us thrive or our ancestors evolved to find things in our environment that would help them thrive.
And those things are things like sources of nourishment, which in nature often had vibrant colors, like ripe fruits in the treetop canopy, as sources of
lushness, right? Lush environments draw our attention. When we see flowers, again, they
signal the locations of future food. So there are lots of reasons why these particular things that
we see in our environment give us this little rush, this little feeling of joy.
And the reason is that they are signals of an environment that can help us thrive.
Isn't that interesting?
Because it's not like you're thinking about that consciously. When you see blossoms on an apple tree or flowers on an orange tree, you're not
thinking, oh, I love those flowers because one day there'll be fruit there. That's not a conscious
thought, but that's exactly what it does signal. And so we find joy in that. That's kind of amazing.
Absolutely. And I think what's so fascinating to me is that even though we're not consciously aware of the reasons why we're attracted to these things, our brains shapes can be seen in neuroscientific studies.
Neuroscientists have placed people into fMRI machines and shown them pictures of angular
objects and round ones. And what they find is that when people look at angular objects,
a part of the brain called the amygdala, associated in part with fear and anxiety,
lights up. And that part of the brain stays quiet when we look at round shapes.
And they speculate that because we evolved in a world where angular things,
might be antlers or thorns or jagged branches, would be dangerous to us,
we evolved an unconscious sense of caution around those shapes.
So we go subtly on the alert.
Whereas when we see round shapes, we're at ease.
And we're free to play and move joyfully and engage with the alert. Whereas when we see round shapes, we're at ease and we're free to play and move
joyfully and engage with the world in a free and open way. And so even though we aren't thinking
about that when we look at a sharp angled table in our homes or a round table in our homes,
that's something that's going on below the surface.
It seems like it would be pretty universal, but are there people who can look at a beautiful
thing of flowers and say, yeah, it doesn't do anything for me?
They're obviously very individual variations. So the way that I like to think about it is that joy occurs on
three levels. We have our own individual experiences and personalities and preferences,
and we all have things that we individually love that someone else might not understand.
Maybe that's the t-shirt from the concert that you went to 20 years ago that your partner would
love you to throw away, but you just can't seem to let go of. We all have those things. Then there's a cultural level, which large groups of people who
grew up around the same influences will find joy in certain things. Maybe that's a sports team or
a particular food. And then there's this universal layer underneath all of it. And many of these
preferences, these universal preferences
are unconscious. So as we go out in the world and we learn, sometimes these preferences get
modified by our own individual experience. But deep down, most of us react to most of these things
on a pretty primal level. We're talking about joy and what could be more joyful than that. Ingrid
Fattel-Lee is my guest. She's author of the book, Joyful, The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things
to Create Extraordinary Happiness. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please
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That's betterHelp.com. follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe
to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. So Ingrid, I want to go back because you were
talking earlier how we sometimes confuse joy and happiness that we use those words somewhat
interchangeably. But when I think about it, we don't use the word joy very often.
We say that that old T-shirt makes us happy, but it's really making us joyful, right?
Yes, exactly.
Those little moments of joy are things that we can find even if we struggle to find happiness in life.
Right now, we're in the midst of a very difficult time in world events and
in many of our own lives. And yet we can still find these moments of joy. We don't have to be
happy to find joy. Do you have to be joyful to find happiness? That's a good question. I'm not sure, but I think that it helps. And I often say that
finding little moments of joy can help us become happier. And I think the reason is that often when
we focus on happiness, we think about big achievements, big milestones, getting married,
having a baby, getting a promotion at work. And those things are not
guaranteed. And often when we do get them, then we start looking at the next milestone.
Whereas when we focus on the little moments of joy, we stop worrying so much about these big
milestones in life and we become more present. We become more connected and more resilient. And these things, over time, start to spiral.
They create these upward spirals, psychologists call them, toward happiness.
So it's as if moments of joy are like the building blocks of happiness.
That's the way that I see them, yes.
So what else is there in the world of science, neuroscience, and about joy? Because, I mean, if anybody would know, you would, and you certainly don't hear this talked about very often. What else do we know that might be surprising. But when psychologists do studies of faces, they show people's faces and they create these
computer-generated faces, faces that are really, really good-looking, like supermodel good-looking,
and then faces that are average-looking.
And what they find is that average-looking faces that are smiling in a genuine way, that
are exhibiting joy, are more attractive than supermodel good-looking faces that are stony face, way, that are exhibiting joy are more attractive than super
model good-looking faces that are stony face, that have no expression on them. So when we exhibit joy,
we become more attractive to others, and that can have powerful ripple effects. Joy is contagious.
When we project joy, we actually give our emotions to the people around us through our tone of voice,
our gestures, our facial expressions, even our walk can convey that kind of emotional information
and can rub off on other people. And it can spread throughout our social networks. So just by having
a little moment of joy, it might feel selfish, but actually it's something that you're doing
that can enhance your life, but it can also enhance the lives of the people that you interact
with on a daily basis. Yeah. And as you describe that, I think people can relate to that, that
when you have those joyful moments, it puts a little spring in your step. It makes you feel
better, which probably projects outward and other people
can sense it. Absolutely. I think that's why we're more attracted to people who are in a state of
joy, because we know that that emotion is going to rub off on us. And we want that. We want to feel
more joy in our daily lives. Well, and the reverse is also true. People who are joyless are not easy to be around. I think it's true
that it can be challenging to be around someone who's struggling to find joy. But the reality is
that we all have the potential to find joy within us. If you look at kids, you can see that we're
all born knowing how to find joy. No one has to teach a child how to be joyful.
They can turn an ordinary walk in the park into a magical adventure. Play is something that just
comes very easily to children. And as we get older, we often find that we are judged for our joy,
or we are made to feel that the things that we find joy in aren't
worthy or valid, and we're pressured to put play aside and focus on work. And I think that can
often separate us from our joy. And so I think the important thing to remember is that there are no
joyless people. There are only people who may have lost their connection to joy. And it's always
something that can be rediscovered. What's interesting when I think about this, and I have
to admit, I have not really thought about this at all until you showed up. But it's kind of
contagious in the sense like, I can remember when my son, who is now 18, but when he was a baby
and he'd be sitting in his little baby thing and there'd be like little butterflies and
stuff and he was fascinated with, or no, they were bumblebees.
They were little stuffed bumblebees that were attached and he was fascinated and he would
look and touch them and this smile would come on his face, and it would make everybody else smile.
And there was something very contagious about that joyful moment, simple though it may be, and this is just a little baby.
Absolutely. I can relate to this so much because I have a six-month-old, and he is just such a, you know, we call babies bundles of
joy, right? But it's true. They beam out joy from their face when they encounter something new or
something exciting or something that's just delightful in the world. And they transmit that
to us. And we're so lucky when we get to be in the presence of someone who exhibits and exudes
joy because it's an opportunity for us to capture that and take that on as well.
I remember a time when my son was very young and we were at the Vermont Country Store in
Vermont and I was holding him, and we were walking around the store,
and somebody popped a pop gun and made that noise.
And my son went into absolute hysterics.
He thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
And so we kept popping the pop gun. He was laughing so hard, and he had a very nice laugh,
a very contagious laugh.
The entire store, everyone in the store was laughing.
It was just this joyful moment that he created,
and everybody picked up on it.
I mean, you couldn't see anybody in the store
who wasn't smiling, if not laughing out loud.
You've just described an experience of that incredibly powerful,
contagious effect that joy can have in one of those moments.
And I think the thing to remember is that it's not a thing you have to
pursue. We often talk about the pursuit of happiness. I think with joy, it's much more
about allowing it to happen. You notice that the pop gun created this moment of laughter and
delight for your son, and then you repeated it to allow that moment to continue. I think that's
really what I'm talking about, is allowing yourself the space to notice those moments
and let them expand into your life. Since he became a teenager, we've been back to that
store and made that noise, and he doesn't find it the least bit funny anymore. It's not funny now. It was funny
then. It was really funny then. It was wonderful. But that's one of the interesting things too,
I wonder about joy is it's hard to recreate it in those kinds of situations. Like you can't like
go back and do it again. It just doesn't quite have the magic. Some things I think are a moment in time like that. And part of that has to do with the fact
that I think the joy in that moment was a novelty. It was a sense of something,
it was a discovery. It was something that was new. He'd probably never heard or seen that before.
And that was what made it so delightful and funny. But I think there are certain things that are
repeatedly joyful, things like sunsets, you mentioned flowers, certain celebrations can be
incredibly joyful, even though we do them again and again and again. Your garden coming back every
year can be a joyful experience or the return of summer or spring, the first dip in the ocean. There are lots of things that can be repeatedly joyful.
Well, all you have to do, it's interesting, as I said,
I haven't given this any thought my entire life
until I'm talking to you about it.
All you have to do is think about this for a little bit,
and it kind of reveals itself like, oh, yes, of course,
this joy is wonderful and it isn't that hard to find.
But nobody ever thinks about this, I guess, except you.
And it's pretty interesting.
It's often dismissed as trivial or self-indulgent or superficial, right?
These little moments. But I think that that is their deceptive power, that
just by focusing on these little moments, we can unlock something that could really be the secret
to happiness. Yeah. Well, if joy shows up more or less in everybody's life at certain times
with virtually no effort, imagine if you made the effort, how much more joyful your life could be.
Exactly.
My guest has been Ingrid Fattel-Lee.
She is an expert on design and joy.
The name of her book is Joyful,
The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness.
And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes.
Thank you for being here, Ingrid.
Thank you.
Have a good one.
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Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today.
Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Thank you. like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is
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Think about all the information at your fingertips.
I mean, there's almost nothing you can't find out right now.
Information is always there, everywhere.
And then there's social media coming at you.
You're really bombarded by all of this if you allow yourself to be. There's nothing wrong with information. It's the side effect of not being able to stay focused on important things
because of all these distractions coming at you. Messages on your phone. Oh, now you've got to stop
and check Instagram or Facebook. And then there's email messages. You got to read and answer those.
These are what my guest calls weapons of mass distraction. Joseph McCormick has really studied this problem, and he's written a book called Noise, Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus.
Hey, Joseph, welcome. Thanks for having me. So at first glance, you might think, well,
we've got access to pretty much all the information
you can imagine, that that's a good thing. So talk about how it's a problem.
The problem is, if you look at the world that we live in now, we are constantly consuming
information. A lot of it's useless. It's not timely. We're on our digital devices 24-7.
We're multitasking. There's a lot of distractions. I mean, it seems like to live and to work means
it's equated to consuming information. And a lot of that I consider to be noise or very noisy
in the world that we live in. And yet, a lot of that useless information and time spent on devices is a choice.
And people could put it down much of the time.
They don't need to be on it.
They choose to be on it.
Yes and no.
I think a lot of people, with the advent of smartphones and pervasive connectivity and 24-7 information dissemination, I think a lot of people feel like they have to.
I think people subconsciously or just unwillingly or just don't really realize that they actually
have a choice. And they feel like, well, when I go to work, my job is to be on all the time and
I consume information. Or when you're at home, if you don't have anything to do, you pick up your
phone. And at some point, people made this subconscious decision that they consume information 24-7.
And the reality is you do have a choice and you need to choose when and where and how much you
consume. But how is that different than say, you know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, if I didn't have
anything to do, I'd sit and consume the TV. What's the difference?
The difference is the sources of information are, they're more readily available. So before it's
like I had to go on television. If they didn't have anything on, I would stare at a test pattern
or the news, the news came out at six and it was over five or six and it was over at seven.
Now we live in an information age where you in your pocket and you in your pocket, in the palm of your hand,
you have the source of all information. I can check social media. I can check news feeds. I
mean, I can check anything, the barometric pressure of what it is in the Philippines if I wanted to.
So that's significantly different than it was 20 years ago. And we're living in an era of
pervasive connectivity where anywhere you go, everywhere you go, you have access to information.
Which sometimes is a good thing and maybe sometimes not such a good thing.
I look at information like food. Food's a wonderful thing. And it always has been a wonderful thing, but I don't eat all the time. I eat breakfast and I eat lunch and I eat dinner
and I choose what to, so if I look at information like food, it's like eating all the time. And a lot of that information is empty calories. So if you look at like our most precious
commodity nowadays is our attention. More than time and money, it's our most precious resource
and we squander it. It gets depleted and divided and distracted and diminished by paying attention
to everything that comes my way moment to moment. So it seems the way you frame it, that what you're describing is a problem, but how do we
know it's a problem? Is there research that supports that this really is a problem? Or is
this just the new normal? And it may not be the good old days, the way people consumed information,
and wouldn't it be great to go back to that but
we're not going back to that this is just new and different and maybe it's a problem and maybe it's not a problem well i think that if you look at if you look at the level of harm of the amount of
time in a day a person spends consuming information let's look at social media for example social
media is a wonderful thing but people spend an incessant amount. The research that I had drawn in the book is people on their smartphones swipe it between
3,000 and 5,000 times a day.
70% of the people that we research, the first thing they do when they wake up in the morning
is check their phone, and the last thing they do at night.
So when you look at the harm, it's like where I'm spending so much of my time doing this,
well, it starts depleting.
One of the things that starts doing this. Well, it starts depleting.
One of the things that starts doing is depleting my attention.
There's an enormous amount of research on multitasking.
And it actually, some research says it lowers your IQ.
So there's substantial research in the effect of incessant consumer information consumption on the brain, on the ability to focus and on, you know, sustaining relationships and,
and, and the list goes on and on. So what are we to do? Because, you know, people,
those people who check their phone as the first thing they do in the morning and the last thing
they do at night, they're not going to stop doing that because you tell them to, I mean.
Maybe they will, maybe they won't. The question is, is, are they doing that consciously and
willfully or are they doing it habitually? There's a book called Addicted by Design, and it's that apps
are designed to be addictive. So there's qualities in information consumption that are quite
addictive. So I think, are people waking up saying, okay, I want to check my phone, this is what I
want to do? Do I want to spend an extra half hour on Instagram? So these things are not
necessarily willful, mindful, conscious decisions. They're instinctive. And in that regard, what I'm
trying to, and many people are for this matter, making an issue of how much time do we actually
spend consuming information versus choosing to spend time consuming information. And that's the
distinction. It's like, it's in this sense, it's like eating. I'm not against eating. I think it's
wonderful. But I want, I need to eat healthy. I eat at a scheduled time and I eat stuff that's
good for me versus just consuming to consume. Okay. So I get the problem, but what's the
solution? I mean, in a practical sense, what are you supposed to do?
So I have a rule. One of the practical things
that I do is I call it the seven to seven rule. So generally speaking, I make a decision not to
check my digital device, not until 7am in the morning and that after 7pm. Do I break it? Yeah,
I break it. But it's like a store. Stores open at nine, they close at five, you know, the store
hours. What am I proposing is some level of moderation and what I call noise is the source of
all this distraction. So the way I look at it is either I'm managing it or it's managing me.
Does the smartphone work for me or do I work for it? And I think some people feel like, well,
when it calls, I answer. And I think that there's a better way of looking at it, which is
set store hours, set limits.
There's some practical things that people can do to manage the noise level.
You can't get rid of it, but you lower it.
But here's the thing.
As long as your phone or your computer or whatever it is,
as long as it's set so that some message comes in,
some notification comes in, it makes a noise,
you're going to pay attention to it.
I mean, you know, back before cell phones, when people just had home phones,
when the phone rang, everything stopped to answer the phone,
especially, you know, if it rang in the middle of the night,
well, boy, you made sure to answer the phone. There's something about the
noise, the immediacy of a device making noise that makes everybody stop what they're doing and run to
it. When I grew up, when the phone rang at dinnertime, we didn't answer it. We had answering
machines and I call it the illusion of immediacy, that everything has to be now. It's like, well,
no, things can wait. So if a person calls you, well, if I called them back in 10
minutes, so one of the things that I say is very powerful is say no, but no doesn't mean never.
No means not now. So if the phone rings in dinner, I'm not going to answer right now.
Well, what if it's an emergency? If it's an emergency, I'll call back.
People think that everything is at the sense of like somebody's going to die and it's really, really dire. It's really not that at all. Most of the information we consume that we think is urgent is an alert from my bank saying that there's It's not life-threatening. And people treat it like it is only to find out that it isn't. But they spent all this buildup to
answer the phone during dinner. And it's like, just no, I don't answer the phone during dinner.
Well, it does seem, and you mentioned it before, that the rules are changing. The rules are being
written. I remember I have a teenage son and I remember when he was younger and he got his phone, he'd get in the car, and I'd be driving, and he'd get on his phone, and I'd say,
no, no, no, no, we don't, we don't, no, no, no, we don't do that. No, we talk and whatever. Well,
now he just gets on his phone. I mean, I gave up that battle because I wasn't, it was always going
to be a battle, and I didn't want a battle. So now he gets in the car and he puts his headphones on and he listens to his phone and I expect it and I don't like it, but it just wasn't worth the fight.
Yeah, I mean, as a parent, I share that sentiment with you where it's like it's not worth the fight.
And I understand and I agree with that.
One of the conversations that I have with my daughter who's in high school is, you know, what do you love about social media and what do you hate about it?
And one of the things that she said to me is one of the things that she hates about it is that she always feels like she's at school because she's constantly connected to school.
So when we were, when I was in high school and college, I could leave school and go home.
They can't anymore.
They're always at school.
They're always under the microscope.
They're always in the public eye.
They always have to look good.
They always have to be connected.
And that's exhausting for them.
And they recognize, not even kids recognize it.
It's exhausting to be on social media 24-7 because you're afraid of missing something
and being left out by people.
So there are things that they love about it and there's things they hate about it.
You've mentioned a couple of things throughout our conversation here of things you do and things people can do to help disconnect from technology
some of the time. And let's talk about some more of those specifics, because I think when you tell
people in kind of vague terms about how they need to disconnect, well, like by doing what? It seems so hard to do. So specifically what?
One of the ones that I practice is I call it's like the first and last thought of the day. So
when I wake up, I don't grab my phone. It's like that's my first victory of the day is to sort of
consume information, whatever that information might be. What I do is I wake up and I have a
thought and I have quiet. So I have a cup of coffee.
It's my routine.
And I schedule.
It's not, there's no technology.
It's just 15 minutes of just quiet.
And I prepare my day.
And I feel a victory in that moment.
I have a very intentional thought when I wake up.
I grab a cup of coffee and I have quiet.
I don't feel like I'm enslaved to information consumption.
I do that at the end of the day.
So I have a way of starting the day and ending the day.
Those are very, they've, I've been doing this for, you know,
for a few years now while writing the book Noise
and also after the book came out.
It feels very, it kind of sets my day on the right track.
That's one thing that I do.
The other thing I mentioned earlier is setting, you know earlier is setting tech timeouts or time for technology.
For example, email.
In working with people in the military and special operations, I ask them, this is really
remarkable, how much time does a special operator spend in email?
Between a third and a half of their day.
Well, they feel like they have to, but I'm like, could you schedule time?
I check it in the morning, middle of the day, in the afternoon.
And many, if not most of them say, yes, they could. They
just don't. So that's just like scheduling when you're on and when you're off. That's another
thing. At work is giving some indicator to the people around you that you need quiet.
Because a lot of people work in open, obviously now with COVID, it's a bit different, but
when people go back to work in these open environments, it's like the open collaboration, open floor space.
It's like putting up like a do not disturb or quiet sign or maybe wearing a pair of headphones.
In the office that I work in, people wear headphones, even though they're not listening to music as a sign to like, I'm focusing and concentrating right now.
I can't be interrupted or distracted.
That's another mechanism.
A simple one, very, very powerful is just, I mentioned earlier, is to say no,
but not never, just not now. I'm doing hard work. I'm focusing on something. Let's say I'm
reading something and then checking my phone or doing something online might be easier
and more interesting and entertaining. I'm going to delay that. I heard a piece of advice some time
ago that I've always tried to do, or at least keep in mind that, you know, when people text you or
email you and you text them right back, you're training them that you're always available and to expect an answer right back.
So I don't answer right back. And I mean, unless it's a real emergency, I sometimes deliberately
don't answer right away because I don't want people to think I'm that available,
even though sometimes I am that available. That is great advice. Just think about like
for the people listening right now to do that, you're telling a person,
I call this the illusion of immediacy, that it's an illusion, that you're always available.
You're not always available.
So giving people that response that you're always available, you're not going to hurt
their feelings by responding in a half hour.
So you're going to do two benefits.
You're going to benefit them that the world is not always available.
And you're going to benefit yourself that you have mastery of that moment that you should be doing something
else. But like when the text message come doesn't mean that's when I respond. So that's a great bit
of advice that if imagine if a person just did that three times a day, that makes you feel more,
more centered, more focused, more, less overwhelmed. Like the next test match is going
to send me into a, no, I'm not gonna answer right now. Yeah. It's things like that, that give people
a sense of hope. Like I can live with pervasive technology and, and, and have it not like be
overwhelming to me. They call this term like infobesity. It's like, I'm just overwhelmed with
this. And I think some of those things can be very encouraging for people.
Well, and two, when people will text and say, and then later say, well, I texted you 20 minutes ago.
And I think, yeah, it was only 20 minutes ago. I mean, so like they're trying to make me feel bad. And so I've just taken the stand that I'm not going to feel bad.
It's 20 minutes.
What you asked wasn't that important.
And I'll get back to you.
Don't worry.
It's okay.
You're absolutely spot on.
I think in that regard, we need to be all to be more unapologetic.
Our attention is precious. Our time is precious. And we don't need to be all need to be more unapologetic. Our attention is precious.
Our time is precious and we don't need to respond right away. So don't, but don't apologize for it.
It's okay. A person can wait 20 minutes. Nothing bad is going to happen. Nothing bad is going to
happen. If it really, really, in fact, is an emergency, you'll know. There's a funny story
that happened to me a number of years ago. I was on a family vacation in Mexico and this was before all hotels and condos had
internet connections. So when we'd go on vacation, I'd have a smartphone, but it didn't really work.
And the hotel didn't have internet connections and the condo was staying at. So we were there
for seven days and I had literally no connection to the Western
world. And I remember thinking my only connection to the world of something really, really bad
happened, like a natural disaster in Europe or some crazy thing was the cleaning lady.
I'm like, my tether to the world right now is the cleaning lady who cleans the condo every morning.
Like if she tells me something bad happened,
that was the only way I would know.
And guess what happened?
Nothing bad happened.
I went back and I looked at the news of the week.
And if we look back in the hindsight of like all the news
that's produced in a week that we think is critical,
I went back and I looked at it all,
none of it was earth shattering.
So it's things like that that can make us feel like,
oh, I can actually breathe
again. I can focus on what's like really important, like a conversation I'm having with this person,
like you and I are having right now. I mean, I'm not talking to 10 people. It's you and I
talking and it's great. And that's what I'm really, I want people to feel encouraged. Like
this is, yes, this is the way the life seems to be, but it can be, it could be a different way, slightly different way and much better.
You know what happens?
I think everybody has their version of this story, but one day you leave your phone at
home, you forget it, you don't have it.
You go to the store and your wife texts you, oh, don't forget to get some broccoli, but
you don't have your phone.
So you don't have your phone.
So you don't get the broccoli. Now you have to go back to the store and get the broccoli. And you say to yourself, see, I've always got to have my phone with me and I've always got to have it on.
Otherwise it's going to cost me. I think that at the end of the day, maybe it was,
that wasn't the, if that's the worst thing that
happened, we live in this, it's, it's a bit of a fantasy that that is like, that's bad.
At the end of the day, you know, we used to take trips and I used a map and we didn't have a phone.
You have to, you know, it's all these different things. So I think now it's like, it's okay. I
mean, do this as a test to see how tethered we are to technology.
Go to the gas station, fill up my car with gas, come back home, and I'm going to leave my phone.
I mean, I drove from Chicago to New York without a phone when I was 18 years old.
My parents let me.
And nothing bad happened.
Well, I think it's a conversation that everybody needs to hear and have and think about because at some point you've got to wonder, is this really good to be connected all the time?
Joseph McCormick has been my guest. The name of his book is Noise, Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Joseph.
Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Every town and city has its own rules regarding recycling. Most often it's recommended that you rinse out jars and cans before you set them outside for the recycling truck. But you could
spend a long time getting the last of the peanut butter out of the jar.
So is it really necessary?
Well, actually, most recycling centers can handle a bit of stuck-on food in jars and cans.
The real reason for rinsing out recyclables is more to cut down on the smell and not to attract ants and rodents either at your house or at the recycling center.
So as a courtesy, it's a nice thing to do,
but you don't need to spend hours getting that last drop of honey out of the jar.
Now what about pizza boxes? Do you recycle those?
Well, if the pizza box is covered in grease, and they very often are,
then it's not recyclable. You should just throw it in the trash.
If, however, the box is clean and maybe only has a speck or two of grease,
then it's okay to recycle. And that is something you should know. Please leave us a rating and
review on Apple Podcasts, CastBox, Spotify, wherever you listen to this podcast. It really helps us out, and I like to read them.
And I can't read them if you don't post them.
So please post a review.
I'm Mike Carruthers.
Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.
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