The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Tame Those Devices: 10 Tips to Achieve Digital Balance

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Technology is amazing! We can make video calls, find facts in an instant and watch movies on our phones. We take all this for granted, but have we let our screens and devices take over too much of our lives?  To mark Digital Wellness Day on May 3, we hear from Amy Blankson (author and "chief evangelist" at the Digital Wellness Institute) about her ten tips to tame our devices at home and in the workplace. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. making free video calls to friends and colleagues all over the planet, I'd probably have said that you'd seen Star Wars one too many times. Thanks so much for taking the time for this. So happy to join you guys. This is exciting. But today in 2024, we use video calls and so many other amazing technologies all the time. We totally take them for granted. How is the audio sounding? Are we good? I think so. I mean, I can share my photos instantly with hundreds of relatives. I can find any existing recipe or song lyric in seconds.

And yes, I can now even watch Star Wars on my phone. Sounds great. Awesome. You're recording, so you have headphones. Thank you. And are you able to record your side? Modern technology is amazing, but it does have a downside. Research shows that our screens and apps and devices are making us less social, less present, and even less happy. And that's why I'm jumping on Zoom with Amy Blankson. I am the chief evangelist for the Digital Wellness Institute. I'm also the

best-selling author of The Future of Happiness, and I am thrilled to be here. Amy is at the forefront of a new holiday known as Digital Wellness Day, which falls on May 3rd. In honor of Digital Wellness Day, I've asked Amy to share her favorite 10 tips that we could all use to bring more balance to the way we use our devices. But first off, what is Digital Wellness Day? So Digital Wellness Day is a global holiday where we literally just pause to think about how we interact with our technology. When, where, why, how. We know that some individuals really need that quiet space in the morning to be mindful. Others need to get through the slog of the day and then have time at the end of the day to reflect on their habits. But wherever you're coming from,

there's an opportunity to learn more about the ways that we interact with our technology because it has become such a dominant force in our lives. Why is this something we need to get intentional about? What's the problem with our digital technologies and why it's negatively affecting our happiness? So I would say that technology is not necessarily negatively impacting our happiness. That was actually my assumption when I started my book. And as I got into the research, that was actually not the case. The big differentiation here is that it's the way that we're using our technology. And the truth is that when we're not mindful about how we're interacting, we wind up falling prey to the snowball effect, which is that the snowball starts at the top of a mountain very slowly and gains steam. And by the end, it's going at such

a velocity that it's hard to keep up with. We know that with our digital technology that 50% of the time we pick up our phone, nobody's actually called or messaged us. We're picking it up because the need to be needed is actually highly addictive. And follow that up by the fact that the second time you reach for your phone, 50% of the time, it's within two minutes of picking it up the first time. So as the day rolls on, we are literally reaching for our devices constantly. And the downside of that is that we're a little bit less connected with other people in our lives. We're less productive. We're making more errors. We're feeling less happy about the way that we interact with the world around us and how tuned in we are to ourselves and other people as well. And so we know that has ripple effects into burnout, mental health issues, as well as physical problems like our backs, our eyes, our necks. And so without really contemplating the importance of this topic, I think it's hard to make a difference and it change until you can actually see it. And so this year, the particular theme of Digital Wellness Day is digital balance. What is digital balance and why is it so important

to achieve? So digital balance is really finding that sweet spot. We call it a spot of digital flourishing where it's not that you are addicted to technology and it's not that you're swearing it off either. It's really that you're finding that happy medium where technology is working for you, not the other way around. And so the idea of digital balance is that each one of us has the capacity to find a better sense of balance no matter where your baseline is today. We all can do a better job of being more thoughtful and really getting control of the way that we're interacting with our technology. And so today we're interacting with our technology. And so today we're going to walk through some of your top 10 tips for achieving digital balance in,

you know, the complicated spot we find ourselves in in 2024 right now. And one of the tips that you talk about a lot, which I think is really relevant for finding digital balance in our home lives, is finding ways that we could become more intentional with our technology. Why is kind of our intent so important there? So our intent is important because when you set your intention, you're 40% more likely to follow through on actions. So intent for me actually starts with data. It starts with being able to get a real gauge of what are your behaviors today. And then you can set an intention so that moving forward,

you have an idea of exactly what you'd like to see change in your life. I'm a bit of a data geek, so maybe that doesn't work for everyone. But I do find that that moment where I have people in an audience pull out their phone and look at their screen time is always an aha moment. Even if you've done it before, I think these numbers sneak up on us. And when we bring our awareness back to the numbers, then we can set an intention to go forward. And so one of the ways we can get intentional is to really learn about those numbers. Do you have particular techniques that you suggest to the people you work with for how to do that better? I do. So when I have people go look into their phones, before they ever touch their phone,

I want them to think in their minds about how much time they think they're spending online and what are the top three apps they think they're using. And I want them to think about what are their top three values in their life. Is it success? Is it fame? Is it fortune? Is it family? Is it friends? Is it faith? Whatever it is for you, those things should be the anchoring things that determine how you use your time. Then I have people guesstimate how long they think that they're spending on those three apps. And then we go look and we get the real gut check in that moment of how accurate were you. And I would say about 10% of the time people are accurate. And 90% of the time you hear a few gasps in the audience as they realize, oh my gosh, I had no idea. Could this even be possible? And it's that moment, it's that light bulb moment that suddenly

people are inspired to create change. And you know this as well, Dr. Santos, that with all of the behavioral modifications that we are trying to create through positive psychology, that awareness is that first step. And then comes the recognition that you need to do something on the back end. And one of the things you suggest that people do is a kind of little hack that I really like, which is you call it a really rule. What's the really rule and how can that make us more intentional? The really rule comes from my brother when he was helping me downsize my house and we were about to move. And as he walked around the house with me, he literally was following me around going, Amy, do you really need this? Come

on. We had our sorting piles and we had our giving away piles and selling piles and literally everything. He would say, really? But his voice got in my head. And so now when I'm thinking about my digital habits, I use what's called the really rule. Thank you, Sean Acor for that, which is that moment where you can think about how necessary it is to pick up your phone, to use that app, to play that game, to read that extra book when you have other things you might need to be doing. Because we all have some distractions that are good for us, right? That are actually helpful.

One cat video can be fantastic for boosting your mood. 20 cat videos is when you start to have an issue, right? And so there's that point of maximum utility and then a steep drop-off point. We wanna be able to be so mindful and aware, so thoughtful that we can say, really, do I really need to watch another cat video or is this enough

for today? And that gut check is very helpful. I love this rule because it can really allow you to say, no, no, right now, actually that engagement with my technology feels fun. Like I've been in this period where I've been traveling a lot. So I find myself spending a lot more time than usual in like airport waiting lounges and just kind of sitting around. And sometimes when I use the really rule, it's like, you know, should I really be checking my email or looking at, you know, goofy things on Reddit? And it's like, I've got four minutes to get on this plane. I'm just killing time. Yeah, this makes sense. But then sometimes I realize like, oh, actually, is there something else I could be doing? Is this really the best use of my time? And then I'll,

you know, think back to all the research on social connection and say, oh, maybe I should talk to the person sitting next to me, or maybe I should, you know, text a friend. And so it was a really useful rule when I heard you talk about it, because it was like, it's just like kind of a gut check, like a reminder of like, is this the best use of my time right now, really? And it was really powerful for me. No pun intended, I guess. Another great tip you give is the power of finding a stopping cue. What do you mean by a stopping cue and how can we build more of those into our kind of digital activities online?

So stopping cues are those moments where you have something that helps cue you visually or even an auditory signal that says, this is a moment that maybe is a time to step back or pause. For some people who are familiar with the Pomodoro technique, there's some fantastic apps online. And yes, I'm talking about using fire to fight fire here, but I like to use one called the Insight Timer. And it is literally a timer that counts down and then it dings at the end.

So what that's doing is, number one, it's giving me a visual cue. Amy, it's time to focus and it's only going to be 20 minutes. And then the sound cue reminds me to come back out of that and say, okay, you've been working for a good deep chunk of time. Now it's time to take a moment to stand up and take a breather. And as long as the science of distraction has been emerging since the early seventies, this has been a very helpful strategy to help to signal our brains, this is deep work, this is a little bit lighter work. And when you can bounce back and forth between the two of them, you actually boost your productivity by giving your brain many breaks and deeper focus

breaks. But I found the stopping cues even more relevant for like, I'm just scrolling through Reddit and my brain, I'm just going to do that for like two seconds. I'm just going to go through a couple of TikTok videos, but without the stopping cue, I could be there for much more time than, you know, a couple of minutes, sadly, embarrassingly. And so how can we use these stopping cues kind of for leisure that we might want to get a little kind of digital distraction in, but not to get stuck there. And this is such a great call out there as well, because the way that our technology is designed is actually based on certain techniques that are designed to keep our brains interacting and highly attuned to the content. And so what the stopping technique does in that sense is it takes what's been designed in an app as what's called the bottomless bowl, meaning that if you scroll on TikTok, you will scroll and scroll and scroll and you will never reach the bottom. And so there is no signal to you saying it's time to stop. More apps that are being focused on human-centered design are starting to create

a limit to the number of videos that they post at a given time because it's a healthier way to consume content. So if you look on Pinterest or if you look on some of the news media apps, you'll scroll down maybe for a couple minutes and then it will stop. It's not that the content stops. It's just a design feature that helps you to know, okay, time to stop. When you don't have that in an app, those are the apps that are the most dangerous for us, the ones that suck us in the most, and the ones that require us as individuals to be stronger and more intentional about setting boundaries for ourselves so that we don't get sucked in. And so these are some ways that we can be a little bit more intentional about our technology use.

But the next tip that you give us is that we also have to manage our technological distraction. You know, how does technology steal our attention away? And how are even simple things like the technology we have around us messing with what we get to think about? So if you want to experience this firsthand, one of the most interesting ways to see exactly how technology is arresting our attention is by switching your phone into grayscale mode. So if you don't know how to do this, just Google, how do I turn my phone into grayscale? It's a very simple three or four step process. But essentially what it does is it takes all of the color off of your screen, all the flashing lights, and sometimes you can

even turn off all the sounds. So you get this very blank canvas. And I've had people who've been able to do the grayscale for maybe a day, two days, three days, and then it will drive you nuts because it's so boring. You don't want to look at it anymore. So that just shows you just how much the interplay of color, light, sound, flashing does to stimulate our visual cortex and how effective it is at keeping our attention focused on whatever is put in front of us. And that's why pop-ups are so effective is because they literally come into your space and they take your attention away from what you were doing before. And so this is not by accident. Tristan Harris, who's the former Google design ethicist, will often talk about how our phones were designed like slot machines and that they were designed to hijack our attention. And I love that message, but I also want to call out that I think

we as human beings are stronger than these companies are designing for. I think that we have the power to control our minds. We just have to set our intention that this is something that we care about, that we want to do, and that we're going to get better at because our attention is so important and so vital to our life. So it's simple. Just use a bit of willpower and you can resist the urge to pick up your phone so often. Well, as you might have guessed, it's not really that easy. You'll hear why when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. Author and digital wellness evangelist Amy Blankson already shared some quick strategies we can use to prevent our screens from taking over

our limited attention. Simple things like switching our phones to grayscale or asking the question, do I really need to be checking this app right now? But she also thinks we need to think a bit more radically. So there was a study called the Mirror Presence Study that found that simply having your phone in your line of sight decreases your attention, your focus, your connection to the person or the task at hand. And that by simply hiding your phone, you can actually reclaim 10% of your brain power. So what this means to me is that literally when I'm working, I'll tuck my phone behind my laptop or desktop screen, or I'll put it in my back pocket, or I'll put it in a bag., or I'll put it in a bag.

So it's not that it's not there. I'm not walking away from it because sometimes people are uncomfortable with that. All I'm doing is getting out of my line of sight. And the reason why this works is because of that factor that the need to be needed is so strong that our eyes are actually flickering back and forth between our screen and our task or the person we're with because we might be needed. And that leads to another factor that I am on a soapbox lately about the importance of not fubbing our friends. And fubbing, for those of you who've never heard of this term, I apologize in advance for introducing you to it because you might hate me later, but fubbing is phone snubbing. And it is that moment where you're having an awesome conversation with someone

when all of a sudden they get a notification on their phone, they look down, and it's not that notification that gets them. It's the one that pops up after that, that they suddenly lost. And then by the time they come back to you, they say, oh, I'm so sorry about that. What were we talking about again? That's fubbing. You are now going to see it everywhere.

And I think that that is the kind of impact that we're trying to eliminate when we're focusing on the mere presence of a device in our line of sight. By having it out of our line of sight, there's nothing to go check. There's nothing to interrupt us. And that's us taking control of our physical space as well as our mental space there as well. And so this is a nice transition to your third tip that we need to engage with if we want to find more digital balance, which is that we need to be protecting our in real life social connections from digital distraction and so many kind of digital challenges. You know, I know that we've talked a lot on this podcast about the importance of social relationships, but talk about how technology beyond just fubbing can kind of

mess with our kind of social connection that we experience in real life. Well, we've certainly seen the rise of mental health concerns, not just in the United States, but across the globe and especially for our young people. And it's no accident that this is a topic that comes back time and time again to not just social media, but also our devices. We see it with gaming. We see it with getting lost in work for some of our hyper-responsible young people. We see it in the ways that we interact with one another and feel less connected because we're not making as much eye contact. We know that the brain has what's called mirror neurons, which means that there's an emotional contagion effect that happens between individuals. You see this all the time when one

person yawns, the next person yawns. Well, imagine if they can't see each other, you don't get that connection. The same thing happens not just with yawning, but also with positive mood affect as well as negative affect. So if we're not seeing one another, we literally can't have that hard wire connection that we've had for all of human existence before now. And so by getting the devices out of our way, by reconnecting with our eyes, with our bodies, with our attention, that's what really helps us to form those bonds.

And that's so important, as we know, to social capital and bridging and bonding as well. Another one of the strategies you suggest for how we can kind of get back to kind of engaging with each other socially away from our technology is to find some screen-free activities. I love this because I feel like so much of my social connection, unfortunately, involves screens. Like I'm going to hang out with my husband, but we're going to watch a movie together or watch Netflix or, you know, we're going to kind of get together with friends,

but we all have our phones right beside us. And whenever that lull in the conversation comes, we pull them out. What are some good ideas for non-screen social activities that we can engage in? And what are some rules that we can put in place around our technology when we're engaging in those new activities? I like that question. And I think that it is interesting because there are so many activities that exist that we have done for years and years, but we're beginning to kind of forget what the options are. I know it's like so sad, right? Like it's like, well, what can we do tonight? Like, I guess we'll do something with the screen because we just like aren't creative enough to come up with these other ideas. Right? Is our creativity leaving us because of a lack of use? It's like a muscle that we're forgetting. But there's all

sorts of activities from playing games outside, playing board games, from playing games like for my children, they still love hide and go seek. Or there's art, there's music, there's just sitting and being still and noticing the world around you, trying new foods and cooking. I really like to encourage people when they're trying to think of this list is to actually write it down somewhere so that when you hit that moment of, what should I do now? You have a go-to list of all the other things that you also enjoy that you can pick something off the list. And we see this. Some people have a little jar of popsicles. You randomly pull out a popsicle stick that has an idea for something to do. But what's essentially happening here is you're creating a different

opportunity cost. You could do this, but you also get a lot of joy out of that. So we're going to try to balance. And as you said earlier, it's not an either or, it's an and. It's an opportunity that you can have time to watch a movie and really enjoy that. And we can do some other things to balance out that time as well. And so those are some ways that we can kind of boost up our in real life social connection. But there's a second in real life thing we need to pay attention to if we're trying to achieve digital balance,

which is like our bodies and how they're affected by our digital world. And so I think this is something we often forget when it comes to kind of thinking about how our technology can make us happier. But tell me a little bit about the challenges that our bodies face as we become more digital natives and interact with screens more often.

The physical challenge that we experience with being on screens more is obviously the sedentary nature of sitting in front of a screen. It creates less activity in our bodies, which makes it harder to regulate our metabolism. It changes our sleep habits, and it also makes us even sometimes forget to eat or to mindlessly eat because you're so busy watching something. So we know the mind-body connection here is really strong. And it's something that we could be paying more attention to. This is another one of those moments though, where I think that we can fight fire with fire. We know Fitbits have been amazing or the Apple Watch has been incredible for helping motivate individuals with data to

change their behavior or track their behaviors, but known to raise your mindfulness. So I wouldn't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but I do think that there is a balance. We also hear a lot of individuals who get lost in tracking data. They are so concerned about their streaks that they lose track of the fact that the whole purpose was to do other things besides being online. And so again, we come back to this place of let's make technology work for us, not us work for our technology. And any other tips for how we can use technology a bit more ergonomically in ways that really support our posture and the kinds of ways we want to hold our body? Yes, absolutely. So having a screen that is at your line of sight is so important for those of

you out there who have been spending a lot of time on a laptop. Because the screens are smaller, we tend to hunch down because the table height is not set at a line of sight for a laptop. And so the idea might be to either put your laptop higher on a stack of books, or it might be to have a desk that raises and lowers depending on where you're looking into your camera. You would not believe the kind of impact this makes on back pain, on neck pain and posture as well. It took me writing a book about digital wellness to pay attention to this factor. And once I did, I wasn't visiting the chiropractor all the time. I was able to go

through a day and not feel like my whole body hurt just from sitting at work. And it's really important. Another thing that's really important, which gets us to tip number five, is that we need to kind of navigate our technology use in the bedroom in order to protect our sleep. How has technology been affecting sleep? And what are some best practices we can do to allow ourselves to protect our sleep while still enjoying the screens that we enjoy so much? So there is some debate on this topic, actually. We've heard a lot about the importance of keeping your phone out of the bedroom. And that's specifically because the blue light that's emitted from your screen has been known

to mess with your circadian rhythms, which makes it harder for you to fall asleep, makes it harder for you to have good sleep and then wake up at a decent hour. And the second reason why it's advised to keep your phone out of the bedroom is because it's really tempting to check that email right before bed or to stay up watching something on your screen or to mess around playing a game or whatever. And so the temptation is so high. I will tell you truthfully, and I think it's important as a digital wellness expert to be as authentic as possible. I do sleep with my phone right beside my bed. And there's two reasons why. Number one is because there's now the ability to change the amount of blue light emitted on your phone. So you can actually decrease the brightness if it's not

as impactful. Two is I still use it as my alarm calendar that helps me feel more at peace. And so if we're just going to be really real here right now, that's important for me. The third reason is I actually like to read myself to sleep. And I find that is the number one thing that helps me to naturally wind my brain down at the end of the day. And so if I can have the self-control enough to not check that email right before bed, then it works And so if I can have the self-control enough to not check that email right before bed, then it works. If we don't have that self-control, then it can become a problem. And so it comes back to evaluating for yourself. What are your triggers? What are your boundaries? What works for you? And if there's a way that you can keep your phone, great. If it

feels better or you think that it will help you to reach your goals by keeping it out of the bedroom, then I highly suggest it. Another strategy you've mentioned, which I think is a nice balance with maybe keeping your phone there, but not kind of going to it as much, is this idea of a screen-free morning practice so that your first moments of wakefulness aren't interacting with that screen. Any good ideas for how to engage with that screen-free morning practice? I'm a huge advocate of the screen-free morning practice, and I'm still working on this practice myself. But I think starting with baby steps is really important and understanding the rationale for why would you not look at your phone first thing in the morning.

And the reason is that when we open our phone, we have, I think the average number of notifications per day is 323 notifications that are pinging at us throughout the day. Oh my gosh. Right? Including I'm sure a bunch at night. So as soon as you wake up, there's like a whole host of them just sitting there. They are all waiting for you and they will be there still, even a little bit later in the morning. So the thought is that rather than wake up to the tyranny of the urgent, why not give yourself that headspace where you control the course of your day, where you allow other

people's thoughts in when you're ready? Most of us don't want to wake up to a fire alarm. And that's the equivalent of what's happening when we open our phone and you think, oh, this bill needs to get paid. Oh, this person needs to go there. The dog needs to get groomed. This project you forgot. You didn't do 10 tasks yesterday. Oh my gosh, my stress level's rising, right? So do yourself a solid. Keep that for as long as you can to have that morning mindfulness

space. And even if it's five minutes for the start of the day, that's a great place to start. And if you are using your phone, even in the mornings or however, one other tip, tip number six, is to find ways to use your technology to make sure you're doing the kinds of happiness hacks that you've heard about on this podcast and elsewhere. When I think about my morning screen practice, one of the things I like to do is to kind of quickly scribble in a gratitude journal, or maybe to open up a screen, maybe my laptop and do a quick journaling practice. How can we kind of maybe

incorporate more technology into the healthier side of practices? And maybe what are some other examples that people could think about in their own lives? So one of the things that I love to talk to audiences about is what's called the J game. And these are the five most well-researched habits, positive habits that can help raise your baseline for happiness. You know these well, Dr. Santos, but these would be J for journaling, G for gratitude, A for acts of kindness, M for meditation, and E for exercise. And while these are all potentially offline habits, I think there's also a way to do all five of them online. For instance, I know that iPhone now has a new journal app and it'll ping you at the evening to remind you, hey, write down two or three things that happened today so you didn't forget. There's a gratitude app I love. It's called Gratitude and it just gives you three blanks

to write your gratitudes and it keeps track so you can look back at them over time. For acts of kindness, I like to send a text message once a day to somebody in my social support network just saying, hey, I'm thinking about you or thanks for something you did. Meditation, check out Headspace, check out YouTube, lots of great resources. And of course, exercise, tying in some of the ways that we can be inspired to keep track of our health and fitness. These are all ways that if you have an intention to raise your happiness, you can use technology to do it or not, either way. But whatever works best for you, you will need to find that so that you can stick with it over time. Finding digital balance during your leisure time

is hugely important, but many of us spend the majority of our waking hours at work. How do we make sure our phones and screens don't boss us around there? The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Venus Lab will be back in a moment. All my good intentions about finding a healthy digital balance fall by the wayside when it comes to work. I know I should be avoiding screens and Reddit rabbit holes in my free time. But as a professional with so many responsibilities, shouldn't I be responding to email at all hours? Or checking social media for the latest psychology news? It kind of feels like my duty. But author and digital wellness expert Amy Blankson isn't so sure. The greatest challenge in the workplace

for finding digital balance is being able to carve out digital boundaries in a way that you feel will be seen and respected, especially by those who are more senior to you. I talk to employees all the time who are worried that if they don't respond to that email at 11pm and all of their colleagues do, that they'll be seen as non-responsive. And this creates sort of a slippery slope of negative habits and round the clock, always on connectivity that's not helping anyone. So really beginning to have those conversations at work is an important next step in terms of figuring out what is allowed, what kind of latitude do you have to make choices? And then for those who are junior to you, how can you impact

their lives with what power you do have to set some policies or set some behaviors or even just social scripts in the workplace that help reinforce positive digital balance and a more positive digital culture. And so that was sort of tip number seven, how we can fight our hyper-conductivity. Your tip number eight is that we should think more about screen fatigue and how to deal with it. I think I know very, very well what this is, but I want to hear your definition of screen fatigue. And I definitely want to hear all your tips that we can use to kind of deal with it and make it better. Screen fatigue is essentially when you get tired of looking at screens. A lot of times it is

prompted by Zoom fatigue or Teams fatigue or even Slack fatigue. But there is this general sense of malaise and even irritability that emerges when you're on a screen for too long. It could show up physically like your eyes start to dry out or you start to get headaches. But for a lot of people, it's a lot more subtle than that. It's just that general sense of unrest that you're frustrated and you don't know why. That comes from screen fatigue. And we've had some interesting studies emerge now since the pandemic around why this happens, specifically with Zoom fatigue. And it's often called the Brady Bunch effect. And the idea is like the Brady Bunch, you have all these

different small screens and pictures of individuals that might be on the call with you. And your brain is spending so much energy flickering between all the other faces on the screen, the chat, what you're looking like, you're managing for your background. And so the amount of mental energy that it takes to manage all of that actually drains you way faster than an in-person interaction would. And so as we are adults and professionals being mindful of our screen fatigue, it's really important to both plan for short breaks in between different screen activities and to give others that same sort of break when we're planning and scheduling activities because we know that this plays an important factor in burnout.

It also seems that we just need to be a little bit more intentional about noticing it. I loved your comment about sometimes the screen fatigue isn't that I've developed some sort of migraine or a headache. It's really just that like I'm incredibly frustrated and on my last nerve, but that actually comes from the fact that I'm kind of a little bit more depleted because I've been on Zoom calls all day. So any kind of tips for kind of noticing that and allowing it to? I think that you'll notice it

now that you've heard it, you think about it, you'll notice it more often. The harder question is what do you do on the backend once you notice it and you're required to be on Zoom all day for work? And there are a few hacks that I'm finding. My number one most favorite hack so far is that when people book meetings with me on my calendar, I made a new option that's called the walk and talk option.

So you can meet with me for 30 minutes or an hour, or you could have a walk and talk and we could put on tennis shoes and walk in the sunshine and be aware that there might be wind, there might be noise, but we're both just going to embrace it and love the fact that we can get away from the desk for a little bit. People have been loving this option. So I think there's some ways that we can reclaim that. I also really recommend that when you feel like that frustration rising up within yourself with screen fatigue is to step away, step away from the computer and then do something really manual. So if you happen to have the luxury to work from home, maybe it's washing dishes or folding laundry. If you're in the office, maybe it's going to take a walk, could be talking to a colleague for a minute or two. It could mean taking a trip to

the bathroom just to have a change of scenery for a minute. But whatever it is, having that break is absolutely essential so that you don't send yourself into a mental decline over frustration. I love exactly this tip because I literally just did this just before. We're having this conversation not in a studio together, but over Zoom as many of my podcast interviews are. And I was on Zoom a bunch today and I just took time to just go do some laundry, not necessarily because it was like an urgent laundry need, but just because like I needed something physical to do. I needed something that was like away from the screens. And I think it did help, right, just to kind of get that time away. But the laundry idea sort of fits with your tip number nine of how to kind of get digital balance at work,

especially when we're working remotely, which is to think really critically about the spaces that we're working from and how we can set up some separations between the digital world and the in real life world. You've talked about this idea of an invisible fence. What is that and how can it impact our home office? So an invisible fence is literally just a digital boundary that you set for yourself. But a lot of times what happens is that when we set a boundary, say, okay, I don't want to have phones at the dinner table. If you don't ever tell anybody that is your invisible fence, they will literally cross over it all the time. But there are ways that we can set up boundaries for ourselves and communicate them or post them that help others to help us

to keep those boundaries together. The idea of the invisible fence initially came from trying to train my dog to stay in my yard in Virginia. It's the first house I'd ever lived in where there were no fences. And I discovered that it wasn't just that all Virginian dogs were so well behaved, all the houses had invisible fences. And what was even more amazing is that when we got consultation for our invisible fence for our dog, we learned that 80% of the fences are not turned on, that the dogs learn the boundaries. And once they learn them, they don't cross over them again. And so it really is about a training process. And while we're not dogs, I do think there's certain ways that we as humans can train

ourselves. But it starts with A, recognizing this is a boundary I want to have. And then B, working with people around us to respect those boundaries so that they're not unconsciously tripping over them. And the pandemic for me, this was a moment where I had to put a sign on my office door for my children that said, I am in a podcast or I am recording or I am doing deep work right now. And beyond that, it wasn't just about posting the note. It was about telling them when I was going to be available again, because they didn't actually want to know what my schedule was. They just wanted to know when they could have my attention. And a lot of times that happens with colleagues, with emails, they don't necessarily need your response right now. They just want to know when they're going to get your response. And so when you put a footer in your email that says, I do not respond to messages on the weekend, but I look forward to getting back to you on Monday, it gives them a sense of calm that they know when they're going to hear from you. And it gives you that digital space to be able to flourish yourself.

space to be able to flourish yourself. And so any other good examples of kind of invisible fences that you've set up in your home to kind of protect your remote work or maybe to protect your home life from the remote work seeping into your home life? Yes. I mean, one of the most familiar invisible fences that many people use is some sort of filter. If you're a parent, it's a filter for your children on what they can see on the internet. We can have them as adults as well. We can also have them, I know my husband is a gamer. And so he will put screen limits for himself so that when he's been on the screen for too long, it'll have a message say, hey, it's time for a break. That's an invisible fence he set up for himself. I think for my children, one of the invisible fences that I'm trying to create is a mantra

in their head. It's literally like, I want to be more mindful. I want to be more digitally well. This is a good thing. So we can even use our own mental game as an invisible fence to help us to stay on task. fences. But now we're going to get to the 10th and final tip that I think is specifically about digital balance at work, which is how we can get some in real life social connection at work, even given the fact that we might be working remotely. I know that there's so many studies that have shown that belonging at work and having friends at work is so important for our happiness at work, but that can be so tricky when we're engaged in remote work. And so any specific tips for how we can kind of be better about connecting socially, even if we're connecting on Zoom or Slack and the like? So I actually watched Mark McConnell, who is a senior wellness specialist at ATB Financial,

literally give a masterclass on how to do this. My jaw was just dropped as I watched him lead a session. And it was a 45-minute webinar. And he packed so much social connection into this 45 minutes. He started off with three minutes of chat and get to know you. Then he led a one-minute meditation where he brought people together. One minute of reflection got right into the task. And all through the webinar, there was opportunity for both chat, where he would call out people's names in the chat so that he could have some back and forth

with colleagues. And there's some banter and there's some official work. And then of course, the emoticons and emojis when we're virtually connecting. And then at the end, wrapping up by talking about gratitudes. So what he was essentially doing is weaving together some of the best practices that we've seen in terms of recognition of gratitude and meditation, but he was so focused and timely about it and personable. And what I like about that and what I think we can pull from it, even if you're not at ATB, is to recreate a little bit of that in our sessions. I think sometimes we think, oh, we got to get straight to work or this is a business meeting. So we need to jump right into the tasks and be very official. And I've seen a massive shift in what's happened in the workplace since the pandemic.

Less and less are we focused so much on task and more about this cross between personal and work at the same time and more interest in one another's lives. So I want to encourage individuals, if you haven't been doing that, it's okay. It's okay to ask how your colleagues are doing. It's okay to take a minute to play around as long as you work hard and play hard. And it's also a great opportunity to really tune in and ask questions about people's lives, to send them an encouraging message to say thank you for something they've done. These are the little things that actually deeply matter. Whether you're in person or virtual, we can still find ways to connect together. Work hard, play hard. I really love Amy's message about Digital Wellness Day because she's not telling us to break up with our phones or delete

all our apps. May 3rd's new holiday is all about finding balance. It's about embracing the digital good, but also noticing what we might be missing out on in real life. Whatever you do on Digital Wellness Day, I hope these strategies will help you find a bit more balance. And I hope you'll join us again for the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.