The Wellness Scoop - Do We Need a Digital Detox?

Episode Date: October 15, 2019

We tap, swipe and click our devices 2,617 times a day, 34% of us have checked Facebook in the last ten minutes, we answer an email within six seconds and we’re now spending more time on screens than we do sleeping. Is it too much? How is it affecting us all? Should we need a digital detox? How can we wean ourselves off the addiction and control the social anxiety that can come with it? Today we’re talking about finding that balance, looking at the small steps we can take making tech something that makes us healthier and happier rather than more frazzled with Tanya Goodin. All statistics cited by Ella and Tanya can be found on: https://www.itstimetologoff.com/digital-detox-facts/ All information about Tanya’s retreats, books and everything else can be found at: https://www.tanyagoodin.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. Welcome back to the Delicious Yellow podcast. I'm afraid to disappoint. It is just me,

Ella Mills again today. Matthew Mills will be back again next week. He is currently at the US embassy trying to see if we can get visas because we are going to bring Deliciously Ella over. So I hope that counts as a good enough excuse not to be here. But I am really, really excited about our episode today. We are talking all about our smartphone usage, how much time we spend online, the effect that that's having on our well-being kind of mentally and physically, and the goes on and on and I really want to start with a list of facts because when I started to research this podcast I actually had no idea quite how intense our online usage was so as it stands the average person in the UK spends more than a day a week online. We're spending over two hours a day just on social media and messaging apps. We

tap, swipe and click on our devices on average 2,617 times a day. We're checking our smartphones every 12 minutes or so. In the last 10 minutes, 34% of us have checked our Facebook. UK children spend six and a half hours a day on screens. 69% of UK children say their parents spend too much time on their mobile devices at home. 62% of polled UK adults say they hate how much time they spend on their phone. So first of all, we're spending an insane amount of time on our phones, on devices. And then we're not happy about it. And we're going to go into specific topics as we get on. But I guess we want to talk about this because too many of us are kind of feeling frazzled. We're feeling a bit unsure about how to deal with it because we don't want to shun technology. Technology is amazing. It allows us to connect with each other, you know, to talk to

friends on the other side of the world, to create international business. And it's really exciting, but our balance is maybe off. And so I guess today, Tanya Gooden is a real advocate for finding that balance. And she has a website, Time to Log Off, which has so many stats on that will literally blow your mind. And this amazing little book called Off. And when I was reading Off last night, kind of preparing for this, there was a moment where you're giving ideas of how to divorce yourself from your phone. And you say, don't take it into the bathroom. And I laughed and I was like, this is insanity.

I always take my phone to the bathroom. And what the hell is going on? And so welcome, Tanya. Nice to be here. What's going on? Well, do you know, taking the phone into the bathroom is one of my little grassroots campaigns because every time I do talks, I do talks in workplaces and in schools, I say, I think, you know, if we're trying to find ways to cut back,

we could all stop taking our phones into the loo. And everyone laughs because we're all doing it. I think I've dropped mine in the loo three times and twice in the bath I think the fact that we can't even put them down to go to the loo it should be a little red flag that's waving at the moment saying what is happening with our tech habits yeah I mean that was a humongous red flag for me last night where I just thought what is happening with our tech habits. Yeah, I mean, that was a humongous red flag for me last night where I just thought, what is going on? And I started to think about all the times you go out for dinner or coffee or something with a friend

and they go, oh, I just need to go to the loo. Or you say, I just need to go to the loo. And you pick up your phone. And you check it while you're in the loo. And you check it on the way to. And then having been researching this, I've been just walking down the street deliberately keeping my phone in my pocket,

which by the way, is hard. I can feel myself it itching for it and I know I'm not alone in that because I walk along and I just see everyone it's got their nose in their screen staring at the ground like you don't even the sky could go green for a split second and you would miss it so I guess I want to start with there's a really interesting thing as we said we're now on average spending 25 hours a week online so just over a day but back in 2005 so not quite 15 years ago that was nine hours so do you think the part of this kind of issue that we have because I've asked our readers for questions and so much of it comes down to fear of missing out if you're not online sense of insecurity from being online using your phone for boredom and therefore almost feeling more bored and the fact that it makes us actually feel less connected to each other and do you think part of the issue is is that technology

has advanced so so so quickly that we almost haven't had a second to kind of catch our breath and therefore find a way to find that right balance yeah I mean I think it's a blink of an eye isn't it 15 years is nothing I didn't even have a computer when I was at school. I didn't have one until I was in my first job. So the whole tech revolution has happened so fast. And I think you're right. I don't think there's been a moment, and I hope that moment's now. That's what we're trying to do with Time to Log Off.

But there hasn't really been a moment where we've stopped and thought, hang on a minute. Is this how we want to use it? Because we've just adopted, you know, each new app. When the App Store came out, we adopted that. When social media launched, we, you know, we all piled in and thought this is great. The ability to check emails anywhere from the office, isn't that great? Because we can all work flexibly. And I don't think we stopped to think what the price we might pay would be. And I think what's happening now is that we're all starting to have those conversations. So why does it matter like you know I'm sure there'll be people sitting there thinking but why should I spend less time on my screen? I think you just alluded to it

earlier when you said we're supposed to be more connected but actually we're less so one of the drivers for me was reading some statistics about loneliness I I don't know if you know, but we've now got a minister for loneliness in the UK. And what's really interesting about that is the loneliest segment of the population are the 18 to 34 year olds. So you kind of have this view, don't you, that it's old people at home on their own. But actually, those people probably developed better, potentially better social skills when they were younger and know how to make friends, how to strike up a conversation in a cafe or in a bus queue. And it's potentially that generation that didn't quite grow up with it, but maybe had tech from their teens onwards, I think have retreated behind screens. And so we're doing a lot less of the face-to-face

connecting. I think social media is one of the real problems because we feel like we've kept up with our friends because we're looking at their Facebook feeds or their Insta feeds. We're looking at Insta stories and think, oh, I know everything that's going on in her life and I'm making a little comment occasionally on a photo and I'm liking something. And we feel that we've caught up, that's our friendship

and we're doing a lot less of that face-to-face connecting and I think we're all getting getting lonelier and I think one of the other things that's interesting is that I think it also it prompts that and it was one of our readers questions that kept coming up FOMO the fear of missing out because I remember talking to my mum about this recently you know she said when I was 17 if I wasn't invited to a party or just something you know to hang out with my friends, the cinema, whatever, I had no idea. Not unless someone came back to school and told me. Blissful ignorance. Blissful ignorance.

And nobody is invited to everything. You know, there's always things happening without you. But now we can go online and we can see how much we're missing out. And that seems to be such a big thing. But also we can compare ourselves to others so easily. And there was an amazing stat again on your website that said 52% of school age students said that social media makes them feel less confident about both their appearance and how interesting their life is. And I thought that was, it's so sad. But also almost half of 18 to 34 year olds said their social media feed made them feel less attractive.

And so it seems like, and is that fair to say that why it matters is because it's actually damaging our ability to be happy to some extent. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the analogies I like to use is food. Interestingly enough, we've got to work out how to use tech healthily in the same way that we have to work out how to eat healthily. You know, if you're scrolling on Instagram and you're doing that for a couple of hours a day when you come up you just feel a bit flat and a bit not great about yourself maybe stop doing it we've got to learn how to develop those social signals i think that make us realize that what we're doing isn't actually making us feel good because is it true in saying there is now studies linking overuse of platforms like social media and increased rates of anxiety and depression? Yeah, so heavy smartphone users, there's a direct correlation between heavy smartphone users and anxiety. And I find that really interesting, because anxiety is actually really on the

increase. You know, if you think about kind of depression and anxiety, it's anxiety that we've got more of an issue with really, particularly the UK when I talk to mental health professionals they say they're treating younger and younger children and I think there's something about that whole FOMO and the insistent nature of your phone buzzing and seeing you know oh somebody's put another post up that just makes us feel a bit anxious I mean you know I know if I haven't checked my phone for a while, you know, because I'm not perfect, I'm work in progress, I think, have I missed something?

It's part of the picture of why we've got so many mental health issues in young children, I think. And so what can you do about it? I think what you said is really nice about kind of relating it to food or something like that. For me, I know I like getting outside every day. I like taking a walk. And I notice if I haven't really moved in any capacity in a couple of days, I feel a bit kind of antsy.

And so I do it. And you feel good. Totally. And I like that way of looking at it, kind of checking in, like how does this actually make me feel? But one of the questions that kept coming up, and actually I totally nodded along to it because it's exactly how I feel,

is often we just reach for our boredom. I don't know whether it's right in saying it's affecting our attention span so affecting our attention span adult attention spans have been tracked for about um 50 years I think and about three years ago officially now our attention spans um Microsoft had a piece of research that shows they're less than goldfish so So the kind of joke that the gold, you know, attention span of a goldfish, we're losing the ability to focus because we're permanently distracted. Because we're multitasking, we've got our phones, we've got our laptops. We're constantly moving between one thing and another. So yeah, we just can't focus in the way we did. And I think that's making us less productive. I mean, that was one of the drivers for me when I first started off on us less productive I mean that was one of the the

drivers for me when I first started off on this kind of journey I thought I feel like I'm busy all the time but I feel like compared to 10 years ago I'm getting less done and it was because I was constantly checking you know we now spend 28% of our day just checking email so not actually doing anything that's of a 24-hour day that's not of a waking day that of a 24-hour day, that's not of a waking day. That's a 24-hour day, yeah. So you're considering how much of that you're asleep. Yeah, and the average email now is opened within, drumroll, six seconds. No way. So if you imagine we spend 28% of our day checking email,

we're opening them all within six seconds, and it then takes about 25 to 30 minutes to get back into the kind of maximum zone of focus we're not focused at any time during the day because we're constantly checking but also when your phone bings it gives you a hit of dopamine yeah and therefore we actually become we got become hooked on it you're like chemically addicted yeah i mean we've got lots of evidence that shows that if your tweets get retweeted or you get likes on instagram you get that little feel-good buzz in the brain and obviously we're designed you know part of it is kind of social validation and social approval that's what's so seductive about social media in particular we're designed as animals to

seek out approval from others because that's what kept us alive and now we can get it on steroids on social media and we're addicted to it so So, you know, you talk to people about looking at their photos and, you know, why did that post on Insta get 300 likes, but that one only get 100? What did I do wrong? Yeah, I found that really interesting. I was talking to someone about that the other day about this kind of addiction that we often have or kind of compulsive need to see what's going on. You know, all these companies say they're kind of introducing things to help.

So, you know, Instagram now pops up with you're all caught up now you know you see everything you can leave it now and walk away but then they introduce instagram stories yeah so then you've got all that to look at and then you have you know if you click the search bar you have these are all the millions of accounts that we think you might like you might like to connect with so you finished here yeah so let me take you on these paths you can't ever finish there you know I have and especially now especially like being awake in the night feeding Skye I mean I've literally ended up in like friends cousins cats girlfriends you know I don't even know what I'm looking at you go down a black hole don't you and think how did I get here yeah I know and I found myself saying like okay I know it's midnight and I'm trying

to keep myself awake but like here's my daughter she's like 10 days old am I seriously not more interested and you know this ability that we have to be present seems to be so sorely lacking and what's interesting is happiness is a consistent theme for us and in our podcast and people come back to time and time and time and time and time again the thing that makes us happy is being present yeah and being actually being with people that we love yeah and actually being there because that's what's interesting is you are there but you're so busy taking a picture of being there or you're so busy seeing what someone else is doing in another country that you're not actually there you're physically there but you're not kind of fully emotionally engaged in it and that's what's

so interesting and seems to me like such a big problem is that we we're really struggling to therefore connect with people i think we should not beat ourselves up about it though i think you know when you're talking about feeding sky and thinking what why am i doing this we're all kind of rats in a very big experiment and there are much more sophisticated brains than us working out how to make sure that even though you've got, you know, the person you love most in the world in front of you, you still want to check your phone. I think what we need to do is work out what, you know, the small steps that we can take to actually make sure that we don't get sucked into that rabbit hole.

And so what are the steps? Where do you advise that people start with this? So I think when you talk about something like digital detox, which I know is, you know, over all my books and over my podcast, people feel that means I have to completely give up tech, or it means I have to go away for three months and not use a phone. And I don't think that's realistic. So I think what we need to do is exercise our without screen muscle a little bit, and just try very small steps so not taking our phones into the loo yeah I will never take my phone to the loo that would be the one step I would tell everyone to do everyone talks about not having phones in bedrooms I would

love to say to everyone you should do that but I know how really hard that is but maybe try it maybe see if you know you get to kind of bedtime at night you put it outside the door or maybe you plug it the farthest side of the room because we most of least sleep with our phones right by our beds so it's all about introducing little steps little hurdles that make it difficult to pick it up reflexively I had a really interesting thing with that because Matt and I said this is insane like this is our time to talk to each other because we're really busy in the day and here we are he's watching golf swings and I'm watching someone ice a cake and you're next to each other yeah I mean this is nuts you know why aren't we having conversation

with each other and I put something up on Instagram saying you know we're trying a new thing we're going to keep our phones actually had to admit in the bathroom but so they were going in the bathroom but to not go in our bedroom basically and all these people replied saying how are you going to be able to wake up in the morning like and I thought this is so have we forgotten that what an alarm clock is yeah and I don't mean that in a condescending way just mean it again just like not taking your phone to the loo it's really indicative of how sort of attached we are to them and but you know even if you don't have an alarm clock an iphone alarm is really insistent you could have it outside the door you could have

it in the bathroom and you'd still hear it yeah it's true that that's so aggressive because actually I set alarms off all the time to remind myself of things and you know you can hear them everywhere I like what you said though it's not about kind of beating yourself up for it or trying to say I'll never use my phone again because what kept coming up was people saying I'm struggling to get my balance right my work-life balance but when I don't look at it I have a kind of fear of missing out yeah and I want to see what I'm doing so I guess it's trying to strike that middle ground between saying it's not like you should never use your phone again we're not here shunning technology but it's just the small things like not feeling this compulsive need to like hold your

phone so you you can pee without it and you can go to bed and and talk to someone without it so I've got a rule that when I'm one-to-one with anyone my phone is invisible so that's another little thing I've done so because I've had that experience I'm sure you have that you go out for a drink with a friend and you're talking to them and they pick their phone up and go oh sorry sorry I'm just I'm listening I'm listening I'm just gonna check but you're not and you're talking to them and they pick their phone up and go, oh, sorry, sorry, I'm just, I am listening, I'm listening, I'm just going to check. But you're not listening. And you're not listening. And you feel, am I not interesting?

What's the matter? So I always keep my phone completely hidden, not on my, and it's interesting, you talked about having it in your pocket. I think if we can feel it, it's a distraction as well. So I make sure it's in a bag, in a coat where I can't feel it or see it. I read that recently. Even though it's turned over, you still know it's there, bag in a coat where I can't feel it or see it. I read that recently even though it's turned over you still know it's there as you said. Well there's a really interesting piece of research Harvard just did so even if our phones are face down and switched off they reduce our

available IQ for problem solving by 10 points. Really? So if you're trying to work and you have your phone on your desk which most people do even if's face down, even if it's switched off, you haven't got all of your brain capacity because you're constantly looking at it thinking, I wonder if there's a reply to that email. I wonder if there's a like on that post. I wonder if someone's commented on my story. So the best thing we can do is completely have it out of sight. And I do think the analogy with food works really well because, you know, if you were trying to eat healthily, would you walk around with a bar of chocolate in your hand the whole time, in your back pocket and put it on your desk?

Yeah, no. And keep looking at it going, I really mustn't touch that, it's there. But, you know, one of the things you do when you try and eat more healthily is clear out all the things that might be, you know, unhealthy and tempting and fill the space

with things that are healthy yeah it's so true if you're like i'm gonna eat well now you're not gonna go and like move into a donut shop and then just use massive self-control actually we know as human animals we're really bad at self-control yeah and we should be much more kind of forgiving as you said of ourselves if that's who we are so i think it's the same with our tech we we just you know let's not beat ourselves up. It is really seductive. There's lots of great things on it. But if we want to spend time with people

and properly connect, we've got to put it away. And actually, I never said to any of my friends that I was going to have my phone away because I hate that whole lecturing thing where you tell people it's the worst thing. But actually, I found that the more I did it, the more they noticed and kind of did it as well I think we need to do it in the workplace too because I don't know about you but I've been to loads of meetings where everyone has their phones

and laptops and you think is anyone actually paying any attention to anything that's going on in this meeting I know it's so so so true and it's it's so easy to be distracted it's unbelievable yeah we have a lot of questions from our readers that I want to include some of. And one that I thought was quite interesting, actually. What should we be aiming for? You know, what is a kind of good amount to spend online? Such a good question. So we don't have any research yet.

I mean, there's one piece of research from Oxford and Cardiff University that suggested for 15-year-olds, the limit was about, I think it was four hours a day on screens. So that's screens in general? So that included TV, games consoles, you know, screens in the classroom and phones. So the limit for smartphones, I think for 15-year-olds was one hour, 57 minutes. At that point, their self-reported happiness decreased. But it's the only thing we've got. So when I talk to people about it, I say the only thing that research tells us is that there is a point. There is a point at which we start not to feel good. And it's not 12 hours. And it's not 12 hours and it's not 24 hours. Yeah. So I think it's valuable to look at quantity

because we all probably notice when we get to a point and think actually that's a bit too much. I think what's more important though is quality and what are we actually doing on screens? Because everybody, when they talk about this says, but it's so useful. You know, I've got the Uber app and CityMapper and I've got Amazon

and I've got all these things that make my life easier. But's not where we're wasting our time if we're all really honest with each other and we can now see actually through Apple screen time since they've introduced it we're spending hours just passively scrolling through stuff that doesn't make us feel good so I think the answer is look at how many hours you're spending on work and then think about whether all your leisure time needs to be spent on screens because that's the big difference in 15 years or 20 years when I think about when I grew up so my parents didn't work on screens during the day no one did so when they came home we watched television that's how we unwound now what we're

doing is we're working on screens and we're playing on screens so that's the kind of division I ask people to think about yeah now there's all these interesting studies like spending two hours in nature has an amazing impact and we're doing less of that so on my podcast it's complicated I interviewed a guy uh he's a adventurer and he said just in one generation we've more than half the amount of time we spend outside because we're spending so much time looking at screens and it's so funny because we were talking completely differently but about gut health a couple of weeks ago and dr megan who was our guest was saying you know she was talking about sugar and she was saying you know it's not that we should deem no sugar but if we eat loads of sugar then we're using all our kind of calorie

intake on those sorts of foods so we're not having space for the fruit and veg and things like that which are really good for us and I feel like it's exactly the same thing here sugar is a really good analogy if you're filling up all your hours in the day on your phone on junk mindlessly scrolling then you don't have time to go outside yeah because there aren't extra hours in the day yeah when I take people away on retreats, the one thing they say is they can't believe how long days are because everyone's forgotten how many hours there are in the day. And I always say to people, expect to be bored

because we've all forgotten how to entertain ourselves. So, you know, I mean, why would you learn how to entertain yourself when you've got the world's entertainment resources in your hand but I think that's a problem that's a problem for creativity because we just pick our screens up and we just kind of browse yeah we've been talking about that a lot actually in light of kind of sky and how we're going to deal with that as parents and definitely instinctively feels like to me it's not brilliant for her creativity and kind of development of that to spend loads of time just sort of watching TV. But, you know, and I don't say that with any judgment.

So I know we haven't got to that point yet. I'm sure it's a lot easier said than done. But I'm sure there's probably some quite interesting research around that as well. Yeah, well, we've known for a while that the more hours a child spends on TV, the less their academic, you know, their academic performance at school is reduced. There's a strong correlation between those two. And I think we will find in years to come there's exactly the same relationship between, you know,

if you're spending as a child growing up all your time on screens and you're not learning how to be creative. So one piece of research I came across recently was primary school children. There's some evidence that they've got reduced, when they're joining school in kind of of nursery inception they've got reduced language abilities because they're spending a lot of time around parents who aren't actually looking and talking at them they're looking at their screens so they're not learning language in the same way that's so i mean

it's fascinating but also really sad scary yeah and i I want to pick up on the boredom point as well and I know people have talked about it recently like it's really important that we like relearn how to be bored and that being bored's slightly a part of life and one question that kept coming up which I thought was really interesting is how do you break the habit of just picking up your phone out of boredom because you know there's a lull at work or you're standing in the queue at Tesco to get your dinner or something. And I think that begs the question, like, why do we feel so bored these days? We've forgotten. Yeah, we don't exercise that muscle anymore, do we? To, you know, daydream. So what I say to someone about standing in a queue or even sitting on a tube or a bus is make sure your device is completely put away. Make sure it's in

a bag, not in your pocket. And then just let your mind wander and look around everything to start with when you're spending time off screens if it's not the standing in the queue thing you're better off actually trying to find something active to do with your brain to fill that space I mean it's mindfulness really isn't it we need to let go of thoughts and observe the thoughts that are coming in I think it's no accidents that the whole mindfulness movement has boomed since the invention of screens, because it's the antidote to screens. A hundred percent. It's really interesting. When I was doing my yoga teacher training, one of the teachers said, I was saying, you know, I really struggle with meditation. It's a bit that

I struggle with, you know, when do you find the time? How do you do it? He said, you know, I meditate on the tube. I thought, what? How? You know, it's so busy. It how do you do it he said you know I meditate on the tube you know it's so busy it's so loud and he said you know the first time I was rubbish I was really rubbish I was so distracted and then I got better and I got better and I got better and now I can meditate anywhere and I thought it was so interesting and it's something that really stuck with me as I said it's just we've got to kind of retrain the way that we do things to sit and just to look around and kind of allow our minds to wander and be calm and as you said it's not it's not that shocking that people feel the need to do that now and I think that's what is also interesting and I know it's something

we've talked about a lot at Drusilla is there's a challenge now that people feel the sense of busyness and compulsive need to do everything because it's like you need to meditate you need to do yoga you need to get outside because you need it as you said it's the antidote to being online the whole time in this kind of pressure that we feel on ourselves to be like the person that we see through a screen even though we don't even know what's going on in the person through the screen's life you know it's only just a tiny snapshot always say it's like a you know it's a highlight reel it's just a tiny highlight reel yeah it's just a little insight into someone's day and it's so important to see it for what it is but because it's come on so quickly we don't see it like that

anymore and I think that's what's so interesting and maybe if we spent less time on screens as you say all that pressure we put on ourselves to do all the stuff that we need to make up for because we're spending the time on the screens would would fall away a little bit and we'd be a little less frantic totally and I definitely I found it interesting in the last kind of couple of months having had sky that you obviously your priority shift because you're trying to fit everything in and you suddenly realize oh my god I actually do have more time in the day than I realized yeah because I actually used to spend like you know 20 minutes in the morning just like scrolling you know great as that is at moments like that's 20 minutes in the morning, just like scrolling, you know, great as that is at moments,

like that's 20 minutes that I could have had breakfast with my husband, or I could have called a friend, or I could have taken a bit of a walk. You know, I don't have time to exercise, I don't have time to eat well. And it's the question is, if we shifted our priorities and didn't spend as much time on Facebook, would we? Well, I mean, those stats you created at the beginning about how much time we spent on screens in 2000, was it 2005 and now? What were we doing with all those hours in 2005? That's what I ask everyone to think about.

Yeah, because we've got 16 extra hours in a week. So what did we used to do? And most people will say it's something to do with exercise, you know, that they don't exercise as much as they used to. Being outside, going out more spending more time with friends you know most people can come or reading my one of my big impetuses was someone asked me what book I was currently reading and I realized I hadn't read a book properly you know from start to finish for two years and I read English at university I was always you know kind

of voracious reader and I thought when did I stop reading properly and I realised it was when I started using screens a lot so I think for all of us it's going to be something different but I think we can all probably look back and think what was I doing more of a few years ago and am I more or less anxious or happy now than I was then maybe what I need to do is rewind a bit and start doing a little bit more of the stuff that actually made me feel good I find reading a really interesting example and I'm sure there's lots of other sort of similar things but I know when I kind of a year or so ago really kind of checked in with how much I was using my phone it was when we were on holiday and I was still checking my

phone the whole time just like what on earth am I doing I'm going to read a book and I get just like you always loved reading and like really rekindles my love of it. And I really would advise anyone, if you do enjoy reading, to take reading up in that sense because what I found so helpful was it was really good to be distracted. Your hands are busy. Your head is busy. It's really hard if you're trying to cut down on your usage today

because you're thinking, you know what, it might be a good thing for my kind of overall well-being. If you're not doing anything and you are sitting in boredom so it's the equivalent of sitting and looking at the chocolate and going i'm not going to do it i'm not going to do it i think yoga is really good for that as well because you can't look at a screen while doing yoga exactly and you're really actively encouraged to put your phone away and i think there is something really good about an activity you know might be knitting or you know all the mindful coloring that exists but doing something that is actually busy because it is difficult as you said it's like staring at a bar of chocolate when you've given up chocolate for Lent whereas if you left the room and went to a yoga class you wouldn't be

like in a downward dog being like where's my chocolate bar although I think I said on one of my podcasts recently one of my you know aha moments was being in a yoga class and watching a guy who had his phone at the top of his mat. And as he was coming down from downward dog, he was checking his phone in the middle of a class. And that was one of those moments for me when I thought this has gone too far then, isn't it? Because yoga should be,

you should be able to spend 40 minutes or whatever it is completely focused all those activities you've just described the coloring and the knitting and the you know something creative they're all flow activities as well aren't they they're ones that make our beta waves in our brain stimulate and we and we go into that meditative state so yeah finding something that's soothing and really needs focus is definitely what we should be doing and from your experience would you say it's better to find a kind of healthier day-to-day habit say that you kind of try and put your phone away from like eight o'clock or you try and not switch it on

until you've left the house or something like that or you know because there's a big movement at the moment about kind of weekends offline and 48 hours or 24 hours or something. Where would you start? So I think for most people, 48 hours is too much. I mean, you know, it's proper cold turkey, isn't it? Maybe you're an all or nothing person and you can go without your screens. But for most people, I think we just need little pauses throughout the day that are screen free. So the loo, the bathroom, some people I've worked with decide that they're not going to check their phone until they've had breakfast in the morning. So the whole of the morning routine, which you know, loads of people, loads of successful people write about their morning routines, don't they? So it's kind of I get up, I do my, you know, my meditation, I do a

bit of exercise, I get dressed, I eat, and then I take my phone out. The commute is another really good time. So I think it's just, and phone-free lunches. I'm a big fan of taking a proper lunch break and leaving your screen behind in the office. And when I suggest that to people, they always look horrified at the thought of stepping outside, but that's the perfect little pause in the day. That's your opportunity to maybe go out with a co-worker or a friend chat to them have something to eat so I would say little pauses and then if you feel more confident and I say this in my book off the first challenge I set myself so I walked to the corner shop to get some milk without my phone

and that was enough the first time because I was walking the whole time going where is it you know it's not in my pocket I'm going to walk walk really, really fast and get back. But now I can take the dog out. Now I can go for a whole Sunday without it. So I think it's that muscle that we just need to flex a bit. Yeah, it's really interesting. I took my emails off my phone a few months ago. Yeah, and everyone was like, what? How are you going to do that? And I felt really nervous the first few times.

I kept thinking, oh my God, I've missed something. Oh my God, I've missed something. I've missed something. I've definitely missed something. world's gonna be up in flames and then now I just couldn't care less and what's so interesting about it was that I was so disengaged in a way with what I was writing because I was so multitasking that I was just doing both things badly whereas now I check my emails let's say like four or five times a day every couple of hours and I'll sit down and I will either flag it remember it think about it or I will come back to you and I will actually write that email to you

thinking about it and I think it is really really interesting and that's all about building relationships again isn't it that goes right back to what we were talking about connecting with people because actually one of the downsides of the online world is that we've all become a lot ruder with each other you know there's you know, you know, kind of hostility online, there's trolling, there's people writing comments. I think email is one of the big things that's responsible for that, because we fire off emails without really thinking. I've sent off angry emails and afterwards looked and thought, oh. And it's because we're doing, as you said, while being distracted by something else. But that means our quality of our relationships are deteriorating because actually a well-written email has a chance to build a relationship rather

than you know kind of blow one apart but we do need to focus on what we're writing exactly and so much time you someone can send you a long message and you just skim read it yeah yeah and then you suddenly think well that was a waste of time wasn't it because we now have to send three more emails because they didn't answer half your points um and I know I'm not the only person that does that so I have to say for me it was a really interesting experience of the panic I had and everyone else's panic when I said I'd done it but how much better it feels and what I've also realized I would say to anyone is so far four months in there has been nothing that urgent like it's okay the world's still standing everything's still spinning you don't

need it all the time now there are going to be moments in your life that it's different like you know no last year when matt's mum was very ill he had his phone with him on loud all the time obviously that's completely completely different and i think it's worth saying that like that's not what we're talking about we're talking about when everyone's good there's nothing that you're waiting for or kind of nervous about and therefore need your phone next to you this is about day-to-day living and could you be more present in what you're doing would that make you happier yeah I mean I think the FOMO point is really good everyone I know who's tried it is amazed by how little you actually do miss out on but you have to try it to realize that and I think that the fear of trying sometimes is

worse than the actual experience I find that when I take people on retreats that people say I just can't do it I just can't be away from my phone and when they do it they can't believe actually how easy it is it's not you know we're not talking about drugs and alcohol it's not a massive addiction it's just really a global bad habit and actually it's in my experience relatively easy to break and there are great things like I love things like podcasts and in a way I think they're amazing for your relationship with your phone because you do put it away yeah but you're listening and you're listening yeah but you're not bored and so you're kind of quenching the boredom thirst but you're not kind of so you're kind of quenching the boredom thirst but you're not

kind of constantly checking and scrolling and flicking and you feel like you're learning you know it's just like reading or knitting or going to yoga class or you know going cycling whatever you you feel like you've achieved something because you've learned something or listened to something or something's made you laugh it's like it's a positive in your day yeah and I keep saying that too I think there's something really powerful like claiming your time yeah and not just learning it like passively scroll by and you get back from work and you sit and you just scroll the Instagram for two hours then you go to bed and it's like well so you gave your whole day to someone else to work what have you done for you today and the people around you exactly

and it's it's really really interesting so I just want to pick up one or two um more readers questions I think this one was really interesting I'm anxious when I'm on it and I'm anxious when I'm off it. Help. Well, I would say that person is probably only anxious when they're off it because they're anxious off it for a small period of time. So it's probably a bit like the sugar rush. You know, you eat the sugar, you come down from the sugar, you take more sugar, you come down from the sugar. You know, I would say what that person needs to do is spend longer periods of time away. Difficult though, that's really going to be, but find something, as we talked about before, really compelling and exciting and interesting to do the first few times you do it. And so how long before you go to bed

should you ideally turn a screen off? Well, that's really interesting because we used to think that there was this golden hour just before you went to bed that was the crucial thing. So we had to turn it off an hour before we slept. But actually research came out recently that shown that if we use screens too much at any time during the day, it's affecting our sleep. So if we were on screens nine hours in the day and then did our, well, I'm going to stop an hour before bed we're still going to have problems sleeping so by all means stop looking at your screen just before you go to bed but if you're doing it for sleep that's not going to help entirely with your sleep issue you need to look at your whole pattern of screen use throughout the day okay and then another question which came up a lot I think I think is also obviously very prevalent to us,

is like any tips on kind of raising kids and families in such a digital world? Because obviously you don't want to say to them, you can never look at a screen. And then they go to school and everyone's talking about Peppa Pig or whatever it is. And they're like, who's Peppa Pig? Yeah. So I feel really strong about the whole kids and parents. And again, I think about the food analogy. So as parents, one of our jobs is to teach our children how to eat healthily and how to make the right choices about food. And we don't say to them, you can't

ever eat that. And we don't make some things bad and some things bad and other things good. I think the first thing you have to start with, though, as a parent is your own screen use, because we know that if children grow up in households with heavy drinkers, they're more likely to drink. We know if they grow up in households with heavy drinkers, they're more likely to drink. We know if they grow up in households with heavy smokers, they're more likely to smoke. It's not rocket science to think in a few years' time, we're going to find out that the parents who couldn't put their phones down are going to be raising the children that find it difficult to be away from screens. So, I mean, it's really logical, isn't it?

If you're a child and you see your mother's face in a screen, you're going to think that's a really attractive object you know that object's important I need to have that so I say to a lot of parents with really young children so I'm looking at you Ella yeah I know I'm taking this on board that think of it a little bit like the glass of wine you have when they go to bed so you've done your bath they go to bed and then you drink the glass of wine that you don't walk around with all day and they're seeing you drinking wine. And maybe think of phones a bit like that, that, you know, make them invisible while your children are very young as much as possible so that they are interacting with you and they're looking at your face.

When they're a bit older, as they get a bit older, you have to sit them down and have the conversations about what healthy screen uses so every device you get them when you get them their first ipad their first phone it's the conversation about you know how are we going to use this and what's healthy and what sort of stuff makes us feel good and you know you're probably the first generation that are going to be able to really have those conversations with your children because i didn't grow up you know I wasn't using screens when I was very young or um or even when my children were very young so I think you know it's kind of it's a bit of a learning curve we've all gone through but the most important thing is we need to talk about it we always try and end each episode with kind of three take-homes things that you, you know, if listeners are listening to this and thinking,

do you know, I really want to implement some of that. Like, what are your kind of top three most important things if people are going to just remember three things? Build little pauses into the day. Seriously think about getting an alarm clock or finding a way that your phone is not the thing that wakes you up in the morning because that cuts down with all the late night, early morning scrolling. And, you know, my favourite rule I have myself is no screens visible when one to one.

I think that bit that's possibly missing about that real world connection to the person in front of us, you are the most important thing, person to me in this moment. I think that's only going to benefit all of us. Yeah, I absolutely love that. And then I guess it's worth saying as well as someone that spends a lot of time on social media. I think it's also so worth remembering that everything you see there is a highlights reel. You know, it's not everyone's days can be quite boring. It's OK. Like people take to social media to share the interesting parts, the good or the bad.

No one actually wants to see a really busy tube platform every day being like, I'm crammed in like a sardine. Like it's not interesting. But it's worth remembering that it's there. That's what most of our lives are like, actually. We're not on holiday all the time, are we? But if you go on Instagram, someone is always on holiday somewhere. Totally.

And it's lovely to see those pictures. Yeah, yeah but they're not exactly they're on holiday two weeks a year or something like that and that's what they want to show you because it's interesting because it's beautiful wherever they are whereas it's not interesting to see their commute in the rain um so just a bit of food for thought and um thank you so much for coming on and i definitely am gonna check myself a lot about the way that I'm using my phone and screens in general, because it is it's so, so interesting and such a big part, I think, of kind of finding our way of being happy. And thank you guys so much for listening. As always, if you've enjoyed it, please do rate it or review it. And the website that is so worth

looking at is itstimetologoff.com. Have a lovely day, everyone. Bye. with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com.