How To Cure Your Phone & Social Media Addiction (My 3-Step Process)

00:00:00.000 | So what we are going to talk about is inspired by an article

00:00:05.000 | that multiple people have sent me recently.

00:00:09.000 | It is an article with an attention-catching title,

00:00:12.000 | "Why I traded my smartphone for an axe."

00:00:17.000 | It's an article about the extreme lengths someone went to try to cure

00:00:22.000 | their damaging smartphone habit.

00:00:24.000 | So I figured we would take a look at this article

00:00:27.000 | and using it as a jumping off point to tackle the following deep question,

00:00:31.000 | "What does it really take to cure your smartphone addiction?"

00:00:38.000 | So to get started, I'm going to put this article up on my screen here,

00:00:42.000 | "Why I traded my smartphone for an axe."

00:00:44.000 | This article came from Barry Weiss's publication, The Free Press.

00:00:49.000 | This was written by a teenager named Caleb Silverberg.

00:00:53.000 | Here's the subhead.

00:00:54.000 | "At 15, Caleb Silverberg made the most important decision of his life.

00:00:59.000 | He ditched technology and headed to the forest."

00:01:03.000 | All right. Well, that sounds intriguing.

00:01:05.000 | Let's look a little bit deeper at this article.

00:01:07.000 | We'll start by establishing the problem in Caleb's life.

00:01:12.000 | So Caleb says, "During the pandemic, I became a slave to screens.

00:01:19.000 | My Saturdays were pretty grim.

00:01:22.000 | I'd wake up and drag myself to the couch

00:01:24.000 | where my Xbox had been waiting for me all night long.

00:01:27.000 | The closed shades blocked the beaming sun in any hope of enjoying it,

00:01:31.000 | swimming in the ocean, biking the mountain, hiking with dogs.

00:01:34.000 | At 15 years old, I looked in the mirror and saw a shell of myself.

00:01:39.000 | My face was pale. My eyes were hollow.

00:01:42.000 | I needed a radical change."

00:01:45.000 | All right. So the article goes on to explain the change that Caleb discovered.

00:01:49.000 | As he writes, "I vaguely remember one of my older sister's friends

00:01:53.000 | describing her unique high school, Midland,

00:01:57.000 | an experiential boarding school located in the Los Padres National Forest.

00:02:04.000 | It is a place in which cell phone and video games are forbidden."

00:02:09.000 | So Caleb, sensing that he is in a bad way

00:02:13.000 | in terms of his relationship with technology,

00:02:16.000 | decided this is what he needed to do.

00:02:19.000 | He needed to go to this school, Midland, in the Los Padres National Forest,

00:02:24.000 | a school in which you're outside and there are no phones and there are no video games.

00:02:29.000 | He succeeds.

00:02:31.000 | September 2021, he makes his way to Midland as a student.

00:02:36.000 | Here's some notes on what that experience was like.

00:02:39.000 | As Caleb writes, "At Midland, students must chop firewood

00:02:43.000 | to generate hot water for their showers and heat for their cabins and classrooms.

00:02:48.000 | Armed with an axe, I found myself liberated from the constant allure of technology.

00:02:56.000 | I discovered the joys of engaging in face-to-face conversation

00:03:00.000 | and savoring moments without the urge to post them on social media."

00:03:07.000 | Towards his conclusion, he says,

00:03:09.000 | "I am now going into my junior year at Midland School.

00:03:13.000 | Whenever I am at home, I find myself on my phone much less

00:03:17.000 | and then only to catch up on my favorite TV shows

00:03:19.000 | and to talk to the numerous lifelong friends I have made at school.

00:03:22.000 | Midland helped me change how I live my life.

00:03:25.000 | I'm no longer dependent on a smartphone."

00:03:29.000 | Well, so this was a sort of inspiring story.

00:03:31.000 | Of course, I figured after reading this

00:03:33.000 | that I needed to check out more about this Midland school.

00:03:36.000 | I loaded a couple of photos here up on the screen for those who are watching.

00:03:41.000 | This looks great to me.

00:03:43.000 | This is talking about aspirational.

00:03:45.000 | All right, so there's a picture here on the screen

00:03:47.000 | that says, "Life at Midland is one big adventure."

00:03:50.000 | And you see farm fields surrounded by mountains.

00:03:56.000 | All right, we see people hiking.

00:03:58.000 | We see people working on a computer.

00:04:00.000 | We see people climbing a rock wall.

00:04:03.000 | Let's click here on the link for "Learn More"

00:04:07.000 | to see what else we can find out about this school.

00:04:09.000 | I just like looking at these pictures.

00:04:11.000 | They just make me feel like I'm Thoreau or something like that.

00:04:15.000 | Here's videos on the screen.

00:04:17.000 | Now, there's a dog.

00:04:18.000 | Oh, here's someone taking a saddle.

00:04:19.000 | Here's someone riding a horse.

00:04:20.000 | Here's someone jumping off of a raft,

00:04:22.000 | collecting eggs from a chicken coop,

00:04:25.000 | cooking tamales.

00:04:26.000 | I don't know what these people are doing.

00:04:28.000 | Big scenic lake, a swimming hole that they're looking at.

00:04:31.000 | I mean, I get the appeal of this place.

00:04:34.000 | You see these beautiful scenes of nature

00:04:36.000 | where everyone is outside and riding horses,

00:04:39.000 | and you hear about Caleb, the author of that article,

00:04:42.000 | finally escaping that life as being a hollow shell of himself

00:04:47.000 | that he was living at his couch's home

00:04:49.000 | and reengaging in savoring moments in the world.

00:04:52.000 | I think all of that is really aspirational.

00:04:55.000 | I really do like watching those clips.

00:04:58.000 | But the point I want to make now

00:05:00.000 | is I think these stories also have a dangerous side to them.

00:05:05.000 | The issue with these popular stories

00:05:08.000 | of extreme measures being deployed

00:05:12.000 | to try to get away from issues with technologies

00:05:15.000 | is that they paint the picture that that's what's required,

00:05:19.000 | that the grip that our technology has on us is so strong

00:05:23.000 | that short of retreating to the Los Padres National Forest

00:05:27.000 | or Chop Wood in a camp in which phones are not allowed,

00:05:30.000 | you are just stuck looking at your TikTok all day,

00:05:33.000 | looking at your Instagram Reels all day.

00:05:35.000 | And because most people are not going to follow in Caleb's footsteps

00:05:38.000 | and head to the Midland Outdoor Survival Experiential School,

00:05:41.000 | most people would then conclude,

00:05:43.000 | "I guess this is just the world we live in.

00:05:46.000 | What can I do about it?"

00:05:48.000 | And so I think we need to move past these extreme pictures

00:05:52.000 | as this is what it takes and get more pragmatic.

00:05:55.000 | I believe that it is quite possible to have a similar effect

00:05:59.000 | that Caleb experienced at the Midland School

00:06:02.000 | without having to go to the forest.

00:06:04.000 | I think you can have a similar impact,

00:06:07.000 | a similar result without having to radically change

00:06:13.000 | the day-to-day rhythms of your life.

00:06:15.000 | And this is the type of solution we need to look at,

00:06:18.000 | is those that are pragmatic and accessible to people

00:06:21.000 | to do right now in their current situation.

00:06:23.000 | So here's what I'm going to do.

00:06:25.000 | I'm going to walk you through a four-step process

00:06:27.000 | for getting a similar experience to Caleb

00:06:29.000 | without having to move somewhere else

00:06:31.000 | and without having to remove phones entirely from your life.

00:06:35.000 | All right, step number one,

00:06:37.000 | you need to do a 30-day digital declutter.

00:06:42.000 | This is a concept and term that I introduced

00:06:45.000 | in my 2019 book, "Digital Minimalism."

00:06:49.000 | It is a concept that I honed after running an experiment

00:06:52.000 | with over 1,700 people who went through this experiment with me

00:06:57.000 | so I could see what worked and what didn't.

00:06:59.000 | What do you do in a 30-day digital declutter?

00:07:02.000 | You take a break from optional personal technologies.

00:07:06.000 | You're not on TikTok, you're not on Instagram,

00:07:09.000 | you're not on Twitter, you're not on Facebook,

00:07:11.000 | you're not streaming things on your phone.

00:07:14.000 | You can still do your work email,

00:07:16.000 | you can still receive text messages from your daughter

00:07:18.000 | when they need to be picked up from school.

00:07:20.000 | But optional personal technologies,

00:07:22.000 | you step away from for 30 days.

00:07:24.000 | So you're not going to the Los Padres National Forest,

00:07:26.000 | but you're simulating that break on a much smaller timescale.

00:07:31.000 | All right, step two, it's not enough to simply walk away

00:07:35.000 | from your technology and white-knuckle it

00:07:37.000 | and hope that you have some sort of detox effect.

00:07:40.000 | I do not believe in this idea that somehow technology overuse

00:07:45.000 | is like a toxin in your body,

00:07:46.000 | that if you can just detoxify yourself, you'll be cured.

00:07:49.000 | That's not how it works.

00:07:50.000 | You have homework during these 30 days.

00:07:52.000 | You're not just white-knuckling and saying,

00:07:54.000 | "I'm not going to use Instagram."

00:07:55.000 | You are going to aggressively try to re-engage

00:07:58.000 | with the activities that will replace this technology use.

00:08:02.000 | That means experimentation and self-reflection.

00:08:06.000 | Experimentation, you need to go out there

00:08:08.000 | and join things and do things and go places

00:08:10.000 | and build things and learn things.

00:08:12.000 | You need to be very active.

00:08:14.000 | Reconnecting with activities that you suspect

00:08:17.000 | might be important to you or activities that you knew

00:08:20.000 | at one point in your life were important to you

00:08:23.000 | and you've lost track with more recently.

00:08:25.000 | You also need to be self-reflecting.

00:08:28.000 | What matters to me? Why? What's important to me?

00:08:30.000 | How is my life going? What's not going well?

00:08:34.000 | What is my vision of my life going better?

00:08:36.000 | What am I avoiding recognizing or acknowledging about my life?

00:08:41.000 | What have I been avoiding with that digital opiate

00:08:45.000 | that is coming out of that piece of glass I hold in my hand?

00:08:48.000 | What am I avoiding about myself that I should confront

00:08:50.000 | that I can then once confront and acknowledge and accept,

00:08:55.000 | start planning what a vision of a life without that would look like?

00:08:59.000 | You've got experimentation, you've got self-reflection.

00:09:01.000 | That's what you're doing during your 30 days.

00:09:04.000 | As I learned in the experiment I ran with 1,700 people,

00:09:07.000 | if you do not experiment and self-reflect

00:09:09.000 | and instead just try to detoxify yourself from technology,

00:09:13.000 | you won't last 30 days.

00:09:15.000 | Your mind will talk you right back onto TikTok.

00:09:17.000 | It'll talk you right back onto Instagram.

00:09:19.000 | It'll say, "This is not really so bad.

00:09:21.000 | "Come on, what else are we going to do?

00:09:23.000 | "The boredom is excruciating and the whole thing will fall apart."

00:09:25.000 | So you have to be active.

00:09:27.000 | All right, step three, here's the important part.

00:09:30.000 | What do you do as these 30 days wind down?

00:09:34.000 | Here's where I'm going to suggest a concept taken from finance,

00:09:38.000 | which is zero-based budgeting.

00:09:43.000 | Now in finance, zero-based budgeting, of course,

00:09:45.000 | is applied to actual budgets.

00:09:48.000 | It's an approach to budgeting for, let's say, an organization

00:09:52.000 | where instead of looking at your existing budget and asking,

00:09:55.000 | "Well, what can I cut or what can we change

00:09:57.000 | "or where are we spending too much?"

00:09:59.000 | You start from scratch and say,

00:10:00.000 | "What does our organization need to do?

00:10:02.000 | "What are the key things we do?

00:10:04.000 | "How much money does that take?"

00:10:05.000 | And you build up a budget from scratch.

00:10:08.000 | What are the things that are important?

00:10:09.000 | How much is it going to cost?

00:10:10.000 | That's different than taking an existing budget

00:10:12.000 | and saying, "What can we cut or what can we change?"

00:10:15.000 | I'm going to suggest that you apply a zero-based budget

00:10:18.000 | to your personal technology use.

00:10:21.000 | You start with nothing.

00:10:23.000 | You've just spent 30 days free from these technologies,

00:10:26.000 | so you're starting from nothing, and you say from scratch,

00:10:29.000 | "What is important to me?

00:10:32.000 | "What technology do I need to budget to support

00:10:35.000 | "these things that are important to me?"

00:10:37.000 | And in doing so, you're going to build back up

00:10:39.000 | a personal portfolio of technology

00:10:42.000 | that is tightly coupled to what matters to you.

00:10:46.000 | And more importantly, the technology that was taking up

00:10:49.000 | a lot of time and cycles of your attention in your life

00:10:53.000 | is likely not going to make it into this budget

00:10:55.000 | because when you start with what matters to you

00:10:58.000 | and says, "Okay, what technologies do I need

00:11:00.000 | "to support this thing that matters to me?"

00:11:02.000 | You're unlikely to find the answer to any of those questions

00:11:05.000 | being on TikTok for nine hours.

00:11:08.000 | You're unlikely to find the answer to this question

00:11:10.000 | of what's important to me, what technology is going to support me.

00:11:12.000 | You're unlikely to find an answer that says,

00:11:14.000 | "Mindlessly scroll Instagram for four hours a day."

00:11:17.000 | So when you work forward from values,

00:11:20.000 | not backwards from what default activities are,

00:11:23.000 | it's a completely different picture.

00:11:25.000 | And if you're doing zero-based technology budgeting,

00:11:29.000 | you have this other advantage.

00:11:31.000 | If you know why you're adding a particular technology

00:11:33.000 | back into your life, it is so much easier

00:11:35.000 | to add rules around that technology use that makes sense.

00:11:39.000 | If you know, "I'm adding this technology

00:11:41.000 | "to support this particular thing,"

00:11:43.000 | then you can talk about what features you don't need.

00:11:45.000 | You can talk about which devices you can access this technology on,

00:11:49.000 | how often you need to access this technology.

00:11:51.000 | When you have a reason for adding a technology,

00:11:53.000 | you have a foundation on which to build natural fences.

00:11:58.000 | So what I want to do here is give you one, two, three, four, five examples

00:12:03.000 | of zero-based technology budgeting in action

00:12:06.000 | so you have a better sense of what I'm talking about here.

00:12:08.000 | All right, here's a classic example I talked about in my book,

00:12:11.000 | "Digital Minimalism."

00:12:13.000 | I met several different visual artists

00:12:17.000 | who went through this process with me,

00:12:19.000 | 30-day declutter, experimentation, self-reflection, zero-based budgeting.

00:12:23.000 | When they're going through the zero-based budgeting step,

00:12:25.000 | they said, "Here's the thing.

00:12:27.000 | "I know I was spending too much time on Instagram,

00:12:29.000 | "but Instagram serves an important purpose

00:12:32.000 | "for my vocation as an artist

00:12:35.000 | "because there are other artists who post their work in progress on Instagram.

00:12:39.000 | "By seeing their works in progress, I get creative inspiration.

00:12:43.000 | "Creativity in the artistic fields require input.

00:12:46.000 | "You have to see a lot of interesting stuff

00:12:48.000 | "to have your own original ideas."

00:12:51.000 | So these artists concluded,

00:12:53.000 | "I need Instagram in my life because I need this inspiration."

00:12:57.000 | However, because they knew why they were adding Instagram back into their life,

00:13:01.000 | they could put natural fences around it.

00:13:03.000 | And what they realized is if the main point of Instagram in their life

00:13:07.000 | was just to get inspiration, why was it on their phone,

00:13:09.000 | and why were they looking at it three hours a day?

00:13:12.000 | There's not that much original art out there

00:13:14.000 | that requires you to look at it three hours a day.

00:13:16.000 | So what they did instead with my prodding is they said,

00:13:19.000 | "Okay, I'm going to, first of all, curate who I follow on Instagram

00:13:22.000 | "down to five to ten artists who I respect.

00:13:25.000 | "So my feed will be mainly filled with work from these five to ten artists.

00:13:31.000 | "Two, it takes, what, 30 minutes max per week

00:13:36.000 | "to see anything new that these people have published.

00:13:39.000 | "So what I'll do is I'll put aside a set evening every week

00:13:43.000 | "where I load up Instagram."

00:13:45.000 | They did it on their laptops, not on their phone.

00:13:47.000 | They took the app off their phone,

00:13:49.000 | so you just don't have it there as a default.

00:13:51.000 | One evening a week, turn on the computer

00:13:54.000 | and scroll through the newest posts from these five to ten artists.

00:13:58.000 | All of the creative inspiration is there.

00:14:00.000 | You still maximize that benefit, but in this example,

00:14:03.000 | the footprint of Instagram in their life has now been drastically reduced.

00:14:07.000 | One of the artists talked about a Friday night ritual,

00:14:10.000 | glass of wine, put on some music, scroll through these photos,

00:14:14.000 | so you're in the right mood to receive creative inspiration.

00:14:17.000 | And this became a really positive thing in their life,

00:14:19.000 | but also it was just taking up 20 or 30 minutes.

00:14:22.000 | Whereas before, this was something that was a constant source of distraction.

00:14:25.000 | All right, let me give you another example.

00:14:27.000 | You're a writer, and Twitter, you've discovered,

00:14:31.000 | is a good way to engage with your audience,

00:14:34.000 | or at least keep your audience, your community of readers

00:14:37.000 | sort of engaged in remembering you and engaged with your work

00:14:41.000 | and maintaining an audience so that you can tell them

00:14:43.000 | at some point when you have a new book coming out.

00:14:46.000 | So let's say we recognize this is important.

00:14:49.000 | This is my best vector for an audience.

00:14:51.000 | But now that you know this is why it's important,

00:14:53.000 | how can we put fences around Twitter use in this scenario

00:14:56.000 | that supports the value but minimizes the other potentially negative impacts?

00:15:01.000 | Well, one thing you could do here,

00:15:03.000 | and I'm borrowing this strategy from a friend of the show, Ryan Holiday,

00:15:08.000 | who does use Twitter to send out quotes about stoicism.

00:15:12.000 | He sends out one quote per day.

00:15:15.000 | How does he do it? Let me give you a hint.

00:15:18.000 | Ryan is not on his phone looking at Twitter all day,

00:15:21.000 | engaging with people and being in arguments and trying to tweet with them.

00:15:25.000 | He has a Google Doc somewhere, and they gather these quotes in them.

00:15:29.000 | And he has someone on his team who once a day actually does the posting of the quote.

00:15:36.000 | He doesn't have to touch Twitter.

00:15:38.000 | So the writer in our scenario can do the same thing.

00:15:40.000 | Keep the tweets you're going to do in a Google Doc.

00:15:43.000 | Hire someone to post them for you.

00:15:45.000 | This is not some extravagant thing.

00:15:47.000 | You can for $50 a week outsource this task to a virtual digital assistant.

00:15:54.000 | It's not going to be some sort of extravagant $50,000 a year to do.

00:15:57.000 | You pay a minimum amount of money to signal to yourself that I take this seriously,

00:16:02.000 | but also I don't want to touch this tool.

00:16:04.000 | So again, in this situation, the writer says, "Great.

00:16:06.000 | I'm going to have a constant stream of tweets that I've really thought about.

00:16:09.000 | I'm crafting my Google Doc. I don't touch Twitter."

00:16:11.000 | The value is being supported.

00:16:13.000 | The negative side effects are being minimized.

00:16:15.000 | All right, example three, keeping up with the news.

00:16:19.000 | I have to be on social media.

00:16:21.000 | People are talking about the news.

00:16:22.000 | How often do I learn about some story because it's trending on social media?

00:16:27.000 | Well, if you recognize that being informed is a value,

00:16:30.000 | you can now say, "Well, what's the best way to use technology to do this?"

00:16:33.000 | And you can find answers that don't involve be on Twitter all day and upset.

00:16:38.000 | Subscribe to a Sunday newspaper.

00:16:41.000 | Get a daily or weekly News Digest email from a newspaper.

00:16:45.000 | Listen to a daily or weekly News Digest podcast.

00:16:48.000 | Talk to your friends.

00:16:49.000 | That's probably going to be more than enough.

00:16:52.000 | I do that, and I know what's going on in the world.

00:16:55.000 | This idea that you need to be like a breaking news producer

00:17:00.000 | pulling streams from five or six teletype machines

00:17:03.000 | as you quickly look at the breaking news from around the world,

00:17:06.000 | that's not you. You don't need to do that.

00:17:08.000 | So again, this example, you identify your value.

00:17:10.000 | I want to be up to speed on the world.

00:17:12.000 | And then you ask the question, "What's the best way to do this?"

00:17:14.000 | And you realize what you have been doing is not the right answer.

00:17:17.000 | All right, what about YouTube for information and content?

00:17:20.000 | Maybe YouTube is how you look up how-to advice.

00:17:24.000 | Maybe YouTube, you like creators on YouTube like me.

00:17:28.000 | You like that content better than what's on TV.

00:17:31.000 | So how then, if you recognize this value,

00:17:34.000 | "I need YouTube to help me figure out how to do home repair.

00:17:37.000 | I need YouTube because I'm tired of watching sitcoms,

00:17:40.000 | and I'd rather watch Andrew Shuberman's interviews on YouTube

00:17:43.000 | than I would watch The Tonight Show on NBC,"

00:17:47.000 | if that's a value of yours, how then can you use this technology

00:17:51.000 | in a way that's going to support that value without the negative side effects?

00:17:54.000 | Well, we've talked about this in previous episodes of this show before,

00:17:58.000 | but you can get a plug-in to turn off the up next recommendations.

00:18:02.000 | If you need how-to information, you're searching just for those videos,

00:18:05.000 | but there's no rabbit hole to follow.

00:18:07.000 | And what about, you like Andrew Shuberman, you like me,

00:18:10.000 | you have certain content you want to watch like a TV show,

00:18:14.000 | bookmark the page, bookmark the YouTube page.

00:18:18.000 | And then you can, when it comes time to, "Hey, I want to watch a show while I eat lunch,"

00:18:22.000 | have five bookmarks, and you can treat them like channels.

00:18:26.000 | "Let me go to the bookmark for Andrew Shuberman.

00:18:28.000 | Let me go to the bookmark for Cal.

00:18:30.000 | Okay, here's his latest weekly video.

00:18:32.000 | I'm going to put that up on my smart TV."

00:18:34.000 | So again, it's a way to get the value out of the tool here

00:18:38.000 | without having to be, for example, stuck in YouTube rabbit holes for hours every day.

00:18:42.000 | Final example here, keeping up with your friends.

00:18:46.000 | For a lot of people, this becomes an excuse to constantly be glued

00:18:49.000 | and reacting to messaging through their phone,

00:18:52.000 | taking away their ability to enjoy other things

00:18:54.000 | and have gratitude for other things in their life.

00:18:57.000 | If you recognize that technology helps you keep up with friends

00:19:00.000 | better than in a pre-digital technology world,

00:19:04.000 | you can recognize that value, but then again ask the question,

00:19:08.000 | "How do I support this value with technology

00:19:11.000 | while minimizing the negative side effects?"

00:19:13.000 | And in this case, what you might do is the following strategy.

00:19:17.000 | There are certain times during the day

00:19:21.000 | where you check text messaging or instant messaging tools

00:19:25.000 | to check what's going on with conversations,

00:19:27.000 | maybe after work, at lunch, again in the evening.

00:19:31.000 | They're turned off otherwise.

00:19:33.000 | So you don't have WhatsApp or your iMessage

00:19:37.000 | just generally on and available throughout the day.

00:19:39.000 | There are certain times you turn it on.

00:19:41.000 | And the other times you either have the app closed

00:19:43.000 | or you go through the effort of actually adding the filters,

00:19:47.000 | which you can do on an iPhone or Android to say,

00:19:49.000 | "Hey, let through important texts for my family,

00:19:52.000 | but let's mute the big group text threads with my friends, etc. for now."

00:19:57.000 | The next thing you do is start to get off your proverbial butt

00:20:02.000 | and actually with the people that matter to you in your life,

00:20:05.000 | set up IRL regular activities.

00:20:09.000 | Don't convince yourself that I'm constantly answering

00:20:12.000 | group text message threads.

00:20:14.000 | That means I'm connected to my friends.

00:20:16.000 | Don't give yourself that storyline as an out.

00:20:18.000 | Say, "No, okay, I'm not constantly available on these anymore.

00:20:22.000 | So what I'm going to do is make sure that, yeah,

00:20:24.000 | every other week we go to the movies and I call my parents twice a week.

00:20:28.000 | And for this friend here, we always go for a walk on Mondays."

00:20:31.000 | And you start doing the effort of getting real social interaction

00:20:35.000 | with the people that matter to you.

00:20:36.000 | You put these two things together in this example

00:20:38.000 | and you're not disconnected.

00:20:40.000 | Still a few times a day, you're able to chime in

00:20:42.000 | and have some touches on the digital.

00:20:45.000 | But you don't mind that you're not constantly in touch

00:20:47.000 | because you're also in real life in this particular scenario,

00:20:50.000 | seeing people and doing things with them.

00:20:52.000 | You're sacrificing non-trivial time and attention

00:20:55.000 | on behalf of your relationships.

00:20:56.000 | That's what's typically required for your brain

00:20:59.000 | to actually treat a relationship as serious.

00:21:01.000 | That's what's typically required for your brain

00:21:03.000 | to think that you actually are being social.

00:21:05.000 | It doesn't know about text on a cell phone screen.

00:21:08.000 | It doesn't know that socializing.

00:21:10.000 | So again, if you know it's important to be in touch with my friends

00:21:13.000 | and the phone can kind of help,

00:21:14.000 | you can say, "But what's the best way to do this?"

00:21:17.000 | So anyways, this is zero-based technology budgeting.

00:21:20.000 | After your 30-day declutter, you rebuild up

00:21:22.000 | your personal technological portfolio from scratch.

00:21:25.000 | What are the things that really matter?

00:21:26.000 | What technology do I have to budget towards the things that matter?

00:21:29.000 | What rules or fences do I put around those technology use?

00:21:32.000 | This will almost certainly radically change your relationship with technology

00:21:37.000 | without requiring you to retreat to a forest

00:21:40.000 | and chop wood all day

00:21:42.000 | and have counselors take your phone and video games away

00:21:45.000 | and you have to go years and completely rewire your mind.

00:21:48.000 | This is something you can do right now.

00:21:50.000 | You could start it today

00:21:52.000 | and 60 days from now,

00:21:54.000 | have a completely different relationship with your tools.

00:21:56.000 | It has nothing to do with removing tools from your life forever.

00:21:59.000 | There's nothing to do with demonizing tools

00:22:01.000 | and saying digital tech has to go.

00:22:04.000 | It's instead saying, "I care about the things that matter to me.

00:22:07.000 | Hey, tools, you're going to help me pursuing what matters.

00:22:11.000 | You no longer are in charge.

00:22:13.000 | I'll figure out what matters.

00:22:15.000 | Where you can be helpful, I'll let you in my life.

00:22:17.000 | And where you can't, go away.

00:22:19.000 | I don't care. I don't need to hear about it."

00:22:21.000 | You can do your TikTok dance ice bucket,

00:22:24.000 | Instagram real trends on your own time.

00:22:27.000 | I don't care about that anymore.

00:22:28.000 | I'm getting after the stuff that matters to me.

00:22:30.000 | I'm using tools when it helps me,

00:22:32.000 | and otherwise you can get out of my way.

00:22:34.000 | No acts required.

00:22:36.000 | So there you go, Jesse.

00:22:38.000 | Zero-based budgeting.

00:22:41.000 | - I like it.

00:22:42.000 | - I'm a nerd for the technical terms.

00:22:44.000 | All right, so we're going to have some questions coming up

00:22:45.000 | that more or less are going to all orbit around

00:22:48.000 | the same general topic of reforming your relationship

00:22:52.000 | with technology in your life.

00:22:54.000 | First, however, I want to mention one of the sponsors

00:22:56.000 | that makes this show possible.

00:22:58.000 | That's our longtime friends at Blinkist.

00:23:01.000 | The Blinkist app enables you to understand

00:23:03.000 | the most important ideas from over 5,500 nonfiction books

00:23:07.000 | and podcasts in just 15 minutes.

00:23:10.000 | With the Blinkist app, you can read or listen to

00:23:14.000 | blinks of these books and podcasts.

00:23:18.000 | These blinks give you a 15-minute summary

00:23:20.000 | of all of the key points.

00:23:22.000 | The way I use this app and the way that Jesse uses this app

00:23:25.000 | as well is as a triage tool for the reading component

00:23:29.000 | of our lives.

00:23:31.000 | If a book seems interesting, we'll add it to a list.

00:23:34.000 | When it comes time to buy a new book,

00:23:36.000 | we will listen to or read the blinks

00:23:39.000 | for the books we're thinking about buying

00:23:42.000 | and use that information to decide if it's worth

00:23:44.000 | buying or not.

00:23:45.000 | What you'll find is 50% of the time,

00:23:47.000 | you listen to or read the blink and you conclude,

00:23:50.000 | "This book's not what I thought," or, "It is what I thought,

00:23:52.000 | "but I think this 15-minute summary, I get it."

00:23:56.000 | 50% of the time, by contrast, you listen to the summary

00:23:59.000 | and say, "My God, I've got to buy this book.

00:24:01.000 | "These points seem fascinating.

00:24:02.000 | "I want to learn more about it."

00:24:03.000 | It's a perfect sidekick.

00:24:06.000 | Think about it as a digital sidekick

00:24:08.000 | for the reading life.

00:24:11.000 | That's how I use it. That's how Jesse uses it.

00:24:13.000 | Jesse likes to read the blinks.

00:24:14.000 | I like to listen to the blinks, but we get to the same place.

00:24:18.000 | Right now, Blinkist has a special offer

00:24:20.000 | just for our audience.

00:24:21.000 | Go to Blinkist.com/deep to start your seven-day free trial

00:24:25.000 | and you will get 25% off a Blinkist Premium Membership.

00:24:29.000 | That's Blinkist, spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.

00:24:33.000 | Blinkist.com/deep to get 25% off on a seven-day free trial.

00:24:37.000 | Blinkist.com/deep.

00:24:39.000 | Now, for a limited time, you can use Blinkist Connect,

00:24:44.000 | it's a special offer, Blinkist Connect,

00:24:46.000 | to share your premium account

00:24:48.000 | with someone who you think will enjoy it.

00:24:51.000 | You'll be getting two premium subscriptions

00:24:53.000 | for the price of one

00:24:55.000 | with this special Blinkist Connect offer.

00:24:57.000 | So check that out, Blinkist.com/deep.

00:25:00.000 | I just wanna talk about our friends at ExpressVPN.

00:25:05.000 | You need to be using a VPN.

00:25:08.000 | This is Cal, the computer scientist talking to you now.

00:25:11.000 | You need to be using a VPN, and here is why.

00:25:14.000 | When you access the internet,

00:25:16.000 | other people can see what sites and services you're accessing.

00:25:20.000 | If you're in a public place using Wi-Fi,

00:25:23.000 | anyone with an antenna can see the packets

00:25:25.000 | you're sending wirelessly to the access point

00:25:27.000 | and what destination those packets are going to,

00:25:30.000 | what website or service you're talking to.

00:25:33.000 | If you're at home,

00:25:35.000 | through your private internet connection

00:25:36.000 | in the privacy of your own home,

00:25:38.000 | your internet service provider can look at

00:25:40.000 | what websites or services are you talking to,

00:25:42.000 | they can collect that information,

00:25:44.000 | and they can sell that information, which they do.

00:25:48.000 | So people are watching what you do,

00:25:50.000 | what sites you talk to, what services you use.

00:25:52.000 | A VPN prevents them from doing that.

00:25:54.000 | The technical idea is very simple.

00:25:56.000 | If you use a VPN,

00:25:58.000 | instead of connecting directly to a site or service,

00:26:00.000 | you instead connect to a VPN server.

00:26:02.000 | You then tell the VPN using encrypted messages

00:26:06.000 | that no one can read,

00:26:07.000 | here is the site or service I really want to talk to.

00:26:10.000 | The VPN server then talks to that site or service

00:26:13.000 | on your behalf, encrypts and hides the answer,

00:26:15.000 | and sends it back to you.

00:26:17.000 | So anyone who's listening to your communication,

00:26:20.000 | your internet service provider,

00:26:22.000 | the creepy guy next to you in Starbucks,

00:26:24.000 | who for some reason is holding a six foot tall RF antenna

00:26:27.000 | with giant headphones on,

00:26:29.000 | trying to act nonchalant, just sitting here holding it.

00:26:33.000 | They can't see who you're talking to.

00:26:35.000 | All right, so you need a VPN.

00:26:37.000 | The right VPN to use is ExpressVPN,

00:26:39.000 | it's the one I use.

00:26:40.000 | They have servers all over the world.

00:26:42.000 | So wherever you are,

00:26:43.000 | there's probably a server that's nearby geographically

00:26:46.000 | to connect to, which is key for speed.

00:26:48.000 | They also have a lot of bandwidth.

00:26:49.000 | So again, speed, speed, speed.

00:26:51.000 | And finally, their software is intuitive.

00:26:53.000 | You just turn it on with a click

00:26:54.000 | and then you use your web browsers or apps like normal.

00:26:57.000 | It's completely hidden in the background

00:26:59.000 | that there's actually a VPN protecting you.

00:27:02.000 | So secure your online activity

00:27:03.000 | by visiting expressvpn.com/deep today.

00:27:07.000 | That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S, vpn.com/deep.

00:27:11.000 | And you can get an extra three months free,

00:27:14.000 | expressvpn.com/deep.

00:27:18.000 | - Jesse, I always think about when doing the ExpressVPN ad,

00:27:21.000 | the Gene Hackman character from "The Conversation."

00:27:25.000 | I don't know if you know "The Conversation."

00:27:27.000 | It's a great Francis Ford Coppola movie.

00:27:30.000 | But Hackman's character is a surveillance expert

00:27:33.000 | and he wears this weird cheap plastic raincoat.

00:27:36.000 | This is a movie from the seventies

00:27:37.000 | and he has all these electronic gadgets he uses

00:27:39.000 | for, you know, with big antennas.

00:27:41.000 | And he has a whole laboratory

00:27:43.000 | full of bugging equipment and microphones.

00:27:46.000 | And as I always imagine Gene Hackman from "The Conversation"

00:27:49.000 | sitting across from you in a Starbucks

00:27:51.000 | with his headphones and the antenna.

00:27:53.000 | And there's like a rotate,

00:27:54.000 | his hat has a satellite dish that's rotating around.

00:27:57.000 | - That's so good.

00:27:59.000 | - And that's what's out there, ExpressVPN.

00:28:02.000 | All right, enough of that nonsense.

00:28:03.000 | Let's do some questions from you, our listeners.

00:28:07.000 | These questions should all roughly have to do

00:28:09.000 | with technology,

00:28:11.000 | reforming your relationship with technology.

00:28:13.000 | All right, Jesse, who is our first question

00:28:16.000 | asker, interlocutor?

00:28:18.000 | - First question is from Wes.

00:28:21.000 | Wes says, "Like Cal, I don't use social media

00:28:23.000 | and I have a computer science degree.

00:28:25.000 | I too am ignorant of what is occurring in the world."

00:28:28.000 | - Not ignorant.

00:28:29.000 | - Not ignorant of what is occurring in the world

00:28:31.000 | and have social connections without using social media.

00:28:35.000 | However, I still wish to share my work online

00:28:37.000 | and build an audience for similar reasons as Cal.

00:28:40.000 | With the world being so engrossed in social media,

00:28:42.000 | I'm unsure how to go about this

00:28:44.000 | while maintaining my privacy as Cal does.

00:28:46.000 | I would like to hear Cal's advice

00:28:48.000 | on how he manages a YouTube channel,

00:28:49.000 | podcasts, online writing, et cetera,

00:28:51.000 | and how he's comfortable with sharing information

00:28:53.000 | like his face and his name while still remaining private.

00:28:57.000 | - Well, Wes, I think I understand the question.

00:29:00.000 | I think you're making a mistake.

00:29:02.000 | There's an inversion in your thinking here

00:29:04.000 | that is very common right now

00:29:06.000 | in people who are thinking about trying to

00:29:10.000 | make a move towards being some sort of,

00:29:13.000 | I don't wanna say writer anymore, content producer.

00:29:15.000 | Let's use that phrase.

00:29:16.000 | And here's the inversion or mistake

00:29:18.000 | that I think you're making

00:29:19.000 | and a lot of other people are making too.

00:29:21.000 | They start by thinking about the channels.

00:29:24.000 | What are the channels?

00:29:26.000 | How do I optimize the channels?

00:29:27.000 | What's the right way to use Twitter?

00:29:29.000 | What's the right way to use YouTube?

00:29:31.000 | What's the right way to build a paid email newsletter?

00:29:34.000 | What are the best practices?

00:29:36.000 | How do I get the sort of maximum conversion

00:29:39.000 | from non-paid to paid subscribers?

00:29:41.000 | They start there and then say,

00:29:44.000 | I'll figure out like what I'm gonna say.

00:29:46.000 | That's backwards.

00:29:48.000 | Where you need to start is figuring out

00:29:50.000 | what do I have to say that people care about?

00:29:52.000 | How do I actually find something

00:29:54.000 | that I'm the right person to talk about

00:29:56.000 | that there's a non-trivial group of people out there

00:29:59.000 | who are gonna be very engaged in what I have to say?

00:30:02.000 | This is the hard part.

00:30:04.000 | It is very difficult to figure out a message

00:30:07.000 | that you're the right person to say,

00:30:09.000 | you can say it well,

00:30:10.000 | and the way you're saying it's gonna appeal

00:30:12.000 | to a lot of people.

00:30:13.000 | That is very hard to find.

00:30:14.000 | That's where all of your efforts should be

00:30:16.000 | if you wanna do something like I do,

00:30:18.000 | even as a productive side hustle,

00:30:20.000 | nevertheless, as a living.

00:30:22.000 | That's all the hard work.

00:30:24.000 | Once that's clicking,

00:30:26.000 | you can care a little bit more about,

00:30:28.000 | okay, well, how am I reaching people?

00:30:30.000 | And then you can care a little bit more about,

00:30:31.000 | okay, maybe I wanna optimize

00:30:33.000 | how I'm using these various channels.

00:30:34.000 | But none of that is important

00:30:35.000 | until you get the first thing first solved,

00:30:38.000 | which is having something to say

00:30:39.000 | that people care about,

00:30:40.000 | and that's where your energy should go.

00:30:41.000 | So why do people invert this?

00:30:44.000 | Because the internet marketing channel

00:30:46.000 | optimization stuff is fun.

00:30:48.000 | It seems so tractable.

00:30:50.000 | I have a term for this, by the way.

00:30:52.000 | This is a term that I think came out

00:30:54.000 | of online productivity circles

00:30:55.000 | from the late '90s, early 2000s.

00:30:57.000 | I call it checklist productivity.

00:30:59.000 | We saw a lot of this

00:31:00.000 | from sort of the West Coast productivity personalities

00:31:02.000 | in the early 2000s.

00:31:04.000 | We are really attracted to systems

00:31:07.000 | or schemes that are checklist-based.

00:31:10.000 | If you do these 10 things,

00:31:11.000 | each of which is tractable by itself,

00:31:14.000 | a really big result will happen,

00:31:16.000 | a really positive thing will happen.

00:31:18.000 | Checklist productivity is really appealing

00:31:20.000 | because you can tell yourself a story.

00:31:23.000 | I'm gonna succeed here

00:31:24.000 | because other people don't have this information.

00:31:26.000 | They just don't know

00:31:27.000 | that these are the 10 things that you do.

00:31:28.000 | But if I do these 10 things,

00:31:30.000 | I'm gonna get this big reward.

00:31:31.000 | And you convince yourself

00:31:32.000 | that you found this information

00:31:33.000 | and how motivating is it?

00:31:35.000 | Like, I know I can do each of these 10 things.

00:31:37.000 | They're all tractable, but they're a little hard.

00:31:39.000 | I set up this account.

00:31:40.000 | I start doing this.

00:31:41.000 | I optimize this.

00:31:42.000 | I have a tweet schedule.

00:31:44.000 | Everything is tractable.

00:31:45.000 | And this storyline, if I just do these things,

00:31:47.000 | it's like moderate amounts of hard work

00:31:49.000 | on a regular basis,

00:31:50.000 | I'm gonna be a major online personality.

00:31:53.000 | It's incredibly appealing, and it doesn't work.

00:31:56.000 | Everything is driven

00:31:58.000 | by having something to say that people care about.

00:32:01.000 | And that is the hardest thing in the world.

00:32:03.000 | That is the hardest thing in the world.

00:32:04.000 | I think a good analogy here to think about

00:32:06.000 | is old-fashioned television.

00:32:09.000 | Every TV network by 1965

00:32:13.000 | knew how to make a television show

00:32:15.000 | and how do you hire writers

00:32:17.000 | and how do you film it right?

00:32:18.000 | And what is the three-act structure of a sitcom?

00:32:21.000 | And how do you break up a show?

00:32:23.000 | And how do you market a show?

00:32:25.000 | And what's the right way to do advertising?

00:32:27.000 | All of that was known,

00:32:28.000 | and yet most shows don't succeed.

00:32:30.000 | What was the most important thing?

00:32:31.000 | Finding a show that people wanted to actually watch.

00:32:34.000 | And so that's where all the energy was.

00:32:35.000 | The showrunners, the writers, the personalities,

00:32:37.000 | when everything just clicked just right,

00:32:39.000 | was worth billions.

00:32:41.000 | This is like Seinfeld.

00:32:42.000 | And when it didn't click just right,

00:32:43.000 | you'd lose money on it.

00:32:45.000 | Everyone knew how to build a show,

00:32:47.000 | but what mattered was,

00:32:48.000 | could you build a show that people wanted to watch?

00:32:49.000 | That is the right analogy

00:32:50.000 | for thinking about being a content producer

00:32:52.000 | in the digital age.

00:32:54.000 | Forget about the checklist

00:32:55.000 | about how to optimize your YouTube channel.

00:32:57.000 | Care about having something to say

00:32:59.000 | that people really care about.

00:33:01.000 | If you succeed in this,

00:33:02.000 | and you see some traction,

00:33:04.000 | then you can start caring about,

00:33:05.000 | "Well, what channels am I using?

00:33:07.000 | "Maybe I should change that.

00:33:08.000 | "What channels am I using?

00:33:09.000 | "Maybe I should improve how I use it."

00:33:11.000 | But don't let that come before

00:33:13.000 | the actual hard work of figuring out something to do.

00:33:15.000 | So how do you actually do this then?

00:33:17.000 | It's like, choose a couple,

00:33:19.000 | a couple reasonable channels to get started with,

00:33:22.000 | and try to get success in those.

00:33:24.000 | And let that be what you do.

00:33:26.000 | And once you have success relative to those,

00:33:27.000 | that's when you can care about it.

00:33:28.000 | So in my own career,

00:33:29.000 | I started with books,

00:33:31.000 | followed soon after by blogging newsletters.

00:33:33.000 | So I want to publish books that succeed,

00:33:36.000 | and I put my energy into that.

00:33:37.000 | And then I started blogging about those books.

00:33:39.000 | And that was basically just where my energy was

00:33:41.000 | for a long time.

00:33:43.000 | And once I really felt like,

00:33:44.000 | "Okay, this is clicking.

00:33:46.000 | "I have something to say.

00:33:47.000 | "I have an audience.

00:33:48.000 | "I'm looking at the technology world.

00:33:49.000 | "I've been doing it for a decade."

00:33:52.000 | I said, "Okay, now I'm gonna go into podcasting.

00:33:55.000 | "Now I'll think about that.

00:33:56.000 | "I'm gonna go into podcasting,

00:33:58.000 | "because I have all these things to say

00:33:59.000 | "that are clicking, and I've sold millions of books,

00:34:02.000 | "and I have a big audience now.

00:34:04.000 | "Podcasting, I've really thought about it."

00:34:06.000 | And I was very late to this,

00:34:07.000 | 'cause I'm very deliberate.

00:34:08.000 | Like, "Okay, I'm gonna go into podcasting now,

00:34:10.000 | "'cause I think that's a way to interact

00:34:11.000 | "with this segment in a more meaningful way,

00:34:13.000 | "and it's a new technology that wasn't there before."

00:34:15.000 | And then once we got into podcasting,

00:34:17.000 | I slowly then started caring about

00:34:19.000 | how do you do this right?

00:34:20.000 | And now that we're a few years into it,

00:34:22.000 | we have it down to a better science.

00:34:24.000 | I think Jesse would agree.

00:34:25.000 | I have Jesse on board.

00:34:26.000 | We've got our sound guy.

00:34:27.000 | We've got our ad agency.

00:34:29.000 | We've got our studio.

00:34:30.000 | That all came slowly after I had something to say.

00:34:33.000 | More recently, we've decided that video is very important.

00:34:37.000 | The podcast could be an engine

00:34:39.000 | for reaching a different audience via YouTube.

00:34:42.000 | And we did that for about a year just to get used to it.

00:34:45.000 | And now we actually have a professional on board,

00:34:48.000 | and we're figuring out how to do that right.

00:34:50.000 | That all came after.

00:34:51.000 | The podcast had traction.

00:34:53.000 | Okay, this content is working.

00:34:55.000 | Now let's think if there's another related channel

00:34:58.000 | that's gonna reach an audience

00:34:59.000 | who would like to hear this is not hearing it now.

00:35:01.000 | So again, this channel optimization stuff

00:35:03.000 | comes after content works.

00:35:04.000 | So Wes, don't get the cart before the course here.

00:35:07.000 | Focus on having something to say that people wanna hear.

00:35:09.000 | Focus on getting tangible, unambiguous evidence

00:35:12.000 | that people like what you have to say.

00:35:15.000 | And I don't care what channel you do this on,

00:35:17.000 | whether it's a book or a sub stack or Instagram,

00:35:19.000 | just choose one, don't worry about it.

00:35:21.000 | And only then do I want you to really care about optimizing,

00:35:25.000 | getting on your tech hat, starting to tweak the features,

00:35:28.000 | all the fun checklist productivity stuff.

00:35:30.000 | Wait until you have no choice but to get involved in that.

00:35:33.000 | I think that's the right way to do it.

00:35:36.000 | I mean, Jesse, you probably see this too.

00:35:38.000 | Like the internet is full of, you can just tell

00:35:40.000 | it's people who got some checklist somewhere.

00:35:42.000 | - Yeah. - You know?

00:35:43.000 | - Yeah.

00:35:44.000 | - I see this on Twitter a lot now,

00:35:47.000 | where there'll be like a link or someone,

00:35:51.000 | I'll come across it because they're mentioning

00:35:53.000 | something we did.

00:35:54.000 | And you'll go to the Twitter page,

00:35:57.000 | because I don't have like a Twitter app or anything.

00:35:59.000 | So if I'm using, looking at something on Twitter,

00:36:01.000 | I'm just in a web browser and I'm just like bookmark,

00:36:04.000 | you know, like a baseball reporter's page.

00:36:05.000 | So I'll go like in the browser to their Twitter homepage,

00:36:09.000 | I don't know what you call it.

00:36:10.000 | - Yeah. - It'll be 60 subscribers.

00:36:11.000 | And they'll have this like weird sequence of content.

00:36:15.000 | And you're like, oh, they just like did a course

00:36:17.000 | about this or something.

00:36:18.000 | And it's all like, they've optimized this whole thing

00:36:20.000 | about, and it's like, here's my thread.

00:36:22.000 | And then at the bottom of the thread, it says,

00:36:24.000 | well, if you like this, you know,

00:36:25.000 | you'll also like these other things and please subscribe.

00:36:28.000 | And it's like, they're all doing the same course,

00:36:30.000 | but none of them have a particular selling proposition.

00:36:32.000 | Like, well, who are you?

00:36:34.000 | What's your point of view?

00:36:35.000 | And why are you the right person to talk about it?

00:36:36.000 | - Yeah.

00:36:37.000 | - It's like, they just heard this course of like,

00:36:38.000 | if you do threads on productivity books or something

00:36:41.000 | that you'll be Ali Abdaal or something like that.

00:36:45.000 | You know, it's like, that's really hard to do.

00:36:47.000 | Like, anyways, it's a bone I have to pick.

00:36:50.000 | It's like, we don't put enough energy

00:36:51.000 | into the hard part first, which is having something to say.

00:36:54.000 | - Yep. - It's a lot more fun.

00:36:55.000 | - And the same message you give to aspiring authors

00:36:58.000 | about like writing a book.

00:36:59.000 | - Yeah. - Being the right person

00:37:00.000 | to talk about the right subject.

00:37:02.000 | - Yeah, that's always my thing about book writing.

00:37:04.000 | You have to have a topic that people are gonna feel

00:37:06.000 | like they have to buy.

00:37:07.000 | You have to be able to write

00:37:08.000 | and you have to be the right person to write that book.

00:37:10.000 | And most people get one or two out of the three,

00:37:13.000 | but not all three.

00:37:14.000 | And that's why they fail to sell a book.

00:37:16.000 | So it's either like a cool topic,

00:37:17.000 | but it's like, who are you to write about it?

00:37:19.000 | Or it's a, you're the right person to write about it,

00:37:21.000 | but who cares?

00:37:23.000 | Or you're the right person to talk about it.

00:37:24.000 | It's a cool idea,

00:37:25.000 | but you're not a good enough writer to really pull it off.

00:37:27.000 | So you gotta have all three.

00:37:29.000 | All right, let's keep rolling.

00:37:30.000 | What do we got next?

00:37:31.000 | - Next question is from Concerned Parent.

00:37:34.000 | What are your thoughts on using an iPad

00:37:36.000 | as a standard part of the K through 12 education system?

00:37:40.000 | Is it effective in teaching children

00:37:42.000 | or are we introducing more sources of digital distractions?

00:37:45.000 | - Well, I think there's a big debate that is going on

00:37:49.000 | and is worthwhile surrounding the utility of ed tech.

00:37:55.000 | In one of my books,

00:37:56.000 | and I don't remember if this was digital minimalism

00:38:00.000 | or deep work.

00:38:01.000 | I think it was in my book, "Digital Minimalism."

00:38:03.000 | I have this footnote that's become sort of infamous

00:38:05.000 | or I weighed tentatively into the ed tech debate

00:38:10.000 | and say this idea that we need kids

00:38:13.000 | to be very comfortable with computer interfaces like iPads

00:38:17.000 | because the economy is high tech

00:38:20.000 | and it's gonna help them be programmers

00:38:22.000 | in the future or something.

00:38:23.000 | It's like giving kids Hot Wheels

00:38:25.000 | because we want them to be good

00:38:26.000 | at becoming automobile mechanics.

00:38:28.000 | The separation between consumer facing digital interfaces

00:38:32.000 | that are optimized and easy

00:38:34.000 | and the complicated skill developing technology

00:38:37.000 | is so big that they're basically disconnected

00:38:40.000 | and I didn't buy that argument.

00:38:41.000 | So I've been involved in the ed tech arguments

00:38:44.000 | but when it comes to this particular issue

00:38:46.000 | and I hear this a lot from parents,

00:38:48.000 | the kids using technology in school

00:38:51.000 | is making them reinforcing unhealthy technology habits

00:38:56.000 | in their lives.

00:38:57.000 | I don't buy that argument.

00:38:59.000 | I think they're orthogonal.

00:39:00.000 | I think the issue of young kid technology abuse

00:39:03.000 | is orthogonal to in the classroom ed tech.

00:39:07.000 | Whether or not your kid is doing reflex max math

00:39:11.000 | on a Chromebook or they're playing YouTube videos

00:39:13.000 | on the Prometheus board in their class,

00:39:15.000 | whether or not they're doing that

00:39:17.000 | will not determine whether or not your kid

00:39:19.000 | has a healthy or unhealthy relationship with technology.

00:39:23.000 | The technology in the classroom

00:39:24.000 | is relatively well constrained.

00:39:26.000 | You're doing specific things on it.

00:39:28.000 | We can argue about whether it's important or not.

00:39:31.000 | We can argue about whether these tech companies

00:39:33.000 | are basically just laundering tax dollars

00:39:36.000 | from people's property taxes

00:39:37.000 | into their corporate coffers

00:39:38.000 | by trying to convince schools you have to buy all this tech.

00:39:40.000 | We can argue about all that

00:39:42.000 | but the Chromebooks and the iPads

00:39:43.000 | and the YouTube and the Prometheus boards

00:39:45.000 | is not what's making your kid addicted to technology.

00:39:49.000 | It's what's happening at home.

00:39:51.000 | That's what's happening at home.

00:39:52.000 | What technology do you allow them to use

00:39:54.000 | and how do you personally model technology

00:39:56.000 | use in your own life?

00:39:57.000 | Those are the two things that matter.

00:40:00.000 | If you let your kid just have an iPad or a smartphone

00:40:03.000 | and have unrestricted access to the internet

00:40:05.000 | or hours and hours playing online games,

00:40:08.000 | they're on Roblox, they're on Minecraft servers,

00:40:11.000 | that's the thing that's going to make

00:40:12.000 | by far the biggest difference

00:40:13.000 | in what their relationship with technology is.

00:40:16.000 | If your 12-year-old is on text messaging

00:40:19.000 | with her friends and on Snapchat,

00:40:21.000 | that's because you let her do that.

00:40:22.000 | That's going to be the problem,

00:40:24.000 | not whether or not they had a Chromebook in school,

00:40:26.000 | not whether or not a teacher played a YouTube video

00:40:28.000 | on the Prometheus board because they were tired.

00:40:31.000 | Ed tech is orthogonal from kid technology abuse.

00:40:34.000 | That's my current thoughts on it.

00:40:37.000 | And why I'm emphasizing this is that I think

00:40:39.000 | it's easier sometimes for parents

00:40:41.000 | to have fingers to point outward

00:40:44.000 | than to have to grapple with,

00:40:46.000 | "Man, it's going to be really hard

00:40:48.000 | "if we set a technology policy for our household

00:40:51.000 | "that we think is healthy, it's going to be really hard.

00:40:53.000 | "There's going to be a lot of social pressure.

00:40:55.000 | "My kid's going to yell at me every day

00:40:56.000 | "and they're going to say, 'All my friends are doing it,'

00:40:58.000 | "and we're going to be really stressed out about it."

00:40:59.000 | And I'd rather just say,

00:41:01.000 | "We're not happy with our kid's technology setup,

00:41:03.000 | "but there's all these reasons why that's not our fault."

00:41:05.000 | If they have iPads in school,

00:41:07.000 | what are you going to do these days?

00:41:09.000 | I think it's an excuse.

00:41:12.000 | There is, however, I think, a tentative connection

00:41:15.000 | between ed tech and kid technology overuse

00:41:17.000 | that you do need to be wary about,

00:41:19.000 | and that is this very clever excuse

00:41:22.000 | that middle schoolers in particular have started using,

00:41:24.000 | where they say, "I have to have unrestricted access

00:41:27.000 | "to the internet through a smartphone or iPad

00:41:30.000 | "because I have to go on the internet to do my homework."

00:41:33.000 | And a lot of parents fall for this.

00:41:36.000 | The fact that, you know, there's some part

00:41:39.000 | of their math homework is in a Google Classroom somewhere,

00:41:42.000 | or like once a year their social studies teacher says,

00:41:45.000 | "Look up some information online."

00:41:46.000 | The fact that they convince you

00:41:48.000 | that that means they need an iPhone.

00:41:50.000 | Oldest trick in the book,

00:41:52.000 | and by oldest I mean it's like five years old.

00:41:55.000 | But I hear a lot about it,

00:41:56.000 | and what I think is going on here,

00:41:57.000 | it's not that the parents are dumb,

00:41:59.000 | it's just it's too hard to actually do

00:42:02.000 | what all of the evidence points at,

00:42:04.000 | which is what would be healthy here,

00:42:06.000 | which is, and people don't like to hear this,

00:42:08.000 | but is unrestricted internet access

00:42:10.000 | through smartphone and iPad should be 16 or older.

00:42:13.000 | That's so hard socially and parenthally

00:42:16.000 | that we're desperate for some excuse

00:42:18.000 | to not have to do that.

00:42:19.000 | So we will fall for this.

00:42:21.000 | Oh yeah, they got to do their homeworks online.

00:42:23.000 | They have to phone all their works online.

00:42:26.000 | They use Chromebooks at school.

00:42:27.000 | They have to have a phone.

00:42:28.000 | It's a completely, I think, fallacious connection.

00:42:32.000 | It's a logical fallacy.

00:42:34.000 | It's a broken syllogism.

00:42:36.000 | And I think we all know that, but it's an excuse.

00:42:38.000 | So that is the tentative connection,

00:42:40.000 | is that I think a lot of middle schoolers

00:42:41.000 | have figured out I can use the fact

00:42:43.000 | that some school stuff happens online

00:42:45.000 | to justify using six hours of TikTok a day.

00:42:49.000 | So anyways, there we go.

00:42:50.000 | I would say care about ed tech,

00:42:53.000 | but don't connect it in your mind

00:42:55.000 | as being critical to the other really big issue,

00:42:57.000 | which is what is my kid's relationship

00:42:59.000 | with technology writ large?

00:43:01.000 | That comes down to the parents.

00:43:02.000 | It's really tough, but I don't think

00:43:04.000 | we have any excuse about the grapple

00:43:06.000 | with that head on.

00:43:07.000 | We'll see.

00:43:08.000 | I'm giving a couple of talks at my kid's school

00:43:10.000 | coming up on this topic again.

00:43:12.000 | Yeah, so we'll see.

00:43:13.000 | We'll see how that goes.

00:43:14.000 | They have to have the internet.

00:43:17.000 | - They posted on Google Classroom.

00:43:22.000 | They posted what the schedule's gonna be for next week.

00:43:25.000 | So I have to use 19 hours of Roblox tonight.

00:43:29.000 | - Parents are like, yeah, checks out.

00:43:31.000 | You know why it checks out?

00:43:33.000 | Because Google Classroom involves the internet

00:43:37.000 | and Roblox is on the internet.

00:43:41.000 | I mean, you know, A follows B, B follows C.

00:43:45.000 | Give them an iPhone.

00:43:47.000 | You know, your son's been playing Fortnite

00:43:51.000 | without stopping to go to the bathroom for 45 hours.

00:43:54.000 | Are you worried about that?

00:43:55.000 | Oh, no, no, they use Prometheus boards

00:43:58.000 | in their classroom.

00:44:00.000 | That's technology.

00:44:02.000 | So it's like, you know, they gotta,

00:44:04.000 | the kids have to use technology.

00:44:06.000 | I mean, what can I, there's a,

00:44:07.000 | they have a Chromebook in the school.

00:44:09.000 | What can I do?

00:44:10.000 | What can I do?

00:44:11.000 | I can't stop them.

00:44:14.000 | - You hear it.

00:44:15.000 | You know who talks of,

00:44:17.000 | it's always like semi-depresses me.

00:44:19.000 | I don't know if you've heard this, Jesse.

00:44:20.000 | You might've mentioned,

00:44:21.000 | you might've noticed this, that Bill Simmons,

00:44:24.000 | when Bill Simmons talks about his kids,

00:44:26.000 | the podcast of Bill Simmons,

00:44:28.000 | he'll always say things like,

00:44:29.000 | oh, I can judge by,

00:44:31.000 | I can judge how much they like a movie

00:44:33.000 | by like how many minutes they put down TikTok

00:44:35.000 | to watch, to actually look up

00:44:37.000 | when we were like watching a movie together.

00:44:38.000 | Like, so you're just like fully conceding

00:44:40.000 | that like my kids are just on TikTok all the time

00:44:43.000 | and I'm lucky if they maybe look up

00:44:44.000 | every once in a while.

00:44:46.000 | I don't know.

00:44:47.000 | It's crazy.

00:44:48.000 | Technology is weird.

00:44:49.000 | I think it's because we all use it.

00:44:50.000 | I don't know.

00:44:51.000 | It's so weird.

00:44:52.000 | I mean, you would never hear someone

00:44:53.000 | in that situation be like,

00:44:54.000 | oh, I can tell my kid really likes a book

00:44:56.000 | because like they put down the 40 of malt liquor

00:44:59.000 | they've been slamming all day

00:45:00.000 | to like actually read it.

00:45:02.000 | The other question is like,

00:45:03.000 | why are you letting them slam malt liquor all day?

00:45:05.000 | You know?

00:45:06.000 | It's like, what are you going to do

00:45:07.000 | to the kids these days?

00:45:08.000 | You know, it's crazy.

00:45:09.000 | It's like, yeah.

00:45:10.000 | I mean, when he stops,

00:45:11.000 | when he stops smoking for 10 minutes,

00:45:13.000 | I'm like, wow, he must really be engaged

00:45:15.000 | in what's going on.

00:45:16.000 | Isn't that interesting?

00:45:17.000 | I mean, of course he can't stop the kid

00:45:18.000 | from smoking all day.

00:45:19.000 | Of course he was.

00:45:20.000 | This whole thing of like, what can you do?

00:45:23.000 | The kids saw a laptop at one point.

00:45:25.000 | I had to give them an iPhone.

00:45:26.000 | I digress.

00:45:30.000 | I digress.

00:45:31.000 | All right.

00:45:32.000 | What do we got next, Jesse?

00:45:33.000 | By the way, angry letters from that

00:45:35.000 | from parents should go to jesse@calnewport.com.

00:45:39.000 | That's where all your angry letters should go.

00:45:40.000 | I always get angry letters for this

00:45:41.000 | because parenting is impossible

00:45:43.000 | and it's more complicated than I say.

00:45:44.000 | But I feel like I'm a parent.

00:45:46.000 | So I'm a label to like rag on other parents

00:45:48.000 | and we all just get mad at each other.

00:45:49.000 | All right, let's move on.

00:45:51.000 | - All right, next question's from Austin.

00:45:53.000 | Hey, I've been going deep on Cal's work

00:45:56.000 | after reading deep work last year.

00:45:57.000 | I'm currently implementing changes and processes

00:45:59.000 | from digital minimalism and a world without an email

00:46:02.000 | and feel great.

00:46:03.000 | My question centers around sites like Goodreads,

00:46:06.000 | Letterboxd, or Last.fm.

00:46:09.000 | That collect data and help track media consumption

00:46:11.000 | while having a social dynamic.

00:46:13.000 | I love these sites as I find it useful

00:46:15.000 | to track books and movies.

00:46:16.000 | I may be interested in, but also because I'm a little obsessed

00:46:20.000 | with data and stats and that part of my life.

00:46:22.000 | I worry that I'm tying my interests like going deep on

00:46:26.000 | like reading, film, watching, and music

00:46:28.000 | too closely to technology in a way that feels inorganic

00:46:31.000 | at times.

00:46:32.000 | Is this a problem?

00:46:33.000 | - I recognize some of these sites.

00:46:36.000 | Goodreads, I know.

00:46:38.000 | Letterboxd, I know.

00:46:39.000 | That's like movie fans.

00:46:41.000 | Do you know Last.fm?

00:46:42.000 | - No, I don't.

00:46:43.000 | - I don't know what that is.

00:46:45.000 | I'm gonna load that up over here, actually.

00:46:47.000 | Let's see here.

00:46:49.000 | All right.

00:46:50.000 | Let's see, Last.

00:46:51.000 | I'm just curious.

00:46:52.000 | I just wanna make sure we're talking about

00:46:55.000 | the same things here.

00:46:57.000 | All right, I'm loading up Last.fm on my screen here.

00:47:01.000 | So for those who are watching the deeplife.com/listen

00:47:06.000 | episode 266, Last.fm, explore top music

00:47:10.000 | powered by your Scrabbles.

00:47:12.000 | Oh, dear Lord.

00:47:13.000 | All right, so I don't know what Scrabble is,

00:47:15.000 | but Last.fm looks to be like a music,

00:47:19.000 | social music site.

00:47:21.000 | Olivia Rodrigo, spiking tracks, all-time Scrabbles.

00:47:24.000 | I really hope that term doesn't catch on.

00:47:27.000 | Scrabbles.

00:47:29.000 | A live global counter showing the total number

00:47:31.000 | of tracks listened to in users since 2003.

00:47:34.000 | That's a big number.

00:47:35.000 | Okay.

00:47:37.000 | I don't mind.

00:47:38.000 | Here's my general take on it, Austin.

00:47:39.000 | Like, as I've written about in the pages

00:47:41.000 | of my New Yorker writing,

00:47:43.000 | I've talked about this a few times.

00:47:45.000 | I like, in general, indie internet.

00:47:49.000 | I like, in general, sort of indie social.

00:47:52.000 | Smaller sites, smaller communities,

00:47:55.000 | sites that aren't trying to aggregate everybody

00:47:59.000 | onto the same platform.

00:48:01.000 | This was my most recent New Yorker piece

00:48:03.000 | where I talked about threads and Twitter,

00:48:05.000 | and it was called, "Does the world need a new Twitter?"

00:48:08.000 | And the argument of that New Yorker piece

00:48:10.000 | was the very notion that it's important

00:48:12.000 | that we have a global conversation platform

00:48:16.000 | where everyone's on the same platform.

00:48:18.000 | That notion is flawed.

00:48:20.000 | That's never going to work well.

00:48:22.000 | Of course we're going to end up

00:48:23.000 | with a Lord of the Flies scenario,

00:48:24.000 | and it doesn't actually increase or solve

00:48:26.000 | any problems that anyone actually has.

00:48:27.000 | It's much better to have many more

00:48:29.000 | narrow niche bespoke places

00:48:32.000 | for people to gather to talk about particular interests.

00:48:34.000 | So in general, the idea of Blast.fm

00:48:36.000 | or Goodreads or Letterboxd, I'm okay with.

00:48:38.000 | Now I know those aren't truly indie social media.

00:48:42.000 | Goodreads is owned by Amazon.

00:48:43.000 | I mean, these have become relatively large services.

00:48:46.000 | But in general, I don't mind online communities

00:48:48.000 | that bring people together around particular interests,

00:48:51.000 | so long as you think that the benefits outweigh the harms.

00:48:55.000 | So Austin, when you do your zero-based technology budgeting,

00:48:58.000 | and if music is very important in your life,

00:49:01.000 | start from scratch.

00:49:02.000 | How do I want to invest,

00:49:05.000 | make technology investments in this thing I care about?

00:49:07.000 | And just reflect on your last .fm use in this case.

00:49:11.000 | And if it's given you a lot of benefits,

00:49:12.000 | find a way to put it in there with some neat fences.

00:49:15.000 | And if not, maybe like, actually, you know what?

00:49:17.000 | What I really like is this,

00:49:18.000 | maybe this Pitchfork newsletter

00:49:20.000 | that turns me on to new music,

00:49:22.000 | and this podcast I listen to,

00:49:23.000 | and I use Spotify to be able to sample a lot of songs

00:49:27.000 | and see if I like them,

00:49:28.000 | and that's the right technology portfolio.

00:49:29.000 | Then do that.

00:49:30.000 | Just be honest about,

00:49:31.000 | here's what I care about,

00:49:32.000 | what is a good package of technology to support this?

00:49:35.000 | And then just be happy with your answer there.

00:49:37.000 | Don't worry about what you're missing out.

00:49:39.000 | Same thing with Letterboxd.

00:49:40.000 | If it's really helping you discover and appreciate movies,

00:49:43.000 | then go with it.

00:49:44.000 | If it's not,

00:49:45.000 | maybe you just subscribe to a couple movie podcasts.

00:49:47.000 | Same thing with Goodreads.

00:49:48.000 | If it's helping you discover new books in a useful way,

00:49:52.000 | go with it.

00:49:53.000 | If it's not,

00:49:54.000 | you find yourself just obsessing about your stats

00:49:56.000 | and not getting much value,

00:49:57.000 | then don't go with it.

00:49:59.000 | So in general,

00:50:00.000 | I think it's an important time for me to do some clarification.

00:50:03.000 | I like the internet.

00:50:04.000 | I like the internet as a way of bringing together people

00:50:07.000 | who might not otherwise be able to find each other

00:50:10.000 | to gather around common interest or identity.

00:50:12.000 | I think that is a miraculous development that the internet gave us,

00:50:16.000 | and the right scale for that to exist is on small.

00:50:20.000 | Gathering to talk about movies is great.

00:50:22.000 | Gathering to talk about,

00:50:24.000 | so if we have a thousand people gathering to talk about movies,

00:50:26.000 | that's great.

00:50:27.000 | A billion people gathering to talk about everything

00:50:29.000 | on the same Twitter platform,

00:50:30.000 | that causes trouble.

00:50:32.000 | So just be honest about your use there, Austin,

00:50:33.000 | but I'm not going to be mad at you for using those.

00:50:35.000 | If it's giving you value,

00:50:37.000 | I think it's a good use of the internet.

00:50:40.000 | All right, what do we got next?

00:50:42.000 | - All right, next question's from Adam.

00:50:44.000 | "I'm 30 years old,

00:50:45.000 | "and I feel like I should have my life together by now.

00:50:49.000 | "I don't like my career,

00:50:50.000 | "I'm not healthy,

00:50:51.000 | "and I'm constantly stressed about money.

00:50:53.000 | "Do you have any advice or simple actions I can implement

00:50:55.000 | "in my life on a daily basis to make progress

00:50:57.000 | "and head in a positive direction?"

00:51:00.000 | - Well, so the reason why I included this question

00:51:02.000 | in today's episode,

00:51:03.000 | which is really about our relationship with technology,

00:51:06.000 | is that I'm making the guess

00:51:09.000 | that the first obstacle to clear

00:51:11.000 | on the path away from the shallows

00:51:14.000 | in which Adam is mired and towards a deeper life,

00:51:18.000 | the first obstacle to clear away here

00:51:20.000 | is probably a harmful relationship with technology.

00:51:24.000 | So for people of this age,

00:51:26.000 | you're in your 20s,

00:51:27.000 | you're in your 30s,

00:51:28.000 | and you feel stuck,

00:51:29.000 | often one of the things that is keeping you stuck

00:51:32.000 | is these tools,

00:51:34.000 | is what's coming in over your phone

00:51:35.000 | and what's coming in over your smart TV.

00:51:37.000 | The reason why it keeps it stuck

00:51:38.000 | is because these tools are optimized

00:51:40.000 | to scratch the itches that are core to our humanity.

00:51:45.000 | We wanna connect to other people.

00:51:47.000 | We wanna have efficacy.

00:51:48.000 | We wanna do things that are recognized.

00:51:50.000 | We wanna have standing in our community.

00:51:53.000 | We wanna be inspired by beauty and on craftsmanship.

00:51:58.000 | All of these are deep human instincts

00:52:00.000 | that are wired to push our lives

00:52:01.000 | in more productive, deeper directions.

00:52:03.000 | But there's apps on your phone and on your tablet

00:52:06.000 | and on your smart TV

00:52:07.000 | that can satisfy those urges just enough

00:52:11.000 | to keep you satisfied.

00:52:14.000 | Okay, I guess I'm okay.

00:52:15.000 | To keep you stuck in your status quo.

00:52:17.000 | You're texting and on social media enough

00:52:19.000 | that you feel like,

00:52:20.000 | "I'm not literally alone, I'm talking to people."

00:52:23.000 | So you consider that it's scratched.

00:52:25.000 | You're making progress in a video game

00:52:27.000 | and that's just enough of scratching that itch

00:52:29.000 | of, "I wanna make something of myself

00:52:30.000 | "and be recognized by my community,"

00:52:32.000 | that you're not forced to get up and do something.

00:52:34.000 | You're yelling at people on Twitter.

00:52:36.000 | You have a tribe on there.

00:52:38.000 | You know, we're yelling at the Libs

00:52:40.000 | or we're yelling at the MAGA crowd

00:52:41.000 | and that kind of scratches barely this itch

00:52:43.000 | of like, "I wanna be involved

00:52:44.000 | "in something bigger than me that matters."

00:52:47.000 | The itches are scratched just enough

00:52:48.000 | that you stay on the couch

00:52:50.000 | and you stay stressed

00:52:52.000 | and you stay like your life isn't put together

00:52:54.000 | and like nothing is happening.

00:52:55.000 | This is the danger of these tools

00:52:58.000 | is that they prevent us.

00:53:00.000 | They prevent us from getting fed up enough

00:53:02.000 | to actually make changes.

00:53:03.000 | So this is why I wanna say,

00:53:04.000 | "Let's start.

00:53:05.000 | "Let's start with re-evaluating

00:53:07.000 | "your relationship with technology."

00:53:09.000 | And this is where I want you to do something

00:53:10.000 | like we've been talking about,

00:53:12.000 | like zero-based technology budgeting.

00:53:15.000 | Get all this stuff out of your life.

00:53:17.000 | Take a 30-day break

00:53:18.000 | from all of these optional tools.

00:53:20.000 | No video games, no social media,

00:53:21.000 | no YouTube, no streaming.

00:53:23.000 | Spend those 30 days

00:53:24.000 | aggressively self-reflecting

00:53:25.000 | and experimenting with analog activities

00:53:27.000 | that are meaningful to you.

00:53:28.000 | Figure out what's going on with your life.

00:53:30.000 | Face and confront.

00:53:32.000 | This is Nietzsche looking into the abyss.

00:53:33.000 | What you're not happy about in your life.

00:53:36.000 | Why?

00:53:37.000 | And then move past this to self-author

00:53:39.000 | what you want your life to look like in five years

00:53:42.000 | so you have clarity about what you dislike now.

00:53:45.000 | You have clarity about what you would love

00:53:46.000 | in your life going forward.

00:53:48.000 | You have clarity through your experimentation

00:53:50.000 | of what really is important or meaningful to you,

00:53:53.000 | what you really enjoy and what you don't.

00:53:55.000 | And then rebuild your technological life from scratch.

00:53:59.000 | Everything has to earn its way in

00:54:00.000 | for a particular purpose.

00:54:02.000 | I care about this.

00:54:03.000 | What's the right way to use technology to do this?

00:54:05.000 | I care about that.

00:54:06.000 | What's the right way to use technology to do that?

00:54:08.000 | When you do the zero-based budgeting,

00:54:10.000 | most of this stuff that's gunking up your life, Adam,

00:54:13.000 | that's keeping you quiescent,

00:54:15.000 | that's keeping you just satisfied enough

00:54:17.000 | that you don't get off the couch,

00:54:18.000 | is going to be gone.

00:54:20.000 | If you recognize, "Hey, I'm 30.

00:54:22.000 | "I'm 30 and a man and I want to stand up

00:54:24.000 | "and be a useful member of society

00:54:26.000 | "and respected by my community."

00:54:27.000 | When you know that's really valuable to you

00:54:29.000 | and you know that there's some self-recrimination

00:54:31.000 | about you not doing that,

00:54:33.000 | and you're trying to build up from scratch,

00:54:34.000 | "Well, what technology can help me do that?"

00:54:36.000 | You're not going to answer if you're being honest,

00:54:38.000 | "Well, I just want to make it to the next level

00:54:41.000 | "in World of Warcraft or whatever."

00:54:45.000 | No, you're saying, "No, no, okay.

00:54:46.000 | "I need to actually do something here

00:54:48.000 | "that's going to be meaningful.

00:54:49.000 | "And where can technology help me?

00:54:50.000 | "Maybe it can help me find a group

00:54:52.000 | "and connect to a group where I can then go in real life

00:54:54.000 | "and join that group and make progress."

00:54:56.000 | So it's going to completely reinvent your relationship

00:54:58.000 | with technology.

00:54:59.000 | So instead of it keeping you pacified,

00:55:02.000 | it instead becomes a tool you deploy

00:55:05.000 | in the construction of a deeper life.

00:55:07.000 | All right, so once you've done that,

00:55:08.000 | once you've cleared out the technological pacification,

00:55:13.000 | now we can work our way

00:55:15.000 | through what I call the deep life stack.

00:55:17.000 | You can work your way through the layers

00:55:19.000 | of the deep life stack on your way towards a deeper life.

00:55:22.000 | We talk about this a lot, so I'll move quickly,

00:55:24.000 | but you would start then with habits and discipline.

00:55:27.000 | So pick a couple areas of your life

00:55:29.000 | you've identified as being important

00:55:30.000 | and have a daily discipline that you follow,

00:55:32.000 | a habit you follow every day.

00:55:34.000 | It should be tractable but non-trivial.

00:55:38.000 | This is all about just telling yourself the story

00:55:41.000 | of I can do things that are important

00:55:43.000 | even if I don't have to.

00:55:45.000 | I can make progress on parts of my life I care about

00:55:47.000 | because I think it's important in the long term

00:55:49.000 | even though I don't want to do it in the short term.

00:55:53.000 | As part of that discipline stack,

00:55:54.000 | also start tracking in a central place.

00:55:57.000 | Here's the systems and habits and disciplines I follow.

00:55:59.000 | That thing is going to grow.

00:56:00.000 | That document will grow

00:56:01.000 | as you make your way through the stack.

00:56:03.000 | Then you move up to the values layer of the stack.

00:56:05.000 | Now you really clarify and codify what you learned

00:56:08.000 | during your technology zero-based budgeting exercise.

00:56:11.000 | What am I all about?

00:56:13.000 | You need to have a code.

00:56:14.000 | This is what I'm about.

00:56:16.000 | And this code is not just here's things I care about.

00:56:18.000 | It has to be a psychological/philosophical game plan,

00:56:23.000 | not just for how do I excel,

00:56:24.000 | but how do I make it through the hard parts?

00:56:27.000 | What's important to me

00:56:28.000 | and what's going to pull me forward

00:56:30.000 | through the parts that are really hard,

00:56:31.000 | especially early on when I feel like nothing's going right.

00:56:34.000 | And the code should tell you,

00:56:35.000 | what am I going to do when things are going really well

00:56:37.000 | and how am I going to live up to that?

00:56:40.000 | You want to have your first draft of this code.

00:56:42.000 | If you're from a religious background,

00:56:44.000 | you're going to find a lot of useful work there.

00:56:46.000 | If you're not,

00:56:47.000 | you can find a lot of good useful work in philosophy.

00:56:50.000 | But you want to be really clear

00:56:51.000 | about what you're writing down here

00:56:52.000 | and don't worry about getting it right.

00:56:53.000 | That can evolve.

00:56:55.000 | Then you move your way up to the control layer of the stack.

00:56:57.000 | It is now and only now, Adam,

00:56:58.000 | that you start to get organized,

00:57:00.000 | get the messy parts of your life together,

00:57:02.000 | get your finances in order,

00:57:04.000 | get your fitness in order,

00:57:05.000 | get your productivity systems running

00:57:07.000 | so you're not just all over the place,

00:57:09.000 | get your act together and work,

00:57:11.000 | build up that career capital

00:57:13.000 | so people start seeing you, Adam,

00:57:15.000 | as this guy gets it done.

00:57:16.000 | And he does it when he says he's going to do it

00:57:18.000 | and he does it at a high level.

00:57:19.000 | And why do you do that?

00:57:20.000 | Because that's going to give you leverage

00:57:23.000 | to start shaping your career towards what matters to you.

00:57:26.000 | But remember, we're not getting our act together.

00:57:28.000 | We're four steps in here.

00:57:30.000 | We've already started clearing out

00:57:32.000 | the technological pacification.

00:57:34.000 | We've done discipline.

00:57:35.000 | We've done values.

00:57:37.000 | And only now do we have the foundation

00:57:39.000 | we need to actually power through

00:57:41.000 | the difficulty of organizing our lives.

00:57:43.000 | And then you get to the final layer of the deep life stack

00:57:46.000 | is where you're going to have vision

00:57:48.000 | and you begin planning

00:57:50.000 | to make your life more remarkable.

00:57:52.000 | And the first time you go through this,

00:57:53.000 | you'll choose one area of your life

00:57:54.000 | and say, "How am I going to make that area of my life

00:57:56.000 | more remarkable?"

00:57:57.000 | And maybe it's a professional thing

00:57:59.000 | or maybe it's a fitness thing.

00:58:01.000 | I'm going to become incredible shape

00:58:03.000 | and become a, I don't know, Cameron Haynes style

00:58:08.000 | deep back country bow elk hunter

00:58:11.000 | that's going to require me to train marathons daily

00:58:13.000 | or whatever it is.

00:58:15.000 | Maybe it's an intellectual pursuit.

00:58:17.000 | You're going to take one part of your life

00:58:19.000 | and make it remarkable.

00:58:21.000 | And this is going to take you about a year

00:58:23.000 | and you're going to be so much better at this point, Adam.

00:58:25.000 | And then you just keep revisiting this.

00:58:27.000 | Hey, as technology creep back into my life

00:58:29.000 | in an unhealthy way,

00:58:31.000 | let me re-clarify in zero-based budget,

00:58:33.000 | work your way up the stack.

00:58:34.000 | Do that once a year.

00:58:35.000 | Adam, you're like a year away from your life

00:58:36.000 | being a lot better.

00:58:37.000 | You're five years away from your life

00:58:38.000 | being something that people remark about.

00:58:41.000 | I have complete faith in that.

00:58:43.000 | But this is the new thing I'm adding now

00:58:45.000 | because I've realized this listening to you, my listeners.

00:58:48.000 | You have to think about the technology use

00:58:50.000 | like the same way you would think about

00:58:52.000 | perhaps an alcohol or drug problem

00:58:54.000 | if you were pursuing a deep life.

00:58:56.000 | Until you solve that,

00:58:58.000 | you're going to have a lot of trouble

00:59:00.000 | with all the other things.

00:59:01.000 | So you want to start with getting that technology monkey

00:59:03.000 | off your back and then we can work our way

00:59:05.000 | through the deep life stack.

00:59:07.000 | All right.

00:59:10.000 | I think we have time for one more question, Jesse.

00:59:11.000 | - Yeah.

00:59:12.000 | We got one more question from Julie.

00:59:14.000 | How can I stay on top of current events

00:59:16.000 | while still living deep?

00:59:17.000 | It's so easy to get sucked into social media scrolling,

00:59:20.000 | but what about the news?

00:59:22.000 | - Well, Julie, I'm assuming

00:59:25.000 | you're not a network television news director.

00:59:30.000 | You're not someone who is sitting backstage

00:59:34.000 | at the NBC nightly news

00:59:36.000 | panning cameras and telling producers

00:59:39.000 | to go after stories.

00:59:40.000 | You're not a news director.

00:59:42.000 | So you can chill out about the news.

00:59:44.000 | You don't need to know everything that's going on.

00:59:47.000 | You're not even really learning everything

00:59:48.000 | that's going on in social media.

00:59:49.000 | You're getting a bunch of takes

00:59:50.000 | on things that are going on.

00:59:52.000 | So my first thing I'm going to say

00:59:53.000 | is just chill out about feeling like

00:59:55.000 | you have to be up on everything.

00:59:57.000 | You're not a news director.

00:59:59.000 | So what should you do instead?

01:00:00.000 | Just have a much more minimalist

01:00:01.000 | news consumption ritual.

01:00:04.000 | Take a weekly newspaper or even easier,

01:00:06.000 | go to Starbucks on Sunday.

01:00:09.000 | They sell the newspapers there,

01:00:10.000 | buy the Sunday paper, read it for an hour.

01:00:12.000 | That alone, you will be just as informed

01:00:14.000 | as you are now with a lot less stress.

01:00:17.000 | If you don't want to do that,

01:00:19.000 | there are news digest emails

01:00:22.000 | that you can get from newspapers

01:00:24.000 | with a digital subscription.

01:00:25.000 | There's news roundup podcasts

01:00:27.000 | that are both daily and weekly.

01:00:29.000 | Listen to some of those.

01:00:31.000 | Put on NPR when you commute to work

01:00:34.000 | and listen to Morning Edition.

01:00:36.000 | There's a major story going on.

01:00:38.000 | There's an earthquake somewhere.

01:00:39.000 | Something's on fire.

01:00:40.000 | They'll tell you about it.

01:00:41.000 | And that's enough.

01:00:42.000 | And you know enough.

01:00:44.000 | Now, I know this might sound radical,

01:00:46.000 | but let me tell you, if we go back,

01:00:48.000 | what's this, if we go back about 10 years,

01:00:50.000 | let me tell you who did adopt this approach

01:00:53.000 | to news consumption.

01:00:55.000 | Everybody, everywhere.

01:00:57.000 | Because it was the only way to do it.

01:00:58.000 | There wasn't social media.

01:00:59.000 | And you know what? People were fine.

01:01:00.000 | This idea that in 2009,

01:01:03.000 | people just stumbled around blindly,

01:01:06.000 | like, I don't know what's going on.

01:01:07.000 | Like, who's the president? Really?

01:01:09.000 | That guy? All right. I mean, okay.

01:01:11.000 | What's going on? Yeah.

01:01:12.000 | There's who died? Okay.

01:01:14.000 | Hey, I didn't know.

01:01:15.000 | There was no place I could go

01:01:18.000 | where strangers were yelling at each other

01:01:20.000 | about the news.

01:01:21.000 | So how would I possibly know

01:01:22.000 | what was going on in the world?

01:01:23.000 | Somehow people knew what was going on

01:01:25.000 | in the world 10 years ago,

01:01:27.000 | even without social media services

01:01:29.000 | they could look at all the time.

01:01:30.000 | So just go back and tap into that 2009,

01:01:33.000 | 2008 version of yourself.

01:01:34.000 | You'll be perfectly informed.

01:01:36.000 | But I'm glad you bring it up, Julie,

01:01:37.000 | because this is one of the last traps.

01:01:39.000 | I think people that have a pretty good

01:01:41.000 | relationship with technology,

01:01:42.000 | one of the last traps that still snags them

01:01:44.000 | is this news thing.

01:01:45.000 | It really is.

01:01:47.000 | I think it's a storyline

01:01:48.000 | of these services themselves.

01:01:50.000 | You've got to be connected.

01:01:51.000 | You've got to know what's going on.

01:01:52.000 | This is where everything's happening.

01:01:54.000 | It's not.

01:01:55.000 | There's plenty of ways to get enough news

01:01:58.000 | without having to be staring

01:02:00.000 | at your phone all day.

01:02:02.000 | All right. I think that's pretty good.

01:02:04.000 | Good questions.

01:02:06.000 | So I want to move on here in a second

01:02:08.000 | to our final segment.

01:02:10.000 | I have a cool topic that

01:02:11.000 | a special guest is going to join me

01:02:13.000 | to help me talk about.

01:02:15.000 | First, however, I want to mention

01:02:16.000 | another one of the sponsors

01:02:17.000 | that makes the show possible.

01:02:19.000 | And that is our friends at Ladder.

01:02:22.000 | L-A-D-D-E-R.

01:02:25.000 | You probably, if you have a family

01:02:28.000 | or anyone who depends on you,

01:02:30.000 | you probably need more life insurance.

01:02:32.000 | It's the type of thing that,

01:02:33.000 | especially of a certain age,

01:02:34.000 | you begin to realize,

01:02:35.000 | oh, I need more life insurance

01:02:37.000 | to whatever small thing

01:02:38.000 | my employer offers.

01:02:40.000 | But you're procrastinating.

01:02:41.000 | And why are you procrastinating?

01:02:42.000 | Because it feels like

01:02:43.000 | a complicated thing.

01:02:44.000 | How do you get insurance?

01:02:46.000 | Do you get that guy

01:02:47.000 | who wears the red shirt

01:02:49.000 | in the TV commercials

01:02:50.000 | and the YouTube ad commercials?

01:02:51.000 | Does he come over?

01:02:52.000 | Like, how do you find that guy?

01:02:54.000 | Does he, like, give you

01:02:55.000 | a bag of insurance?

01:02:56.000 | We just don't know.

01:02:57.000 | We just, there's,

01:02:58.000 | insurance commercials are these

01:02:59.000 | incredibly vague things on TV

01:03:00.000 | where it's like funny people

01:03:02.000 | and you're like, well,

01:03:03.000 | I don't even know what this means.

01:03:04.000 | So we put it off.

01:03:05.000 | So I'm going to tell you

01:03:06.000 | how to get the life insurance you need

01:03:07.000 | much more simply than hoping

01:03:09.000 | that red shirt guy comes by.

01:03:10.000 | And that is to use Ladder.

01:03:13.000 | Ladder is 100% digital.

01:03:16.000 | There are no doctors, needles,

01:03:17.000 | or paperwork involved

01:03:18.000 | if you're applying

01:03:19.000 | for $3 million in coverage or less.

01:03:21.000 | You just answer a few questions

01:03:22.000 | about your health

01:03:23.000 | in an application.

01:03:24.000 | You need just a few minutes

01:03:25.000 | on a phone or laptop to apply.

01:03:27.000 | Their smart algorithms

01:03:28.000 | work in real time.

01:03:29.000 | So you'll find out instantly

01:03:31.000 | if you are approved.

01:03:33.000 | Ladder works with insurers

01:03:34.000 | that have long proven histories

01:03:36.000 | of paying claims.

01:03:38.000 | These are insurers

01:03:39.000 | that are rated A and A+

01:03:40.000 | by A and Best.

01:03:41.000 | So you can trust the insurers

01:03:43.000 | that you end up working with.

01:03:46.000 | So go to ladderlife.com/deep today

01:03:51.000 | to see if you are instantly approved.

01:03:53.000 | That's LADDERlife.com/deep

01:03:59.000 | ladderlife.com/deep

01:04:02.000 | I also want to talk about

01:04:04.000 | My Body Tutor,

01:04:07.000 | which is run by my long time friend

01:04:08.000 | Adam Gilbert.

01:04:10.000 | My Body Tutor is a 100%

01:04:12.000 | online coaching program

01:04:13.000 | that solves the biggest problem

01:04:14.000 | in health and fitness,

01:04:15.000 | which is lack of consistency.

01:04:18.000 | They do this by simplifying

01:04:20.000 | the process into practical,

01:04:21.000 | sustainable behaviors.

01:04:23.000 | Here's how it works.

01:04:24.000 | When you sign up with My Body Tutor,

01:04:25.000 | you are assigned a coach.

01:04:27.000 | This coach works with you directly

01:04:29.000 | to figure out your nutrition plan

01:04:31.000 | and your fitness plan.

01:04:33.000 | Here is your exact workouts

01:04:34.000 | and when you're going to do them.

01:04:35.000 | Here's what you're going to do with food.

01:04:37.000 | And then you check in with this coach

01:04:39.000 | every single day online.

01:04:41.000 | They have a simple app.

01:04:42.000 | You tap a couple things or submit.

01:04:44.000 | You can also do it on the web

01:04:45.000 | and you get feedback from your coach

01:04:46.000 | every day.

01:04:48.000 | So not only do you figure out

01:04:49.000 | what you should be doing,

01:04:50.000 | you get daily accountability

01:04:52.000 | on actually doing the work.

01:04:53.000 | Knowing that a coach with which

01:04:55.000 | you have a relationship

01:04:56.000 | will know whether or not

01:04:57.000 | you did your workout today,

01:04:59.000 | will know whether or not

01:05:00.000 | you followed the nutrition plan

01:05:01.000 | is incredibly effective and motivating.

01:05:03.000 | This is why My Body Tutor clients

01:05:06.000 | rave about it.

01:05:08.000 | It gets results.

01:05:09.000 | So if you're serious about getting fit,

01:05:11.000 | Adam is giving Deep Questions listeners

01:05:13.000 | $50 off their first month.

01:05:16.000 | All you have to do is mention

01:05:17.000 | this podcast when you join.

01:05:19.000 | If you have questions,

01:05:20.000 | Adam wants you to call or text.

01:05:21.000 | You can find his personal cell phone number

01:05:23.000 | at the top of every page

01:05:24.000 | on MyBodyTutor.com

01:05:26.000 | so you know he's serious

01:05:27.000 | about getting you results.

01:05:28.000 | So go to MyBodyTutor,

01:05:29.000 | T-U-T-O-R.com

01:05:31.000 | and mention Deep Questions

01:05:32.000 | to get $50 off.

01:05:35.000 | All right, Jesse,

01:05:36.000 | well, we're moving now

01:05:37.000 | to our final segment.

01:05:38.000 | As longtime listeners know,

01:05:40.000 | in our final segment,

01:05:41.000 | we typically go

01:05:42.000 | in a different direction

01:05:44.000 | than the rest of the episode.

01:05:46.000 | And in particular,

01:05:47.000 | there's a topic that

01:05:49.000 | a lot of listeners

01:05:51.000 | have been sending me articles about

01:05:53.000 | recently, so I figured

01:05:54.000 | we should tackle this.

01:05:55.000 | And this is this notion

01:05:56.000 | of the friendship recession.

01:06:00.000 | Are we in a friendship recession?

01:06:04.000 | If so, is it a problem?

01:06:05.000 | And if it's a problem,

01:06:06.000 | what's the right way to solve it?

01:06:08.000 | What's the right way

01:06:09.000 | to build from scratch

01:06:11.000 | a robust series of friendships

01:06:13.000 | in your life?

01:06:14.000 | This seems really tightly connected

01:06:16.000 | to our broader vision

01:06:17.000 | and living a deeper life

01:06:18.000 | in a distracted world,

01:06:19.000 | especially in a world

01:06:20.000 | where we have these social apps

01:06:21.000 | and text messaging tools

01:06:23.000 | that give us the illusion

01:06:24.000 | of being connected to people,

01:06:26.000 | but don't trick our brain

01:06:27.000 | into thinking that we're actually

01:06:28.000 | being social.

01:06:29.000 | Real friends matter now

01:06:30.000 | than they ever have before.

01:06:32.000 | So in order to talk about this,

01:06:33.000 | I'm going to bring on

01:06:34.000 | a special guest.

01:06:35.000 | That's a longtime friend of mine

01:06:37.000 | and a longtime friend of the show.

01:06:39.000 | It's a comedian and podcaster,

01:06:41.000 | Jamie Kilstein.

01:06:42.000 | I'm bringing him on

01:06:43.000 | because he recently went

01:06:44.000 | through a process

01:06:45.000 | of building up

01:06:46.000 | a robust group of male friendships

01:06:49.000 | in his 40s,

01:06:50.000 | so I figured he would have a lot

01:06:52.000 | to teach us about what worked

01:06:54.000 | and what didn't.

01:06:56.000 | So let's get Jamie on the line now

01:06:58.000 | to talk about the friendship recession.

01:07:00.000 | Jamie, I brought you on

01:07:01.000 | because we were actually

01:07:02.000 | just talking about this topic offline,

01:07:04.000 | and I was thinking,

01:07:05.000 | "Wait a second. Save it.

01:07:07.000 | Let's do this in public,"

01:07:09.000 | because I guess that's

01:07:10.000 | what we do these days.

01:07:11.000 | Everything is in public.

01:07:12.000 | So anyways, thanks for coming on

01:07:13.000 | and helping me figure out this topic.

01:07:15.000 | Now, is that term, though,

01:07:16.000 | "friendship recession,"

01:07:17.000 | is that one you had heard,

01:07:18.000 | or is that just us being geeky?

01:07:22.000 | Yeah, I was going to say,

01:07:23.000 | I haven't heard it

01:07:24.000 | because I have friends

01:07:25.000 | that I'm hanging out with

01:07:26.000 | and not reading your dorky newspapers.

01:07:28.000 | No, it makes--

01:07:31.000 | It's something that--

01:07:32.000 | I haven't heard that term,

01:07:34.000 | but when you said it,

01:07:35.000 | it hit me so hard in my heart

01:07:38.000 | that I was like, "Oh, yeah."

01:07:39.000 | That--I mean, I think about--

01:07:41.000 | It just automatically made me think

01:07:43.000 | about the years I was just drowning

01:07:46.000 | and didn't even think about

01:07:48.000 | the fact that I had, like,

01:07:50.000 | no male friends

01:07:51.000 | and that I was just trying to fill

01:07:54.000 | the void with everything else,

01:07:56.000 | you know, girls, career,

01:07:57.000 | you know, whatever.

01:07:59.000 | And, yeah, so, I mean,

01:08:01.000 | it makes total sense.

01:08:03.000 | But I also think there are

01:08:04.000 | some easy fixes we can get into.

01:08:06.000 | But, yeah, I'm here for it.

01:08:07.000 | And I'm also glad you introduced me

01:08:08.000 | as your friend

01:08:09.000 | because that would have been

01:08:10.000 | a real sad turn to this segment.

01:08:13.000 | Or just my only friend?

01:08:15.000 | Maybe that would have set

01:08:16.000 | the segment up better.

01:08:18.000 | Although, dude,

01:08:19.000 | I do feel like podcasters--

01:08:20.000 | I don't want to get too esoteric,

01:08:23.000 | but I do feel like we make our friends--

01:08:25.000 | I mean, this will tie into, actually,

01:08:27.000 | social--I mean, I think a lot of people

01:08:28.000 | have convinced themselves that

01:08:30.000 | if they talk to a lot of people

01:08:31.000 | on Twitter or social media

01:08:33.000 | that they're actual friends.

01:08:35.000 | And it's like--

01:08:36.000 | or, I mean, even, like,

01:08:37.000 | girls on OnlyFans.

01:08:38.000 | And it's like, no,

01:08:40.000 | that is not a real connection.

01:08:41.000 | It's artificial.

01:08:42.000 | And even for us, for podcasters,

01:08:44.000 | you know, I consider guys friends

01:08:47.000 | and then I realize

01:08:48.000 | I've just podcasted with them.

01:08:50.000 | Right.

01:08:52.000 | Frequent guest on your podcast

01:08:54.000 | does not equate to a male--

01:08:57.000 | male friendship.

01:08:58.000 | But I've been on your show,

01:08:59.000 | like, four times.

01:09:00.000 | Like, come on, we're best friends.

01:09:01.000 | Let me show you--

01:09:02.000 | I'll show you--

01:09:03.000 | let me show you the actual article

01:09:05.000 | that coined this term.

01:09:06.000 | We'll look at a couple of the claims here

01:09:09.000 | and see if we're all on the same page.

01:09:11.000 | All right, so as far as I can tell,

01:09:12.000 | this Daniel Cox article

01:09:14.000 | from a couple years ago

01:09:16.000 | from the National Review

01:09:17.000 | is where the term

01:09:18.000 | "friendship recession" was introduced.

01:09:20.000 | It was then supercharged

01:09:21.000 | by Richard Reeves

01:09:23.000 | doing a Big Think interview

01:09:24.000 | more recently,

01:09:25.000 | but I think this was

01:09:26.000 | the original source.

01:09:27.000 | It just didn't spread as much back then.

01:09:28.000 | I guess we were still

01:09:29.000 | thinking about pandemics and such.

01:09:31.000 | So here's a couple quotes

01:09:32.000 | from this article

01:09:33.000 | just to put us on the same page.

01:09:35.000 | "As Americans try to rebuild and reconnect,

01:09:38.000 | a new survey conducted

01:09:39.000 | by the Survey Center on American Life

01:09:41.000 | finds that the social landscape

01:09:42.000 | is far less favorable than it once was.

01:09:45.000 | Over the past three decades,

01:09:46.000 | the number of close friends

01:09:47.000 | Americans have has plummeted.

01:09:50.000 | This 'friendship recession'--

01:09:52.000 | first use of that term in print, I believe--

01:09:54.000 | is particularly bad for men.

01:09:56.000 | The percentage of men

01:09:57.000 | with at least six close friends

01:09:58.000 | fell by half since 1990,

01:10:01.000 | from 55% to 27%.

01:10:03.000 | The study also found

01:10:04.000 | the percentage of men

01:10:05.000 | without any close friends

01:10:06.000 | jumped from 3% to 15%,

01:10:08.000 | a five-fold increase.

01:10:10.000 | Single men have fared worse."

01:10:13.000 | I also heard the author, Richard Reeves,

01:10:15.000 | when he was talking about this

01:10:16.000 | more recently,

01:10:17.000 | cite a study that said

01:10:19.000 | "loneliness is equivalent,

01:10:20.000 | from a health perspective,

01:10:22.000 | to smoking 15 cigarettes a day."

01:10:25.000 | All right, so we got a couple things--

01:10:26.000 | - When you smoke a cigarette,

01:10:28.000 | you look cool.

01:10:29.000 | When you're just lonely,

01:10:30.000 | what a bummer.

01:10:31.000 | - Well, and also,

01:10:32.000 | you're gonna get friends

01:10:33.000 | if you smoke cigarettes,

01:10:34.000 | because everyone's gonna think you're awesome.

01:10:36.000 | - Guys, what we're trying to say is,

01:10:37.000 | go smoke cigarettes.

01:10:38.000 | What are you doing?

01:10:39.000 | Well, this is our podcast.

01:10:41.000 | Yeah, man, that, uh--

01:10:44.000 | You know, I mean, jeez,

01:10:45.000 | I'm even thinking about--

01:10:47.000 | I think I have really healthy

01:10:49.000 | male friendships now

01:10:50.000 | for the first time in my life.

01:10:51.000 | It's helped me a lot.

01:10:52.000 | But as you were reading that,

01:10:54.000 | I started to think, like,

01:10:56.000 | how rare it is.

01:10:57.000 | So, like, my brother

01:10:59.000 | is still friends with, like,

01:11:00.000 | his best friends from high school.

01:11:02.000 | And my reaction to that is like,

01:11:04.000 | "What's wrong with you guys?"

01:11:05.000 | When that probably is like,

01:11:07.000 | "It's so healthy.

01:11:09.000 | It's so good."

01:11:10.000 | And yeah, how that ties into loneliness,

01:11:12.000 | I really think that

01:11:15.000 | a huge part of it is

01:11:17.000 | we are getting these

01:11:20.000 | false senses of friendship

01:11:22.000 | from the internet.

01:11:23.000 | You know, "Oh, me and all these people

01:11:25.000 | are mad at Ted Cruz on Twitter.

01:11:27.000 | That's my posse," right?

01:11:29.000 | Or, again, I mean, OnlyFans--

01:11:30.000 | Like, I've never--

01:11:32.000 | I have girlfriends who have OnlyFan pages.

01:11:34.000 | I've never talked to them about it.

01:11:35.000 | But I've never subscribed.

01:11:38.000 | But apparently, it is, uh--

01:11:41.000 | You know, you're talking

01:11:43.000 | back and forth to them

01:11:44.000 | like you're in a relationship

01:11:46.000 | or like you're, you know, whatever.

01:11:48.000 | And so if you're already lonely

01:11:50.000 | and nervous about the real world

01:11:52.000 | or nervous to date or whatever,

01:11:54.000 | and then you just have these tools,

01:11:55.000 | like, "Hey, here's a sense of it,"

01:11:58.000 | I can just see how that would just, like,

01:12:00.000 | spiral into utter despair.

01:12:02.000 | Right, right.

01:12:03.000 | There's a technological element

01:12:05.000 | also explaining this.

01:12:06.000 | I cited some of these studies

01:12:08.000 | in my book "Digital Minimalism."

01:12:10.000 | At the time, they seemed paradoxical,

01:12:12.000 | but these studies that showed

01:12:13.000 | when social media use went up,

01:12:15.000 | so did loneliness.

01:12:17.000 | And then the social psychologists

01:12:18.000 | followed up and said,

01:12:19.000 | "What's going on here?"

01:12:20.000 | And they introduced this term

01:12:21.000 | "social snacking," where they said,

01:12:23.000 | "As you use social media more,

01:12:25.000 | "you convince yourself that you're getting

01:12:26.000 | "your daily dose of social interaction,

01:12:29.000 | "so you do less of the analog

01:12:31.000 | "social interaction,

01:12:32.000 | "but our brain does not recognize

01:12:34.000 | "digital interaction,

01:12:35.000 | "especially just text-based interaction,

01:12:37.000 | "like on a text message screen

01:12:39.000 | "or leaving comments on Instagram."

01:12:41.000 | Our brain doesn't recognize that as interacting.

01:12:43.000 | So you think you're social.

01:12:45.000 | Deeper in your brain, they're saying,

01:12:46.000 | "We haven't interacted with a human in weeks,"

01:12:48.000 | and you feel sort of paradoxically lonely.

01:12:50.000 | So technology, it made this worse

01:12:53.000 | is what it sounds like.

01:12:54.000 | - Yeah.

01:12:55.000 | Well, I mean, you eat two buckets

01:12:57.000 | of KFC chicken, and you're like,

01:12:59.000 | "All right, I'm really full and feel sick,

01:13:01.000 | "and I guess I got my protein intake,"

01:13:03.000 | but it's just like,

01:13:04.000 | are you actually getting, like, substance?

01:13:08.000 | That's why when friends of mine,

01:13:10.000 | or me even, were really poor and younger,

01:13:14.000 | you just eat a bunch of fast food

01:13:16.000 | because you're like, "Well, this is cheap,

01:13:17.000 | "and I'm getting so much,"

01:13:19.000 | and it's like, "Yeah, but you're not.

01:13:20.000 | "You're getting so much, like,

01:13:22.000 | "you're getting all these empty calories.

01:13:24.000 | "You're not getting real nutrition,"

01:13:26.000 | and so really similar.

01:13:28.000 | - Now, let me, before we get to,

01:13:29.000 | I wanna get to the specifics of your transformation,

01:13:31.000 | because it's very interesting to me,

01:13:33.000 | your friend transformation,

01:13:34.000 | but just because you're more in touch

01:13:36.000 | with the culture around us than I am

01:13:39.000 | because I'm married with a bunch of kids

01:13:41.000 | and I'm too busy and don't know what's going on

01:13:43.000 | and I'm a nerd.

01:13:44.000 | - That was Kyle's nice way of being like,

01:13:46.000 | "You're sad and don't have a family."

01:13:51.000 | - Yeah, so when it comes to sad family-less people,

01:13:54.000 | I think the number one person, yeah,

01:13:58.000 | you and Jennifer Aniston.

01:14:00.000 | Like, these are the two.

01:14:02.000 | No, but when you just look around,

01:14:04.000 | you're out in the world more than I am.

01:14:06.000 | Do you buy that this is worse in general?

01:14:09.000 | Like, when you're talking to other men,

01:14:10.000 | when you see other men, you know,

01:14:12.000 | in your social circles, are people,

01:14:15.000 | are you seeing this?

01:14:16.000 | Are people lonely?

01:14:17.000 | Are people talking about it?

01:14:18.000 | What's the word from the street, Jamie?

01:14:20.000 | - Yeah, men are desperate for connection.

01:14:23.000 | And it is, you know, it's hard, man.

01:14:27.000 | It's weird.

01:14:28.000 | Because it's hard enough to find a girlfriend,

01:14:32.000 | to find someone to date, to ask someone out,

01:14:35.000 | let alone you're kind of doing the same thing,

01:14:38.000 | but like with a dude, you know what I mean?

01:14:41.000 | Like, I even noticed that,

01:14:43.000 | and I'm sure the guys listening to this

01:14:44.000 | can like cop to this, is I remember,

01:14:48.000 | I just became really good friends with my trainer,

01:14:52.000 | the dude who trains me at the gym.

01:14:54.000 | And, you know, I would come home

01:14:58.000 | and I would like light up to my girlfriend about him,

01:15:02.000 | just like you would when you met a girl.

01:15:04.000 | I was like, oh my God, Trev is like,

01:15:06.000 | he's so sweet and like, he's like really pushing me harder.

01:15:09.000 | I felt like I like, I PR today.

01:15:11.000 | And then we got in the sauna and like, man,

01:15:12.000 | we were talking about like spirituality.

01:15:14.000 | And suddenly like, as I'm describing him,

01:15:16.000 | I'm like, oh, this is how I would describe,

01:15:18.000 | oh my God, I just met this girl.

01:15:19.000 | She's so cute.

01:15:20.000 | Like we vibe on the same things.

01:15:21.000 | We have the same goals, blah, blah, blah.

01:15:23.000 | And, but it takes a little bit of like security, you know?

01:15:31.000 | I mean, Cal, when we grew up, everything was called gay.

01:15:36.000 | It's like, oh, you're showing emotion.

01:15:38.000 | Oh, you're, you know, in touch with your feelings.

01:15:41.000 | Like, oh, you're hanging out with that.

01:15:42.000 | And so like, I really do think there's this weird part in men

01:15:48.000 | where it's like, we want so desperately that male connection.

01:15:52.000 | Jiu-Jitsu is so popular.

01:15:54.000 | You know, we've gone from handshakes to like bro hug,

01:15:58.000 | but like full hug is only for like really good.

01:16:00.000 | Like there is, we crave that camaraderie,

01:16:04.000 | but it's also like, we don't want to be weird.

01:16:07.000 | Especially as you get older.

01:16:09.000 | I mean, making friends in general is super hard.

01:16:13.000 | - What, I mean, do you think something has changed about that?

01:16:17.000 | So in other words, in 1990, that was the end point of that article.

01:16:20.000 | That like in 1990 compared to now,

01:16:22.000 | there's been this five fold increase in not having close friends, et cetera.

01:16:26.000 | Was there, I mean, there must be a pathway to male friendships

01:16:32.000 | that existed then that doesn't now.

01:16:33.000 | Because of course it's not that in 1990,

01:16:35.000 | we were much more comfortable expressing feelings.

01:16:38.000 | That's when we grew up, right?

01:16:39.000 | As you were saying, this was where, yeah.

01:16:42.000 | If you were in touch with your feelings, that was gay.

01:16:44.000 | But if you used a phrase, you're in touch with your feelings,

01:16:46.000 | that too is gay.

01:16:47.000 | And so it all sort of recursively piled up on itself.

01:16:49.000 | So what was it I wonder?

01:16:51.000 | There must've been, maybe it's just the role of work.

01:16:54.000 | Maybe it was more stability and location.

01:16:56.000 | You didn't move so much.

01:16:57.000 | Maybe it was church.

01:16:58.000 | Maybe it was family earlier.

01:17:00.000 | There's gotta be something that was a cheat code for male friendships.

01:17:04.000 | And when that was removed,

01:17:05.000 | it was suddenly to use a metaphor from our childhood,

01:17:08.000 | you couldn't beat the boss in Contra

01:17:10.000 | because you no longer had the super gun or whatever.

01:17:13.000 | I don't really know what that would be.

01:17:14.000 | I don't know if you have any thoughts about 1990 versus now.

01:17:17.000 | No.

01:17:18.000 | So I think that it definitely has to do with the internet

01:17:21.000 | and it just has to do with like less social gatherings in general.

01:17:24.000 | So I was always a girlfriend guy.

01:17:28.000 | I believe the term is codependent.

01:17:30.000 | And I would always just, my relationship was everything.

01:17:33.000 | And when I broke up,

01:17:34.000 | that's why this breakup going through now is super weird.

01:17:37.000 | And actually I'm leaning on male friendships for the first time

01:17:40.000 | because usually I lose a girlfriend and I go,

01:17:43.000 | "I gotta go to the next girlfriend."

01:17:45.000 | Like that's the only option for connection.

01:17:48.000 | And so I think like if you look at 1990,

01:17:51.000 | there were just more gatherings.

01:17:54.000 | More people went to church.

01:17:55.000 | If you were a liberal, you were unions.

01:17:59.000 | You weren't working from home as much.

01:18:01.000 | Yeah, you went to an office.

01:18:02.000 | You went to an office every day.

01:18:04.000 | The last time I had friends was like my football team in high school.

01:18:07.000 | And I've been like getting out of shape.

01:18:09.000 | It's like go to a gym, join a CrossFit, do Jiu-Jitsu.

01:18:13.000 | I mean, if I didn't do Jiu-Jitsu, I'd probably still have zero male friends.

01:18:17.000 | That was the thing for me.

01:18:19.000 | So you do something cool and challenging with guys who, you know, you--

01:18:27.000 | Like most of my male friends I look up to.

01:18:29.000 | And I don't know if people think, you know, when they're looking for friends

01:18:35.000 | that like they have to be the cool one.

01:18:37.000 | And it's like no, you don't want a bunch of little like mean girl underlings.

01:18:40.000 | Like you will be good enough.

01:18:43.000 | People love helping other people, you know.

01:18:46.000 | I mean the fighters I hang out with are the best fighters in the world.

01:18:50.000 | And they're not like you can't hang out with us

01:18:51.000 | until you become the best fighter in the world.

01:18:53.000 | I give something else to that circle

01:18:55.000 | and then they build me up and make me a better fighter.

01:18:58.000 | And so literally just like, again, it sounds like they didn't advise you.

01:19:03.000 | Shoot your shot.

01:19:04.000 | Yeah.

01:19:05.000 | Well, okay, and it's like when you're talking about

01:19:08.000 | hanging out with the best fighters in the world,

01:19:10.000 | I can't help but think about the guy from Bloodsport

01:19:14.000 | whose main fighting style was to just boom.

01:19:17.000 | The guy with the beard and the American with the Harley Davidson shirt.

01:19:20.000 | But him hanging out with Jean-Claude Van Damme

01:19:22.000 | or David Dukes as the character's name

01:19:24.000 | was probably really life affirming for him

01:19:27.000 | until he was put into a coma by being too cocky

01:19:30.000 | about knocking out the guy with the giant pecs.

01:19:33.000 | But I think it's very apt, right?

01:19:35.000 | It raised his element.

01:19:36.000 | But okay, so this is what I want to get to now.

01:19:38.000 | So if we're going to talk about solutions.

01:19:40.000 | If Steven Seagal befriended all of those dreadlocks Jamaicans

01:19:44.000 | instead of killing them,

01:19:45.000 | would he have found a healthier inner life balance?

01:19:49.000 | I think so.

01:19:51.000 | I just read a book about Steven Seagal, by the way.

01:19:53.000 | This is a different story.

01:19:55.000 | Okay, we'll talk about that afterwards.

01:19:57.000 | I became friends with his daughter who's very nice,

01:19:59.000 | but I have so many questions for her that I'm just like,

01:20:02.000 | like sitting on.

01:20:04.000 | Oh my God, it was such a weird--

01:20:05.000 | It was a whole book about 1980s action films

01:20:08.000 | and all of those actors.

01:20:10.000 | Weird, interesting, fantastical, terrible.

01:20:14.000 | It's just-- Okay, anyways.

01:20:16.000 | We'll put that aside.

01:20:18.000 | I think what we're trying to build towards

01:20:19.000 | is we would like Steven Seagal to be our friend.

01:20:21.000 | All right, but let's go back to--

01:20:23.000 | Let's go to your life though, right?

01:20:24.000 | Because my understanding is you recently added--

01:20:28.000 | You made male friendships really for the first time

01:20:30.000 | in a long time, a big part of your life.

01:20:33.000 | My understanding of your timeline--

01:20:34.000 | Tell me if I have this wrong.

01:20:35.000 | But here's my Jamie Kilstein timeline.

01:20:37.000 | All right.

01:20:38.000 | This always makes me nervous.

01:20:39.000 | You're living in LA, more or less just hanging out with Moby.

01:20:43.000 | Yeah.

01:20:46.000 | Then you move to Arizona.

01:20:48.000 | And as far as I can tell,

01:20:49.000 | you were living in a retirement community.

01:20:50.000 | So you're essentially hanging out with old ladies, yeah,

01:20:55.000 | and elderly Mexican men.

01:20:57.000 | Then you move to Austin.

01:20:59.000 | And somehow, once you got to Austin,

01:21:01.000 | you now seem to have a lot of friends

01:21:02.000 | that you do things with.

01:21:03.000 | All right, so give us the story here.

01:21:05.000 | How did you get friends?

01:21:07.000 | As a 40-year-old male at the time in Austin, Texas,

01:21:10.000 | what happened?

01:21:12.000 | Okay, so here's what I think happened.

01:21:16.000 | And again, this is very similar to dating advice.

01:21:20.000 | That time in Arizona, when I was kind of a hermit--

01:21:25.000 | so I moved to Arizona with an ex-girlfriend of mine

01:21:29.000 | because we were in LA,

01:21:31.000 | and we were clearly settling for each other.

01:21:34.000 | But we were both nice enough.

01:21:37.000 | It was my only dating app relationship.

01:21:40.000 | And we were just like--

01:21:41.000 | she was tired of creepy guys.

01:21:42.000 | I was tired of LA girls on the internet.

01:21:45.000 | And we just so desperately wanted to make it work

01:21:49.000 | that we were like, "You know what?

01:21:51.000 | "It's probably LA's fault.

01:21:52.000 | "It's probably not us.

01:21:53.000 | "We should just leave LA."

01:21:55.000 | And so I end up in--

01:21:57.000 | so we literally picked a place randomly on the map.

01:21:59.000 | And so we were outside of Tucson, Arizona.

01:22:02.000 | And not surprisingly, we broke up

01:22:06.000 | probably like a year after living in Arizona,

01:22:08.000 | like right before COVID happened.

01:22:10.000 | So my first time as being a single adult male

01:22:15.000 | was over COVID,

01:22:17.000 | which is--oh, boy.

01:22:19.000 | It's really like a do-or-die situation,

01:22:22.000 | which is like, "Am I going to kill myself?

01:22:25.000 | "Or am I going to do what I probably should have done

01:22:29.000 | "a long time ago, which is figure out who I am?"

01:22:31.000 | The year that I spent by myself

01:22:34.000 | was the first time that I figured out who I really was.

01:22:38.000 | And I couldn't try to fill that gap.

01:22:41.000 | So now I had this breakup.

01:22:43.000 | It was a loving breakup. It was a sad breakup.

01:22:45.000 | I had this breakup with my girlfriend.

01:22:49.000 | And I have to fight the urge to be like,

01:22:54.000 | "Okay, just find a new girlfriend."

01:22:56.000 | Because usually we're so used to kind of like adapting

01:23:00.000 | to whoever, like, the next person is.

01:23:03.000 | COVID did not allow me to do--

01:23:05.000 | there was no other option.

01:23:06.000 | I couldn't date. I couldn't have friends.

01:23:08.000 | I couldn't do any of this stuff.

01:23:10.000 | And so for your listeners who are really lonely right now

01:23:13.000 | and are struggling, I can say that the first thing

01:23:16.000 | you should do before you date,

01:23:19.000 | before you even make male friends,

01:23:21.000 | is figure out, like, who are you?

01:23:24.000 | Because that year, I was reading books.

01:23:27.000 | I was finally watching the movies I wanted to watch.

01:23:30.000 | I was, like, taking walks in nature.

01:23:32.000 | I started meditating.

01:23:34.000 | I was doing all these things on my own.

01:23:36.000 | - Yeah. So what you're saying is--

01:23:38.000 | so you got familiar with yourself.

01:23:41.000 | - Yep.

01:23:42.000 | - Took the time to actually be with yourself.

01:23:44.000 | And I would add the addendum to that,

01:23:46.000 | which you're not going to do by spending more time on screen.

01:23:49.000 | So we'll just add in that caveat.

01:23:51.000 | Notice every example Jamie gave--walks, meditation,

01:23:54.000 | getting back into activities he had enjoyed before,

01:23:57.000 | reading books, watching movies.

01:23:59.000 | None of this was fight on Twitter with your crew.

01:24:02.000 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:24:04.000 | - Or, you know, get your Instagram follower.

01:24:06.000 | - Twitter. Fanbust. Only fans.

01:24:08.000 | Like, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, no.

01:24:10.000 | - Okay. - Yeah.

01:24:11.000 | - All right. So then you got to know yourself.

01:24:13.000 | And then it sounds like what happened was

01:24:15.000 | you used that to identify meaningful analog activity.

01:24:19.000 | Now that you had the self-reflection,

01:24:21.000 | you could identify--like, for you, for example,

01:24:23.000 | you got back into jiu-jitsu,

01:24:25.000 | which is something you had done very seriously

01:24:27.000 | earlier in your life. - Yep.

01:24:29.000 | - And then church after that,

01:24:31.000 | which again was coming out of self-reflection.

01:24:33.000 | You were now very--you were familiar enough with yourself

01:24:35.000 | that when you were sort of looking around

01:24:37.000 | and hanging out with the sort of spiritual,

01:24:39.000 | not religious types, like, "This isn't quite right.

01:24:41.000 | I think a church, but this church."

01:24:43.000 | That required self-knowledge, right?

01:24:45.000 | - Yeah. I showed up at church and was like,

01:24:47.000 | "Do I hate Moby?"

01:24:49.000 | But yeah, no, I mean, like, dude,

01:24:51.000 | my superpower and the reason I'm not dead

01:24:54.000 | is, like, being able to, like, be self-analytical.

01:25:00.000 | It started as self-hate, which sometimes can backfire.

01:25:04.000 | But yeah, just being like, "Why am I here?"

01:25:06.000 | Because I also want to add that

01:25:09.000 | if you're looking for friends or a girl,

01:25:11.000 | going to a bar every night, just like screens,

01:25:14.000 | also isn't the answer. - Right.

01:25:16.000 | - Because you feel like, "Well, I'm surrounded by people,"

01:25:19.000 | but you're numbing yourself out,

01:25:21.000 | you're having vapid conversations,

01:25:23.000 | if you can even have a conversation over the music.

01:25:25.000 | Like, I always joke that I want to meet my next girlfriend

01:25:28.000 | just, like, at a bookstore. - Yeah.

01:25:30.000 | - Like, I just want to, like, we accidentally both reach

01:25:33.000 | for, like, the same graphic novel,

01:25:35.000 | the same Calvin and Hobbes book or something.

01:25:38.000 | And--but I think that--

01:25:41.000 | and when we were talking, you know,

01:25:44.000 | right before we went on air about this,

01:25:47.000 | I did not think that this is where--

01:25:49.000 | that this was nowhere in my head

01:25:51.000 | that I was going to veer in this direction.

01:25:54.000 | But as I talk about it, I realize,

01:25:56.000 | oh, my God, this is the most important thing you can do,

01:25:59.000 | which sounds counterintuitive

01:26:02.000 | 'cause we're talking about being lonely.

01:26:04.000 | So it's like, why would you want to spend more time with yourself?

01:26:07.000 | There is such a difference between, you know,

01:26:11.000 | if I stayed at home all day

01:26:13.000 | and just scrolled on Instagram and watched porn

01:26:18.000 | and, you know, texted my ex,

01:26:20.000 | like, yeah, dude, that's a real lonely day by myself.

01:26:23.000 | But if I write and I go to the gym

01:26:26.000 | and maybe instead of having coffee here, I go to Starbucks

01:26:28.000 | and I ask the barista how they're doing

01:26:31.000 | and I have that interaction and then I meditate

01:26:33.000 | and then I journal what I've been--

01:26:35.000 | like, I'm waking up early, I'm not sleeping.

01:26:37.000 | You know, I wake up at 5.15. I don't have a job.

01:26:39.000 | I'm an artist. I'm a comic.

01:26:40.000 | I wake up at 5.15 every day

01:26:42.000 | so that I can have that time to myself.

01:26:44.000 | - Yeah. - Man, when I'm around people,

01:26:47.000 | that's how I can be my authentic self.

01:26:50.000 | And then when you're being your authentic self,

01:26:52.000 | you will attract people who are like, "Oh, I like that guy."

01:26:55.000 | And you will also be able to walk away from

01:27:00.000 | a circle of friends that maybe that's just, you know, whatever.

01:27:04.000 | Whatever the hookup version is of friends.

01:27:07.000 | Yeah, yeah. Okay, so then there's one final step here

01:27:10.000 | to get out-- to touch on.

01:27:12.000 | So we have the self-reflection leads to activities

01:27:14.000 | that are deeply meaningful.

01:27:15.000 | You're meeting people through those activities.

01:27:18.000 | So you're now surrounded by people

01:27:20.000 | who are on the same wavelength.

01:27:22.000 | So this is clearly going to be a source of

01:27:24.000 | high-quality friendships.

01:27:25.000 | I guess the final piece then is there's still a little bit

01:27:27.000 | of trigger polling that requires a little strategizing.

01:27:29.000 | We hinted at this earlier.

01:27:31.000 | But now it's like, "I really like these guys."

01:27:33.000 | And we're on the same wavelength,

01:27:35.000 | and they make me better,

01:27:37.000 | and I really like hanging out with them.

01:27:38.000 | So then there's that final piece, right?

01:27:40.000 | Okay, now I have to just have the courage to say--

01:27:42.000 | - Yeah. - And this is the dating analogy,

01:27:44.000 | but, "Hey, you want to come watch the fight?"

01:27:46.000 | Or, "Do you want to come do whatever?"

01:27:48.000 | So what did you discover about that?

01:27:49.000 | Is that as bad as men fear,

01:27:51.000 | or is it just something you got to just go for

01:27:54.000 | and break the ice? - Yeah, I'm running through,

01:27:56.000 | because I'm also--I'm an introvert,

01:27:58.000 | and so I'm not good at it.

01:27:59.000 | I seem very bubbly and social in social settings.

01:28:04.000 | It's just 'cause I'm projecting, and I'm terrified.

01:28:06.000 | - Yeah. - So I definitely haven't been like,

01:28:11.000 | you know, "Hey, do you want to go get coffee?"

01:28:14.000 | I mean, I have with my pastors, but that's like their job.

01:28:17.000 | I feel like when my pastors hang out with me,

01:28:19.000 | that's like if I was like, "I had sex,

01:28:21.000 | but I paid an escort."

01:28:22.000 | It's like, "Well, she's supposed to do that."

01:28:24.000 | My pastors see I'm sad.

01:28:25.000 | But like, okay, so...

01:28:30.000 | Be someone you would want to hang out with

01:28:33.000 | is number one, right?

01:28:34.000 | So if I go to jujitsu,

01:28:37.000 | and I sit in the corner and scowl at everybody,

01:28:41.000 | I'm probably not going to get an invite to hang out.

01:28:44.000 | But if every time I go to spar with someone,

01:28:47.000 | I go, "Hey, man, what's your name?"

01:28:49.000 | Great, and then we roll, and I go,

01:28:51.000 | "Hey, when you did this, that was really good,"

01:28:52.000 | you know, blah, blah, blah.

01:28:53.000 | And then maybe they start coming and asking me for advice,

01:28:55.000 | you know, whatever.

01:28:57.000 | Maybe you're the funny person.

01:29:01.000 | Maybe you're the person who just asks people how their day is.

01:29:04.000 | Maybe you just, you know, my main jujitsu coach

01:29:08.000 | was this guy Marcelo Garcia, who was the best in the world,

01:29:11.000 | so his gym was like packed.

01:29:13.000 | And every day, he would go up, and he would walk around

01:29:16.000 | while people were chatting, and he would shake everyone's hand.

01:29:19.000 | And so I try to do that when I go to a gym.

01:29:22.000 | I try to, like, you know, if I'm teaching the kids' class,

01:29:24.000 | I'll shake the parents' hands, stuff like that.

01:29:27.000 | And then through that, people just feel comfortable around you,

01:29:30.000 | and maybe they start asking you questions,

01:29:31.000 | and maybe they just become your gym buddy.

01:29:34.000 | I have dozens of gym buddies who I've never hung out with,

01:29:37.000 | but they're also people that if I show up,

01:29:39.000 | and they go, "Hey, how are you doing?"

01:29:41.000 | "Hey, man, I'm struggling. I got this breakup."

01:29:43.000 | And they will give me amazing advice before class.

01:29:47.000 | Then usually in these places, there are, like, group activities.

01:29:51.000 | So if you're going to a CrossFit gym or a jujitsu place,

01:29:54.000 | chances are, yeah, when there's a big pay-per-view,

01:29:57.000 | they're going to watch the fights.

01:29:59.000 | And, you know, you can be so likable that they invite you.

01:30:06.000 | There have definitely been times where I'm like,

01:30:08.000 | I just have a good enough sense that I'm like, "These guys like me."

01:30:11.000 | Like, they follow me on Instagram, even if I don't follow them.

01:30:14.000 | I think they like me.

01:30:15.000 | That I'll even be like, "Hey, guys, if there's ever room,

01:30:18.000 | I'd love to watch the fights with you."

01:30:20.000 | You don't have to say, "Can I come and watch Izzy fight this Saturday?"

01:30:23.000 | But you can go, "Hey, if you're ever going out."

01:30:26.000 | One of my church friends, this girl, AJ,

01:30:30.000 | the day after the breakup, I go, "Hey, man, I got to be more social."

01:30:34.000 | I know I usually say no when you guys invite me out,

01:30:37.000 | but if there's ever anything going on, can you at least float it to me?

01:30:41.000 | And she goes, "Oh, my God, I'm having a birthday dinner tonight."

01:30:44.000 | I was like, "I didn't want to invite you. I figured you wouldn't want to go.

01:30:47.000 | Do you want to go?"

01:30:48.000 | And I went, and then I met a bunch of different church friends,

01:30:51.000 | and now they've hit me up.

01:30:54.000 | The one piece of advice I really want to give,

01:30:56.000 | because I know you won't give it on another piece, on another episode,

01:31:00.000 | is this is where social media can actually be kind of good.

01:31:05.000 | And maybe--I don't know if it's this--I think it's for normie people,

01:31:09.000 | because I have a bit of an audience,

01:31:11.000 | so people think it's--in my real life, if they don't know what I do,

01:31:15.000 | they think it's cool and they follow me.

01:31:17.000 | But I have had a couple people that I've met from jujitsu or church or whatever

01:31:23.000 | that they'll find me on Instagram, and that kind of tells me,

01:31:28.000 | "Oh, this person likes me."

01:31:31.000 | And maybe when they write me on Instagram--

01:31:35.000 | I can't write every random person back, but when they write me, I go,

01:31:39.000 | "Oh, shit, Nehemiah from church is hitting me up about my story.

01:31:43.000 | Maybe I actually have more in common with him than I thought."

01:31:46.000 | And that will kind of--that'll be an icebreaker,

01:31:50.000 | because I don't want to just--I have very low self-confidence,

01:31:53.000 | so I don't assume people like me.

01:31:56.000 | But if I see someone's followed me on Instagram, I'm like,

01:32:00.000 | "Oh, okay," but then where you will agree is then it's your job

01:32:04.000 | to not keep that relationship in Instagram.

01:32:07.000 | Right. I mean, you're describing 2010 social media, where it really was,

01:32:11.000 | "Okay, my friends follow this. We keep up with each other."

01:32:15.000 | And sometimes I get a second-order connection, like a friend of a friend

01:32:18.000 | who I sort of know is a way for them to interact with me.

01:32:21.000 | And that was the heyday of social media. It was just like 2.0.

01:32:24.000 | Yes, that's different than being like, "I'm friends with Tucker Carlson

01:32:27.000 | because we both hate the same people on Twitter."

01:32:30.000 | Yeah, he liked a tweet of mine. All right, this is excellent.

01:32:33.000 | So I'm going to do what I do, which is try to reduce this all down

01:32:36.000 | to step-by-step advice for my listeners.

01:32:40.000 | So this is the Jamie Kilstein prescription.

01:32:43.000 | Well, first of all, the setup here is that, especially for males,

01:32:46.000 | friendships are really important, especially as you get into your 30s and 40s,

01:32:52.000 | as Jamie was talking about.

01:32:54.000 | It is, if anything, like a buffer against hard things that happen in your life,

01:32:58.000 | a source of motivation, et cetera. So you need them.

01:33:02.000 | Don't just keep in touch with your high school buddies or just know--

01:33:08.000 | I don't want to mess up your list, but I didn't go into nearly as much detail on that.

01:33:13.000 | I was trying to get to the how-to, but it has saved my life, 100%.

01:33:18.000 | I have been going through so much for the last decade, 15 years of my life,

01:33:24.000 | that having strong male friends who I look up to be able to--

01:33:30.000 | When I'm struggling, this sounds so cheesy, but put a hand on my shoulder

01:33:34.000 | and be like, "Dude, I see how hard you're working.

01:33:37.000 | You are going to be so good. You have no idea how far you've come

01:33:42.000 | since even the first day I met you."

01:33:44.000 | When another man tells you that, you just go, "Oh, sh--."

01:33:48.000 | That's so much different than even your wife being like, "Babe, you got this."

01:33:53.000 | It's just different.

01:33:55.000 | Yeah, it's been-- Yeah.

01:33:58.000 | Right. So fundamental. It saved Jamie's life. Fundamental. Okay.

01:34:03.000 | So how do we do this? If we're going to make a prescription here,

01:34:06.000 | one, I would say go back to my digital declutter is a good starting place,

01:34:11.000 | which we talk about in digital minimalism, where you take 30 days away

01:34:14.000 | from all this optional technology, do self-reflection experimentation.

01:34:18.000 | We usually talk about the digital declutter just as a way of figuring out

01:34:22.000 | how to update your technology use, but now let's add that on

01:34:25.000 | as the first step towards upgrading your friendship situation

01:34:30.000 | because during that 30 days of reflection experimentation,

01:34:33.000 | you get to know yourself better.

01:34:35.000 | Now, typically, we say at the end of that 30 days,

01:34:37.000 | "Oh, look at your tech use. Fine." But let's add a new obligation here.

01:34:41.000 | At the end of that 30 days, join something.

01:34:44.000 | Join something based on what you discovered during that 30-day declutter

01:34:49.000 | that is going to surround you with other people

01:34:51.000 | who are on the same wavelength with your values.

01:34:54.000 | And I would add to that, being around those people will probably also bring

01:34:59.000 | other things into your radar to join.

01:35:01.000 | I mean, Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a synergy

01:35:03.000 | between you getting back into jiu-jitsu and the church

01:35:06.000 | because there's crossovers, right?

01:35:08.000 | Some of the people that the fighters you were meeting were also religious,

01:35:12.000 | and so these things cross-pollinate. They weren't two separate thoughts.

01:35:15.000 | It was like once you're in the world of people you admire

01:35:17.000 | and like to be around, other meaningful things emerge.

01:35:20.000 | I mean, I got that right, right? It was all these things sort of mixed together.

01:35:24.000 | Yeah, and that actually, that's another great tip, which is like

01:35:28.000 | once you know yourself and you have these interests

01:35:30.000 | and these things that you love that are kind of different or whatever,

01:35:34.000 | like if I meet a dude at church who, you know, you love stand-up comedy

01:35:40.000 | and he loves stand-up comedy, suddenly you go like,

01:35:43.000 | "Oh my God, did you watch the new Shane Gillis special?"

01:35:45.000 | And now you're bonding over nerd stuff.

01:35:48.000 | Or they play guitar or, you know, like jiu-jitsu is a huge one.

01:35:53.000 | Like I'll have so many people come up to me just because they see my ears

01:35:57.000 | and they go, "You train?" And like I'm talking to that guy.

01:36:00.000 | There's no way I'm not talking to that guy.

01:36:02.000 | But it's also if you have nothing that you do

01:36:05.000 | or nothing that you're interested in, you're just like bored.

01:36:08.000 | Online.

01:36:09.000 | Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a lot harder to connect.

01:36:12.000 | Right. Okay, so then that brings to the final step.

01:36:14.000 | So now you've joined things based off the values that you've rediscovered

01:36:18.000 | during this sort of period of reflection.

01:36:20.000 | Now you're surrounded by interesting people.

01:36:22.000 | And then the final step is to put yourself out there.

01:36:24.000 | Like, "Hey, let me know if you're going to watch the game or the fight

01:36:28.000 | or go to see this film."

01:36:30.000 | "I've been coming to this Trout Boy meeting for two months now.

01:36:33.000 | Time to make some friends."

01:36:35.000 | Like next time you raid a government building, let me know.

01:36:41.000 | I mean, I have like this civilian commando gear.

01:36:45.000 | You need like a good tech logo on Instagram, yeah.

01:36:47.000 | I've got this bear shaman, you know, mask helmet.

01:36:52.000 | Look, I have it, you know, whatever.

01:36:54.000 | You're raiding a building.

01:36:55.000 | Just going to collect dust.

01:36:57.000 | I'm not using it, you know, not using it.

01:37:00.000 | Let me know what could go wrong.

01:37:02.000 | I think everyone will forgive us.

01:37:04.000 | Yeah, that's a good turn.

01:37:06.000 | Yeah, good turn.

01:37:07.000 | Okay, so that--but here's what's cool about that advice though,

01:37:09.000 | is like right now if you're listening to this and you're thinking,

01:37:12.000 | "You know what? This is me. I'm lonely.

01:37:14.000 | I'm online all the time, and I'm feeling lonely.

01:37:17.000 | I have no backstop."

01:37:18.000 | This plan we're talking about, this is six months from right now

01:37:21.000 | potentially to a very upgraded friend relationship,

01:37:24.000 | a month or so of self-reflection.

01:37:26.000 | You join things, get involved for a few months.

01:37:28.000 | That's it.

01:37:29.000 | Yeah.

01:37:30.000 | You do that, you're going to have at least a few new friends,

01:37:33.000 | and then it's going to snowball from there, you know,

01:37:35.000 | and then like you're going to tighten some friendships,

01:37:38.000 | and others will lose.

01:37:39.000 | You'll find others, but that's it.

01:37:40.000 | Like six months from now--because it went fast for you, Jamie,

01:37:42.000 | so like give our listeners hope.

01:37:44.000 | Like six months from now, you really could be in a very positive

01:37:48.000 | social situation, friend-wise.

01:37:50.000 | And that leads to everything else, you know.

01:37:52.000 | It's like that builds you up, so you become a more confident person.

01:37:57.000 | You being a more confident person leads to other things in your life.

01:38:00.000 | You know, this is very hard for me to say because I've been flamed

01:38:04.000 | by a lot of like constantly online people.

01:38:07.000 | But what I will say is like while it is not healthy

01:38:13.000 | to only have these relationships online,

01:38:16.000 | clearly if you're listening to this, like you're intelligent,

01:38:21.000 | you're funny, right?

01:38:23.000 | Like you make people laugh on Twitter or Reddit or whatever.

01:38:28.000 | Those skills that you have online, it's going to be nerve-wracking

01:38:34.000 | at first, but they do translate.

01:38:37.000 | They do--like if you can make people laugh online,

01:38:40.000 | you can make people laugh in real life.

01:38:45.000 | It's just about building up that confidence.

01:38:47.000 | And that's going to be a step-by-step process.

01:38:50.000 | And then show yourself grace, you know, if you do get nervous

01:38:54.000 | and you're like, "Oh, this is so stupid."

01:38:56.000 | You know, ever since I started reading or listening to self-development

01:39:00.000 | podcasts or even with religion, the worst you can feel sometimes

01:39:05.000 | is before the breakthrough where you go, "I'm doing the right stuff."

01:39:09.000 | Like, "I go to church now. Why would I have a breakup?"

01:39:13.000 | You know, or, "I'm trying to make friends.

01:39:17.000 | I did everything Cal said and I showed up at the fights

01:39:20.000 | and I was too nervous and didn't say anything.

01:39:22.000 | I guess there's no hope." Nope.

01:39:24.000 | That's just the first step.

01:39:26.000 | And then the next time you're like, "I'm going to talk a little more."

01:39:28.000 | And then the next time, then you just keep piling on wins.

01:39:31.000 | - Yep, and you look back and say, "I'm glad I started."

01:39:34.000 | - Exactly. - Right, because you moved it there.

01:39:36.000 | All right, well, excellent. Well, this was great, Jamie.

01:39:38.000 | Just a reminder for the audience, your podcast is The Back Row

01:39:42.000 | with Jamie Kilstein. What's that website, Jamie?

01:39:44.000 | - Yeah, you can go to backrowpod.com.

01:39:48.000 | And there's the YouTube channel and I have a newsletter I do

01:39:52.000 | every week now where I'm writing about mental health

01:39:54.000 | and stuff like that.

01:39:56.000 | Yeah, we're talking about the mental health spiritual journey,

01:39:58.000 | but also getting a little more into culture, politics,

01:40:04.000 | and trying to bring people together and laugh at the ridiculousness

01:40:07.000 | of it all.

01:40:09.000 | - Yeah, sounds--something to do with friends.

01:40:11.000 | All right, Jamie, well, thanks for joining me.

01:40:13.000 | I look forward to talking to you again in four months.

01:40:15.000 | - Thanks. - That's the way we do it.

01:40:18.000 | - Bye, friend. - Old school.

01:40:20.000 | All right, see ya.

01:40:22.000 | All right, so there we have it.

01:40:23.000 | Thanks to Jamie for coming on and talking to us

01:40:26.000 | about the friendship recession.

01:40:28.000 | I want to mention, actually, Jamie's sister, Stephanie Krause,

01:40:34.000 | has a book out that I thought would be relevant to our audience.

01:40:38.000 | I know Stephanie through other reasons, and we were talking

01:40:40.000 | about this book recently, her new book.

01:40:42.000 | It's called "Whole Child, Whole Life,

01:40:45.000 | 10 Ways to Help Kids Live, Learn, and Thrive."

01:40:50.000 | So in particular, you worry about your kids and technology.

01:40:53.000 | Stephanie is great on these matters, so check out that book,

01:40:56.000 | "Whole Child, Whole Life, 10 Ways to Help Kids Live,

01:40:59.000 | Learn, and Thrive."

01:41:01.000 | That's author Stephanie Krause, who happens to be Jamie's sister.

01:41:05.000 | There we go, Jesse. It's a small world.

01:41:07.000 | - Yep. - Everyone's connected to everyone.

01:41:09.000 | So hopefully you like the show.

01:41:11.000 | I should probably also remind you, if you do like the show,

01:41:13.000 | leave a review.

01:41:15.000 | There's been some nice reviews left recently,

01:41:17.000 | and I really appreciate that.

01:41:19.000 | Subscribe as well, and whatever podcast listener you use,

01:41:22.000 | that does help the podcast networks show the show

01:41:27.000 | to more potential listeners.

01:41:28.000 | So review or subscribe does help.

01:41:30.000 | Otherwise, that's it for today's episode.

01:41:33.000 | We'll be back next week with the next show.

01:41:36.000 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:41:40.000 | Hey, if you like today's episode, I think you'll also like episode 263,

01:41:47.000 | which gives a four-month plan for completely overhauling your life.

01:41:51.000 | I think you will enjoy it. Check it out.

01:41:54.000 | So today's deep question,

01:41:56.000 | how can I reinvent my life in four months?

How To Cure Your Phone & Social Media Addiction (My 3-Step Process) | Cal Newport

Chapters