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S-U-I-T-E H-O-P.com. It's more than just a ticket. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua.

I am your host and I have a unique show today for you that is very current. And in this show, we're going to talk about living the rich life. I am preempting the show that I've just recorded and deleted, wherein I was answering more questions and continuing on the income theme because I think this is more timely.

And I want to record some ideas here for you live in the moment. And I think you'll find these ideas to be helpful because they are related to living this rich life now. And it's about comparisons, comparing ourselves to others, specifically with social media. I need three quick minutes of announcements.

So bear with me for three quick minutes as we go through it. Announcement number one. If you are a patron of Radical Personal Finance, my apologies that I have not been able to post in the Patreon page. I'm presently locked out of my own Patreon account. I'm working very diligently with Patreon to get back in.

It's a moderate length story, but basically I'll skip the story because I want to do this in three minutes. I said there was a discount code in Patreon because I thought I would be able to get it in there by the time that that show where I said that was in there went live.

Unfortunately, I haven't. So if you are a patron of mine, forgive me. I'm working diligently to get back into the account, but I don't have it right now. So email me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com for that coupon code, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, and I'll get this squared away as soon as I can, working hard to get it back in there.

Thing number two, I was planning today to record a live Q&A show, but due to technical issues, I am pushing that to Monday. And here is what I want to do. I want to invite you to join me on Monday, all of you. Well, any of you who are interested.

Monday, May 14 at 3 o'clock PM Eastern, join me using this phone number, 561-440-7362 for a live call coaching. Again, this coming Monday, May 14, 3 PM Eastern, 561-440-7362. Specifically, and exclusively to talk with me about questions relating to your career and your income and how you can make more money.

I want to turn this into, I guess, an AirSats coaching call to discuss with you some ideas and I'll, of course, release it as a public podcast, but join me on that call. Please don't call in if you just want to hear, I will release it as a podcast.

Please only call in if you have a question. And if I get more than, say, a dozen callers, I'll lock the phone lines. If you call in and the phone lines are locked, it means I had too many callers. Join me though, Monday, May 14, 3 PM. A few questions on frequently asked questions for the course.

Again, right now we are in the launch phase for the Radical Personal Finance Career and Income Guide, the increased income course that I have just polished off version two. Right now, until this coming Wednesday, May 15, is the lowest price. Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/increaseincome to sign up. A couple of questions that have been coming in.

People have been asking this question, "Will it always be available?" I've mentioned that I have a 12-week launch cycle here. Short answer is I intend to keep this open available to you who are buying it always, but I'm focused very much on providing a lot of service for you during the first 12 weeks.

You don't have to complete it in the first 12 weeks. I'm just trying to provide a lot of service for you. There's a balance between courses and products and training products and things like that that are always available because the content is static versus sometimes available. And for this particular module, I feel that at least 50% of the benefit of the course is specific discussions around your specific needs.

And I can't commit to doing that forever. But what I can commit to doing is doing that for the next 12 weeks. And so the course will be available on a launch cycle, but you don't have to complete the content in the next 12 weeks. So if your next 12 weeks are busy, that's fine.

All of the calls and things will be recorded. All of the lessons are available for you to download the audio from, which is the most important thing. All of the notes are available. There's 56 pages of outline notes that you can download. So you don't have to complete this in the first 12 weeks.

It'll be available for you to refer back to. And my operating philosophy is this. I want to always reward and incentivize my customers who have been with me from the beginning. I would not be speaking to you today if there had not been a core group of members who supported me a few months into the show.

I wouldn't be speaking to you today if there weren't people who signed up to be patrons of the show. I wouldn't be speaking to you today if there were not a beta group of initial students who signed up for the course. They believed in me when, I don't know if you should have.

I've done my best. But things have not been perfect. But people believed in me. And so for every one of you who shares your hard-earned money and spends it with me, I'm absolutely committed to giving you the best that I'm capable of. And so I want you to know that that's my operating philosophy, is to give you the best that I'm capable of and then to make it better in time.

So my hope is, even with this course, to make it constantly better and better and better. And if the technology allows me to do it, I'll try very hard to keep you having access to even the better future versions that are even better and more on point, et cetera.

So final announcement is that if you have been thinking about the course, you've been thinking about signing up as I've started promoting it over the last few days, but you're interested but not that interested, I would love to know what you're thinking. When I first released this beta version of the course, the initial response was super, super strong.

The course sold out in the first week with a hundred students. This time it has been slower, slower than I expected. So I would love to know your feedback. If you're interested, but you're not quite sure about it, please email me at joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com and tell me why. You don't even have to say anything.

I'm not going to try to put you into a new sales funnel. I would like to just know why, what your personal reservation is. Or if you are, just so I can know in the future as I continue to get better, I want to make things that are really, really serving you.

So if you have a question specifically, email me joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. Tell me your question. If you say, "Joshua, I'd love to work with you, but I just not interested in income. Most of my audience is already earning a very high income. Tell me what you would most like to ask me about.

Just shoot me a quick note. Do it right now, please, if you would. Just pause and shoot me a quick note, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com and tell me, "Hey Joshua, if we were sitting down for lunch, here is what I would most like to ask you about. Here's what I'm most interested in.

That will help me because this is just the tip of the iceberg." All right, announcement's over and let's get back to what I want to talk with you today. And that is exposure to others and comparing yourselves to others. My intention today was to record for you and I've recorded and dumped, I recorded, I was planning to record a show responding to your Q&A.

And I, today for the first time on since February 22, today on May 11, I signed into my Facebook account. I had forced myself to stop going on Facebook back on February 22 because it was really damaging to my productivity. I was really struggling to figure out how do I get specifically the course finished?

How do I get this done? I was months behind schedule, nothing was working, everything was locked up. I wasn't able to get things done and I was really frustrated as far as why. And so one of the things that I found myself doing is interacting with y'all in the Facebook group.

But then at that time, this was right after the Parkland shooting and all of a sudden everybody's upset about guns and gun control, blah, blah, blah. And I found myself, I exercised a lot of discipline, I engaged with one, one person's thread. And I quickly found myself seven hours later having lost seven hours.

And I just said, "That's it." So I closed out. I said, "I cannot come back here until I launch." And I told my wife, I said, "I'm not going back to social media until I launch." Well, it was a month and a half longer than I wanted it to be, but it was really interesting.

Now this is in line with a number of other things in my life that I have done specifically to limit my own usage of my phone. I've over the years, maybe you find it easy to exercise self-control, but I don't. I find myself, I don't know if this is a thing, I've self-diagnosed myself, which is always, of course, brilliant.

But I think I have something of an addictive personality if that's a thing. I just use it to describe the fact that when I get into something I usually get really into something. And I usually don't stay with it for all that long, but when I get into something I usually get really deep.

If I'm interested in something, I'll go to the library and get 30 books and I'll go through all 30 of them. I'll read a dozen and go through all 30. If I'm interested in something, I'll watch hours of videos. I'll search out everything I can on it. Now this has been very useful to me throughout my lifetime, but it also can be a real problem because I tend to go kind of deep.

And it means that I always have more input, more input, more input. Over the years, I've studied my own kind of successes and failures. And in some ways I feel more successful than I've ever felt. But in some ways I feel like I'm always trying to get back to who I was somewhere around a decade to 15 years ago.

This has been expressed in a number of ways, specifically with my attention span. When I talk with my friends in person, I've often diagnosed my own personal problem with attention to go back to the invention of tabbed browsing. I remember the first time I had an internet browser that allowed you to open multiple tabs at once.

I thought it was the greatest thing in the world because now instead of having to follow a thread through, you would click on a link, you would go forward, and if you wanted to go back, you had to go back, back, back. I could click on every link and open every thread.

I thought it was wonderful. Now in this regard, I am in a very interesting position where in my current age bracket, I'm right on the transition between generations. I am essentially a digital native where I didn't have to learn as an adult some of the web skills, et cetera.

I'm a digital native. But I remember the early days. So people who are a decade younger than me, they don't have any idea what it's like to not have a smartphone. They don't have any idea what it's like to not have tabbed browsing. They don't have any idea what it's like to not have fast access internet.

And so they almost can't conceive of what that is like. Some people who are older than me certainly remember what it's like, but frequently, unless it's a part of your daily life, you're not as hardcore of a user as someone like me is, where it's native for me. I'm pretty current on most technological approaches.

So I'm right on this really interesting generation where I have remembrance of both. And I've often thought back to that tabbed browsing scenario. And to this day, I look and I say, "That was when my attention span started to fall." Before then, I have this impression, who knows if it's accurate, but I think it is.

I have this impression of me with a very long attention span. I could sit and read difficult books. I could follow complex arguments. I could engage in extensive conversations. But when tabbed browsing came along, I developed a very much shortened attention span. And a few years after the invention of tabbed browsing, I remember sitting there watching myself not even able to finish a single article on a single page.

I'm not exaggerating. I couldn't finish a single article on a single page because I would be interested in the next one. Click, follow, click, follow, click, follow. Oh, that looks like an interesting link. Click, follow, click, follow. A number of years back, I noticed that my attention span had evaporated.

My ability to stay with something, stay with a hard job had evaporated. And so I've worked hard to pull back from it with varying levels of success. But it's been a continual challenge over the last five years to say, I need to make sure that I'm focused, focused, focused.

And I've especially been working on that the last six months. Focused, focused, focused. I've also come to the point where I identified that there were a number of things that I liked that weren't helping me. And because they were easy, I was doing the easy things and not the hard things.

So let me give you some examples of some things I've done as I tell you what happened today. Simple example, YouTube. I, as most men, I really enjoy videos, YouTube videos. I've never enjoyed broadcast TV. I've never really consumed broadcast TV, but it's not it just it's not me.

I can't stand to hear a laugh track. I acknowledge that there are some very well done TV shows, but I generally have just avoided most of them. But individual created video is is is powerful for me. I really love it because I can exercise that interest that I have in weird, esoteric topics and I can follow that interest to its very end.

But over the years, YouTube became deadly because I could just click subscribe and follow the recommended videos. And as YouTube has perfected their algorithms, there's always a list of things that I'm interested in and they're perfectly curated for me. I don't remember the exact timing, but maybe a year ago, I said, this is not helpful.

I'm spending hours and hours every week on YouTube. This is not good. And I tried various things, fits and starts, but I wound up taking the step of actually completely deleting my YouTube account, completely deleted the Google account that was associated with it, completely deleted all the history. And I completely removed all of removed the YouTube app from my phone and I completely removed any saved cookies from YouTube.

So today, when I actually if I log on to YouTube, it's been really good because if I log on to YouTube, there's never a search history of what I've watched, which is also good for privacy. I don't want to create a long extensive search history of what I'm watching, but it's also really good for me.

I always see that front page of YouTube and it's never curated content. I was previously subscribed to hundreds and hundreds of channels. From time to time, I'll allow myself to go and watch video, but I make myself remember the channel name. If I can't remember it, it's obviously not that important.

And my YouTube viewership collapsed in terms of time and I gained a huge amount of time back. It was really, really healthy for me, really helpful. It also helped me to not live in such an echo chamber because certainly as I would watch a video and then watch another video, then the algorithm would start to try to give me videos that I was interested in.

But my entire experience wasn't curated just to myself. So I would see a more diverse array of videos. Well, that was good. But then it continued on and I'm going to skip giving you any kind of timeline because this is fits and starts over time. But other things that I did, I completely removed social media from my phone.

I had an experience that really struck me because it was very visible. For me, my children and my wife are very important to me. And one of the basic structures of our lives that we have fully committed to is that our family eats together. And for the most part, we eat together at least two meals a day.

Now, what I found is generally, even though I usually work from home, I skip lunch with my family because it's right in the middle of my most productive hours. But we would try to always have breakfast together and dinner together. And if something's going to fail, I want to make sure that we always have dinner together.

That is deeply important to me. It's a priority for us. I remember I was arguing with somebody one time on Facebook and I remember sitting there and I had it on my phone and it was just so easy for me to get that phone and go and look. That I remember getting up from the table, didn't need to get up, but getting up from the table, going to the bathroom with my cell phone so I could look to see if somebody had responded to me on Facebook and if somebody had given my brilliant point back to me so I could figure out what's the next rebuttal that I could give them in their argument.

Now, maybe you're not an arguer. I certainly am a debater. I enjoy interesting things and debating points and philosophy and principles, et cetera. That's me. Maybe yours is different. I don't guess that you would be like me. But I was really embarrassed and I'm embarrassed even to say that because here's my family.

Here's my wife and my children who I love and I want to be with. But because it's easier for me to go and argue with someone online, I'm physically removing myself from the space with my family to go and check Facebook. Well, over time I completely removed all social media apps from my phone.

That was really good. It brought me a lot of peace. I removed all work email from my phone. That was really good. So then instead of getting a nasty email from a listener, "Joshua, you said this hateful blah, blah, blah, blah," then I just wouldn't bother. I can go when I'm in work mode.

I go to work mode, I open my email, I close it and I'm done. I don't all of a sudden pull out my phone while I'm with my family and we're going to go to the park and, "Oh, there's an email. There's another one. Another person mad at me on the internet.

Great." Or another nasty review. "Joshua sucks at blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," for whatever reason. So that was a good move. Now, as time has gone by, I've taken it even farther. One of the things that I did is I learned that, okay, I'd removed the YouTube app from my phone.

That was helpful. But then I still had the YouTube app, but I still had an internet browser. So I could, of course, go to YouTube and open up the internet browser and watch. Well, I had not set a rule that I wasn't going to do that. But in time, I realized that, "Wow, I'm now spending a lot of time on video still, again, even though I didn't have the app." So I went to the step of actually completely removing the internet from my phone.

I totally deleted the...and if you're interested in how to do this, I don't know how to do it on Android, but on an iPhone, the browser that I...well, I usually would use a browser called Snow Haze, which gives you a little bit more granular control. If you're looking for a good browser to use that is a little bit better, Snow Haze is a good one.

It does a good job. So I removed that. And then I removed Safari from the phone. Now, you can't actually remove Safari. If you're interested in doing this, as I tell you about it, feel free. But you can't actually fully remove Safari. But you can, in the Restrictions tab, go into the Parental Restrictions tab on your phone, and you can set up a code that is a four-digit PIN.

And in that four-digit PIN, you can remove Safari. And that way, it's not available to you. You don't have the internet, the browser available to you. Now, of course, you still have to exercise your own...this is a self-restraint thing here that we're doing. But...and then for a time, I remembered the PIN.

Now, my productivity went up, but then I would every now and then go ahead and just unlock the restrictions so I could use it. Finally, I just changed the PIN so I wouldn't even know what it was. And I kept on deleting apps. So I systematically deleted apps, deleted apps, deleted apps, deleted apps, deleted apps, deleted apps.

And my phone usage shrank and shrank and shrank and shrank. And as I did that, my happiness and my ability to be present increased. I was able to make progress. I felt less stuck. And by consuming, instead of constantly consuming these little just hits of tiny little content, I increased my reading.

I increased my reading in things that were helping my brain, ideas that were challenging to me, super, super helpful. I didn't really realize how good my mental state was. I observed some effects of it. And I look at life a lot through...as a father, I look at it and say, "Well, how would I advise my children?" And as I drive around sometimes I see children at bus stops and I look and I just observe that the vast majority of them usually, as they're standing at the bus stop, have their neck down, head in the phone.

You go anywhere, head in the phone, head in the phone, head in the phone. And I know I sound like an old curmudgeon, but I'm like, "Man, this is not good." In my own experience, I can empathize with the addiction, but I can also empathize with the reality of it being better without it.

So for weeks now, my phone has basically been totally useless in the sense of there's nothing on it. The only thing that's on it is a couple of simple communications apps for me to talk with the very few people that have my actual communications apps. And the piece increased.

Now, it's a bad financial move. I got a thousand-dollar phone that thankfully it's not brand new, but my time on it basically has gone to nothing. And I didn't realize how good my mental state was until I logged into Facebook today. Now back to Facebook. I set myself a rule and I locked myself out.

Now, over the last few years, I've deleted LinkedIn, I deleted Instagram, I deleted a bunch of other things as well. But I just said, "These things are not good. They're not helpful. They're not useful. All they are is noise and nonsense, and they don't actually help in anything that matters." I'm not denying that they can be useful for a few small places, a few small cases.

I'm not denying that they can be exploited by certain people who are interesting to use them, but I don't want to play those games. So I've gotten rid of a lot, but the two that I still have are Facebook and Twitter. And so a while ago, on February 22, I closed out my Facebook account.

I put a note in the Radical Personal Finance Facebook group and I said, "Guys, I can't. I got to get out of here. This is bad." And what's happening is that my being on Facebook, because it's easy, is causing me to miss my goals. I am six months behind schedule on everything that I had intended to do six months ago.

I don't like being behind schedule. That hurts my pride. That hurts my self-image. That hurts my productivity. That hurts my ability to serve you when I can't get things done. And so I put a note in the Facebook group and said, "Sorry, I got to go." I haven't logged in since February 22.

Did the same thing with Twitter, deleted all my tweets, and the only thing that was there for a while is just simply the show automatically publishing. When I publish, it goes to Twitter. And so I got out of that until today. Now, generally, when you're part of something every day, you don't really realize how it affects you.

Think about it in terms of your own house. Have you ever noticed that other people's houses smell but your own doesn't? I go to other people's houses and it's like, "That's weird." I come to my own and, "Ah, it smells great." But I know that other people come into my house, especially we have dogs and old carpet, and I'm kind of embarrassed about how my house sometimes probably doesn't smell great, but I can't smell it.

And the point is, when you're in it, you can't smell it. When you're in something, you can't really feel it. So I logged into Facebook today and I started answering listener questions. And I didn't go and look at my newsfeed. It wasn't a matter of the newsfeed, but I started just checking a little bit here, checking a little bit there.

All of a sudden, I started seeing this personal finance conversation and that personal finance conversation. I see this group and that group. About an hour ago, I'm sitting here just feeling utterly worthless. I'm thinking, "Yeah, I've been out of Facebook, but man, everyone's doing better than I am." I'm looking at all of my other friends who have financial podcasts and financial communities, and I'm thinking, "They're doing better than I am.

They have bigger communities than I have. Look at how fancy their stuff is, and my stuff stinks." This morning, the Joshua of early this morning, Friday, when I got up this morning, I was feeling great. When I got to work, I was feeling great. I was confident. I was focused.

I've got a plan. I'm working on it. I was feeling great. I didn't spend that much time on Facebook. I pulled up my Twitter account, answered a few people. An hour ago, I realized self-confidence shot. Everyone's better than me. Poor little old me. What's wrong with me? Why can't I do what other people are doing?

Why does their stuff work? Why is my stuff not? Why don't I have 50,000 people who've signed up for my course? Everyone else did. Everyone else has had this. What's wrong with me? Poor little old me. I say this to you because it took me a little while, and I just figured out.

That's what happened. Now, we talk about comparing ourselves to the Joneses, and there's all kinds of people who've written about this issue. If you haven't read about this as far as the comparing ourselves to other people, you're living under a rock. I'm not trying to repeat all of those articles that you've read.

People have said, "Well, when we compare ourselves to others online and we're seeing this carefully curated, perfect life that everyone else, which is all lies, tiny little moments carefully edited to post online, it just makes us feel down about ourselves because my life doesn't look like that." Now, I'm not a beauty blogger, vlogger.

I'm not a beauty Instagrammer. I don't follow things to talk about how you look, but some people do. But it took the person who's posting the perfect, candid 87 tries to get it right. And then you look in the mirror and you say, "I don't look so good." Their outfit was months of work.

You look in the mirror and say, "I don't look so good." Or maybe that's not your thing. You look at their perfect family photo, but you can't hear the audio of how that was the only family photo in an evening of frustration. Or maybe you're like me with your business and it looks like everybody has it so easy.

What's wrong with me? Poor little old me. It was funny because what reminded me of this was somebody's post in my Facebook group. Way back in the Radical Personal Finance archives, I recorded a show and it was about not comparing yourself to other people. And on that show, I had just seen, I had been working hard.

I think it was episode 135. It was called Be Confident in Your Unique Offering and then Stick to Your Knitting, January 15, 2015. And what had happened in that show was the lady who has the podcast, a really good podcast, Farnoosh. Farnoosh Tarabi had just published her show. And I had been before Farnoosh, I'd been interested in personal finance and I was struggling with radical personal finance.

I was struggling. And all of a sudden, Farnoosh launches her podcast and here's Farnoosh, Miss Public Media Creator extraordinaire, and she has Tony Robbins for her inaugural episode. And I just felt worthless. I sat down and I thought, what's wrong with me? Everyone else is better than me. And I recorded that show saying that, I said, be confident in your unique offering and then just stick with what you can do.

Like you can't be everyone else. I don't want to be Farnoosh. She's wonderful, but I'm sure she has all kinds of problems. That's not me. It's not what I want to do. And then finding this Facebook comment from my listener posted to my group saying, I just found your episode 135 and it really was so helpful for me.

I couldn't even remember what I was talking about. But when I thought it back through, I realized, you know what? For the last few hours, I have been in the same mental state that I was on January 15, 2015, because I was comparing myself to others because I'm on Facebook.

Now, somebody who tries to practice what I preach, I try to mean what I say and say what I mean. I try to always tell the truth. I try to be clear and to not say something that I don't believe, but to say the things I do believe. That's embarrassing.

To look back almost three years later and say the same emotion I was dealing with three years ago, I still have that. But it was the clarity of me recognizing I haven't had that until I turned on Facebook. Now, my relationship with Facebook is somewhat unique because as someone who makes their living online, it's very hard to just say, well, I'm anti-Facebook.

I'm anti-Facebook. And for a long time, I have been fully intending to be completely out of Facebook. I see no benefit from it. I could give the business case and I'm not going to do that here. But basically, I've lost any trust I ever had in any of these companies to actually to not change in the middle of what they think.

I've lost any trust. But I certainly see how I could use Facebook to grow my business. But you know what? If me growing my business on Facebook causes me to constantly be engaged in comparing myself to people, and it causes me to lose my self-confidence, and it causes me to think poor little old me, no chance.

It's not worth it. Now for you, I share my thoughts not to tell you what to do. But I will say this. This show is dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, today's insight, and encouragement, today's encouragement, that you need to live a rich and meaningful life now.

My question for you is, is your phone and your computer keeping you from living a rich and meaningful life now? I know for me, mine sure has. Now I've shared some of my successes, and I've had a lot of success in this. Tell you what, I like not caring about my phone.

I leave it behind more and more, don't use it. I'm down to exactly 11 apps, 11 apps at the moment. Not a single one of them is interesting. They're purely utility. I could probably cut out even those. At this point in time, the only reason that I could make for having a smartphone for me right now, based upon how much better my life has been by not using the smartphone, is simply that I value secure private communication.

I can't do that with a flip phone, but blah, blah, blah. I can't, you know, I can't do that with a phone. I work hard to get all my friends off of phone lines. I work hard to get all my friends off of unencrypted email. I work hard to get all my friends to use secure messengers and to use encrypted email, and I can't do that with a feature phone.

But I'll tell you this, there's not a chance in the world I'd buy this phone again. I loved it when I bought it. I was so excited. There's not a chance in the world I'd buy it again, at least not right now, in my current needs structure. So consider trying it.

If you want to live in rich and meaningful life now, consider trying it. Frankly, I don't even have service on the phone right now. I completely quit cell phone connection. I have an emergency phone that I sometimes carry so that my wife can get ahold of me if necessary, but we're together most of the time.

I don't even have cell phone service on the phone. It just lives on Wi-Fi, and I only use it for a few messaging apps, just so I don't have to communicate in text messages and email. It has been awesome. My life has been measurably, measurably improved. My self-confidence has been high.

My productivity has been high. My interest has been strong. I've been actually able to get stuff done. I've actually been able to learn things and read weird books that interest me, that don't, they're so much more rewarding than mindlessly flipping and flipping and flicking and flicking. My relationship with my family is better.

Now I'm not sitting at the dinner table wondering what's on my phone. I know there's nothing on my phone because my phone doesn't even work. It's just, yeah, just has some apps on there. And since nobody talks to me on those, you know, I only have, you know, how often do you actually interact with close friends?

Maybe you're more than me, but it's not that big a deal. In every way, I've had a visceral experience of things being better without the phone, without social media, without some of those other things. Now, you're listening to me right now on a podcast, probably on your phone. One of the very few apps that I have, still have as a podcast app.

It's kind of, would be a little bit hypocritical for me to have a podcast app and then, or to have a podcast and then not have a podcast app, wouldn't it? But you know what? I've got a client of mine I've worked with for a long time. This client is very, very successful.

A lot of businesses, a lot of money, does very well. Month ago, this client, very successful person, was just frustrated with their own troubles. Lack of ability to execute on their to-do list. And we're sitting going over the same things month after month after month. No progress. His solution?

He deleted his podcast app, started playing classical music instead. Immediately reported to me a significant increase in productivity. Making major progress again. So if my podcast is causing you to not make progress towards your goals, I recommend -- this is a client that found me through my podcast. He doesn't listen to my podcast anymore, because he's done with podcasts.

I recommend to you, listen, your life is what matters. Your goals are what matter. Your priorities are what matter. It's your life. It's your family. These are your children. My children are never going to be where they're at right now. I am not going to miss their life because I'm staring at the screen on my phone.

I still have my podcast app, but you know what I don't have? I deleted my Kindle app. I deleted my iBooks. And just in case you're curious why, it's not that I don't like to read. It's not that I don't read digital books. But it's that ability to focus.

I really quit reading on the phone because with the phone, it's so easy to see the next notification. It's so easy to click over and say, "Oh, I'll just research that interesting thing." So I have a standalone Kindle and I have a standalone -- well, I have a standalone e-readers and Kindles that aren't connected to anything.

They don't have data. They don't have anything. I put the book on them and that way I'm actually just sitting and reading the book and building that attention span. So I wrap this up to say, I'm not going to let my life be stolen because Facebook and YouTube and Twitter want to sell me.

Not going to do it. I've threatened for a long time to totally delete, get out of Facebook, even radical personal finance off it and everything. That's kind of a business discussion. I think social media marketing is wildly overblown in terms of its impact. Wildly overblown. I see that it can be used by people for certain ends, but those ends are more specific.

Wildly overblown. So I am 99% sure that -- and we've worked hard. We've got a forum that's built behind the scenes with radical personal finance where I can interact with you in a specific forum that's not on social media, etc. It's not quite ready to publish yet. Right now, still working on this course launch, but hopefully next couple of weeks it should be published on the site and I'll share with you more about that.

But I'm not going to let my life be stolen by Facebook, let alone the data and all that stuff. One of the things I don't like is I don't like coming out when everyone else is on the delete Facebook bandwagon. I prefer not to be normal. But it's true.

Constantly assess -- as I close, I share this stream of consciousness. This is real. Right now it's 4/11 in the afternoon on Friday afternoon. When I got up at 5 o'clock this morning, I was feeling great. When I was working, I was feeling great. About 11 o'clock, I signed on to Facebook.

At 2 o'clock, I realized how my mental state was impacted from the fact that I had signed on to Facebook, started looking around, I had signed on to Twitter. And I'm telling you about it now. At the very least, give yourself a break. Try it if you haven't tried it.

Fasting is really important. You know, most religious traditions, the Christian tradition certainly does have this. Many religious traditions have this. In some religious traditions, fasting is kind of a farce, where, yeah, we fast, but we feast at the same time. But fasting is really valuable. When you fast, whether that's from food, or with, of course, many people fast from other things and have their thing that they give up.

But fasting allows you to appreciate something more. And if you haven't done it, try putting yourself on a fast. And try to figure out a way to so that you don't have to rely on your willpower. If anything that I've said, if you want to try it for yourself and see if it helps you or doesn't help you, then just try it.

But here's some ideas of how to do it. I don't ever want to be addicted to something. I don't ever want something to be in control of me. So from time to time, you know, over the last few years, from time to time, I'll quit coffee. I enjoy drinking coffee every day.

I really enjoy getting up and having a cup of coffee. That is a valuable part of my life. But I don't want to be addicted to coffee. So from time to time, I stop completely. And I always appreciate it when I go back to it. And I say, No, I really value having that cup of coffee.

I really like to have a cup of coffee in the morning. It really is nice. So when I go back to it, I know that I value it. But other things that I've given up, I don't value. I've learned, Oh, you know what, I don't actually value it. So here's what I would do.

If any of this sparks anything for you, here's what I'll just share as far as my experience. In our modern world, it is almost impossible to keep up with, it is impossible to keep up with everything. So don't try sometimes. Here are some ideas you take and pick. I've tried these all in different contexts.

If you have a bunch of subscriptions, start over. If you're listening to me right now on a podcast app, and you have 70 podcasts, or 30 podcasts, just for fun, just delete the app. Or delete all your podcasts. Go a week with no podcast and then think which of those do I really want to listen to?

And resubscribe to the ones that you really want to listen to. You probably won't resubscribe to 30 or 70, you probably resubscribe to a handful. Try it. Same thing with YouTube. Most of my audience is male. Most men are heavily oriented towards video. We spend a lot of time on things like YouTube.

Try my thing. Consider deleting your YouTube account. You can always get another one. But delete the Google account that's associated with your YouTube. Clear all your history. That's good for your privacy as well. So delete all your comments. Google doesn't need that. They're selling you. Delete your YouTube account.

And try what I did. Yeah, give yourself the permission to still go on YouTube. But instead of being subscribed everywhere, you got to actually remember and go check those people's subscriptions. Or consider doing that on social media. I've done that. At one point, I actually completely unfollowed thousands of people on Facebook.

Then what I learned is I actually missed being able to find people at that time. That was a couple years ago. I missed being able to get a sense of what's happening. I went back and re-followed everyone. This stuff's not permanent. But same thing on Twitter. I completely unfollowed everyone on Twitter.

Now if I want to check someone on Twitter, and this has been for a long time, but now if I want to check someone on Twitter, I have to go and actually look at their feed. So that way it's just my brain working instead of the algorithms controlling me.

I'm thinking proactively, "Oh, you know what? I want to go and see what this person is saying." Instead of the algorithm saying, "Here, here, here, come see me." Give it a try. See if it works. Try deleting it from your phone. I see nothing good from social media on your phone.

The routine that most people seem to make, roll up in bed before you even get out of bed, checking social media. Before you go to sleep, checking social media. Friends, it's not healthy. It's very bad for relationships. I don't have any research data that I can present on this.

But in most of the people that I've talked to over the last few years, who have been going through divorce, personal friends, family, people I interact with, I often have taken to asking this question, "Tell me about Facebook." Frequently, Facebook is involved. Now, it's not always involved in infidelity.

But man, I can sure see how it frequently is. I was talking with my wife about it the other day. There was a girl that I'm friends with on Facebook from years and years ago. I had a major crush on the girl for a long time. And of course, in the world of Facebook, it's always interesting to say, "Oh, let me go and see what that girl's up to.

Go and look at her profile and see what's up." You've done it. Of course you have. We all do. And I was thinking about it. I was talking to my wife and I was saying, "You know, I don't have any romantic feelings for that girl. It was a long time ago." Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking at the time, but I guess I wasn't.

It was all unthinking. But I was talking to my wife and I said, "You know, I can see how it starts right there. If my wife and I were having a tough time and our relationship were not warm and fun at the moment, how easy would it be for me to go and obsess on that other girl?

How easy would it be for me to just say, 'Oh, hey, how you doing?' To all of a sudden start talking. The talking continues. And one thing leads to another. Happens all the time. I spoke with a man a couple years ago. He'd just gotten divorced from his wife.

We were talking about it and he said, "You know, it was not so bad that during dinner, I'd be there at the dinner table with the children, two little girls. She'd be over on the couch in the living room on Facebook. I didn't know what she was doing. But come to find out, she was developing a relationship with another man.

This is bad. That's an expensive thing to go through a divorce. So let me just simply say, you can come up with your own reasons. I've got all kinds of them. I think I'll go ahead and in today's site, I'll post a pretty good couple of articles in the comments on the sorry, in the notes for today's show on just reasons to consider picking on Facebook.

It's not part of it is specifically Facebook's fault. I hate to beat up on someone when they're being beaten up on. It's just that Facebook is they bought everybody else and they're the giant thing, the giant force. But it's not just them. For some people, it's Facebook. For some people, it's YouTube.

For some people, it's something else. But you assess your own life, be an adult and think about your own consideration. But that's my experience. My enjoyment, my rich life today has been measurably improved by my smartphone basically becoming a stupid phone. Just a little bit of communication apps on it.

And my computer and online experience being free of videos and free of social media accounts. And in three hours, after almost three months of absence and three hours, my productivity dropped, I wasted time, my self-image dropped, my self-confidence dropped. I started comparing myself to other people. People that if I said, and specifically, I'm talking about friends who have mine who are fellow podcasters, fellow financial people, started comparing myself to them, I started to feel worthless.

If I were physically with these people, I would feel great. I would be thrilled about their success. They would be thrilled with mine. We'd have a great conversation. We all have unique things to offer. We're all pursuing unique things. And they would say, "Hey, here's what's working. Here's what's not working." They would share their struggles.

I would share my struggles. We would, in person, or when talking, we would build each other up. Whereas Facebook fueled my jealousy. That is not a good emotion. Happy Friday, everybody. Remember, launch window right now, radicalpersonalfinance.com/increaseincome. I would love to have you sign up there. If you have any questions about the course, if you want to know if it's right for you, email me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.

If you're interested or just vaguely interested, but you have your own reasons, "Joshua, I appreciate what you're doing. I want to support you, but it's not really for me." I'd love to know. Just shoot me a note. No hard sales pitch. I'll just say, "Thank you very much," and I'll make notes of it.

That'll help me to organize what's going on. And then also, if you have something you say, "My income's doing really well, but here's what, if I would really love you to talk about, what questions I really have, what I'd really love to see you do," this particular course is 104 videos.

My next one, I think it's going to be 60 minutes total, but it's going to be packed. So if you wanted me to give you a 60 minute presentation or a 30 minute presentation on something, let me know what that is. Correspond with me via email, please. joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. And have a great rest of your weekend.

Remember, Monday at three o'clock, Monday at three o'clock, call in for the Q&A show. Hey there, treasure hunters and bargain seekers. Are you on the lookout for a local thrift store that has it all? Look no further. Picks Exchange is your thrifting paradise right here in the heart of Torrance.

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