All right, let's do another call, Jesse. I like these. All right, we got a call about smartwatches. Hello, Cal. My name is Connor Beck. I am a copywriter and content marketing specialist from St. Paul, Minnesota. And my question has to do with smartwatch technology. So I think I know what your answer to this question might be, but I'll ask it anyways.

I just wanted to get your general thoughts on smartwatches. I really try and not stay glued to my phone or get too distracted throughout the day, but I thought maybe I could use a smartwatch in a very simplified way in order to screen out text messages that are not important versus those that are.

My partner occasionally texts me throughout the day, and sometimes it is very time-sensitive and important in terms of what she texts me about. So again, I think I might know your answer, but I'm just wondering what you think of smartwatch technology and if that technology can be used in a very simplified way so that it actually helps you eliminate distraction rather than create more distraction, and if you can use that technology in a way that allows you to tune out distractions rather than be overcome by them.

So thanks again for your insight and your wisdom. It is very much appreciated. Thank you to both you and Jesse for sharing the deep life, and keep up the good work. Thank you. >> Connor, with smartwatches, we should separate two different common uses. So there's productivity. That's the category where we'll put what you are talking about now.

So looking at text messages and emails, being able to communicate through your watch for productivity purposes. Then there's fitness, which is a whole other world, which I'll put aside for now. So in the productivity world, as you seem to be guessing, no, I'm not that impressed by the idea of needing a smartwatch to make you more productive.

I think you should be spending less time with notifications, not more. I don't buy the screening argument. So there's two possible responses here. One is what would happen if, and this is the way I typically run things, I check my phone sometimes. And so text messages that come in when I don't have my phone with me, I won't see for a while.

The right answer to that question is nothing bad will happen. And you can come up with a lot of scenarios where, well, so my partner is literally on fire. And if I don't get the text message in time, I can't use this app I have set up to trigger a complex Rube Goldberg style watering system that will put out our flames.

You can come up with these scenarios, but here's the thing. Well, just about a minute ago, we did not have the ability to contact people like that. And very few people burn to death because their partners couldn't access to Rube Goldberg watering system. So we were fine without that before.

I think most people would be fine today. It's easy to come up with those scenarios, but they just don't happen enough. They don't happen enough. And when they do happen, the cost is such that it's not worth months and months of consistent distraction because every four months, you missed a call that caused someone to get mad at you.

I say fair trade. All right. Number two, I would say about that is, okay, if you really are worried about it because your partner spends a lot of time around fire and you spent a long time building that Rube Goldberg apparatus, then just do the extra five minutes of work to set up the filter on your phone so that for calls, you have a white list and people on that list, their call comes through, put their number on it, put your ringer on.

All right. Call here if there's really an emergency. Now, this comes up a lot. I talked about this in my book, A World Without Email, where this was the context of business where you're making yourself less accessible. And we called it the steam valve. You have the emergency steam valve where you say, okay, I know I'm not going to be as accessible on email or Slack or whatever, whatever the plan is you're talking about, but don't worry.

We have an emergency backup. Call this phone number. So there's always a way you can reach me. There is no actual period where you can't reach me. And the whole point of those backup emergency steam valves, we called it, strategies, was not so that you could avert emergencies because they never happen.

You talk to people who set up, like, okay, here's my special number. Call me if you can't wait until, like, the next time I'm supposed to be online or my office hours or whatever. No one ever calls. The emergencies don't happen. They exist just so that people feel better.

They know if they really had to reach you, they could. And I always thought that was an interesting observation is that we're worried that all these emergencies are happening. They rarely do. The potential existence of these specters should not be sufficient to get you to live all of your time in a much more distracted state.

So there's a question like, what watts do I use? As Jesse will attest, I actually hang off of my belt an old fashioned sand hourglass. That's true, Jesse? It's true. And I, and I, so I have a sundial I consult. And so when the shadow gets to the top of an hour, I flip over the hourglass.

It weighs about seven pounds. It's about yay big, but you know, it's simple. You don't run out of batteries with your sand. Am I right, Jesse? No, actually I will say, um, the watch I use is, is like the, my favorite, my favorite physical object that I own. So I'm not in the cars.

I don't dress very well or collect a lot of things, but I do. My watch is like very symbolic to me. It is something I really enjoy. So I use a, uh, let's say down here and a mega speedmaster, early analog winded every day with a little, uh, mechanism.

It's mechanism is brilliantly engineered. They updated this in 2021. It loses, you know, a second in it per day or something. So it's just like beautiful engineering inside of this thing. No batteries, no electricity, no quartz crystals, no text messages being shown through. And the backstory I like about this other than being like a nice, like well engineered piece of analog handicraft is that this was the watch that was approved by NASA for the Apollo missions.

Speedmaster went into space and you can get a lot of pictures of the astronauts. They actually wore it on the moon. They would, they got bigger straps that could go around the outside of the UVA suits. But I liked it as a metaphor to this that I think is nice for the type of techno criticism I do, which is when Apollo 13 was having their famed troubles on the way to the moon, they had to shut down all the computers to save battery power, right?

So they shut down all the computers. So they're just, this thing was just flying analog and they had to do these burns of the engine to correct their trajectory so that they want to skip off the atmosphere of the earth. They had to do these precise burns, but the computers were shut down.

And so how did they do them? Well, they had a reticule, like a little cross hairs, which they aimed at a very particular, you know, I think it was the horizon, the terminal horizon on the moon. And then a level timed it with the speed master. So this analog piece of beautifully engineered gears, when all the electricity had to be turned off, essentially it was this piece of analog handicraft that actually that plus a cross hairs plus fire is how the astronauts did what otherwise a computer would do.

So this is a nice metaphor about the, you know, beauty and analog simplicity versus the complexities and distraction of the digital. So I can use that all to justify otherwise a sort of kind of absurdly expensive thing to wear on your wrist.