All right, what do we have here? Ooh, 120. Let's do one more quick question, Jesse, and then we'll call it quits. This last one comes from Oscar. Oscar asks, "How should I organize my circle of friends "and acquaintances in order to make them stop texting me "via WhatsApp?" I'm gonna give you three suggestions, Oscar.

All of these suggestions are gonna be built on this foundational observation that I make in my book, "Digital Minimalism," which is that this is actually the area in your personal technology life that is the hardest to change. By hardest, I mean the area where you're gonna get the most pushback.

People worry about social media. Oh, if as part of becoming a digital minimalist, I stop using social media as much, all of these bad things might happen. I'm not gonna be able to grow my business. People are gonna miss me and worry, "Where are you?" I'm gonna disappear from the public discourse, et cetera, et cetera.

But in reality, when people embrace minimalism, it's text messaging, instant messaging. Back and forth conversations with people they know on apps, that's the hardest place to change their behavior. They leave Twitter, no one notices. They leave WhatsApp, and a private investigator is knocking at their door with a corpse-sniffing dog.

So let me just make that the foundation. I feel your pain, Oscar. But I'm gonna give you three ways to make this transition away from constant WhatsApp accessibility. Three suggestions to give you. One, I would say apologize instead of instructing. So instead of trying to instruct people, "Okay, everyone in my family, okay, all my friends, here's how I'm using WhatsApp now.

Here's the right way to get in touch with me." Everyone will get defensive. It's the guy with his one-day AA chip going to the bar and lecturing about alcohol. People are gonna get defensive. So I would say instead, just switch to your new rules for using instant messengers, whatever those rules are, and apologize when people complain.

You just simply get ready to say a bunch at first. "Oh, sorry, yeah, I don't keep WhatsApp open when I'm working on work, or I don't keep WhatsApp open when I'm exercising." Whatever it is, just keep apologizing, right? And people will eventually get it. Like, "Oh, I guess Oscar doesn't keep WhatsApp open, so I cannot expect that if I send him something, he's gonna get back to me right away." They're not defensive because you're not telling them that's better.

They're not defensive because you're not telling them, "Don't bother me." You're apologizing. But the apology is sneaky effective because even if it annoys them that they can't reach you because you don't keep WhatsApp open at work, it's a hard argument for them to make, "Hey, Oscar, no, no, that's unacceptable.

You need to be monitoring WhatsApp at work." When they actually put in the words what they're doing and what in the moment they're hoping you would be doing, it seems somewhat absurd, and so they don't. Two, provide a higher friction emergency option. This was actually an idea that came up.

We called it escape valves. In my book, "A World Without Email," by the way, I don't know why I use this royal we. Have you noticed this, Jessie? I've noticed this more and more podcast and videos. There's this real temptation to use we, even when it's not we. I guess it makes it seem like everyone has big teams or seems more important, but I don't think it actually works.

I think it just sounds weird, but look, I just did it there. I said, "Oh, in "A World Without Email," we." There's no we. It's a book I wrote. There's not a team of crack scientists that got together to put together this book, so I'm trying to be better about that.

Or if I'm talking about this show, I'll just say like Jessie and I, 'cause I don't, I don't, I don't know. There's a lot of that goes on now. Podcasters, YouTubers, they all wanna emphasize their teams, like there's some large office building that all their workers are in. Anyways, in my book, "A World Without Email," when I was talking about, it's a slightly different context, but people reworking professional communication protocols so there's less ad hoc messaging, I talked a lot about the importance of an escape valve.

So you give people a way that they can contact you and get an immediate answer in the case of an emergency, but it's a higher friction solution. So like you have to call me, right? Something that's higher friction, not impossible, but higher friction. No one really is gonna use it, but it provides people a psychological piece knowing if I did need to use it, I could, right?

So people might be worried in your family or your circle of friends, if they're thinking, "Oh, you know, Oscar's not on this, but what if there's an emergency? What if we really need him? My goodness, like maybe this is better that you're on it." But if they have an escape valve, "Oh, this is how you get me if it's really urgent and I'm not on WhatsApp," then that issue, that concern goes away.

You're not worried about that anymore. It also, again, I don't mean to keep coming back to this, I don't mean to be villainizing your family and friends, Oscar, but it diffuses potential defensive responses. 'Cause there's a response that's like, "Hey, look, I need you. I need you to be on WhatsApp because I'm swinging by." You know, your mother-in-law is like, "I have to swing by to drop something off and I need to know if you're there." If they have the escape valves, like, "Yeah, but you know what you can do?

You can call me." It's a bit more of a pain, but it's there and you can do that. No one will actually use it. Escape valves are all about the peace. Finally, consider personal communication office hours. So I was reminded of this idea. I mean, I first heard this idea from an entrepreneur I know named Chris Yeh.

And then I talked to Chris the other day. So it reminded me of this concept that he had innovated years ago. But Chris had office hours every day during roughly the same time when he was commuting from his office back to his house. He's in San Francisco. Maybe he was on the 101 and there's traffic.

So he knew there was a 45 minute period where I'd always be in my car. And so he had personal communication office hours for people who knew him, friends, family members. You can always call me during that time. And so it's a way that he could stay in touch with people and have serendipitous conversations and see what's going on without have to constantly be monitoring some other type of asynchronous communication medium.

So personal communication office hours are a great way of maintaining connection when people are used to being able to just outsource that to doing quick messages back and forth. Now you're like, "Hey, call me, man. Call me. This is my time I'm available. When are you gonna call me?" Or if they're texting you and you don't see it till three hours later, you're like, "Just call me at my next, call me.

You can always call me at these hours. Call me next time you can, let's talk about it." So it's a way to have connection with people with again, not having to monitor that screen all the time. All right, Oscar, so that's what I'd recommend. I think you're thinking about the right thing.

I do not think the constant monitoring of instant messenger type channels is compatible with a deep life by almost any definition. It is an issue, but it's also really hard to get past. Those are the three things I would keep in mind. People will still complain, but they'll complain a lot less if you do those three things.

It is worth it. You just can't live a focused life if every four minutes you have to check and jump in on an asynchronous back and forth conversation. So reform your WhatsApp usage. If they still complain, you can blame it on me. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)