How To Build Real Connection And Destroy The Likes Habit | Cal Newport

0:00With the Discover Cashback Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5 % cash back at different categories each quarter on up to$1 ,500 in purchases. That's 5 % cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to Discover. Terms apply. See discover.com slash 5 for details. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:39So if you go back to the beginning of the consumer-facing smartphone era, so like the iPhone in 2007, I went back and talked to the original development lead for the first iPhone. And what he confirmed is there was nothing about this tech that meant for you to look at it all the time. Right? Steve Jobs was a minimalist. Right. His whole thing was I want to take something that's really important to you and then I want to make the experience beautiful. And so for him it was playing music. Music was incredibly important. Huge. It was big. Yeah. And everyone was listening to iPods, right? And so the iPhone had a touchscreen.

1:13And he was like, look, I can make the experience of playing music even more beautiful. and he was offended by the interfaces on cell phones at that time. He was like, phone calls are important. I want to make that a beautiful experience. I want to put them in one device so you don't have to have an iPod and a phone, both in your pocket. And that was from like 2007 and 2012, that was smartphones. It was this beautiful tool that you brought out occasionally to do specific things. Like I want to listen to a song. I want to call my mom. I want to look up directions, right? Right. Around 2011, 2012, the social media companies were now past the stage of just we're trying to grow and saying we actually have to get our revenue up because it was the Facebook IPO in particular.

1:52Right. How are we going to get people to engage much more on our services? Because the Facebook.com is pretty static. Right. I mean, you would go check your friend's relationship status, but if you checked it in the morning, it was probably not going to change that day. It's not something you would spend all day looking at. Right. And so they completely re-engineered the experience to be not about posting and reading other people's posts, but instead about social approval indicators. Wow. And then we got the likes and the retweets and the favorites and the photo auto tags. So now every time you hit this app, you could see some indications.

2:27Are people approving of me? Are people thinking of me? And that's what changed our relationship with the phones from this Jobsian vision of this is a beautiful object that does a few things really well into I have to look at this when I'm walking the dog. I have to look at this, you know, when I'm in the bathroom. I have to look at this when I'm in the line. There was nothing fundamental about the tech that said we need to be looking at this all the time. Wow. That was essentially a business model that was proved very effective. Very effective. Very addictive. Yeah. And this, you know, as that expands and grows, the more likes you get, it's almost like you feel less worthy of yourself.

3:05It's like you have less self-worth because you constantly need to be reminded that you're liked or what you posted, what is cool or interesting. Oh, you have cute kids or a cute dog. And so we have to constantly remind ourselves, like, yes, I am worthy. I am enough. Look, it keeps growing. Yeah. Let me post more to remind myself that I need the likes. Except for when you're hunting the likes, then what you're not doing is actually sacrificing your time and energy to be with a close friend or family or community. Or create something meaningful. Or create something meaningful. Like the things that actually we've evolved to crave to feel sort of accepted and connected and impactful.

3:40And so it's this irony that you're doing this because you're like, I want to feel accepted and connected to people. But by doing this all the time, you're actually feeling less connected and less accepted. because our social brain, it doesn't really know what to make of, like a number next to a thumbs-up icon. It knows about this. It knows, like, I'm sitting across from someone, and I'm looking at someone, and I'm seeing facial expressions, and I've made time to be here, and we're interacting. It knows about that. That's connection. But without some sort of sacrifice, like I had to go and be and spend my time with someone.

4:13If you take all the friction out and you just hit happy birthday or like or something like that, it's not a strong connection. So how do we build stronger connections? Well, I mean, when it comes to social life, we kind of know, we've known for a long time what makes people feel connected. It's strong relationships with sacrificing time and attention for taking on responsibility on behalf of family, close friends, and community. I mean, there's no shortcut. I mean, if a friend has a baby, you could send them, like, congrats, three exclamation points. what you really should do is go over there and say, here, I'm bringing you a box full of, like, it's snacks and food and towels.

4:52It turns out towels are really useful when you have babies. Yeah, this is something I've discovered, right? And that's hard, and it just took an hour of your time, right? But that leaves you feeling connected. That leaves that other person feeling like you're connected. The congrats with the three exclamation points. It's not bad, but it's not giving you what you need. And it's not like a deep work of building relationship. it's the small attention that's not as meaningful as showing up even a phone call is better than it's a lot better than just a like or congrats it's taking the time i try to go even a step further with people that i'm really connected to and send them just a video message yeah and they're always in shock because they're like so used to someone just saying a quick text yeah i'll send even a minute video message of just acknowledging them for what i appreciate about them or congratulating they're just always like wow yeah so thankful a video yeah it probably hits you instinctually, something about it when you do it, it probably feels something about it feels more real.

5:46Absolutely. It's more attention. It's more time. It's a more piece of quality, I guess, communication, right? But showing up is really the key in person if you can, but if someone's not in their city, then it might be harder.

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7:36Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

7:48With the Discover Cashback Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5 % cash back at different categories each quarter on up to$1 ,500 in purchases. That's 5 % cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to Discover. Terms apply. See discover.com slash 5 for details. Thank you.