Your Phone Is Stealing the Life You Actually Want | Cal Newport

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20:17And what he confirmed is there was nothing about this tech that meant for you to look at it all the time. 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. It was big. Yeah. And everyone was listening to iPods, right? And so the iPhone had a touch screen. And 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. Wow. He was like, phone calls are important.

20:48I 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? 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, right? How are we going to get people to engage much more on our services.

21:24Because 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. Are people approving of me?

21:56Are 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. That was essentially a business model that was proved very effective.

22:22Lewis Howes:Very effective. Very addictive. And this, you know, as that expands and grows, the more likes you get, it's almost like you feel less worthy of yourself. It's like you have less self-worth because you constantly need to be reminded that your light or what you posted was cool or interesting and, 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. Let me post more to remind myself that I have. 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.

23:00Or 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. And 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.

23:34It 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. If you take all the friction out and you just hit happy birthday or like or something like that, it's not a strong connection.

23:46Lewis Howes: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. There's no shortcut. I mean, if a friend has a baby, you could send them, like, congrats, three exclamation points. But what you really should do is go over there and say, here, I'm bringing you a box full of, like, this is, you know, it's snacks and food and towels. It turns out towels are really useful when you have babies.

24:21Yeah, 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.

24:35Lewis Howes: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 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. And they're always in shock because they're so used to someone just saying a quick text. 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. It probably hits you instinctually.

25:08Something about it when you do it, it probably feels, something about it feels more real. Absolutely.

25:13Lewis Howes: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. So do you feel like our quality of our life is diminishing because of social media or because of the lack of our attention to deeper work in our work and our relationships? This is what I've been hearing, right? So I wrote Deep Work, which was really about tech and its impact on the professional world. And what I kept hearing when I was on the road was readers saying, yeah, but what about tech in our personal lives, right?

25:49There's something going on here. So tech in the work life meaning? Like the distractions like email and Slack and how that's keeping people away from doing highly concentrated work and how this is probably a mistake.

25:59Lewis Howes:Yeah, just doing meetings all day and communicating, but not actually creating work. Yeah, we're really bad at knowledge work. So that was deep work, right? So a lot of the readers say, yeah, but something is going on in our personal lives with tech that is sort of arguably more important. And so you look into this, and you see there is this unease. Maybe around two years ago, people really started to shift from this sort of self-deprecating mode to, like, wait a second, there is a problem. But if you talk to people, it's not utility, right? So it's not that they say, this is useless. I hate what I'm doing when I'm on my phone.

26:32It's not like cigarettes or something. Most people who smoke would just say, I just wish I wasn't smoking. There's something good that comes around. There is, right? There's good things happening. The issue is autonomy. So people were feeling like, I am losing control over my life, and that's why I'm upset. Not that this is always bad, but it's that I'm doing this more than I should. I'm doing this more than it's useful. I'm doing this more than it's healthy. I'm doing this to the exclusion of things that I know are much more meaningful. I feel manipulated, like how I feel, my emotions, that somehow these algorithms are changing how I feel.

27:06And so the argument is I'm losing my autonomy as a human being. That's what was making people concerned. Now, the social media companies, for a long time, because I've been a long sort of public critic of some of social media, they would always push back with the utility argument. They would say, wait a second. Here is something useful that someone is doing on Facebook. Stop criticizing me. Checkmate, right? Like we've won. And what I was finding is that's not really the grounds on which this argument is occurring. It's not is this useless or useful. It is am I in control of this and using it for good means or is it in control of me?

27:41I think more people feel like, okay, it's shifted and now it's in control of me.

27:45Lewis Howes:Especially when you now on the iPhone, you can try to see how many hours you spent on an app or social media account. And you're like, wow, I just spent 20 hours this week on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. Just like, what could you have done with all that time? I'm guilty for this too, you know. But you split that. Take 20 hours, right? Split that between some strong interaction with people, self-reflection, and let's say some skill building or creation. Yeah, or working out or nature. And multiply that by, what, like five or six weeks even. And it's a vastly different outcome. And now think about the compounding return, right?

28:21Now you take those 20 hours and you repurpose it week after week. And now you're growing off a bigger and bigger base. And you go three or four years down the line, it's a completely different life. Completely different.

28:31Lewis Howes:And people who complain about wanting to write a book but never have the time or wanting to learn a new language or a new skill, just look at the amount of time you spend on social media or your email or on nonsense. This is why people are getting upset about social media. Again, it's not that they think it's what they're actually doing is evil or like what they do when they're on these screens. is you're looking at baby pictures of your niece or something. It's not bad. What they're upset about is that it's keeping them from getting after it in these other aspects. So this isn't bad, but not learning the language, not learning the skill, not getting healthy, not taking on responsibility, right?

29:08Like becoming a figure in my community that people respect. Like these things that we actually crave, that's what people are picking up on. There's all of this stuff over here that instinctually I know if I'm doing this is key to flourishing as a human, and I'm just distracting myself with this so much that there's nothing left over for me to do that. And the fact that why am I so distracted on this is because they tweaked it so that I would do this a lot. It's so that the real estate prices in Northern California can be really expensive. It's not like I'm curing cancer over here and I'm making sacrifices over there.

29:39It's they tweak this so that I would use it 20 hours a week.

29:43Lewis Howes:And you said before we jumped on here about the deeper conversation of what's the void we're trying to fill? What's the thing that people aren't willing to look at within themselves that makes them so distracted? You've been having those conversations a lot lately? This is a lot of what surprised me, right? When I was working on the book is that I did this experiment where I put out a call to my readers and said, I'm experimenting with this idea of a digital declutter where 30 days you step away. Wow. 30 days you step away. And this is kind of the core sort of suggestion in the book. Like 30 days, you step away.

30:17From all social media. All social media. Email too or no? No, all optional technologies in your personal life. So I can't get you out of answering your boss's email, but online news, social media, games, streaming media, YouTube, right? Almost everything you do in your personal life with tech for one month. TV as well?

30:34Lewis Howes:It's like movies and TV. Well, yeah. So different people had different rules for that. Like one of the rules I liked is people said, no streaming media by yourself. So like, yeah, I can watch a movie with, with like a friend or my wife or something. Not just in bed streaming a movie. But I can't just, you know, watching The Office or whatever. Which is what everyone does. And that's the idea was that you do this 30 days, and then when it's over, you rebuild your digital life from scratch, right? So it's like Marie Kondo. You clear out the whole closet. Yes. Right. And what brings you joy? Yeah, you figure it out, and then you rebuild it from scratch, right?

31:03But I kept getting these reports from people, especially younger people, who did not have an adult life before social media. Wow. That it was terrifying. that taking this away that first day was really terrifying for him. And I had underestimated the degree to which for a lot of people that this is a serious escape. It's not just like this is dumb, I spend too much time on nonsense. Like it's actually an escape from hard things they don't want to deal with. Like what? Well, it can be a lot of things, right? I mean, for some people, there's actually hard questions about their life. Like what am I supposed to be doing?

31:39Am I really living up to my potential? Am I really happy with the type of person I am? Am I just going out partying too much or this or that? And this stops them from having to confront that. And it's incredibly uncomfortable to confront. And for other people, they don't have high-quality analog leisure options in their life, which is another thing I learned about it. It seems sort of superficial, like leisure activities. But it's actually really important to have things you do. Like things you do in your time outside of work that requires skill, something you can get better at, something that maybe connects you to other people as you do it.

32:16It could be like athletics for a lot of people, like even like their pickup basketball game or something like this, but also skilled hobbies, community or church group engagement. Like these type of things that we always use to fill our time with outside of work are really important, but it takes some practice and it's harder, right? And so getting back into that, if you've never been there before, is difficult.

32:36Lewis Howes:I think you said in your TED video that you read a book every night and you relax on a rocking chair. I'm such an old man. And I read a newspaper at the table with my kids in the morning. That's how I get to do it. That was like my dad. My dad would read the newspaper either in the morning but after work. He'd come home and just read the newspaper. Just sitting in the room with us while we were watching TV or playing video games, he was reading the newspaper. And then almost every night he would just fall asleep in his chair. reading the newspaper or a book and just like passed out and I'm like man he just looks like so restful yeah yeah yeah I know I'd be a good farmer a hundred years ago right if I could just sit on a porch and whittle yeah but again it sounds superficial but but I get into it like we go all the way back to Aristotle right in the Nicomateean Ethics and you see that it's crucial to have activities you do just for the intrinsic quality that's crucial for making it through the inevitable ups and downs in life right that you have activities that you do that you do just because you appreciate quality, right?

33:35If you have that, it's kind of a buffer against various ups and downs, right? If you're really good at cooking or playing music, if you're a musician, even amateur, you can really just appreciate a good piece of music or if you're a knitter or something like that and just constructing something good. It all seems superficial, but it's actually a really important buffer.

33:54Lewis Howes:Really? The in-between times. The in-between times. And so maybe you're having a hard time in life at the moment having this sort of anchor, but there's things I do that I just appreciate them for their intrinsic quality, is like deeply human. And we take it for granted, but having the screen, I mean, you can avoid all of this. Because it's easier in the moment. And more rewarding. More rewarding. It's this algorithmically optimized content. You've been reduced to a data tuple of 19 ,000 data points. Statistical algorithms are processing. And they're feeding you. Like, look at this nugget, look at that nugget.

34:27It's reduced you to a statistical gadget. It feeds you these isolated nuggets. And it's just optimized so that you'll want to keep – it's the same as processed food. Yeah. Same idea. You want more and more of it. You're never satisfied. You're never satisfied. But if you move away from a real food culture to eat McDonald's, you're not going to be happy in the long term.

34:44Lewis Howes:Wow. Yeah. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation, and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now and you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need. Now, let's get back to the conversation. There's always that one spot in the house you keep meaning to fix. Maybe it's a room that feels a little tired or a piece of furniture that's seen better days.

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36:03Lewis Howes:Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5 % back on every purchase. Head to Wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's Wayfair.com. The School of Greatness is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. You know what they say, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So go with Amica and get coverage from a mutual insurer that's built for their customers. One that looks after what's important to you together. Auto, home, life, and more. Coverage that fits your unique needs. Amica helps you protect what matters most. Visit amica.com and get a quote today. So this void that we're trying to fill, you're saying that when we have hobbies or other things that we can do that add value to us, the buffer times, as opposed to going on the phone to try to fill the void, what will that do for us emotionally, mentally?

36:58Lewis Howes:You also talked about how a lot of professors or maybe, what is it, the therapists on college campuses or professors in mental health are saying that mental health is rising. It's off the charts. Because of social media anxiety. Yeah. So do you think if we were able to eliminate some of that to do more arts and crafts, music, other buffer-type experiences, that anxiety would go down? Yes. Really? Yeah. It would definitely go down. So for young people, so Generation Z, which is the first generation to have sort of ubiquitous access to smartphones and social media as they enter their young adolescence, this generation, that's where anxiety and anxiety-related disorders were literally off the charts.

37:38So the demographers that measure different traits of generations and see how traits change from generation to generation had never seen something change that severely. So it was off their charts looking at anxiety and anxiety-related disorders. And the turning point from this was if you were born just late enough to have social media and smartphones like when you entered junior high.

37:59Lewis Howes:When you were like 10. Yeah. And so this was off the charts. I had been hearing this informally from mental health experts on college campuses. where they would tell me like it was crazy. It was overnight. They used to have the standard array of mental health issues, sort of a cross-section of what you would expect, like country as a whole. And then it just shifted overnight. It was all anxiety, anxiety-related disorders. And it was like 5x more students coming in than they ever used to got before. And they would say it was the students who started arriving on campus with smartphones. It was like that year.

38:31Because we're not wired for it, right? So what do we need to flourish as human beings? You take on responsibility for friends, close family close friends community take on responsibility commit to them you know i'm going to sacrifice for you you'll sacrifice for me i'm going to be involved you do activity that that has intrinsic quality right so you go out there to i want to do things with my time that itself is high quality and there's value in just doing that and then and then in your professional life you look to make impact like you do these things it's it's not a secret formula this is what we've always needed is the nutriments of human flourish right and so this is the issue with the phone is And again, the social media companies want it all to be about utility.

39:09It's not useless to be on Facebook, but it's not the issue. It's that this has become so compulsive that it's taken us away from these things that we absolutely need to flourish. So you take those all away and you just do this instead, you're going to be anxious. You're going to get dumber. You're going to get dumber. It's going to impede professional progress. And then life gets really hard. And then you need this more and more to escape. I mean, when things become dangerous in our life is when you start using them to escape harder things you don't want to confront. And so then it becomes a cycle.

39:41So then you know, like, I'm not, I'm probably not doing what I should be doing with my life.

39:45Lewis Howes:When you feel guilty, you feel guilty. You feel guilty, and so you escape the guilt by going back to this, and it's a cycle. What's more addictive, social media or smoking? Well, I mean, it's an interesting question. I talked to psychologists about this. It's a different type of addiction. Smoking is a substance addiction. So there's actually chemicals that can, nicotine can get through the blood-brain barrier, and it can mess around directly with your neurons. So that's really strong. And when you have a substance addiction, you can feel strong physical withdrawal symptoms, for example, if you stop using it.

40:16Phone addiction, psychologists tend to categorize as a moderate behavioral addiction, which means, okay, if I take away your phone, like, it might be difficult, but you're not going to have the same type of withdrawal you would have if you were, like, an alcoholic and you were being taken away from alcohol. But moderate behavioral addictions lead you to using something much more than you know is healthy if you have access to it So it's just like if I put the bowl of potato chips in front of you every day You're gonna eat probably way too many potato chips, right? But if I don't you're not gonna sneak out in the middle of the night to go buy it So that's where we are with probably with the phones is that if we have it with us We're gonna use it more than we think is healthy on the phone.

40:57Lewis Howes:Okay, so let's Let's make this scenario. There's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen a lot of people that have have products and services and companies and trying to build their brands and get exposure and build a following. What would you say to the people that their business is mostly online and is evolved around building communities on social networking platforms? How would you suggest they manage their time on social media? Can they eliminate social media all in all or let someone else run it for them? What's your recommendation? All those are possible. right? So I definitely recognized in the professional context, there's certain things that social media enables that's really powerful.

41:36I mean, there's a reason, for example, why Facebook is worth$500 billion because let's say you're trying to advertise. It's crazy. This thing can pinpoint exact human beings that you want to try to sell to. I mean, I see why they're making lots of money and I understand why people would use it to advertise. I also understand having some sort of presence in social media is useful in certain industries. And so what I typically advise is if you think social media is very important for your business, treat it as something important. Like actually get after it and understand where am I really getting value?

42:09What activities really matter? Do they really matter? Make sure you're not telling yourself a story, right? Treat it like any other tool. Then once you've really figured out, okay, these are the ways that social media is helping me professionally, then use it like a professional. So there's no reason for it to be on your phone. Really? Yeah. It doesn't, don't. Email's on your phone, right? I don't use email on my phone. Really? Wow. Yeah. I deleted the app.

42:30Lewis Howes:You only open the computer to do the work on email. Yeah. And on your phone, you're not checking or being notified. So do the same. So once you've identified X, Y, and Z on social media is a big ROI, do it like the pros. So I interviewed some sort of social media brand managers for major companies in the book. Like, okay, how do the professionals use it? It's on their desktop. They've got tools. They've got schedules. They've got systems. They often have staff that helps them. And it's a completely different interaction than I'm in line at CVS. Right. And I'm looking at it. I'm on the toilet. Yeah.

43:03Lewis Howes:You're on 20 extra minutes, which I do all the time. Right. So like a lot of people sort of tell themselves the story. They allow the sort of professional use to completely change what's happening in life outside of work. And so those are the two things that happen. So sometimes people just generically see professional social media. is like, I don't want to think about it more than just, in general, being on here and using a lot is beneficial. I think we've got to think about it sharper than that. And then two, they let it infect over. But like, if a friend of mine was running a business, and we were out to dinner, and he's doing QuickBooks, whatever.

43:35I was like, well, why are you making QuickBooks invoices? Like, I don't doubt that maybe QuickBooks is useful for your business, but this is weird that you're using it on your phone all the time. At dinner. Yeah, it's not just enough to, if he came back and said, but my business needs QuickBooks. That's how I invoice my clients or whatever. I say, that's true, but like, do you need to be writing up invoices on the toilet? Yeah, and at dinner and at the movies. At dinner and at the movies, yeah. So when I talk to professionals, I'm like, if you need social media, use it like, if you're using it professionally, use it like a professional.

44:05And it should have very little to do with your personal life.

44:08Lewis Howes:What are the non-negotiables for you every day in terms of screen time and your phone? That's a good question. Well, I don't really need that many non-negotiables because it's never there. So I don't have social media accounts. So I'm free from that re-engineering. So when you don't have that re-engineering towards the compulsive use model, the phone just goes back to the way it was in 2007. So I was like, great, I need to look up, you know, I'm looking up like whatever the address of where I'm going or something like this. Use maps. Yeah, I do maps. I'm going to call my wife and see how the kids are doing or something like that.

44:41But because I've never been exposed to the constant companion model, It's just never something that I worry about. And then online, I train myself not to web surf. Really? So I don't have a cycle of sites to go through. Now, in part, I can do this because I have a lot of autonomy in my job. So as a professor and a writer, it's not like I never have to just be at an office to be there. I can decide what I'm going to work on. And so because I have kids, I tend to tightly schedule my workday. And so I don't want time, the web surf, during my workday. It's like I'm doing this for two hours and this.

45:14I want to be trying to work every single minute. I'm working so I can be done and then I can be home. And then when I'm home, I have three kids running around.

45:21Lewis Howes:So you're just a present dad. That's what I want to do. Wow. Yeah. You're just hanging out, throwing a baseball in the backyard, whatever, getting dirty, whatever it might be. Yeah, we literally do that, yeah. Wow. Just like the old days. I remember after work, my dad would come home. He'd be in his suit. He'd roll his sleeves up. He'd get to two mitts and we'd go play catch in the backyard. Yeah. For 20, 30 minutes. It was so powerful. In the summer in Ohio, just like the smell, the grass, just like throwing a catch, you know? Yeah. Simple little things that build connection and it's a memory.

45:52It's a memory. And it's physical and it's tangible and you're taking responsibility for a relationship. My oldest is only six, but we're working on swings. Wow. It's getting better. All right.

46:01Lewis Howes:You'll be doing t-ball soon? He did t-ball last summer. Really? Are you coaching? I'm not the coach. I'm not the coach. Maybe I should be. But you go. Now, it's interesting. When you go as a parent to see, I guess, T-ball, and I'm sure you'll be doing more activities with your kids as they get older. Yeah. Do you see all other parents just on their phone the whole time? There's a lot of that. Really? Yeah. And playgrounds too. Really? This is one of the sources, I think, of the pushback that I've been picking up on the last couple of years on our digital lives is that our generation, like so people like us who were exposed, the social media generation, right?

46:36We got it when we were like in college. 20s. The first adopters, basically, right, is we're starting to have families. And so it's interesting. A lot of the unease is coming from, like, new moms and dads. Wow. Right? Because now suddenly you have to confront. Like, it's pretty clear that this thing in front of me here is very important and something that I want to dedicate to and take responsibility. And then, like, then why am I looking at this? Right.

46:59Lewis Howes:Well, my kids are the most important thing. Yeah. And so it's one of the source of the growing unease is that the social media generation, the first adopters, is now getting old enough. That it's not just, you know, we're in our 20s and we're going out and hanging out with friends and who cares, you know. And so I think that's part of the pushback. So for people who are entrepreneurs that use social media to build their business, what do you recommend? Do you recommend them deleting for 30 days? Do you recommend them saying, okay, you're only going to be scheduled online for these hours a day like a working professional would?

47:30Yeah, put fences around it.

47:32Lewis Howes:Okay. Yeah, so take it off your phone and put fences around how and when. Man, that's scary. Yeah. Yeah. Take it off your phone. And have how and when. How and when. Wow. So a lot of the digital minimalists, right? Like a lot of the people who go through this process, like of that 1 ,600, probably 50 % added some social media back into their life after the 30 days. So you had 1 ,600 people go through this process? Okay. And they would send them reports. Of the reports I got, about 50 % were saying, okay, I can't think of any huge wins I'm getting out of social media. because the whole minimalism game is just about focus on the big wins and ignore the rest.

48:09And so the whole idea is you go through all this tech after the 30 days and say, if it's a big win, I'll bring it back in. And if it's not, I'm happy to miss out. So about 50%, when they did this calculus for social media, were like, I'm not getting a big win. And I'm a minimalist. I'm going to focus my attention on the things that really matter. So that's OK. 50 % had big wins, right? What do you mean they had big wins? There was a value, something they really valued for which, let's say, a particular social media tool was a big boost, right? For what? Their business or their career. Either, right?

48:37So it might be a personal thing, right? Like this is the only way I connect with these people who are very important in my life. A lot of like soldiers deployed overseas have a very different relationship with some of these social media platforms. Interesting. Because of the time changes and the difficulty of the synchronous communication. Interesting. That's really important for them. A lot of visual artists told me that Instagram is crucial.

48:58Lewis Howes:For their business and for their awareness. For their creativity. They have to be, if you're a visual artist, you have to see other people's work. That's why they all used to live in Greenwich Village, because that's where the galleries were. Wow, interesting. And now, yeah, so Instagram has been fantastic for visual artists, because you don't have to live in one of three cities anymore. So about 50 % had some value that social media really helped. But of that 50%, probably 95 % took it off their phone and transformed it into, I use it like Sundays on my desktop to do X. right the visual artists were like i i took my instagram followers i went down to 10 artists i really admire sunday night i go on my desktop uh the password's not saved you know it's in a post it note or whatever it takes about 20 minutes i look at the things they posted that week i'm getting all the value i need out of this tool without letting it turn me into a widget so the how and when is sort of the secret sauce to minimalism so it's not just the what so they really cut down, right?

49:57It's like taking the junk out of your house. But then they have this extra element, which is unique to the digital world, which is how and when am I going to use the things that I kept in the closet?

50:05Lewis Howes:Interesting. So in the book, Digital Minimalism, do you have a guideline for how people can do this for 30 days? Is there a process? Yeah. The process is you figure out, okay, what am I going to step away from? And for the things that I do need to keep, you actually write down the rules, right? So you see it. Here's my tech rules. You have 30 days. So what are you supposed to do during those 30 days? Like, why is this not just like a Marie Kondo weekend type thing, right? Yeah, like what? Five-hour declutter. Yeah. Yeah, well, there's two reasons. So one, it takes about seven to 10 days just to sort of detox from the need to compulsively use the phone.

50:40Until you get rid of that feeling of compulsive use, it's very hard to make decisions about what's important or not. So the first week or two is you're just kind of getting away from it. But more importantly is 30 days is enough time to actually do the hard self-reflection on these key questions. Like, what am I all about? What do I care about? What do I want to do with my time? You can experiment and try things out. You can talk to mentors. You can go for walks. You read inspiring books. I mean, it takes quite a bit of self-work to figure out what do I really care about? And then once you know that, when you get to the end of 30 days, now you have a foundation to make your decisions.

51:15So now when you're like, should I come back, maybe should I put Instagram back into my life? You can now run that against, here's the things I identified I really cared about. If it really helps one of these things, yes, I'm using it for a huge win. If it doesn't, I'm really secure missing out on it because this is what I really care about. I really care about these five things. This is what I want to do with my time. This is what's important to my life. I want my energy to go to that. And now you can just make these tools back into tools and not this sort of constant companion escape. Addiction.

51:45Yeah. Wow.

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53:58They seem to be doing it. Really? Yeah. I mean, the whole idea of a 30-day challenge is a little bit more self-healthy than I normally am. I mean, right? I mean, I was a little bit uncomfortable. My books tend to be more, a little bit more like idea books. It has practical things, but like I'm an academic, right? We don't do 30 days. You're a researcher. Yeah, we don't do 30 days. But it's what works. And, you know, people want there to be, I get asked a question a lot, like, but can you give me instead like some tips, like five things I can do or whatever? I was like, I can, but. Just delete your accounts.

54:29But you got to do the 30, like something about this 30 days, this declutter it does work and coming up short of that trying to kind of do it piecemeal it doesn't seem to be as effective and so I was like all right I'm putting it in I'm gonna marry condo it I'm gonna have a process you know I love it but that's the feedback I'm getting so that's why I tell people I was like you can do things to get in shape the prepare for the 30 days but

54:52Lewis Howes:yeah I really feel like when you do this 30-day challenge I had another friend Baratunde Thurston Thurston who did this a couple years ago and he wrote a whole article I think in like fast company about what he learned about himself in 30 days. I wrote about him in deep work. He did. Yeah, because he stepped away from Twitter. I think he stepped away from like every, was it just Twitter? Maybe everything. But then he went back to it all. And now is he back like this? Well, I don't know. I just remember at the time I wrote the article, I went and looked at how much he was using afterwards. Yeah, he stepped away for 30 days or maybe a month or something, yeah.

55:25Lewis Howes:And then he did like a whole article about what he learned about himself. I think he was able to do the deep work finally on certain projects or connect with friends more. You have to have the time. It can't be a weekend closet clean. That's the interesting thing about it. If it's just like, okay, this weekend I'm going to just step back and figure out what do I want on my phone. I'm going to delete apps and stuff like that. It doesn't get it done. You have to have that space. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the same. Honestly, I think what's going on here we've seen in health and fitness. Right? We've got highly palatable processed foods.

56:00Lewis Howes:Yeah, get it out of your system. Yeah, and everyone got, you know, the BCD epidemic. And we tried tips, just, you know, the banal stuff, right? Like eat less, move more. You've got to get rid of it, though. The food pyramid. Yeah, and what works is the people who have like a whole philosophy, right? They're vegan, they're paleo, they're whatever. But they've got a whole philosophy based on something they care about. And so that's why this book is not about tips. It was like what's veganism for digital life, right? Like what's the philosophy? What's the philosophy that can be based in values? that allows you to make consistent decisions about what you do.

56:34It's interesting.

56:34Lewis Howes:My COO who manages my business, he doesn't have social media. He has a Facebook account because he got on in 2004 when we were in college. But he never uses it. I don't even know if he knows his password. He's not on Instagram, Twitter, nothing. And he's probably the most productive person I know. He's got a daughter, a year and a half daughter. And he's not anxious a lot. He's calm. And he can think clearly. Yeah. And he's my inspiration because I'm probably on it too much promoting my show or whatever it may be. Yeah. But I realized after this conversation, like, I could just be on the desktop for an hour a day doing what I need to do on social media.

57:13Lewis Howes:Yeah. With some professional help probably too. Yeah, with some systems, some software, some team, you know, around that. And I've been doing that more and more, but I still feel like there's a couple things I hold on to. Yeah. For whatever reason. and maybe I get to reflect more of like what's the void I'm trying to fill yeah or is it just an addiction now that it's just like maybe there's no void but it's just like you're just so used to it that's the complicated thing right but you can't figure out the void unless you do the whole Nietzsche thing right you have to confront it right okay I feel really uneasy because I don't have the thing I normally look at that uneasiness is good because now you have to figure out why do I feel uneasy and how do I make this go away and and that's where actual development comes out yeah you gotta be uncomfortable sometimes i love this you know my my mom who lives a few blocks away she has been knitting her whole life and she still knits i don't know two three hours a day yeah there's a blanket a huge blanket a scarf a sweatshirt every week yeah that she finishes and she always shows me like her masterpiece yeah like that's so cool that she focuses so much on her craft and she has that as her buffer time she's Always knitting in the car when someone else is driving, she's knitting in the car.

58:27Lewis Howes:When there's a movie, she's knitting. She's always knitting. Yeah. And it brings her a lot of peace. Yep. It helps, like, her mind. I'm sure she's probably thinking a lot during those times. Yeah. It's just, like, reflection time. And I just continue to think about what are all the things that we could be mastering with this buffer time. And it's primal, right? There's something primal, let's say, about knitting or woodworking. Using your hands. Yeah. Because what differentiates, there's maybe three species, like chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans. One of the things that differentiates us is that we can plan.

58:59So we can have an intention and we can manifest it in the world. It's crazy. So I can think about a spear and I can take the rocks and I can do the different things and create it. And that really helps us succeed. So we're wired to be very fulfilled when we can take an idea and manifest it in the physical concrete world. which is why there's a type of fulfillment we get when you knit something or you carve something or whatever it is that you don't get on a screen because seeing our intention manifested in the concrete world is something that's primal it's something that we're wired to crave because that's what allowed us to stop being tiger food right once we could start once we could start doing that and so like someone i really admire is i don't know if you've if you've if you've met nick offerman who he plays ron swanson yeah but he's got this somewhere around here in la woodworker He's got to shop around here.

59:47Yeah. And he spends, it's got to be the most healthy way probably to be in Hollywood. Amazing. But he's there all the time. And it's a serious shop. Like a light industrial, warehouse type things. And he's a really serious. I also look at like Jim Carrey.

59:59Lewis Howes:I don't know if you've seen his work. He had a video last year that was like the most viewed video on Vimeo. Okay. He's a master artist. Interesting. He has this huge warehouse in I think New York City and in LA where he just goes and paint something new every single day yeah he's unbelievable painter yeah and he just has all these colors and he's just painting whatever he wants and i actually have one of his paintings because i was so inspired by it but here's a guy who's probably he's been wrapped up in the hollywood scene for a long time but to have like a craft that you can keep focusing on yeah probably gives him a sense of peace as well yeah because we're wired for that yeah yeah i mean i'm trying to do that more in my own life really like what well so i'm getting back into my guitar playing Really?

1:00:41Same thing, right? You have inflexible metal strings and a piece of wood, and you're sort of trying to manipulate this real-world thing to make it some outcome.

1:00:49Lewis Howes:Sound good. Sound good. That's good, man. A big thing I like to do is salsa dance. Yeah. I love salsa dancing. I play a little guitar as well. And I just started singing lessons a couple months ago. That's great. So I'm trying to just use more of my body to manifest my skills. Yes. And things that I'm not that good at, you know? Yes. Things that I'm trying to get better at. But you can get better at, and this seems to be, it's skilled, and you can get better at it, and it's demonstrable that you're getting better. It's rewarding. You know, like, I'm better at this now than I was. And I think when we do these things, like guitar or whatever it may be, and we get better, that's when we build true confidence.

1:01:26We don't build confidence by getting more likes on social media.

1:01:29Lewis Howes:It might be a false sense of confidence for a moment, but we haven't really built a skill that's valuable. Yeah. And I think that's the thing. There's, like, fake confidence when we're, like, growing online. But when we actually do something that we know is hard deep work and we see the growth That's when we have that intrinsic confidence. Yeah, that supports us for a longer time my uber driver yesterday Was telling me that he used to do music lessons professional musician And he said this was one of the shifts he saw that kind of got him out of out of that industry Was that sort of younger people now aren't willing to practice And he'd been doing this for a long time, right?

1:02:04I mean it's not a random sample as people who are coming to get lessons and And just a discomfort with the discomfort of practicing. But when you're doing something like this, like learning how to play guitar, you probably remember when you first learned. The guitar is like completely unyielding.

1:02:17Lewis Howes:Oh, it's so hard, man. It's like a year and a half to figure out like three songs. Just for like your fingers to get comfortable. It's hard, painful. But we used to be more comfortable doing these things because what else were you going to do? Yeah, we had all this free time. It was free time. What are you going to do? Like I want to play in a rock band, right? Girls like guys in rock bands is what I was told, right? So I'm going to learn. Practice all afternoon. I'm going to practice all afternoon. and I'm going to put on the Hendrix and do, you know, pentatonic scales or whatever. But, you know, if you're used to that, it's confidence.

1:02:43You know what skill is. You don't have to be world class at something, but you know about I was bad at this and then I did this deliberate effort and now I'm not bad. Yeah. And now you know what that is. The competent person, this was Matthew Crawford said something like, the competent person who has a skill is sort of quiet and easy with themselves. The non-competent person is out there yelling into the void online, desperate to get, will someone validate? Wow. Will someone validate me? But when you know how to do something really well, you're quiet and easy.

1:03:13Lewis Howes:What do you recommend as a parent to other parents on how they can train or teach or educate their kids to do the hard work growing up? Yeah. On certain skills or activities as opposed to take your iPad and iPhone and watch a movie and play games. Yeah. Well, modeling's important. So they see. Wow. They got to see what you're doing. See you reading a book. See you reading a book. See you doing... Playing guitar. See you doing hard things, yeah. See you doing hard things. Seeing you respecting other people who do hard things. That was important to me growing up, for sure. Just being exposed to that and seeing that.

1:03:48It's just having that message. And then when I was growing up, the other rule was you always have to be doing an instrument. You always have to be doing a sport. And I was like, okay, that's pretty good, actually. Because those are both things that are... What's more? Two things are very unyielding, like trying to get a guitar to do something or trying to get a bat to hit a fastball.

1:04:05Lewis Howes:Fastball. Yeah. So hard. So hard. That's right. Yeah. My dad tried to get me to do piano when I was a kid. And I went to one lesson and I just like screamed and cried about it. And he was like, okay, you don't have to go anymore. But I was in every sport. Yeah. So I was like obsessed with sports and all that. Sports is great. I mean, this is part of why it's so great is because, I mean, it's hard. and you want to get better, it's demonstrable when you get better. Like it's clear that you're better and you're connected to other people. You're learning with a group. You're getting coached. You're helping the team as you get better.

1:04:40I mean, having that model, like skills matter. We respect people who do something well. It's worthwhile learning how to do something hard. Hard things is what moves life forward. Hard things is the foundation of fulfillment. it the more i think that that is sort of modeled and talked about the better yeah this is great

1:05:00Lewis Howes:man i love this uh make sure you guys get the book digital minimalism i've got a couple questions left for you but uh digital minimalism is out now choosing a focused life in a noisy world you can't find them on social media but you can go to your website cal newport.com yeah right that's right yeah you can subscribe to your newsletter there you can learn more about you uh not on social media but on there and then you're new do you have a newsletter once a week Yeah, well, I blog. Blog. And it goes out to the newsletter. Yeah, I'm a blog nerd. Blog nerd. Love it. Okay. This question is called The Three Truths.

1:05:30Lewis Howes:So I want you to imagine it's your final day on earth whenever you want it to be. It could be hundreds of years from now. It could be whenever. But at some point, you've got to go. Yeah. And you've got to take all of your work with you. So all of your writing, your material, the content you've created has got to go with you when you die. Yeah. But you get to write down on a piece of paper three things you know to be true about all of your experiences and leave that with the world. Your three lessons that you've learned that you would want to share back with the world. What would you say are your three truths?

1:06:04So this won't be worded elegantly because I'm just, I'm thinking about this on the fly. Probably something about responsibility. So taking on responsibility, like for other people to do things of value is in the end going to be more important than worrying about happiness in the moment. Doing hard things is sort of the foundation for a good life. Hard things are good. Like push yourself, push yourself to do hard things. Serve other people. Family, close friends, community, I talk about these things. Yeah, serve other people. I mean, I guess all of these, if I'm thinking about it, all three of these things is, and this is probably common to a lot of wisdom traditions, I'm not coming up with anything new, but all three of these things, I guess, are really about taking the focus away from yourself, what's happening to yourself, what do people think about you, how do you feel, sort of shifting the focus away from that.

1:07:00Take on responsibility, take on hard things, try to rise to it. Do hard things, produce things that are valuable. Serve other people, as opposed to worrying too much about, are other people properly serving you? Are they liking the right things or saying the right things to you? Sure.

1:07:16Lewis Howes:Those are great, man. I love those. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Cal, for, man, you set the example for what is really hard for a lot of people right now. People are so focused on likes and being on social media and doing the easy things, and you constantly do the hard things and set that example. So I want to acknowledge you for going against the grain because it's not easy to do that. And a lot of people are seduced with the easy out and filling the void by getting likes and all these things. So I appreciate and acknowledge you for creating this type of work because it is the most rewarding things when we do the hard work and when we eliminate distractions and really connect to other people and other human beings.

1:07:56Lewis Howes:So I acknowledge you for that, my man. My final question is what is your definition of greatness? Rising to your potential. We all have a potential. Like what we could be doing. And so fighting the rise for that, like that's greatness versus throwing in the towel early. Right. There you go. I love it, man. Hey, thank you, man. Thank you. Appreciate it, brother. Yeah, appreciate it. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact 100 million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now.

1:08:38Lewis Howes:It's the single biggest thing that you can do to support the show. and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes. I appreciate you and I can't wait to see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

1:09:14Lewis Howes:Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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