How to Create a Distraction-Free Phone
Episode Stats
Summary
Jake Knapp grew up using Apple II and then Mac computers, browsing bulletin boards, and making his own games. As an adult, he worked at Microsoft on the Encarta CD-ROM before being hired by Google, where he worked on Gmail, cofounded Google Meet, and created Google Ventures Design Sprint Process. Today, he s a venture capitalist and consultant for startups, as well as a writer.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Jake Knapp loves tech. He grew up using Apple II and then Mac computers,
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browsing bulletin boards, and making his own games. As an adult, he worked at Microsoft on
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the Encarta CD-ROM before being hired by Google, where he worked on Gmail, co-founded Google Meet,
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and created Google Ventures Design Sprint Process. Today, he's a venture capitalist and
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consultant for startups, as well as a writer. Today on the show, I talked to Jake about what
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motivated him to change his relationship with his phone over a decade ago, and what steps he took
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to do so, including how and why he lives life without a web browser or email app on his phone.
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We get into what realization about work and life Jake's gotten from having a distraction-free phone,
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why he doesn't think using tools like screen time or a dumb phone are always the best solutions to
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reducing the phone itch, and how he also cuts down on distractions on his desktop computer.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash phone.
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So several years ago, we had your co-author of your book, Make Time, on the podcast to discuss
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how we can make time for what really matters in our lives. And one aspect that you guys talk about
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in that book is spending less time on our smartphone. And you're an expert in this because 12 years ago,
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you were an early adopter of trying to reduce screen time on your phone. You set out to make your phone,
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your iPhone, distraction-free. 12 years ago, that's a long time in internet time,
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and things have changed a lot since then. There's a lot more to be distracted by, for sure.
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Back in 2012, what were the biggest distractors on your iPhone?
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Well, in 2012, there were still a lot of the heavyweights of distraction existed that early.
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I think there was Facebook, there was Instagram. And then for me, some of the real killers were
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email and just Safari. Just the web browser is a big distraction for me. So all of those big ones
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existed even back then. There were games on the phone back then. Those distracted me.
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The news is a big one. So a whole host of things.
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Okay. So Facebook, Instagram, just surfing the web on Safari. So it wasn't the... Remember the
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beer app? I remember when the iPhone first came out, it had all those silly apps where you can
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pour yourself a glass of beer. I don't remember that one, but I do. I mean, I think there was a
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proliferation right at the beginning of just... People were trying to figure out like, what's this
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thing for? What can we do with this? And so then I think a big thing that happened to me was
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starting off using the iPhone. I didn't really think about what I wanted to use it for.
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I didn't really think about what problem it was going to solve. I was just like, oh man,
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that thing, it looks really cool. Oh, it's an iPod and it's a phone. Great. And then I got one and
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then I just started anything that came out. I was like, yeah, I want to try that. Sure. I'll try that.
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I'll put that out. Facebook's a new thing. I'll try that. I'll put that on there. All these things
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came out and I would just say yes by default. And so as time went by, we got to 2012. There was a lot
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on there. There was a lot of things that would catch my attention. Was there a moment you realized
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that your phone was causing problems in your life? There was. It was a very specific moment.
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I was at home and I'm a person who for a long time had been interested in being really efficient
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with my time and trying to get my work done at work if possible, or just get through everything
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so that I could spend time with my kids. So I have a 20 year old now. So if we rewind to 2012,
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he was, I guess, eight or nine. And then we had a baby who was around one at that time.
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And I really wanted to spend quality time with them. So I wanted to be really efficient when I was at work
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and get home before they went to bed, you know, before dinner. And so I can remember being at home
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and, you know, having gotten done with the work day and being on the floor in the living room,
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playing with wooden trains, like Brio trains with the boys. And we're playing trains and I hear this
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voice and I'm kind of like, well, man, I realized it's my son. And he's saying like, Hey, Hey dad,
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like, what's, uh, what's on your phone? And, and I was like, Oh, I didn't even realize I'd been
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holding my phone at the time. You know, I've just like by reflex, like, you know, Frodo reaching in
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his pocket to pull out the ring. I had pulled out the phone and I was looking at something and I was
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like, Oh, it's, you know, it's work stuff. Like I was defensive. And I realized that like, he wasn't,
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he wasn't even criticizing me. You know, he's just like, Oh, here we are playing wooden trains
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together. This is the most fun thing in the world. Why would you, you know, if you're doing
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something on your phone, it must be really great. It must be really interesting. Maybe I can see it
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too. And, and in that moment, I, I, it just kind of occurred to me that I had this memory from when
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I was a kid of what it was like doing things with my dad. And of course, back then there were no
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smartphones. There were no, you know, it was no internet that when my dad was home from work,
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he was just, he was just home. Like I grew up on a farm. We would be out on the farm, like,
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you know, mending a fence or something. That was like a hundred percent what we were doing.
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And I had always wanted when I had kids to have moments and times with them. Like I remember having
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with my dad, it was really just the two of us. And maybe we weren't talking that much, whatever,
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but we were just there. We're just present. We're just there. And I, it just occurred to me in that
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moment, how different the moment I was having with my kids was than, than what I had grown up with.
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And I thought, this is, this is crazy. And I, in frustration in that moment, I started deleting
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apps off of the phone. A wiser person might've looked inward, you know, and tried to change
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something about them, but I was just holding the phone and I got angry at the phone and I, and I just,
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I started deleting and I just started deleting anything that it just, everything clicked in there. Hey,
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there's all these things that they're pulling at me. Even when I'm not actively using the phone,
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I don't actively have an idea of something that I want to do. They're just kind of pulling me in.
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And so I, I went after anything that did that. Okay. So you, the phone wasn't allowing you to be
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present with your kids or with your family, with the things that really matter to you. Besides that,
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did you notice anything else about the phone and how it was affecting how you were thinking or how you
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approached life? Yeah. I would, would describe it as a kind of a tug that the phone creates. And
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it's this notion that my coauthor, John Zeratsky, he's describes this as infinity pools. It's like
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any thing that has a potentially infinite amount of, of new stuff in it, anything that at any time of
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day, there might be, there might, there might be a new email at any time of day. Or if you use Facebook
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or Instagram or TikTok, whatever, like there's, there's something new on there at any time of day,
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there's a new news story. There's like a breaking news at every time of day. Somewhere on the internet,
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there's something new at any time of day. So anything where there's a bottomless pit of new
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stuff, there's always going to be something new. Those things, they create this tug on my attention.
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There's some kind of pull at any time. If the threshold of my interest on whatever's going on
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in the real world dips below a certain level, then instead of dipping down and getting into like,
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you know, boredom mode, just like chill out mode or whatever, my brain is like, Oh man,
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there's probably something new on the phone. And I mean, you know, this is not some novel insight.
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I think lots of people have talked about this. Everyone's probably knows about this, but
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that tug, I just started to recognize how that tug was affecting my attention at all times,
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whether I was with my kids or, or at work or whatever. Like I was just never getting down into
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that, that more calm, chill brain mode, the boredom, you know, like boredom didn't have to be an option
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anymore. There's always the tug when boredom or quiet started to creep in. And once I had kind of
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noticed that and realized like, that's actually an unpleasant feeling, it feels sort of pleasant.
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It's sort of an excitement like, Oh, maybe there's this new thing, right? Maybe this new thing is
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going to make me feel good. And because sometimes it does. Sometimes there's an email that makes me
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feel good. Sometimes there's a, you know, some new thing on social media or some new story that's
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interesting or whatever. And it makes me feel on top of things, or it makes me feel flattered,
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or it makes me feel engaged or what important to whatever. But I also recognize that the flip side
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of that was that, that, the tug that, that feeling was really unpleasant. And I, I know you had Cal
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Newport was on the show a couple episodes ago. Yeah. And he's, I mean, I'm a big admirer of his
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work and he, he highlighted the work of this researcher from the university of Washington who
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she phrased this, I think attention residue. And it's like when something you're, you're working
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on something or you're doing something and then you go to another task, but the first thing kind
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of sticks in your head and distracts you a little bit. And so I realized like, man, if I'm going to be
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doing my highest quality work, or if I'm going to be spending the highest quality with my family or my
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kids, that attention residue, that tug from the phone, it's in direct opposition to that. It's hurting my
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ability to, to be at my, at my best and whatever definition of my best might be in other venues.
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So you had that moment 12 years ago, you're with your kids playing trains and you realized this
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thing in my pocket is preventing me from being present with them. So you deleted all these apps,
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which apps did you delete from your phone? And then which ones did you keep?
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Yeah. Okay. So I deleted, I started off the, the easy ones I think to delete. And I think the ones
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that people like most people when, cause people will talk to me about this and they're like,
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what's wrong with you? What's your problem? You know? So, but most people will say, okay,
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like Facebook and Instagram, I get it. Right. Like that's lots of people have that feeling that
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sometimes it's not a good feeling to use those. So those were the, like the first ones. And then I
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had, I had some games on my phone at that time. I think one that I remember, I think was from that
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you're a, cause I'll admit like since 2012, I'll sometimes put a game on my phone. Like,
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it's not like I'm, I'm like, I've just walked the complete straight and narrow since then.
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So like, I think it was Golden Axe. And you remember Golden Axe was like a, a game from the,
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I mean like the late eighties or nineties. It was on the Sega Genesis.
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Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, there was like a, you know,
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an emulator game version of that on the iPhone. I think I had that. I think, you know,
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I had probably had like, I don't know, like CNN and ESPN or something like that. I can't,
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it's a little hard for me to remember in 2012, what was an app versus what was like,
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you know, you'd go to Safari to see, but the, but ESPN has always been, I'm, I'm a football fan.
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That's always been a big infinity pool for me. And then, you know, Twitter would be another one.
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And, but then also things like LinkedIn, that's another one where, you know, do I really need to
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access LinkedIn 24 hours a day right in my pocket? No, probably not. So it was things like that.
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But, but then the next wave I realized that was a little bit more insidious was like email,
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especially for me having worked on the Gmail team for years. And I was like, man, I, it doesn't
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actually do, I could go on for a long time talking about the email on the phone. It's, it's not,
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it's not a good experience for me at least because I will read the emails. I'll see that there's new
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stuff. And then there's this momentary feeling of like, okay, good. I'm on top of things. I know
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what's in the inbox, but the downside is I personally, I can't really compose a good email
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on the phone. Like I might be able to, there's, there's maybe some category of email that I,
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I can answer and I can do an all right job, you know, but I just mentally, like I need a keyboard
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to write a decent email. And I try to, I try to do as little email as I can, but do what I do
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well. You know, I, I try to do something that maybe, maybe Cal Newport would be proud of.
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I can't do that on the phone. And so what happens is I'm just activating the stress of here's this
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open loop and I can't close it. So I've, you know, the email on the phone to me is a disaster.
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So I deleted email. That was a little painful. And then I realized, you know, Safari, you can't
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delete it, but I realized that it was, it became a problem once I deleted everything else. I can just
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go to Safari. I can sign into my email there. I can look at the news there, whatever. But I realized
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you can go into settings and if you like dig through settings, you can disable Safari. So yeah. And
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then, I mean, at that point there was still, the thing is you take all those away. There's still
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some really good stuff on there. So what'd you keep on? What'd you leave on there?
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Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, just like starting with the basics, like imagine you go back to 2007,
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Steve Jobs is introducing the iPhone. You know, he said today we're introducing three devices.
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It's a new iPod, a new phone, and a new like internet device. It's three devices. And he was like,
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you see what's going on here? It's one thing. And the iPod part of that, if you're old enough to
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remember like when iPods existed and smartphones did not exist, iPods were
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amazing. They were so great. And it sounds very like, I don't know, I mean, we just sound like
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an old man to say that now, but like, it was so cool to be able to play any music you wanted
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on your phone. And then now with like the streaming services to really literally be able to play
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anything, that is magical. I just think that's so cool. So that alone is a huge deal to have a phone
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that's also an iPod. I still think that's fantastic. So of course, music is a keeper. Podcasts is a
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keeper. I mean, podcast is great. And I, I do think there are times when I have, I've noticed
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that even like listening to podcasts when I'm on a walk or on a run or whatever, there are times when
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I'm served better by not doing it, by not listening to music, by having quiet, because having that quiet
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and that really, that time to just let the mind be off is quite valuable. But podcasts also many times,
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like they just, they bring great joy and like interesting ideas into my life. So podcast is a good one
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and not an infinity pool. It's not a thing where I'm like going to be playing with my kids or,
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you know, needing to do something important, but hard to do at work. And I'm going to be like,
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oh, I'm going to browse through the podcast app. That's just, at least for me, that's not that big
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of a pool. What else? Maps. Maps is amazing. You know, if whatever you use, Google Maps, Apple Maps,
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whatever, like the Maps app is a very magical thing. And we're starting to talk about like a series of
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things, you know, music, whatever you use, Spotify music, whatever, podcasts, the Maps,
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the camera on the phone is amazing. A category of things where I just think if I was a kid,
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if I rewind to being a kid in like the 80s, who was really into science fiction, and you described
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this thing that you could hold in your, you just have it in your pocket and it's got these, it can do
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these things. I would have been like, oh my God, that's so futuristic. That's so cool. I can't wait to
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live in that future where that thing exists. And so all of those things meet the bar for like
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a cool future, you know, where this feels like this, this magical tool from the future.
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Well, you actually keep the apps that you've kept on your phone, you know, the ones that seem like
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magical tools from the future. You keep them in a folder called the future.
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Yeah, I do. I do. Now it's, I used to be really organized about having the new apps would go in the
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future folder. And then at some point, I don't know, two or three years ago, iOS changed and you
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could just remove an app from the home screen, it would disappear. And then if you want it, you could
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search for it. So now I still keep like a very small set of apps visible, but rather than filing
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them in the future, I just, I've gotten a little bit lazy and, and I just, you know, I just remove them
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the home screen and then I search for them if I want them. I will say that that laziness has cost
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me something because there was a really nice moment when I would try out an app and then decide,
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because I have, I only allow myself to have apps on the top row of the phone. And so like, this is,
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I'm sorry, this is like full on nerdery, but like if I open my phone, the home screen has no apps on it
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at all. It's just a blank screen. So, which is just kind of, I don't know. It's just like, I take a
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breath when I see that, like, do I really have something I want to do here? It just sort of,
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I feel like a little bit less tension and stress than opening the phone and having like a million
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apps. And then as I swipe through the screens, there's just like one row of apps on the top.
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And I have four on the first screen, three on the second, two on the third, and then one on the last
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one. So it's just like, there's fewer and fewer and fewer. And this is all just stuff that I,
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I just do to try to make it less stressful and less grabby for me to use the phone.
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Okay. So the apps you do keep, you'll keep them if they have a wow factor, it provides a lot of
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value to your life and it doesn't have that tug. Like you don't feel that need to necessarily,
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Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'll keep it if it's, if there's a utility to it,
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that's really powerful. Like, um, you know, one password is an app that I think is,
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is great and very useful. You know, the notes app, the, the,
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the weather app, these are ones that make the cut to be still on the home screen.
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Like I want to be able to access them that easily, but a lot of things I want to maybe
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have to dig for them to find them. But anyway, when I had this future folder,
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this folder of things called the future, there was this really nice moment where if I've
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added something new and I'm like, okay, does it make the cut to be in that top row?
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And there's only, let's see, four plus three is seven plus two plus one. So there's only 10 slots
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there. Does it make it into the top 10? Now, if not, does it make it into the future? Am I saying
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like, this is one of those kinds of apps that makes me feel like I've got this magical futuristic
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device in my pocket. And that was kind of a helpful little guideline for me for a while.
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I'd like to think that I've kind of internalized it. And so it's okay for me to just remove it.
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You know, the reality might be, I just got lazy, but that's my mental framework for what
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So like you said, getting rid of social media and news apps, that's like a no brainer. I think
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a lot of people who want to make their phone distraction free, they just don't have that
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stuff on their phone. I want to dig more into the email and the web browser. I think a lot of
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people might hear that. It's like, how can you function without having your email or a web browser
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on your phone? I am like you. I do not like writing emails on my phone. And I find that I very rarely
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respond to emails on my phone. But I will say that the email app is useful because it's a
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resource of information. Particularly when I'm traveling, it's extremely useful. So like when
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I'm traveling, I can just pull up my airline reservation, the hotel, the car rental reservations,
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and boom, I'm done. How do you handle that? How do you like handle that sort of thing when
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you're traveling, for example, an email would be good to have, but you don't have email on your
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phone? Totally. I just got back from a trip so I can speak from experience like yesterday.
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First of all, I should say, if I haven't made it clear already, like some of this stuff,
00:20:10.100
it may be a Jake problem and not an everybody problem. You know, I know that I have a harder
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time with getting distracted than some folks. So for some people, I'm certainly open to the idea
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that if you or a listener is thinking, oh, you know, email doesn't bother me. I really have
00:20:26.680
thought about it. I'm okay with it. You know, that that's, I totally accept that that can be true.
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But for me, there's this really unpleasant feeling that I recognized after having it on there for
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years, I recognize there's this unpleasant feeling about it being on there. And so if I'm on a trip,
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first of all, over time, more and more things you don't need the email app for, I found, which is
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handy. Because basically what I'll do is I'll install email and then uninstall it. So I'll just like,
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when I need it, I'll just download it. And it doesn't take too long. Our internet connections
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are pretty fast. If you're traveling in cities, like it, it's pretty much a snap to download email.
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You know, I sign in and then I check what I need to check. And sometimes I'll even keep it on for
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a day when my travel day or keep it on. I've sometimes put it on because I'm like, you know,
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I'm going to be on the, on the plane. I have a bunch of email I need to process.
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It's the best way for me to do that is to do it on my phone. I often tell myself that
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usually it doesn't work out that well. I think it's going to be really efficient and effective
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way to process email. And then everything I just said earlier happens. And I'm like, oh yeah,
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it's just stressful for me to look at it in this way. I can't really reply.
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But things like the, you know, the airplane reservations, usually nowadays, the airline app
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is going to be better than the email app for giving me the information about my flight.
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Or if I just bookmark where the hotel is on maps, that's going to be the best way for me to get
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there. In the early days of, of, you know, using a smartphone before there was, before there was
00:22:03.200
Uber, before every airline had like a decent enough app. Yeah. Like I definitely needed the email thing.
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And sometimes I, what I used to do was collect the, the relevant stuff and paste it into the notes app.
00:22:16.180
But nowadays I don't think I have to be super religious about having things off the phone at
00:22:23.880
all times. I just install it. And then I'm at this point, I'm so familiar with the tone of the
00:22:31.080
negative feeling that I get from having email on the phone that I want to delete it as soon as
00:22:37.700
possible. And as soon as I delete it, there's this feeling of like, just a moment of relaxation.
00:22:43.760
I can feel the release in my brain from that tug.
00:22:47.320
No, so I like that. So only install it when you need it, delete it when you don't need it. I think
00:22:51.640
that's a really good idea. I might try that out myself actually. What about the web browser? You
00:22:57.380
know, I think a lot of people will be listening. It's like, well, you know, web browser can come in
00:23:00.460
handy if you're out and about and you want to find out if a restaurant's open or what's a good
00:23:06.040
restaurant to go eat at tonight. Like how do you manage that without a web browser on your phone?
00:23:12.920
I found that most things that I really need to know that are time sensitive or location sensitive
00:23:19.400
can be discovered with a purpose-built app that doesn't, that doesn't come along with everything
00:23:27.040
that might distract me. So the web browser itself, like you can do anything with the web browser.
00:23:31.020
Go anywhere. It's a news app. It's an email app. It's everything. But like in maps, if you have
00:23:36.540
disabled Safari on your phone and you open up Google Maps or Apple Maps and you say, Hey, okay,
00:23:42.820
I need to go. I'm curious about this restaurant. I'm going to search for restaurants near me or
00:23:46.840
whatever, whatever tool you use to find those Yelp or whatever. But if you want to go to the
00:23:51.920
restaurant's actual webpage, because Safari is like built into the OS, it'll still open up the
00:23:57.020
webpage within the maps app. You can still see it. I just can't open up like pure unlocked Safari.
00:24:04.260
I can just get like that one view of the webpage. And that was a really big discovery for me. Like,
00:24:08.820
oh man, I can still see things via maps because a lot of these things I'm like, I realized I was
00:24:15.060
trying to talk myself into, I need this app. Like a lot of the ways that I, I buy a gadget or I,
00:24:20.980
you know, when I first adopted the iPhone, I'm trying, when I get a new iPhone, I'm, I'm trying to
00:24:26.680
talk myself into doing it because like, I want the new shiny thing. So I'm trying to talk myself
00:24:30.740
into, no, I really need this. And the same thing happens with the apps. Like I want to talk myself
00:24:35.160
into, ah, I need the web browser on now. I can handle it. And it's really helpful for these
00:24:40.520
situations. And then I realized like a lot of those arguments don't hold up because the, the purpose
00:24:46.120
built app will solve it for me. It's another one too, though, where, when there is a situation
00:24:50.520
where man, I really do need to know this thing. Maybe I'm going to a, you know, a, like some kind
00:24:57.080
of a event at a theater, like a concert or whatever. And I, I got to get something from the
00:25:01.540
venue and I can't get it through maps. Maps is, I mean, actually that one maps probably would work
00:25:06.100
because it would probably let me to theater, but let's just say, well, I can, I, it's the same thing
00:25:10.140
as we were talking about with email. I can enable the browser, do the thing and then disable the
00:25:15.340
browser afterwards. It's not that big of a deal. It's a little bit of a hassle to go through and do it,
00:25:20.080
which is helpful most of the time because it just creates this barrier. So I'm not going to do it
00:25:24.060
on autopilot. I'm not going to do it without thinking to look something up for, you know,
00:25:28.640
just to distract myself. So I don't feel boredom. I'm going to do it only when I'm really motivated
00:25:34.000
to do it. And, you know, then it takes, maybe it takes 30 seconds to dig through settings and turn
00:25:39.340
it on, do the thing. And then I just, I turn it off again. And the value always comes from turning it
00:25:45.380
off. You know, I've, I've had a lot of people make fun of me about this. I have friends make
00:25:50.860
fun of me about having my phone this way. And my wife for the longest time, she was like,
00:25:57.000
oh my God, rolling her eyes. And she authorized me to say that she came around. Like I've had
00:26:03.100
friends who came around and they're eventually like, okay, you know what? Actually this, something
00:26:08.280
was going on and it kind of bugged me. I'm going to try it. I'm going to disable the apps.
00:26:12.400
I'm going to disable the browser. I'm going to turn off email. And, and then they feel
00:26:18.280
the feeling. The feeling is so powerful when those things are off. It's, it's so good.
00:26:24.460
It's just like, um, you know, you're, you're reading and you can't quite see and somebody
00:26:28.180
turns the light on and everything gets a little brighter. And once you feel that feeling, you
00:26:32.180
want to feel it again. And so then you, you want to turn the browser off after you're done
00:26:36.440
using it. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:26:42.400
And now back to the show. How has your life changed since creating your distraction free
00:26:50.260
phone or has it brought you to any realizations?
00:26:53.860
Yeah. The spread of the smartphone and the, and sort of the smartphone ramping up because
00:26:59.240
it wasn't all that distracting at first. It really kind of took a while for these really
00:27:03.240
sticky apps to be developed. All that happened in the same period of time that I was thinking
00:27:08.700
a lot about how I did my work and recognize that when I was working on Gmail or when I
00:27:15.860
was working on this project that grew and became Google meet that most of the time at
00:27:22.080
work, essentially like nothing, all that important was happening. We were just a lot of meetings,
00:27:27.260
a lot of emails, a lot of chats, a lot of noise that felt like it was productive, but
00:27:32.380
wasn't really accomplishing anything. And again, like if people want to listen to your
00:27:37.120
interview with Cal Newport, like they're going to hear a really more eloquent description of this
00:27:41.740
state of affairs than I can give. But I was starting in my own, my own work to recognize
00:27:49.280
that problem. And my solution had been this design sprint process that I created around 2009,
00:27:55.700
2010, where it's like, okay, for a week as a team, we're going to clear everything off of our
00:28:01.620
calendars. We're going to stop using email. We're going to close our laptops. We're just going to
00:28:07.460
focus on solving this problem. And when you did that, you got a team of people together,
00:28:10.640
you put some structure around it and you shut off all the work distractions. And you just said,
00:28:15.160
we're just doing one thing. It was amazing what we could accomplish. We could prototype
00:28:19.660
a new product and test it by the end of the week because we were all focused on the same thing
00:28:25.440
and, and, and not changing contexts all the time and not trying to be responsive and not going to
00:28:32.000
all these meetings. And I, and so I had woken up to this idea that I've got to have big blocks of time,
00:28:38.900
either as a team or be as an individual, I have to have these big uninterrupted blocks of time.
00:28:43.580
And I have to sort of allow myself to get behind on all of this, this sort of endless hamster wheel
00:28:51.500
of email meetings, project requests, all these things. I have to let myself say no and let that
00:28:56.960
stuff stack up, let the email inbox not be empty, you know, let it, let it get full. And that's just,
00:29:02.740
that's, you know, there's, there's discomfort there. It's an uncomfortable feeling, but I had
00:29:06.460
to let that happen if the really good stuff was going to happen. And so this had been going on in
00:29:12.380
my work and in my thought process around the time then that I had this, this moment of insight
00:29:19.180
with my kids, with the phone. And I recognized that the phone was just a really powerful incarnation
00:29:25.940
of that hamster wheel that was always in my pocket, always with me. And, you know, in the
00:29:33.860
Cal was describing how part of our motivation for trying to respond to every email, trying to say yes
00:29:40.580
to every request, trying to attend every meeting. Part of that motivation is that we know on some level,
00:29:47.140
like that's how we're being evaluated or judged in our work. And I think that's true.
00:29:51.800
I also think there's just a, a very fundamental desire that we have to be helpful, you know,
00:29:57.400
helpful to our colleagues, helpful to other people. And the most obvious way to be helpful
00:30:01.520
is to say yes. It's to say that, yes, let me respond to you as fast as I can. I want to be helpful.
00:30:07.780
Let me, you want to invite me to that email? Yes. I want to be there for you. I want to,
00:30:11.180
I want to help. I want to be a part of things. The most obvious ways to help are, are everywhere.
00:30:17.220
The email is easy to do. The meetings are easy to go to. It's easy to say yes to a project before
00:30:21.900
you have to actually do it. And the harder path is clearing the time, digging into hard problems,
00:30:28.840
thinking them through that stuff is, it's a harder way to go. And if there's easier off ramps
00:30:34.760
from that highway, if I can get off of that highway and go to the fast food restaurant of email,
00:30:39.200
like I'm going to do that, that's easier. And so anyway, all of this sort of led to this notion
00:30:44.000
that the phone is this constant off ramp from the things that I ought to be doing if I really want
00:30:51.620
to do high value, high impact work. And that's something I had realized in my career around
00:30:56.040
the same time that smartphones got super sticky. All right. So getting rid of the, the distraction
00:31:00.080
of your phone, allow you to do more of the important things with your work. How did it affect
00:31:04.200
your personal life? Cause in my experience, when I've had, I've gone through various, you know,
00:31:09.000
I've, I'm a backslider. Like I'll have these periods where I'm like, Oh yeah, I'm going to
00:31:13.140
not be distracted on my phone. Uh, then I fall off the wagon. But in those periods where I'm not on my
00:31:18.820
phone all the time or constantly connected to social media or whatever, I just noticed in my
00:31:23.400
personal life, I'm less stressed out. And I think it's because I'm just not, there's like less to think
00:31:27.320
about, like, I'm not thinking about, Oh, here's this dumb tweet I read and I'm angry about it.
00:31:34.400
And even though I'm not doing anything about it, it's just, it's like an impotent anger.
00:31:38.340
When I don't have that on my bandwidth, I feel much more copacetic.
00:31:41.960
Totally. Totally. There's just this, you know, we, who grew up before, before social media,
00:31:49.600
before smartphones, I even grew up like a, you know, it's definitely a big part of my life.
00:31:53.420
That's really before email. And I remember how much complexity was in my head about the world,
00:32:02.000
about the social scene, you know, my friends. And I'm really, I'm talking about when I'm in like
00:32:06.760
elementary and middle school, it was like before email, but it, there was just a limit to how much
00:32:11.820
your brain could really lock onto and be aware of and deal with. It's just like, it had to be people
00:32:16.620
who were there or like, maybe I'd send letters to my grandma who lived in Mississippi, but there wasn't
00:32:22.160
room in my head for like everything all the time, everyone in the world all the time. And the
00:32:28.240
challenge with email and phones and social media and constantly available news is that now the
00:32:35.900
surface area for what I might potentially be able to keep up on and stay connected with, it's just
00:32:42.020
way more than my brain is wired for anyway. I just can't do a good job. And so that's a constant
00:32:47.240
stress. If I have this feeling that there's an expectation that I'm going to be up to speed and
00:32:51.320
really maintaining a good connection with all of these people, all of these topics, all of these
00:32:56.640
things, well, I just can't do it. It's overload. And that's constant stress. When I made this switch,
00:33:04.460
I did it because I just, I felt I couldn't handle it. This is just too much for me. It's not serving me
00:33:10.220
well. It's hurting me at work. It's definitely hurting my experience with the people I care most
00:33:16.180
about in the world, like my kids, my wife. And so I, I said, I've got to do it. And then what
00:33:23.900
happened was there were a bunch of, there were a bunch of like kind of painful, maybe like
00:33:29.160
renegotiations that I had to do. Like I, I had to say to people at work who had maybe come to expect
00:33:35.520
that I would respond to emails at any time. I had to set my email signature to, Hey, I'm only
00:33:42.640
checking email twice a day. And that was really powerful because then all of a sudden I knew that
00:33:48.880
they knew that I might be slower to reply. And I think this is a, looking back on it, I'm like,
00:33:53.860
you know, that's a, it was a really powerful thing because I think I actually had much higher
00:33:58.940
expectations for myself about how fast I would reply than other people did. I think in general,
00:34:04.660
I think it's true that we're more forgiving of other people than of ourselves, that we hold
00:34:08.780
ourselves to a higher standard for how fast we're going to reply, how much we're going to stay up
00:34:12.880
on everything. When somebody else isn't on top of things all the time, I just think like, yeah,
00:34:18.740
of course. I mean, they've got things going on, you know, maybe there's, there's other important
00:34:22.300
stuff going on in their life, but that was a big one for me. So one of the renegotiations was just
00:34:27.300
the email signature that said, I'm only checking email twice a day. And then the ones that were,
00:34:32.920
you know, a little bit harder to do was saying goodbye to Facebook and Instagram and this notion
00:34:39.480
that I'm going to keep up with all those people. And so a lot of those, there's people in my life
00:34:43.520
who like I care about. And if you're on Facebook or maybe if you're spending a greater portion of your
00:34:50.580
time on email, maybe you can keep up with those people a bit more, but the quality I found, the
00:34:57.440
quality of those relationships, those relationships that are maintained via Facebook are those
00:35:03.560
relationships that are maintained via, I'm going to squeeze in a few more emails and get those social
00:35:08.400
emails off. They come at a cost. And I was trading a very like low bandwidth connection with somebody
00:35:15.240
for more time to spend on the higher bandwidth connections. And then sometimes you'll see these
00:35:21.260
findings where they interview people who are at the end of their lives about what do they regret?
00:35:26.320
You know, and I remember reading one that talked about someone who had a terminal cancer diagnosis
00:35:33.420
and they had six months to live. And I think this guy said he made a plan for, he drew circles and
00:35:39.820
like in the inner circle where his wife, his kids, and the next circle out were close friends. And then
00:35:45.920
the farthest circle out were friends, but you know, and he said, okay, here's how I'm going to divide up
00:35:50.200
my time over the six months. I'm going to start with the outer circle and then kind of work my way in.
00:35:53.980
And he realized after a month or two, he was spending way too much time on the outer circle.
00:35:58.320
He just only wanted to spend as much time as possible on the inner circle. And the lesson I
00:36:03.660
think from that was like, we, we can always gain so much value from investing more on the inner circle
00:36:09.040
of our relationships. And I think that means the people who we see in person every day. And sometimes
00:36:14.540
there's a person who's not in person, but they're very high value. They're in the inner circle.
00:36:18.620
And the same, I think is true of our work. Certainly for me, the highest value came from
00:36:24.200
doubling, tripling, quadrupling, quintupling down on the very few, like the one effort that's at the
00:36:31.180
center of that circle and allowing myself to not do well at the outer circles. And so that shift had
00:36:39.300
to happen as part of not being connected to everything and breaking with the way society was
00:36:45.680
going and everybody else was going. That's hard. There's a pain to, to letting those things kind
00:36:52.360
of drift away that are in the outer circles. I can't tell you there's, there wasn't pain with that,
00:36:56.180
but for me, the benefit of being able to put more into the inner circles has been worth it.
00:37:02.460
Okay. So if someone wants to make a distraction, free phone, uh, delete social media apps, the news
00:37:06.480
apps, any app that has a tug, and that might include email and disabling your web browser. And there's
00:37:14.100
different, so you can do it on your iPhone. I think there's a way you can do this on Android,
00:37:16.940
correct? Just get rid of the browser. I think so. You know, I, I haven't, I don't have an Android
00:37:22.200
phone and there, there certainly was a way to do this, uh, you know, a couple of years ago.
00:37:29.460
It's if you look it up, you know, I think, and actually the web browser one is kind of tricky
00:37:34.960
because like right now on my phone, it doesn't work. And this is, I think just evidence that it's not
00:37:40.840
a priority for Apple. Like they made a big push, uh, a few years back to talk about screen time.
00:37:45.820
And we're going to do this stuff to help you pay attention. And now you go into screen time,
00:37:49.700
you go into parental controls, you turn off the browser. And on a lot of people's phones,
00:37:53.140
it won't actually turn off. It won't actually go away. And I'm mine for whatever reason does that.
00:37:57.980
I've looked this up. I've been on the, you know, you know, you're in hell when you're in those like
00:38:02.020
tech support forums and you're reading people's things they've tried, you know, and they can't.
00:38:06.780
And it's the blind leading the blind, you know, exactly. Yeah. So I've been, I've spent some
00:38:11.860
time on there trying to figure out how to turn it off. Um, I'm just hoping that one of these
00:38:16.740
OS updates, it'll start to work again. So with the browser, you know, you might have to just tuck it
00:38:22.240
away, just, just hide it on a far, far screen on your home screen. That might be the best that you
00:38:28.180
can do, but you can try to turn it off for sure. And, and at minimum, even just signing out of
00:38:34.300
services that you might be signed in on the browser, it goes a long way. So if you're signed
00:38:38.260
into whatever it might be, Twitter, your email or whatever, just like logging out, you can always
00:38:42.940
log back in, right? It's just like the main thing here is to try to create some friction. So if it's
00:38:50.280
really important to do a task or a thing, you need to check in on, on something on, you know,
00:38:56.700
let's say you've got a, for some people, Instagram or Facebook's like part of their job. So maybe
00:39:01.700
you've got to do something on there. Well, install it, do the thing and then uninstall it.
00:39:06.780
And when you, once you've done that a few times, you realize it's not that big of a deal. Like you
00:39:10.100
start to delete the app and it says, are you sure you're going to delete your data? All the data's
00:39:14.220
on the cloud. Like it's not, it doesn't cause any problems. So you just delete it. Then when you need
00:39:18.400
it again, you reinstall it and you delete it again. Cause you'll, you know, I've found when I talk to
00:39:23.200
people who do this, they feel that feeling of how good it feels when it's off. And then, you know,
00:39:28.820
you'll want to, it's not, you won't do it cause you feel like you have to, you'll just do it cause
00:39:32.280
you want to. So you mentioned Apple screen time. And I know a few years ago to Google with Android,
00:39:38.300
they made this big push on helping people have better healthy relationship with their smart
00:39:43.440
devices. Why not just use that stuff to manage your phone time instead of just deleting everything?
00:39:50.620
I would say if it works for you, go for it, but keep in mind, this is one of those things where
00:39:56.800
their interests are not aligned with us using our phones less. Apple doesn't win if we use our
00:40:03.280
phones less and we're less excited about getting a new iPhone. Google doesn't win if we're less
00:40:08.520
excited about using Android. So even though their intentions, their intentions may be totally good
00:40:15.140
here. They may want to help, but there's no way they're going to be putting their A game effort on
00:40:20.800
solving that problem. They're going to want to give you something that gives you kind of what we all
00:40:25.540
want if we don't think too hard about it or work too hard on it, which is we kind of want to have
00:40:30.600
our cake and eat it too. We want to have access to everything cause it's easy and it's fun. And it
00:40:35.300
gives us that little dopamine hit. I just don't believe they're really serious about it. So I
00:40:39.680
don't believe those tools are like really serious about giving you your attention back. I might be
00:40:43.840
wrong and you might find people might find that it works great for them, but the simpler thing to do
00:40:49.120
than configuring some settings on the phone is to just delete it and install it back when you,
00:40:54.100
when you have to have it. No, it's pretty easy to circumvent. It's not very useful. So I've
00:40:58.580
tried using screen time on my iPhone where I set time limits for certain apps. It's like, okay,
00:41:03.000
Gmail, I only want 10 minutes a day. And then your time's up and I'm just like, ignore a limit for
00:41:07.660
rest of the day. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Okay. It's gotta be a little bit more hardcore than
00:41:14.320
that. Now there is a tool that is really powerful. It's hard to configure, but it'll like shut you down
00:41:20.300
in a bigger way called freedom. And there's a version for the phone and you can use it on your
00:41:26.400
laptop or your desktop computer as well. And freedom actually kind of goes in and, and like
00:41:33.180
shuts things down on the like internet connection level. Yeah. And so that's a more powerful tool.
00:41:38.980
You gotta be serious if you want to use that one, because it's a little bit tricky to set up and
00:41:44.560
configure. And it's, it's really going to shut it down. You can set hours and things like that for
00:41:49.660
different websites or different apps. But that one's the, if you're just like not messing around
00:41:54.740
and I use that sometimes on my laptop, I'll do like a session, like a 90 minute, two hour session so I
00:42:01.200
can write. But for me, even that one is like a little bit scary on the phone. Okay. Someone might
00:42:07.600
be listening to this too and think, okay, why not just get a dumb phone if you're not going to be
00:42:11.380
connected to the internet? Yeah. Why not get a dumb phone? I've tried it actually. I got one of those
00:42:16.780
light phones and they're, I mean, if, if folks haven't heard of this, I think it's called like
00:42:21.720
light phone, maybe light phone two or something. Yeah. And cool device, like a similar e-ink screen,
00:42:28.440
like a Kindle would have. And I, I just found for me that, you know, if I love all of the,
00:42:37.900
all of the cool stuff, the cool futuristic stuff that I described on the smartphone, I think that
00:42:42.420
stuff is great. It's really cool. And I feel like it adds to my life and going back to the simpler
00:42:50.240
time with the light phone and the light phone is like a really elegantly designed phone for sure.
00:42:54.840
But it just, I missed that other stuff. I do know people who they'll use a light phone or,
00:43:02.720
you know, something like that in specific times. They'll say like, you know, I'm going on a date or
00:43:07.820
I'm, I'm doing this certain kind of work. I'm going to leave the smartphone at home and take
00:43:13.460
the dumb phone with me. And I think that's a really, it seems like a really smart strategy.
00:43:18.900
And it's just, for me, it's just been like a little, a little too much to figure out like,
00:43:24.240
okay, am I, you know, is it really okay if I don't have all this other, the maps and all the other
00:43:30.700
stuff with the music, like the iPod with me, that's really usually the killer for me is the very first
00:43:36.280
feature they introduced on the iPhone. And I'm like, I want to have that. I want to have the
00:43:39.800
music with me. But I do think that, I think it's a legit approach. It's just, it hasn't worked for
00:43:44.160
me. So a lot of new apps have come out since 2012. Do you try new ones out and how do you decide
00:43:51.780
which ones to try out and which ones to keep? I do try new ones out, but with some,
00:43:57.920
there are things where I'm like, there's no way that's going to be a good scene for me,
00:44:02.180
knowing myself like TikTok. There's no way I'm, I'm getting into TikTok because I'd love it.
00:44:08.860
That's the thing with all this stuff. I love it. I love the, the, you know, like, oh man,
00:44:15.540
it's funny little video clips. God, that just sounds great. I would be on that. We wouldn't
00:44:20.620
have had this call, Brett. I'd be doing that right now. So TikTok, I'm like that. I can't go,
00:44:25.640
I cannot do that. That's definitely a bad scene for Jake. Um, there's some apps that I just
00:44:31.940
started using this app. That's become one that I use several times a day. Uh, maybe you've heard
00:44:36.360
about how we feel it's this app. It's just like an emotion tracker, which sounds like really like,
00:44:41.180
why would I want to track my emotions? But it's beautifully designed. And what's cool about it
00:44:45.580
is you, you go in, it's really quite fun and fast and to almost like a playful interaction to choose
00:44:52.160
from these four. Like if I check in, it's like, are you feeling high energy, unpleasant,
00:44:57.240
high energy, pleasant, low energy, unpleasant, low energy, pleasant. And then it gives you all
00:45:02.120
these emotion options and you kind of tag like what was going on at the moment. And it's just
00:45:06.800
kind of beautiful and fun to go through. And then you start to see, it's been this really helpful
00:45:10.440
thing to see, oh man, when I'm stressed out or I'm feeling down about this writing project or
00:45:15.900
whatever, you can kind of see how those emotions pass, like what the trends are and how long those
00:45:20.520
things stick, which I found to feel really good to, to sort of see the emotions in a different
00:45:25.180
way. Anyway, that's a great app that made it onto the home screen. Like that's in the top four now
00:45:30.180
on that first screen. That's a beauty. I use a Peloton and I've got the Peloton app is on my top
00:45:38.600
10, you know, that's one that I added. So I'll use it to record like an outdoor run or an outdoor walk
00:45:44.700
because I'm kind of hooked to having these streaks of days that I've worked out in a row. It's just
00:45:48.940
stupid, but I love that. So there are things like that and they're, they're different utilities. I use the,
00:45:54.300
I'm a bit of a sneaker head. So I've got like the sneakers app and stock X and go, you know,
00:46:01.040
those sometimes will veer on like being infinity pools and problems for me. But the nice thing is
00:46:05.840
the stuff doesn't come out that frequently. So I like the new shoes that I'm interested in.
00:46:11.500
So I found that it doesn't really create that tug in the same way, but yeah, I'm definitely open all
00:46:18.440
the time to try new apps. I just have this parameter of like, does it create, it's just simple. Does it
00:46:24.340
create bad feelings when I use it? Does it create bad feelings when I'm not using it? And some apps
00:46:30.620
do both. Some apps create bad feelings, you know, just when you're using it or not using it. But if it
00:46:36.540
creates bad feelings, if it creates that tug, or if it makes me feel stressed in the moment when I
00:46:42.080
shouldn't have it on the phone, I don't need to carry that around with me. That's bad. So then I
00:46:47.560
don't use it. So you mentioned your desktop browsing. Do you do some stuff? It sounds like
00:46:52.880
you do some stuff to avoid mindlessly surfing the web there. Yeah. I mean, I'm just like so easily
00:47:00.600
distracted that I have to have a whole bunch of tools to keep me on on track, especially because,
00:47:07.240
you know, writing, which is a big part of what I do, is this thing where you like, I've got to
00:47:15.100
with no social pressure from anyone else, usually I've got to like, stop everything else. And for
00:47:22.380
at least like two hours, just sit and do something. So the tricks and techniques that I use include
00:47:30.580
I use this thing called a time timer. This is a physical timer, you can set the time that you
00:47:36.720
want on it. It's got a little red, like dial almost use like turn this thing out and you see a pie chart
00:47:42.200
of how much time is left and then the time ticks away. And so I can just at a glance see that sitting
00:47:46.560
on my desk and see how long I've sort of agreed with myself, I'm going to focus on a thing.
00:47:50.860
That's a big help. I use that freedom software on my desktop if I need to have a session where I just
00:47:58.600
like shut off internet access. I also have a, an office that I rent where I've actually like
00:48:06.000
disconnected the internet from that office. So I leave home, go to that office. There's no internet
00:48:11.120
there. That's really, really helpful place to get writing or focused work done. So I'll do all kinds
00:48:17.480
of things to try to create these spaces where it's like, when I think back to creating computer
00:48:23.820
games when I was a kid before the internet existed and it, it was such a lovely feeling to just focus
00:48:31.280
and just do something that was really an all consuming creative task. And for me now to recreate
00:48:37.760
that, I have to create some walls. Well, Jake, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to
00:48:42.880
learn more about your work? They can go to jakenapp.com. The sprintbook.com is where we
00:48:48.640
talk about the design sprints and maketime.blog. Or you can just look up my friend, John, and I wrote
00:48:55.720
this book called Make Time. That's about focus and attention and how we are trying to keep it,
00:49:01.760
keep it working for us. And that book is available, you know, everywhere books are available.
00:49:07.360
Fantastic. Well, Jake Knapp, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:49:12.240
My guest here is Jake Knapp. He's the author of several books, including Sprint and Make Time.
00:49:16.640
They're all available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about
00:49:20.180
his work at his website, jakenapp.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash phone,
00:49:25.680
where you find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.
00:49:35.380
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our
00:49:38.900
website at artofmanless.com, where you find our podcast archives. And while you're there,
00:49:42.580
make sure to sign up for our newsletter. We've got a daily option and a weekly option. They're
00:49:46.120
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00:49:50.460
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00:50:01.300
the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you to not listen to AOM podcast,