The Art of Manliness - How to Create a Distraction-Free Phone

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.760 Jake Knapp loves tech. He grew up using Apple II and then Mac computers,

00:00:16.620 browsing bulletin boards, and making his own games. As an adult, he worked at Microsoft on

00:00:21.360 the Encarta CD-ROM before being hired by Google, where he worked on Gmail, co-founded Google Meet,

00:00:26.560 and created Google Ventures Design Sprint Process. Today, he's a venture capitalist and

00:00:31.360 consultant for startups, as well as a writer. Today on the show, I talked to Jake about what

00:00:35.640 motivated him to change his relationship with his phone over a decade ago, and what steps he took

00:00:39.880 to do so, including how and why he lives life without a web browser or email app on his phone.

00:00:44.940 We get into what realization about work and life Jake's gotten from having a distraction-free phone,

00:00:49.440 why he doesn't think using tools like screen time or a dumb phone are always the best solutions to

00:00:53.400 reducing the phone itch, and how he also cuts down on distractions on his desktop computer.

00:00:58.320 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash phone.

00:01:13.000 All right, Jake Knapp, welcome to the show.

00:01:15.760 Hey, thanks for having me, Brett.

00:01:17.240 So several years ago, we had your co-author of your book, Make Time, on the podcast to discuss

00:01:23.240 how we can make time for what really matters in our lives. And one aspect that you guys talk about

00:01:29.680 in that book is spending less time on our smartphone. And you're an expert in this because 12 years ago,

00:01:38.220 you were an early adopter of trying to reduce screen time on your phone. You set out to make your phone,

00:01:44.840 your iPhone, distraction-free. 12 years ago, that's a long time in internet time,

00:01:51.240 and things have changed a lot since then. There's a lot more to be distracted by, for sure.

00:01:56.720 Back in 2012, what were the biggest distractors on your iPhone?

00:02:03.300 Well, in 2012, there were still a lot of the heavyweights of distraction existed that early.

00:02:10.260 I think there was Facebook, there was Instagram. And then for me, some of the real killers were

00:02:18.640 email and just Safari. Just the web browser is a big distraction for me. So all of those big ones

00:02:25.960 existed even back then. There were games on the phone back then. Those distracted me.

00:02:31.540 The news is a big one. So a whole host of things.

00:02:34.980 Okay. So Facebook, Instagram, just surfing the web on Safari. So it wasn't the... Remember the

00:02:41.660 beer app? I remember when the iPhone first came out, it had all those silly apps where you can

00:02:45.680 pour yourself a glass of beer. I don't remember that one, but I do. I mean, I think there was a

00:02:51.800 proliferation right at the beginning of just... People were trying to figure out like, what's this

00:02:55.500 thing for? What can we do with this? And so then I think a big thing that happened to me was

00:03:03.220 starting off using the iPhone. I didn't really think about what I wanted to use it for.

00:03:08.160 I didn't really think about what problem it was going to solve. I was just like, oh man,

00:03:12.840 that thing, it looks really cool. Oh, it's an iPod and it's a phone. Great. And then I got one and

00:03:22.200 then I just started anything that came out. I was like, yeah, I want to try that. Sure. I'll try that.

00:03:27.380 I'll put that out. Facebook's a new thing. I'll try that. I'll put that on there. All these things

00:03:31.180 came out and I would just say yes by default. And so as time went by, we got to 2012. There was a lot

00:03:38.020 on there. There was a lot of things that would catch my attention. Was there a moment you realized

00:03:42.980 that your phone was causing problems in your life? There was. It was a very specific moment.

00:03:50.020 I was at home and I'm a person who for a long time had been interested in being really efficient

00:03:57.980 with my time and trying to get my work done at work if possible, or just get through everything

00:04:05.740 so that I could spend time with my kids. So I have a 20 year old now. So if we rewind to 2012,

00:04:13.260 he was, I guess, eight or nine. And then we had a baby who was around one at that time.

00:04:19.780 And I really wanted to spend quality time with them. So I wanted to be really efficient when I was at work

00:04:25.220 and get home before they went to bed, you know, before dinner. And so I can remember being at home

00:04:31.760 and, you know, having gotten done with the work day and being on the floor in the living room,

00:04:37.820 playing with wooden trains, like Brio trains with the boys. And we're playing trains and I hear this

00:04:46.400 voice and I'm kind of like, well, man, I realized it's my son. And he's saying like, Hey, Hey dad,

00:04:51.820 like, what's, uh, what's on your phone? And, and I was like, Oh, I didn't even realize I'd been

00:04:58.220 holding my phone at the time. You know, I've just like by reflex, like, you know, Frodo reaching in

00:05:04.300 his pocket to pull out the ring. I had pulled out the phone and I was looking at something and I was

00:05:09.540 like, Oh, it's, you know, it's work stuff. Like I was defensive. And I realized that like, he wasn't,

00:05:14.220 he wasn't even criticizing me. You know, he's just like, Oh, here we are playing wooden trains

00:05:18.920 together. This is the most fun thing in the world. Why would you, you know, if you're doing

00:05:23.540 something on your phone, it must be really great. It must be really interesting. Maybe I can see it

00:05:27.400 too. And, and in that moment, I, I, it just kind of occurred to me that I had this memory from when

00:05:37.300 I was a kid of what it was like doing things with my dad. And of course, back then there were no

00:05:42.400 smartphones. There were no, you know, it was no internet that when my dad was home from work,

00:05:47.720 he was just, he was just home. Like I grew up on a farm. We would be out on the farm, like,

00:05:52.320 you know, mending a fence or something. That was like a hundred percent what we were doing.

00:05:56.820 And I had always wanted when I had kids to have moments and times with them. Like I remember having

00:06:02.280 with my dad, it was really just the two of us. And maybe we weren't talking that much, whatever,

00:06:06.700 but we were just there. We're just present. We're just there. And I, it just occurred to me in that

00:06:11.900 moment, how different the moment I was having with my kids was than, than what I had grown up with.

00:06:18.020 And I thought, this is, this is crazy. And I, in frustration in that moment, I started deleting

00:06:24.560 apps off of the phone. A wiser person might've looked inward, you know, and tried to change

00:06:29.320 something about them, but I was just holding the phone and I got angry at the phone and I, and I just,

00:06:33.980 I started deleting and I just started deleting anything that it just, everything clicked in there. Hey,

00:06:38.780 there's all these things that they're pulling at me. Even when I'm not actively using the phone,

00:06:44.980 I don't actively have an idea of something that I want to do. They're just kind of pulling me in.

00:06:49.100 And so I, I went after anything that did that. Okay. So you, the phone wasn't allowing you to be

00:06:54.800 present with your kids or with your family, with the things that really matter to you. Besides that,

00:07:00.220 did you notice anything else about the phone and how it was affecting how you were thinking or how you

00:07:06.060 approached life? Yeah. I would, would describe it as a kind of a tug that the phone creates. And

00:07:13.020 it's this notion that my coauthor, John Zeratsky, he's describes this as infinity pools. It's like

00:07:20.760 any thing that has a potentially infinite amount of, of new stuff in it, anything that at any time of

00:07:30.020 day, there might be, there might, there might be a new email at any time of day. Or if you use Facebook

00:07:36.260 or Instagram or TikTok, whatever, like there's, there's something new on there at any time of day,

00:07:41.000 there's a new news story. There's like a breaking news at every time of day. Somewhere on the internet,

00:07:46.760 there's something new at any time of day. So anything where there's a bottomless pit of new

00:07:51.720 stuff, there's always going to be something new. Those things, they create this tug on my attention.

00:07:56.920 There's some kind of pull at any time. If the threshold of my interest on whatever's going on

00:08:02.240 in the real world dips below a certain level, then instead of dipping down and getting into like,

00:08:08.260 you know, boredom mode, just like chill out mode or whatever, my brain is like, Oh man,

00:08:12.380 there's probably something new on the phone. And I mean, you know, this is not some novel insight.

00:08:16.920 I think lots of people have talked about this. Everyone's probably knows about this, but

00:08:20.980 that tug, I just started to recognize how that tug was affecting my attention at all times,

00:08:27.880 whether I was with my kids or, or at work or whatever. Like I was just never getting down into

00:08:33.900 that, that more calm, chill brain mode, the boredom, you know, like boredom didn't have to be an option

00:08:39.740 anymore. There's always the tug when boredom or quiet started to creep in. And once I had kind of

00:08:46.360 noticed that and realized like, that's actually an unpleasant feeling, it feels sort of pleasant.

00:08:52.560 It's sort of an excitement like, Oh, maybe there's this new thing, right? Maybe this new thing is

00:08:57.140 going to make me feel good. And because sometimes it does. Sometimes there's an email that makes me

00:09:00.880 feel good. Sometimes there's a, you know, some new thing on social media or some new story that's

00:09:05.560 interesting or whatever. And it makes me feel on top of things, or it makes me feel flattered,

00:09:09.820 or it makes me feel engaged or what important to whatever. But I also recognize that the flip side

00:09:17.260 of that was that, that, the tug that, that feeling was really unpleasant. And I, I know you had Cal

00:09:22.420 Newport was on the show a couple episodes ago. Yeah. And he's, I mean, I'm a big admirer of his

00:09:27.560 work and he, he highlighted the work of this researcher from the university of Washington who

00:09:34.200 she phrased this, I think attention residue. And it's like when something you're, you're working

00:09:41.100 on something or you're doing something and then you go to another task, but the first thing kind

00:09:45.500 of sticks in your head and distracts you a little bit. And so I realized like, man, if I'm going to be

00:09:50.740 doing my highest quality work, or if I'm going to be spending the highest quality with my family or my

00:09:56.220 kids, that attention residue, that tug from the phone, it's in direct opposition to that. It's hurting my

00:10:02.060 ability to, to be at my, at my best and whatever definition of my best might be in other venues.

00:10:09.580 So you had that moment 12 years ago, you're with your kids playing trains and you realized this

00:10:14.680 thing in my pocket is preventing me from being present with them. So you deleted all these apps,

00:10:20.600 which apps did you delete from your phone? And then which ones did you keep?

00:10:24.680 Yeah. Okay. So I deleted, I started off the, the easy ones I think to delete. And I think the ones

00:10:31.080 that people like most people when, cause people will talk to me about this and they're like,

00:10:35.220 what's wrong with you? What's your problem? You know? So, but most people will say, okay,

00:10:39.180 like Facebook and Instagram, I get it. Right. Like that's lots of people have that feeling that

00:10:45.920 sometimes it's not a good feeling to use those. So those were the, like the first ones. And then I

00:10:52.800 had, I had some games on my phone at that time. I think one that I remember, I think was from that

00:10:58.520 you're a, cause I'll admit like since 2012, I'll sometimes put a game on my phone. Like,

00:11:02.520 it's not like I'm, I'm like, I've just walked the complete straight and narrow since then.

00:11:08.820 So like, I think it was Golden Axe. And you remember Golden Axe was like a, a game from the,

00:11:14.480 I mean like the late eighties or nineties. It was on the Sega Genesis.

00:11:17.440 Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, there was like a, you know,

00:11:20.040 an emulator game version of that on the iPhone. I think I had that. I think, you know,

00:11:25.120 I had probably had like, I don't know, like CNN and ESPN or something like that. I can't,

00:11:30.680 it's a little hard for me to remember in 2012, what was an app versus what was like,

00:11:35.200 you know, you'd go to Safari to see, but the, but ESPN has always been, I'm, I'm a football fan.

00:11:40.860 That's always been a big infinity pool for me. And then, you know, Twitter would be another one.

00:11:45.980 And, but then also things like LinkedIn, that's another one where, you know, do I really need to

00:11:51.380 access LinkedIn 24 hours a day right in my pocket? No, probably not. So it was things like that.

00:11:57.800 But, but then the next wave I realized that was a little bit more insidious was like email,

00:12:05.820 especially for me having worked on the Gmail team for years. And I was like, man, I, it doesn't

00:12:12.220 actually do, I could go on for a long time talking about the email on the phone. It's, it's not,

00:12:19.540 it's not a good experience for me at least because I will read the emails. I'll see that there's new

00:12:25.760 stuff. And then there's this momentary feeling of like, okay, good. I'm on top of things. I know

00:12:30.300 what's in the inbox, but the downside is I personally, I can't really compose a good email

00:12:36.500 on the phone. Like I might be able to, there's, there's maybe some category of email that I,

00:12:41.920 I can answer and I can do an all right job, you know, but I just mentally, like I need a keyboard

00:12:47.580 to write a decent email. And I try to, I try to do as little email as I can, but do what I do

00:12:53.300 well. You know, I, I try to do something that maybe, maybe Cal Newport would be proud of.

00:12:58.300 I can't do that on the phone. And so what happens is I'm just activating the stress of here's this

00:13:03.720 open loop and I can't close it. So I've, you know, the email on the phone to me is a disaster.

00:13:09.240 So I deleted email. That was a little painful. And then I realized, you know, Safari, you can't

00:13:16.280 delete it, but I realized that it was, it became a problem once I deleted everything else. I can just

00:13:22.500 go to Safari. I can sign into my email there. I can look at the news there, whatever. But I realized

00:13:27.240 you can go into settings and if you like dig through settings, you can disable Safari. So yeah. And

00:13:33.900 then, I mean, at that point there was still, the thing is you take all those away. There's still

00:13:38.360 some really good stuff on there. So what'd you keep on? What'd you leave on there?

00:13:42.380 Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, just like starting with the basics, like imagine you go back to 2007,

00:13:47.320 Steve Jobs is introducing the iPhone. You know, he said today we're introducing three devices.

00:13:52.480 It's a new iPod, a new phone, and a new like internet device. It's three devices. And he was like,

00:13:59.380 you see what's going on here? It's one thing. And the iPod part of that, if you're old enough to

00:14:03.840 remember like when iPods existed and smartphones did not exist, iPods were

00:14:08.260 amazing. They were so great. And it sounds very like, I don't know, I mean, we just sound like

00:14:13.560 an old man to say that now, but like, it was so cool to be able to play any music you wanted

00:14:18.600 on your phone. And then now with like the streaming services to really literally be able to play

00:14:23.320 anything, that is magical. I just think that's so cool. So that alone is a huge deal to have a phone

00:14:29.840 that's also an iPod. I still think that's fantastic. So of course, music is a keeper. Podcasts is a

00:14:36.880 keeper. I mean, podcast is great. And I, I do think there are times when I have, I've noticed

00:14:42.700 that even like listening to podcasts when I'm on a walk or on a run or whatever, there are times when

00:14:47.660 I'm served better by not doing it, by not listening to music, by having quiet, because having that quiet

00:14:52.920 and that really, that time to just let the mind be off is quite valuable. But podcasts also many times,

00:15:00.220 like they just, they bring great joy and like interesting ideas into my life. So podcast is a good one

00:15:04.960 and not an infinity pool. It's not a thing where I'm like going to be playing with my kids or,

00:15:10.080 you know, needing to do something important, but hard to do at work. And I'm going to be like,

00:15:15.680 oh, I'm going to browse through the podcast app. That's just, at least for me, that's not that big

00:15:19.200 of a pool. What else? Maps. Maps is amazing. You know, if whatever you use, Google Maps, Apple Maps,

00:15:25.380 whatever, like the Maps app is a very magical thing. And we're starting to talk about like a series of

00:15:32.120 things, you know, music, whatever you use, Spotify music, whatever, podcasts, the Maps,

00:15:38.780 the camera on the phone is amazing. A category of things where I just think if I was a kid,

00:15:43.820 if I rewind to being a kid in like the 80s, who was really into science fiction, and you described

00:15:48.620 this thing that you could hold in your, you just have it in your pocket and it's got these, it can do

00:15:53.540 these things. I would have been like, oh my God, that's so futuristic. That's so cool. I can't wait to

00:15:58.820 live in that future where that thing exists. And so all of those things meet the bar for like

00:16:04.420 a cool future, you know, where this feels like this, this magical tool from the future.

00:16:10.100 Well, you actually keep the apps that you've kept on your phone, you know, the ones that seem like

00:16:13.720 magical tools from the future. You keep them in a folder called the future.

00:16:18.480 Yeah, I do. I do. Now it's, I used to be really organized about having the new apps would go in the

00:16:27.480 future folder. And then at some point, I don't know, two or three years ago, iOS changed and you

00:16:35.640 could just remove an app from the home screen, it would disappear. And then if you want it, you could

00:16:39.940 search for it. So now I still keep like a very small set of apps visible, but rather than filing

00:16:47.120 them in the future, I just, I've gotten a little bit lazy and, and I just, you know, I just remove them

00:16:52.340 the home screen and then I search for them if I want them. I will say that that laziness has cost

00:16:57.820 me something because there was a really nice moment when I would try out an app and then decide,

00:17:03.900 because I have, I only allow myself to have apps on the top row of the phone. And so like, this is,

00:17:10.020 I'm sorry, this is like full on nerdery, but like if I open my phone, the home screen has no apps on it

00:17:16.920 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

00:17:21.440 breath when I see that, like, do I really have something I want to do here? It just sort of,

00:17:25.760 I feel like a little bit less tension and stress than opening the phone and having like a million

00:17:30.060 apps. And then as I swipe through the screens, there's just like one row of apps on the top.

00:17:36.480 And I have four on the first screen, three on the second, two on the third, and then one on the last

00:17:41.520 one. So it's just like, there's fewer and fewer and fewer. And this is all just stuff that I,

00:17:45.340 I just do to try to make it less stressful and less grabby for me to use the phone.

00:17:51.400 Okay. So the apps you do keep, you'll keep them if they have a wow factor, it provides a lot of

00:17:55.640 value to your life and it doesn't have that tug. Like you don't feel that need to necessarily,

00:18:01.020 you know, just constantly check it.

00:18:02.800 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'll keep it if it's, if there's a utility to it,

00:18:06.920 that's really powerful. Like, um, you know, one password is an app that I think is,

00:18:11.860 is great and very useful. You know, the notes app, the, the,

00:18:15.080 the weather app, these are ones that make the cut to be still on the home screen.

00:18:18.680 Like I want to be able to access them that easily, but a lot of things I want to maybe

00:18:22.680 have to dig for them to find them. But anyway, when I had this future folder,

00:18:27.040 this folder of things called the future, there was this really nice moment where if I've

00:18:30.180 added something new and I'm like, okay, does it make the cut to be in that top row?

00:18:35.420 And there's only, let's see, four plus three is seven plus two plus one. So there's only 10 slots

00:18:40.700 there. Does it make it into the top 10? Now, if not, does it make it into the future? Am I saying

00:18:46.680 like, this is one of those kinds of apps that makes me feel like I've got this magical futuristic

00:18:50.900 device in my pocket. And that was kind of a helpful little guideline for me for a while.

00:18:56.360 I'd like to think that I've kind of internalized it. And so it's okay for me to just remove it.

00:19:00.300 You know, the reality might be, I just got lazy, but that's my mental framework for what

00:19:04.640 something should do for me on the phone.

00:19:06.300 So like you said, getting rid of social media and news apps, that's like a no brainer. I think

00:19:10.640 a lot of people who want to make their phone distraction free, they just don't have that

00:19:15.420 stuff on their phone. I want to dig more into the email and the web browser. I think a lot of

00:19:20.280 people might hear that. It's like, how can you function without having your email or a web browser

00:19:24.960 on your phone? I am like you. I do not like writing emails on my phone. And I find that I very rarely

00:19:32.540 respond to emails on my phone. But I will say that the email app is useful because it's a

00:19:40.000 resource of information. Particularly when I'm traveling, it's extremely useful. So like when

00:19:44.400 I'm traveling, I can just pull up my airline reservation, the hotel, the car rental reservations,

00:19:49.580 and boom, I'm done. How do you handle that? How do you like handle that sort of thing when

00:19:56.160 you're traveling, for example, an email would be good to have, but you don't have email on your

00:20:00.300 phone? Totally. I just got back from a trip so I can speak from experience like yesterday.

00:20:06.020 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

00:20:15.000 time with getting distracted than some folks. So for some people, I'm certainly open to the idea

00:20:21.200 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.

00:20:30.840 But for me, there's this really unpleasant feeling that I recognized after having it on there for

00:20:37.540 years, I recognize there's this unpleasant feeling about it being on there. And so if I'm on a trip,

00:20:42.560 first of all, over time, more and more things you don't need the email app for, I found, which is

00:20:49.440 handy. Because basically what I'll do is I'll install email and then uninstall it. So I'll just like,

00:20:55.760 when I need it, I'll just download it. And it doesn't take too long. Our internet connections

00:21:00.260 are pretty fast. If you're traveling in cities, like it, it's pretty much a snap to download email.

00:21:05.660 You know, I sign in and then I check what I need to check. And sometimes I'll even keep it on for

00:21:11.800 a day when my travel day or keep it on. I've sometimes put it on because I'm like, you know,

00:21:17.520 I'm going to be on the, on the plane. I have a bunch of email I need to process.

00:21:22.400 It's the best way for me to do that is to do it on my phone. I often tell myself that

00:21:27.020 usually it doesn't work out that well. I think it's going to be really efficient and effective

00:21:30.780 way to process email. And then everything I just said earlier happens. And I'm like, oh yeah,

00:21:35.040 it's just stressful for me to look at it in this way. I can't really reply.

00:21:38.360 But things like the, you know, the airplane reservations, usually nowadays, the airline app

00:21:44.400 is going to be better than the email app for giving me the information about my flight.

00:21:48.760 Or if I just bookmark where the hotel is on maps, that's going to be the best way for me to get

00:21:56.340 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.

00:22:09.500 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 0.97

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 0.97

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, 0.99

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.

00:49:09.120 Thanks, Brett. Thanks for having me on.

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 both free. It's the best way to stay on top of what's going on at AOM. And if you haven't done

00:49:50.460 so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us reading off the podcast or

00:49:53.220 Spotify. Helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the

00:49:57.360 show with a friend or family member. You'd think we get something out of it. As always, thank you for

00:50:01.300 the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you to not listen to AOM podcast,

00:50:05.340 but put what you've heard into action.

00:50:08.900 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - April 03, 2024

How to Create a Distraction-Free Phone

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