Speaker 1: Sure, you might feel good after playing Candy Crush for
Speaker 1: an hour or two, but I wouldn't say that you
Speaker 1: feel magical. I'm not even sure good. Yeah, maybe not
Speaker 1: even good. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good will. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Manu
Speaker 1: Summer Roadie, the host and managing editor of Note to Self,
Speaker 1: the tech show about being human from w NYC Studios.
Speaker 1: Every week on her podcast menu, searches for answers to
Speaker 1: life's digital quandaries through experiments and conversations with listeners and experts.
Speaker 1: Topics include information overload, digital clutter, sexting scandals, and the
Speaker 1: eavesdropping capabilities of our gadgets. The Note to Self podcast
Speaker 1: is starting a new challenge called Infomagical to help cope
Speaker 1: with information overload. You'll hear more about it during this episode.
Speaker 1: If you want to sign up to participate, go to
Speaker 1: w n YC dot org slash info Magical Challenge Week
Speaker 1: starts February one and runs through February five. This interview
Speaker 1: was recorded live in the w NYC studios in New
Speaker 1: York City, home of other popular podcasts like Radio Lab,
Speaker 1: The New York Radio Hour, and Freeconomics. And here's the
Speaker 1: interview with Manu samar ROADI him a nush, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. It is so great to be here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. I'm really excited to get you
Speaker 1: on and talk more about your current program called Infomagical. Um.
Speaker 1: You did Board and Brilliant about a year ago, which
Speaker 1: is a great program. But you're really focused on how
Speaker 1: we stay human in a in a rapidly changing technological
Speaker 1: and digital age. That is kind of what we try
Speaker 1: to do. I mean, we try to you know, these
Speaker 1: projects I think we're finding our way. But what we've
Speaker 1: seen is that people don't just want to understand the algorithms.
Speaker 1: They don't just want to hear the stories about how
Speaker 1: they affect their lives. They want to also like figure
Speaker 1: out ways um to make their lives better by using
Speaker 1: these things. So we try to, you know, give them
Speaker 1: some experiments, some different ways that they can um play
Speaker 1: around and and hopefully feel as though the technology is
Speaker 1: helping them be more productive, um maybe even happier um
Speaker 1: and and use it. I think what we're seeing is
Speaker 1: that people have to really be more aware of their
Speaker 1: own um reaction and the way that they act with
Speaker 1: this technology, and and that the techies, the people making
Speaker 1: this stuff are not necessarily looking out for our best interests. Right.
Speaker 1: The technology is largely going to be neutral. It's it's
Speaker 1: how we use it, and we'll we'll dig into a
Speaker 1: lot of that here in a minute. Let's start like
Speaker 1: we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather is
Speaker 1: talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I've been thinking about it
Speaker 1: all weekends and in preparations for well, there's actually two answers,
Speaker 1: I feel like. So I feel like, UM, many of us,
Speaker 1: and certainly speaking for myself, don't just have one wolf.
Speaker 1: It's like good wolf packs and bad wolf packs. I've decided.
Speaker 1: And so some of the things that the bad wolf does, um,
Speaker 1: which is make me competitive, make me want to work
Speaker 1: every hour of the day, make me short with my
Speaker 1: children because they move at a different pace than I
Speaker 1: want to. Some of those things actually are good. It's
Speaker 1: a matter of the other wolf pack, the good wolf
Speaker 1: pack sort of nipping. They nippit each other's heels. I
Speaker 1: feel like when the good wolf gets too kind and
Speaker 1: too complacent, because I do think that is possible. Sometimes, um,
Speaker 1: the bad wolves start to howl and nip at their heels.
Speaker 1: And then then same way the other way around that
Speaker 1: when I get too competitive or shortsighted or um wrapped
Speaker 1: up in my own bowl shit um, then the good
Speaker 1: wolves start like nipping at them, so they I feel
Speaker 1: as though they have to like live together very very
Speaker 1: much now in terms of the show. With note to self,
Speaker 1: I mean to me, that is exactly what technology is doing.
Speaker 1: Is it's showing humanity very very quickly, where your good
Speaker 1: wolf is and where your bad wolf is. For example,
Speaker 1: my phone can make me efficient in touch with my
Speaker 1: friends and family. I'm on time, I actually know where
Speaker 1: I'm going. It does delightful, wonderful things. I read more
Speaker 1: than I ever have. The good wolf is satisfied, she
Speaker 1: likes all that. But the bad wolf, the one who
Speaker 1: wants to work all the time, the one who likes flashy,
Speaker 1: blingy things and doesn't want to do the hard work
Speaker 1: of sitting and thinking of my own thoughts, of really
Speaker 1: digging deeper into um what I read and analyzing it
Speaker 1: as opposed to just stuffing more into my head. That
Speaker 1: bad wolf gets fat and happy with my phone, and
Speaker 1: and it it can't control itself, and so to me.
Speaker 1: It's like those two wolves are so embodied in our technology,
Speaker 1: and very much like you do on the show, you
Speaker 1: have to think about which one you're feeding at all times.
Speaker 1: And if you don't think about it, um, well, the
Speaker 1: bad wolf is fat and happy, so he he, he
Speaker 1: doesn't care what he eats, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like you have to feed good stuff to the good wolf,
Speaker 1: but the bad wolf will take all your garbage. And yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: What makes me think of when you talk about that,
Speaker 1: I think that I always am struck by how are
Speaker 1: some of our our best tendencies can also become our
Speaker 1: greatest weakness is taken too far. It's like all that
Speaker 1: stuff too far one way or the other, that that
Speaker 1: desire to create and make things can turn competitive, it
Speaker 1: can it can turn obsessive, it can turn but it's
Speaker 1: it's a positive thing in general. It's one of the
Speaker 1: things that is I think is good about myself. But
Speaker 1: if I don't watch it, it goes too far. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and like you said, if you don't watch it,
Speaker 1: I mean that's exhausting, constantly checking in on yourself. You know,
Speaker 1: it's tiring, but it's what I hope we ask our
Speaker 1: audience to do is to do a little bit of
Speaker 1: hard work up front and then see some like real paybacks,
Speaker 1: like big time, like that that the stuff that you
Speaker 1: dig and get to will be so worthwhile that you'll
Speaker 1: be glad that you did the constant like checking in
Speaker 1: at the front. You say the show is about keeping
Speaker 1: your humanity in this very digital time. What does that
Speaker 1: term keeping your humanity mean? Do you? It's not just
Speaker 1: about how we use, you know, our digital habits, but
Speaker 1: I think it's also very much understanding how the technology
Speaker 1: works so that you can push back. I think we
Speaker 1: take it for granted. We're like, oh, there's a new
Speaker 1: iPhone out, I guess I'll upgrade. Um, Google Photos, that's awesome,
Speaker 1: look what it does to my pictures. But I think
Speaker 1: it feels like it's like sprouted from the earth. It
Speaker 1: is just so it just feels like it always existed,
Speaker 1: that it's magical in some ways. But what we have
Speaker 1: to kind of understand is there are people making these
Speaker 1: things who maybe have certain not only agendas, but maybe
Speaker 1: don't even know about a lot of the things. So
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of an example, Um, we did a show
Speaker 1: specifically about deep learning to try to explain what deep
Speaker 1: learning is and and we use the example of Google Photos, which,
Speaker 1: um does it organizes your photos, but it also like
Speaker 1: can read like it looks at the pictures and it says, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a boat, and so it labels it as a boat.
Speaker 1: In this case, unfortunately, it labeled an African American woman
Speaker 1: as a gorilla. And so this was you know, this
Speaker 1: lovely young guy who I subsequently went to go meet
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. Um, he I actually twenty two year old guy.
Speaker 1: This happened to his friend. He's the one who tweeted
Speaker 1: at Google and was like not cool calling me and
Speaker 1: my friends guerrillas. UM. And I wanted to just go
Speaker 1: talk to him and be like, not only what did
Speaker 1: that feel like? But um, it sort of it showed
Speaker 1: me something. This guy lived two miles away from my
Speaker 1: house in a neighborhood that I had never gone to,
Speaker 1: and he said to me, He's like Google Photos was
Speaker 1: made for people like you. I was like, upper mental
Speaker 1: class white mommy's you know, I get it. Um, I
Speaker 1: need to understand that more. UM. I need to understand
Speaker 1: what people who are not being prioritized with a lot
Speaker 1: of this technology, how they experienced the technology. And then
Speaker 1: we need to cycle that back. Um. Look, it's an algorithm.
Speaker 1: Deep learning is incredibly difficult and impressive, but we need
Speaker 1: to be able to tell very human stories about what
Speaker 1: the repercussions of the technology is, so that we question it,
Speaker 1: so that we use it better, so that we um
Speaker 1: make it makes some like this world a better place. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's a broader message to it. So infomagical,
Speaker 1: which is is coming off when you say that, by
Speaker 1: the way, ridiculous title you say. It's an audience engagement
Speaker 1: and podcast series that looks at the consequences of fear
Speaker 1: of missing out FOMO and too much information t m
Speaker 1: I on our brains, our relationships, and our ability to
Speaker 1: generate new ideas. Do you want to tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about the FOMO and the t m I.
Speaker 1: What what does that do to let's start with our brains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's what I've been trying to figure out. This
Speaker 1: is something that has come up from a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners, this idea of too much information information overload.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have so many words to describe it
Speaker 1: right now, right we say we don't have enough bandwidth. Um,
Speaker 1: you're maxed out It's kind of funny that we use
Speaker 1: tech terms to describe what's happening to our brains. Guess
Speaker 1: what the Internet is limitless, bandwidth, limitless. Our brains, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: are not, and yet we haven't sort of put parameters around, um,
Speaker 1: what we are capable of. You know, so you you
Speaker 1: come into work, did you read did you hear it?
Speaker 1: You're seeing that Portlandia sketch where they're like, did you
Speaker 1: read it? And they're like, oh, yeah, but did you
Speaker 1: read did you read? You know, we're always one up
Speaker 1: in or two out there. We feel as though we
Speaker 1: need to be constantly in touch. We and there are
Speaker 1: so many wonderful things to listen to, to to watch Netflix shows,
Speaker 1: my god, Amazon now kicking. But like, there's so much
Speaker 1: good stuff out there, but we physically cannot take it in,
Speaker 1: and no one has created a filter for us to
Speaker 1: decide what should we be taking in? And so we're
Speaker 1: being asked constantly every single moment of the day, should
Speaker 1: I click on this link in Facebook? Should I update Twitter?
Speaker 1: Oh that looks interesting. You've heard of decision fatigue. I'm
Speaker 1: sure near a sciences called that. We are at decision fatigue.
Speaker 1: And so by the end of the day. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us feel like we are kind of
Speaker 1: on this water wheel. The water wheel starts to go
Speaker 1: in the morning and you're looking up the weather and
Speaker 1: reading the headlines, and then you look at Twitter, and
Speaker 1: then you look at Facebook, and then you look at
Speaker 1: you know, Instagram, and then you know d da da dada,
Speaker 1: and it just goes, goes, goes, goes goes. Well, as
Speaker 1: you can imagine, that is not conducive to good sleep.
Speaker 1: It is not conducive to UM. You know, we all
Speaker 1: some well some of us get that weird eye twitch
Speaker 1: at the end of the night. UM. Health wise, stress
Speaker 1: of course, UM comes from this. We are asking ourselves
Speaker 1: to make a lot of decisions about a lot of
Speaker 1: really small things when maybe what we should be doing,
Speaker 1: and this is the question we're trying to answer, and
Speaker 1: infor magical, If we set our own filters, because the
Speaker 1: technologists aren't doing it for us, maybe we can take
Speaker 1: in the right information um and just enough, maybe even
Speaker 1: less than we think we need to paradoxically actually be
Speaker 1: better informed. The average American takes in twelve hours of
Speaker 1: media a day, so that's half your life that you're
Speaker 1: taking in information. If you want to cut it down. Great,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying we're not trying to do that with
Speaker 1: this one. What we're trying to say is so taking
Speaker 1: stuff that matters to you, that moves you closer to
Speaker 1: your goal, and that goal could be anything where we've
Speaker 1: identified five goals that we're asking people to choose, and
Speaker 1: you know, I'd love to hear what your answer is
Speaker 1: to this. Actually, eric Um, for one week, all the
Speaker 1: information you take in, really try to take in things
Speaker 1: that either this is mine mine is Be more creative, Um,
Speaker 1: be more in touch with friends and family, be more
Speaker 1: knowledgeable about a certain topic, be more in tune with yourself,
Speaker 1: or be more up to date on the news. What
Speaker 1: would yours be? Which would I choose? Probably more in
Speaker 1: touch with myself doesn't surprise me. I listen to your show.
Speaker 1: So the info part is pre obviously info magical. What's
Speaker 1: the magical part. The magical part to me is when
Speaker 1: you take in the information that you want to take in,
Speaker 1: maybe you'll achieve something amazing, which is you'll learn to
Speaker 1: speak a new language, or you will finally be back
Speaker 1: in touch with that cousin who you're really close to
Speaker 1: Um back in the day, or you know, whatever you
Speaker 1: define it, but it's a little bit harder. You know,
Speaker 1: sure you might feel good after playing Candy Crush for
Speaker 1: an hour or two, but I wouldn't say that you
Speaker 1: feel magical. I'm not even sure good yeah, maybe not
Speaker 1: even good after maybe during but after or maybe you know,
Speaker 1: you're catching up on oranges in New Black or whatever,
Speaker 1: and it's enjoyable. But in terms of magic, like like, no,
Speaker 1: the magic stuff, the stuff that is life changing, life affirming,
Speaker 1: that moves you forward a step in the direction that
Speaker 1: you want to go, takes a little bit more. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it does, but it's worth it is worth it. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean the example I also uses. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I came to was this podcast, which was
Speaker 1: a result of UM doing a lot of uncomfortable thinking
Speaker 1: about what I wanted my life to be about. UM,
Speaker 1: and I would argue that sometimes we make magic. And
Speaker 1: here's the rest of the interview with MANW Samaradi. You're
Speaker 1: talking about how you read, would read like thirty five
Speaker 1: articles and then nothing would stick to you. The other
Speaker 1: thing that we're asking people to do, and this is
Speaker 1: five days, so UM, it's coming up each day. Not
Speaker 1: only are you with your your goal, your schema, because
Speaker 1: we've just defined it um. But we're also giving you
Speaker 1: a slight tweak of a behavior change that we're asking
Speaker 1: you to do. Some of them are a little weird,
Speaker 1: some of them are a little wacky. So, for example,
Speaker 1: day one, we are asking people to single task. As
Speaker 1: you probably know, multitasking is a myth. Uh. Neuroscientists know
Speaker 1: that actually we cannot do two things at a time.
Speaker 1: What we're doing is we're switching tasks extremely quickly, right.
Speaker 1: And actually they've also identified that every time you get
Speaker 1: off of your working spheres, they call it. So let's
Speaker 1: say you're working on your podcast and you get interrupted,
Speaker 1: it takes you an average of twenty three minutes and
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds to get back to the original task that
Speaker 1: you were working on. Here's another one that this is
Speaker 1: crazy to me. This is from Gloria Mark, she's a
Speaker 1: professor at the University of California, Irvine. Um, this is crazy.
Speaker 1: Let's say you have an hour where it's nutty, right,
Speaker 1: people are stopping by your desk, you're getting emails, you're
Speaker 1: checking things. All these external interruptions are happening to you.
Speaker 1: In the subsequent hour, you will start to self interrupt
Speaker 1: to sort of mimic that pattern of interruption. We so
Speaker 1: quickly get into this habit the way that we um
Speaker 1: operate that we we sabotage our elves in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. So what we're asking everybody, so day one
Speaker 1: is single task, do one thing at a time. That
Speaker 1: is going to be so hard for me. I'm a
Speaker 1: working mom, but I'm gonna do it, and um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna see if I feel magical the next day. Um
Speaker 1: Marie Condo do you know her Japanese art of decluttering.
Speaker 1: So we're doing something where we're condoing our phones, trying
Speaker 1: to find simplicity on day two. Um, Day three is
Speaker 1: avoid a meme or a must read. So whatever world
Speaker 1: you live in, um, you know if it's the you
Speaker 1: know the dress meme, like is it? Well, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have known that day. That day you stay away from memes.
Speaker 1: You really try see what it feels like. If someone's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, did you see the dress? Do you
Speaker 1: see do you think it's blue and black or gold
Speaker 1: and white, and you're like, see what it feels like
Speaker 1: to say, Nope, didn't see it. Because I think it's
Speaker 1: a societal expectation that we have set I mean, so
Speaker 1: we have to start to see what it feels like
Speaker 1: to say like, no, I don't know because it's it's
Speaker 1: not in my schema today. It's not my goal, and
Speaker 1: I'm cool with it because I've set my own expectations.
Speaker 1: And so there's a couple more going on with that.
Speaker 1: I can tell you specifically, what should I tell you? Okay,
Speaker 1: let me tell you the other two. So day four
Speaker 1: is called a magical connection. This is UM from M I. T.
Speaker 1: Psychologist Sherry Turkle. You probably read her stuff. Her latest
Speaker 1: is Reclaiming Conversation, and she talks about how you need
Speaker 1: to have a conversation voice to voice for at least
Speaker 1: seven minutes and um. When she was talking to her
Speaker 1: college students, they were like, oh, but like, I don't
Speaker 1: really know what I want to say. I won't say
Speaker 1: it right, I'll like stumble. It's better if I write
Speaker 1: you an email because then I can make it perfect.
Speaker 1: It might be boring if we talk. And she's like, no,
Speaker 1: the boring stuff, the stuttering, all those things. We are
Speaker 1: picking up on each other's human cues. Not being perfect
Speaker 1: is the point of being human. So we are asking
Speaker 1: people take one of the things that you've learned today
Speaker 1: when you're pursuing your information goal, share it, talk it out,
Speaker 1: get weird with someone, get past seven minutes, you know,
Speaker 1: and then on the fine all day. What we're asking
Speaker 1: people is, you know, we want a magical life, right,
Speaker 1: we're thinking big here, and it's and I'm curious to
Speaker 1: hear this is something you talk about the one you feed.
Speaker 1: That's sort of your your sort of note to self
Speaker 1: in a way, right, remember about which wolf you're feeding.
Speaker 1: So asking people to think about what's the sort of
Speaker 1: mantra or or rule that you want to set for
Speaker 1: yourself so that every time you do start to fall
Speaker 1: down a rabbit hole online, you don't have to make
Speaker 1: a decision. The note is there. It gets you back
Speaker 1: on track. So you know, for example, Steve Jobs had one.
Speaker 1: It was um focus and simplicity. That was his. But
Speaker 1: maybe you're writing a term paper, maybe you're a college student.
Speaker 1: Maybe you say to yourself, for every forty five minutes
Speaker 1: that I work online, I get fifteen minutes of fun
Speaker 1: time too. Maybe it's about setting up parameters for yourself.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about what mine's going to be and
Speaker 1: I realized, like I think I've really gotten into a
Speaker 1: rut where I consume so much information, but I never
Speaker 1: stopped to actually think about I've just read to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: the person who wrote this amazing article did this so well,
Speaker 1: and then push myself to be like, well, what didn't
Speaker 1: they do well? You know, really start to be more critical,
Speaker 1: synthesize information. Um. I think this is the new digital literacy.
Speaker 1: I really do. I think that kids have to be
Speaker 1: taught to be not just to find the right things online,
Speaker 1: which is what digital literacy is considered right now. You
Speaker 1: know who's a reputable source, but how to get the
Speaker 1: right information and to use that information. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: such it's staggering to me to think of what it
Speaker 1: was like just for you know, us, as kids would.
Speaker 1: It's just so dramatically it's shocking, right Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's I can't even feel like an old person.
Speaker 1: Well it was. I mean, it's funny that when you
Speaker 1: said that, I just had that moment of clicking on,
Speaker 1: like the quandary was finding yes, something that's over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of over. Someone once said, as far
Speaker 1: as information overload, there's no such thing as information overload,
Speaker 1: only filter failure. I think that's so true. I do
Speaker 1: think that is so true. And you know it's um
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of Corey doctor of Uh. I think he's
Speaker 1: an n Yu were Columbia. He was saying seven years ago,
Speaker 1: what we're going to see our filters being set up
Speaker 1: to help us with this conundrum? And here we are,
Speaker 1: they're not here. We just keep getting more and more
Speaker 1: and more. So I think this becomes a part of
Speaker 1: personal growth, which is like defining your own filters. It's
Speaker 1: your now, it's your job, because I just feel like
Speaker 1: some of us are going to be sad five years
Speaker 1: from now when we look back on what we achieved
Speaker 1: and yeah, we're caught up on Netflix. But like you know,
Speaker 1: I think we have to be. It used to sound
Speaker 1: kind of like, I don't know, mad many to say,
Speaker 1: like what's your five year plan? But I think with
Speaker 1: so many wonderful things out there to delight us and
Speaker 1: tempt us digitally, we all need to be thinking a
Speaker 1: little bit more concretely about what we want to get,
Speaker 1: Like what's the point here? Right? Yeah? And that's I
Speaker 1: mean that very little thing, just that very question helps
Speaker 1: me a great deal with online stuff and just behavior
Speaker 1: in general is like what's what's the point? Like this
Speaker 1: very basic thing I try and do as often as
Speaker 1: I can, and I don't you know, we all are
Speaker 1: better at doing things sometimes than others, but just as
Speaker 1: often as I can catch myself like what am I
Speaker 1: doing right now? Like what am I actually doing? And
Speaker 1: why am I doing it? And is it what I
Speaker 1: should be doing? I mean, should be right being in quotes,
Speaker 1: But ideally I have a sense of that now. You
Speaker 1: have a background as an entrepreneur, right as a businessman,
Speaker 1: and so I think those things are very much um
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, codified in the way a
Speaker 1: lot of people see themselves when they are, you know,
Speaker 1: when they own their own business. You really have to
Speaker 1: be extremely disciplined, you do, I mean, And I think
Speaker 1: I was talking with somebody about that the other day.
Speaker 1: I was saying, I think who I was, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe ten years ago, would have struggled more with these
Speaker 1: things that I am now. I think I've gotten better
Speaker 1: at saying all right, you know, there's this period of
Speaker 1: time this needs to get done and and focusing. But
Speaker 1: it's certainly not perfect. I mean, I think that idea
Speaker 1: of that you're talking about is a student taking a
Speaker 1: term paper and say, all right, for every forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: I get a fifty minute break. I mean, working like
Speaker 1: that is so powerful. I think Bridget Shalty in her
Speaker 1: book about it, and she called it pulsing, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, and I literally, I literally do it with
Speaker 1: a timer. It's like yeah, I mean I said, I've
Speaker 1: got one of my I mean, I don't insist on
Speaker 1: a kitchen time or or any time people do. The
Speaker 1: one on my computer works, but it's I said it
Speaker 1: for a certain amount of time, and then whatever I'm doing,
Speaker 1: what I've said I'm gonna do, I'm doing for that
Speaker 1: period of time. I can't you know what my timer
Speaker 1: is small children, I swear to God like I get
Speaker 1: nothing done when they're around. So I know that when
Speaker 1: I have those blocks of quiet time, my brain is ready.
Speaker 1: I just jam. But before I had kids, I would
Speaker 1: have tried to quote unquote am all the time, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have recognized the fact that, like no, I
Speaker 1: was exhausting my brain and you can only do these
Speaker 1: things for so long. I was talking to um maybe
Speaker 1: the Organized Mind, which is by neuroscientist Dr Daniel Levitton,
Speaker 1: and he just you know, it's kind of funny to
Speaker 1: hear a neuroscientists say this, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: real reminder that this is indeed grounded in science. Not
Speaker 1: only should you you know, brain dump everything that's going
Speaker 1: on in your brain right everything, I mean everything that
Speaker 1: is like should you take your shoes for repair? Put
Speaker 1: it on the list. Don't just say you know all
Speaker 1: of it so that you get a clean slate. But
Speaker 1: then he was saying, the real key to it is
Speaker 1: prioritizing that you really have to decide where the priorities
Speaker 1: are to get things done. And I, you know, I
Speaker 1: have to say, yeah, technology, I have an awesome to
Speaker 1: do app that helps me do that, and I'm really
Speaker 1: trying to use all the functions in it to color
Speaker 1: code to say like, you know, I'm only looking at
Speaker 1: things that need to be done for my family, or
Speaker 1: I'm only looking at things that need to be done
Speaker 1: for work, and red is like right this minute, And
Speaker 1: it's just offloading some of that cognitive um um work
Speaker 1: that you have to do every time you decide what
Speaker 1: you're working on um and technology can help us do
Speaker 1: that if we use it. Yeah, I mean David Allen
Speaker 1: of getting things done was kind of way ahead of
Speaker 1: his time with that idea of mental ram right, like,
Speaker 1: if you've got written down or in a two do app,
Speaker 1: it's on the hard drive. But otherwise it's got to
Speaker 1: stay in memory and precise exhaustion. And Daniel Leviton also
Speaker 1: which this really shocked me, he said that you can
Speaker 1: only keep about four things in your head at one time. So, oh,
Speaker 1: I really want to get a good salad for lunch,
Speaker 1: got to remember to pick up my kid. I need
Speaker 1: to prepare for that, meaning at three o'clock. And god,
Speaker 1: my hair, I could really use a haircut. There. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's all that's in my head. Like you think that
Speaker 1: you're keeping all these plates going neuroscientifically, that is not possible.
Speaker 1: The benefit of having a memory that's as poor as
Speaker 1: mine is just being a disaster area is that I've
Speaker 1: just finally learned that, like I can't if I don't
Speaker 1: write it down, it's it's going to be gone. But again,
Speaker 1: running at your own business, I think that, like you know,
Speaker 1: I really see that some of them. That's the reason
Speaker 1: why some of the most efficient people are some of
Speaker 1: these tech are to people people who run their own businesses,
Speaker 1: because if you don't do that, the bills don't get paid, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, nothing like a motivator of that will definitely
Speaker 1: help you. Talk about the to do apps a little bit.
Speaker 1: I was interested in asking you, sort of in a
Speaker 1: paradoxical way, are there technologies that you found, whether they
Speaker 1: be apps or different things, that help you to be
Speaker 1: more human? To be more human? I thought you were
Speaker 1: going to say, to be more efficient. That gives you
Speaker 1: a sense of where my head is. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're focused on retaining our humanity, I'm curious, is
Speaker 1: there any apps that you think or technologies or tools
Speaker 1: that help you to do that that no one has
Speaker 1: ever asked me that. They've asked me what are the
Speaker 1: apps that make you the most productive? What are the
Speaker 1: apps that make you most deficient? But they've never asked
Speaker 1: me what apps make me most human? I don't have
Speaker 1: to get out my phone here. Yeah, so one app.
Speaker 1: I don't use it anymore, And I think that that
Speaker 1: shows that, like the job has been done. But for
Speaker 1: our boardom Brilliant challenge, which was really about um putting
Speaker 1: down your phone, rethinking your relationship with your phone, and
Speaker 1: seeing if you could spend more time spacing out, like
Speaker 1: not meditating, spacing out, really just letting your mind go
Speaker 1: wherever it wants to. What would you feel could you
Speaker 1: jump start your creativity? The app that we um partnered
Speaker 1: with is by lovely guy named Kevin Holish. He's a
Speaker 1: developer UH in Pittsburgh and he did this in his
Speaker 1: free time. He came up with this app that measured
Speaker 1: how much time you spent on your phone every day,
Speaker 1: which was a lot, but this was the key. Other
Speaker 1: thing that it measured was how many times a day
Speaker 1: did you pick it up? Oh my god, Eric, Like,
Speaker 1: I think you know, you probably start wondering why you
Speaker 1: even bother to put it down at that point, completely, Yes,
Speaker 1: I think you know that's the future, right, just jacked
Speaker 1: into our brains. But like I also realized that I
Speaker 1: was doing it, Um, why didn't you even realize I
Speaker 1: was doing it? Do you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: I'd get in the elevator and I'd look at it.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think I even registered what was
Speaker 1: going into my eyeballs. Like, so to me, that was
Speaker 1: a real wake up call. And we had over twenty
Speaker 1: people sign up, and ten thousand of those people shared
Speaker 1: their data with us. So we started to see what
Speaker 1: their patterns of behavior were, and I think when you
Speaker 1: see it in number terms, it is quite shocking. So
Speaker 1: Moments a good one. There's also UM break Free, which
Speaker 1: is the the Android version of that, which I would
Speaker 1: recommend to try. And now I need to go. I'm
Speaker 1: now now, I'm like, you've really piqued my interest here.
Speaker 1: It's the same more human I downloaded one I haven't
Speaker 1: used to yet because I'm scared. It's UM. It's an
Speaker 1: app that you take a picture of yourself and then
Speaker 1: it ages you so you can see what you look like.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I haven't used it yet well
Speaker 1: frightened for obvious reasons. But also I was talking to
Speaker 1: UM computer scientists out in the valley who was saying, UM,
Speaker 1: they want to start using digital nudges to get people
Speaker 1: to do things that are good for yourself. So, for example,
Speaker 1: they're trying to measure if you see a picture of
Speaker 1: what you're gonna look like in thirty forty years, will
Speaker 1: that therefore make you put more money into your savings account.
Speaker 1: So this idea of looking out for your future self
Speaker 1: UM with visual cues. So I mean, I think there's
Speaker 1: so many crazy ways that. It's true, apps and technology
Speaker 1: can make us more in touch with ourselves and not
Speaker 1: just like, oh, I use Skype to talk to my
Speaker 1: mom who lives three thousand miles away. Yeah that's an
Speaker 1: obvious one. But yeah, but those are great too, you know,
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, yeah, I would. I wouldn't have this show
Speaker 1: without Skypes. What's on your phone? Yeah, hand it over.
Speaker 1: I gave you some goodies. All right, what you got
Speaker 1: on there? Way too much stuff. But we'll start on
Speaker 1: the home screen. So you got the basics. Calendar, map, camera,
Speaker 1: text messages, coach dot me is on the home page,
Speaker 1: which is sort of habit tracking. So I used that.
Speaker 1: I've used that religiously every day. It's great. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just use it for I came up with a
Speaker 1: list about eight or ten things that I think contribute
Speaker 1: to my overall well being, and so they're all listed there,
Speaker 1: and I just check them off if I do them
Speaker 1: each day. My goal isn't necessary every day you do it.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily not to do all eight or ten
Speaker 1: of them every day, No, but you you check in
Speaker 1: on it every day. I try to. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while I miss and I go back to the
Speaker 1: second day, But yeah, I try and and in general,
Speaker 1: if um, if that list is pretty robust day after day,
Speaker 1: I'm generally in a pretty good space. There used to
Speaker 1: be this app online, very simple, called Joe's Goals. I
Speaker 1: loved this thing, um because of what it did is
Speaker 1: you could set a list of things and you could
Speaker 1: give them points, So like meditation might be worth three points,
Speaker 1: and exercise was worth three points, and calling a friend
Speaker 1: was worth two points and gamified your life basically a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, And but what was interesting was I
Speaker 1: could just I could look and if I found myself
Speaker 1: in sort of a low mood. I mean I talked
Speaker 1: on the show all the time. I you know, I
Speaker 1: battled depression, and so if I could look at my
Speaker 1: mood off and then look back and I could see
Speaker 1: the week before, like the point titles were just going,
Speaker 1: I wasn't taking care of myself. And so I use
Speaker 1: those things just as again. The goal isn't to do
Speaker 1: every one of them every day, because it's usually impossible.
Speaker 1: Is to do a good number of them on a
Speaker 1: regular basis. But by having eight or ten, it means
Speaker 1: that I can that's flexible enough to work within a
Speaker 1: life that's always sort of change. I mean, what you're
Speaker 1: saying like just brings up two things to me. One is, like,
Speaker 1: you know, before we had these apps, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: nutritionists or psychiatrist would ask you to do, right, is
Speaker 1: to audit yourself, to keep track of what's going on
Speaker 1: and also measure your mood. So kudos to the apps
Speaker 1: form make that even easier now. The other thing I
Speaker 1: would point out is what you've just created is really
Speaker 1: an algorithm for your life. Right. If you know that
Speaker 1: these things have a certain quantity, then you know that
Speaker 1: the output is going to be a calmer, healthier Eric,
Speaker 1: which is fascinating to me that you can, like you
Speaker 1: can you can put it on a screen and see
Speaker 1: and and really sort of take the building blocks that
Speaker 1: will build a good life for yourself. It can sound
Speaker 1: so cheesy to me, but at the same time, I
Speaker 1: think some of the very fundamentals of computer science can
Speaker 1: be really applied to our lives, which is fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: And the algorithm is not exact and it doesn't work perfectly,
Speaker 1: and there's no right, yeah, I don't think there's any
Speaker 1: Like I think part of being human is you're going
Speaker 1: to be up. You're going to be down here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's unavoidable. But I certainly think I've
Speaker 1: got a good degree of influence. Hey, laptops crash too,
Speaker 1: you know, so there you go. Absolutely all right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna what's tell me inhabit dot me coached me. I'm
Speaker 1: going to try that. And then I've got obviously a
Speaker 1: podcast app. I've got insight Timer, which is a meditation
Speaker 1: app like a little Timer for meditation, also has guided meditations. Well,
Speaker 1: it's good ones, you can really tell what I Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got the Gratitude app on my homepage to break
Speaker 1: down gratitude and take a picture each day, and um
Speaker 1: the Kindle app and my expense rey for and Evernote.
Speaker 1: I'd be doomed without every note you love everyone. I've
Speaker 1: tried to get into every note so many times. I
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it. I mean, the only way that
Speaker 1: ever note works for me is when literally everything goes over.
Speaker 1: There's no halfway with now, there's no halfway. There's not
Speaker 1: because otherwise then you're just like, well, now I've got
Speaker 1: another place to check stuff. So but I just over time,
Speaker 1: I don't think I got it right away, but over
Speaker 1: time it's slowly now I'm pretty habitual, Like where did
Speaker 1: I park when I flew out here? It's somewhere. It's
Speaker 1: an ever note really, I mean I just threw it
Speaker 1: at twelve, you know whatever. It is a team be
Speaker 1: or you know. Yeah, but yeah, Well, when we link
Speaker 1: to the show, I would love to include a list
Speaker 1: of apps that you recommend. If that's okay, okay, great,
Speaker 1: so we'll we'll make a little post with this and stuff.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. So where can people go to join into
Speaker 1: the info Magical Challenge. They can go to w NYC
Speaker 1: dot org slash info Magical. Um, join us. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we're going to have a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's part of the joy of
Speaker 1: it too, is that we'll be all doing it at
Speaker 1: the same time. And as we found with Board and Brilliant,
Speaker 1: you know, just being there for each other through this
Speaker 1: experience and seeing what happens is really fun and motivating.
Speaker 1: And um, with boardom Brilliant, you can also go back
Speaker 1: and do that anytime. So these projects, I think the
Speaker 1: other beautiful thing about them is that they continue to
Speaker 1: live on, because these aren't issues that are going away.
Speaker 1: UM And I think we all need refreshers. I tried
Speaker 1: to do boardom Brilliant again this past summer, just to
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, give myself a little space and
Speaker 1: out time and not feeling guilty about not being productive
Speaker 1: because actually counter and really you are extremely productive when
Speaker 1: you space out. So yeah, I'm really excited, come join us,
Speaker 1: Come do informagical. The accountability and supportability is such an
Speaker 1: important thing, and I think we're all. I hear from
Speaker 1: listeners a lot about how do I apply some of
Speaker 1: the things I'm hearing on the show. So here's a
Speaker 1: perfect opportunity to do just that. So you're gonna do it, Eric, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. Okay, do it? I commit? Okay, awesome.
Speaker 1: Can we check back in with you afterwards? Absolutely? All right,
Speaker 1: all right, well, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 1: the show. It's been a pleasure. We're sitting here in
Speaker 1: your studio, particularly fun for me to be in a
Speaker 1: real radio studio. So playing your away game here, that's right, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's better equipment though, for sure. So I like this
Speaker 1: Mike the way it's just sort of hanging there. Fancy
Speaker 1: public radio. That's right, Thanks so much. Okay, bye, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can learn more about Manuch, Samarodi and this podcast
Speaker 1: at one you feed dot net slash Manuch. That's m
Speaker 1: A n o U s H. Thanks