Focused - 161: Stolen Focus, with Jean MacDonald

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Jean MacDonald joins us to talk about social media, the M.E.O.W. system, and reading books.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? Doing great. How about yourself? I am in the throes of construction. I've been talking about this indoor studios build, but I had a revelation the other day when I was doing my journal.

I said, you know, I could sit here and keep writing about how I'm going to be way more productive when this is done, or I could just do my work today and not worry about it. And that's been a really good theme for me this week because this morning a concrete truck showed up in my house at 7 a.m. and I didn't know it was coming. But it's all good. Surprise. Yeah. And we are going to make a podcast today with one of my dear friends, Jean McDonald. Welcome to the Focus Podcast. Hi, David and Mike. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. Now, before we get into the meat here, though, we should make a quick announcement here because September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. For the fourth consecutive year, the RelayFM community is rallying together again to support the life-saving mission of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, finding cures and saving children. Yeah, I mean, it's the time to help out, gang. I mean, any contribution you make to St. Jude goes to one job, curing children from life-threatening diseases. St. Jude not only takes care of families, they also do a ton of research and they share that research with the world. This is like a no-brainer contribution. And something I'd like to really focus on for the focused audience, see how I did that, is I'd like to get everybody in on this. I'm not saying that everybody has to give hundreds of dollars,

but if everybody just gave $1 or $5, that is the kind of momentum we need to make a difference. We're really pushing this year. We want to get the Relay total contribution to nearly a half million dollars. If we can do that, that'll make the total contribution from Relay listeners $2 million over the several years we've been doing this. I think that would be such a wonderful thing for us to do together. And if you're listening and you're on your way to Starbucks, just skip Starbucks today.

Drink that lousy coffee at the office or at home and give that five bucks to St. Jude. I guarantee you'll feel a lot better than if you're drinking a cup of Starbucks. And it's going to make a big difference. I mean, the statistics behind the work that St. Jude does is kind of astounding. Cancer kills more children under the age of 14, first of all, than any other disease, which in and of itself is a scary statistic.

But because of generous supporters like you, St. Jude creates more clinical trials for pediatric cancer than any other children's hospital in the U.S. And in 2021, one of those trials reported a more than 20-point improvement in the survival rates for high-risk neuroblastoma. That's the second most common solid tumor in children. And they did it using an antibody, which was produced at the St. Jude campus.

So there is tangible results from this money that you're giving. And this progress is just one example of the world-class research that takes place at St. Jude. It's carried out by researchers who are among the world's most highly cited scientists, which is then, this is the amazing part, they share all that research with the world to help doctors and patients elsewhere. Yeah, I heard from a listener who's a bankruptcy attorney, and he explained that, you know, a lot of families, sadly, in America, who pay their bills and have jobs, they go broke because of an illness.

Now, that's got better recently. We've changed some of our laws, but not enough. And imagine these families, you know, your child has cancer. You're going to be worried about your child, but you're also going to worry about those bills. Well, you know what St. Jude does? They pay for the treatment and the families never pay a dime. I mean, I don't know. It's just such an easy one for me.

Daisy and I actually put money away every month for St. Jude and every September we send it in and it feels great. And I would love for you, dear listener, to do the same. It doesn't have to be a lot. One dollar. One dollar. That will make me happy. Just take the time to give a little bit, and you will receive so much back.

Please, please contribute to St. Jude. Help us with this big goal for Relay. But more importantly, help all those kids and those families. Absolutely. And if you want to contribute, you can go to stjude.org slash Relay. You can donate there. You can also find out more about fundraising. There's a couple of options, ways you can get involved this year. Donors who make an individual gift of $60 or more will receive a digital bundle, which includes a wallpaper and a macOS screensaver pack. If you make an individual gift of $100 or more, you'll receive a set of stickers in addition to the digital bundle. And just a reminder that if your employer offers a matching gift program, then fill out the form there to have that match credited to the campaign,

double your contribution. But you can also get more hands-on this year if you want and start your own fundraising campaign to help us reach our goals while also earning exclusive RelayFM merch. So fundraisers who raise just a single dollar like you were talking about, David, or more, they receive an exclusive St. Jude limited edition of the RelayFM challenge coin, which I have right here. And fundraisers raising $250 or more also receive a unique desk mat featuring the cartoon heads of RelayFM's co-founders. So please go to stjude.org slash Relay to donate and find out more. And I'll just add that that desk mat is truly disturbing. I don't know. I'm not sure that that's a benefit. But anyway, it's cool. And the idea that you can raise money through your community,

I don't know. It's such a great thing. We've been banging on about this for a while. But hey, you know what? Like I said, skip Starbucks today. Skip Starbucks for the week. Give some money to St. Jude. You'll feel so great about it, and you will be making the world a better place. Gene McDonald, thank you so much for coming in. Now, Jean, for folks who don't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself. Oh, yes. I am currently work-wise.

My focus is community manager at micro.blog, which is a kind of blogging plus social media platform founded by Manton Reese, who's a longtime Mac and iOS developer. I also do a lot of podcasting. As you know, David, I used to be really involved in podcasting from the sponsor side. And I think eventually you hang out with podcasters long enough and you end up podcasting. So I. Let me share a story there.

That's kind of funny. When Katie and I first started Mac Power Users, we just did it because we wanted to make it. We never really thought about having sponsors. it. We never really thought about having sponsors. And after we had been making it for, I don't know, about six months, Jean wrote us at the time she was working with Smile Software and TextExpander and said, hey, we'd like to sponsor you. And I wrote her back and said, okay, well, how much should we charge? Because we don't know. And Jean did not take advantage of us. She's just a quality person. I didn't take advantage of you, but I did get bragging rights to be the first sponsor of Mac Power Users, which obviously was starting a trend that many people jumped on that wagon. And rightfully so.

Yeah, I brag about that all the time. But yeah, so I was sponsoring a lot of Mac and Apple-oriented podcasts, and I really enjoyed just working with podcasters and occasionally being a guest. just working with podcasters and occasionally being a guest. But then I had this big need to make a podcast about a television show that I really like called Orphan Black, because I couldn't find a podcast that met my need. And I was like, all right, I'm just making this podcast. And that's when Jason Snell said, well, would you like to have it on the Incomparable Network? And I was like, yeah. So then I became part of the Incomparable.

And I went on to do a Star Trek podcast called Voyager Revisited. I also do a podcast with my good friend, Mac developer and musician band leader, James Dempsey, who is the founder of James Dempsey and the Breakpoints. And he and I, a few years ago, four years ago, he first discovered David Allen and he was talking to me about it. And I had been working on GTD since way before that. And so I said, you know what? What if we make a podcast? That'll kind of give us a reason to every week do our weekly review. And so the podcast is called The Weekly Review.

And we've been doing it for four and a half years um consistently every every friday yeah it it's great to see you on the production side gene because you have a lot of cool things to say and um and you know the thing about because you and i we're we're friends we talk often not right not with microphones we just talk and and you uh you're trying to work through this stuff and figure out how to be productive and and pursue the things that are important to you um something that gene didn't say is she was the founder of app camp for girls and uh made a big difference that way uh for many years and and gene is a person who's interested in getting focused and getting things done. And I'm just so happy that you came on.

Well, I feel like I'm talking with the big leagues now. You guys are the real productivity deal. And I started calling our podcast the so-called productivity podcast. Well, honestly, I do too. I do too. I feel like we're all fake. You know, I mean, let's just all be honest here. This stuff is really hard.

And you go through phases where you're good at it and phases where you're not so good at it. And I mean, like I started the show today making a joke about this construction, but just like every day, these guys are asking me for questions and talking about, you know, well, this might cost extra and I got to go out and figure out what they're doing. And like my whole system is in shambles this week, you know, and it just takes

a little while for that to happen. And I'll get back on the horse here soon. And we all, we all fall apart. And anybody who goes on a podcast and tells you that they've got it all figured out is lying to you. I'm just convinced. I mean, the trick to this stuff is not that you're going to master it and be done. The trick is to look at it as a journey and do the right things you can every day as best as you can. In fact, I had somebody write me because I keep saying that on the show. And they're like, well, you said that you're not an expert at this stuff.

I am, so you should have me on as a guest. Somebody actually wrote me that. It's like, wow. Wow, man. That's pretty impressive. I feel like all the productivity advice is kind of related to that Mike Tyson quote, you know, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Well, you know, it's like there's certain things in life I've learned,

like everybody has a way of doing it. And those ways all actually work. Dog training, for one, like you can get totally you know people with totally opposite views there's no one good way to train dogs um well my dog has trained me if it matters yeah the dogs have their secret training guild that they they figure out how to make humans do what they want. But fixing your Mac, I just had a big Mac meltdown the last two weeks, and it really undermined my sense of getting things done at all. And I talked to a lot of people. Obviously, I have a lot of friends who are pretty much experts on Mac tech stuff. And I kind of got a different answer from every person of what I should do next, including the Apple Store, the Genius Bar.

And so eventually I was like, I just have to do what I know will work for me. And, you know, when somebody says terminal, blah, blah, blah, this, I'm like, oops, that's just above my pay grade as a Mac user. I'm pretty savvy, but I'm not an engineer. And I don't know Unix. And I just want the thing to work again. See, if I were you, I would just drop it off at James Dempsey's house and then come back in a week. I would just drop it off at James Dempsey's house and then come back in a week. You know, if his house wasn't so far from my house, I would.

And yeah, I mean, that's how I used to operate. I have a friend named Edward McNair who was my teacher. He was my web design teacher early on back in the 90s. And he's a Mac genius. And he used to upgrade my Mac every year or whenever a new operating system came out. I'd just go up to his house like what you just said. But it got easier to do it um for mortals and also i you know the older i not the older i get but the more i appreciate like people's time and attention the less i want to take it up with my stuff if i can figure it out on my own, that would be better. And what a perfect segue into the show.

You know, we're here. We call it a productivity show, but really, I think the problem we're aiming for with this show is focus. And productivity is something that can come with focus, but focus is more the verb than the noun here. And it's a challenge for everyone. And it's something that Mike and I are on a crusade for. And Jean, I know, for instance,

you were there at the beginning of kind of the social media revolution. In fact, you were the one who told me, I think you were the one who told me, I hope I don't get you in trouble here, that we just, because I didn't want to put the Mac Power Resist forums on Facebook. You know, like, David, just do it. That's where everybody is. Stop fighting it.

You know? If I said that, I'm sorry. Yeah, it was a long time ago. I mean, it was before Facebook became what it is now. Yeah. But, you know, but you were actually paying attention to this stuff. But I know from our personal conversations, you've been rethinking social media a lot lately. Tell me kind of where you've been and how you're dealing with it now in terms of your own personal focus.

Sure. Well, I joined Twitter at the very beginning. Not the very, very beginning, but shortly after they launched. So I think that was 2007. And I really like Twitter. I mean, it just, it worked for me because I was out there networking with all kinds of Mac users on behalf of Smile. And I'm not a kind of person who divides up like my personality from here's my work and here's my fun socializing as you know I like to socialize with you know I just meet so many

cool nice people in this business and um go to I went to a lot of conferences and to mac user group meetings and stuff and so keeping touch with people was super easy on Twitter. And yeah, so I really enjoyed Twitter in the beginning. But it just, you know, it just year after year got to be more onerous. I don't know, you know, that I would say that, I don't know. I was doing Facebook. I joined that because I was doing a rock and roll camp here in Portland. And I did a ladies rock camp session where I was with other ladies my age. We did a camp, a weekend camp, where we formed bands and wrote songs and did a performance. It was really cool. And then everybody was like, are you on Facebook? Yeah, this is the part where Mike starts jumping in his seat, I know.

Really? Well, I have a couple of guitars in my office here. I play electric guitar, so that is intriguing to me. But you're probably beyond my skill level. I don't think I could jam with you guys. I'm going to say you're probably beyond mine. I mean, I can play guitar passably on stage, but I'm not a very well-practiced or skillful guitarist. But making a band is not about having skill.

So there's a rock and roll camp for girls, which is the nonprofit that Ladies Rock Camp is like a fundraiser for. And that actually was the inspiration for me for App Camp for Girls because I saw how much people, girls, you know, and also women got out of kind of cutting loose with music and being encouraged, not feeling, you know, like imposters, not feeling stress of being really great. Just, you know, putting your heart into it is the most important thing. Anyway, yeah, you should look for a rock camp mike and play it you would have fun but uh yeah so the all the all the women at ladies rock camp were like oh we're you know let's be friends on facebook that's when so that i joined and that kind of got me sucked into facebook but um you But, you know, joining micro.blog, you know, working with Manton, it was interesting because he started it, you know, with a Kickstarter. And when he met his initial goal, he created a stretch goal.

And part of the stretch goal was he would hire a community manager. And I read that and I thought, hmm, I think that's a job for me. I don't know why I think I can do that job because I've never been the quote unquote community manager of anything. But the Smile user community, I mean, I guess I was the manager of that. So anyway, I started working with Manton and it's just been such a great learning experience because he's thought very deeply about these issues about social media and blogging and especially the decline of blogging over time. Once, you know, Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, to some extent, you know, people started posting everything there and not on their own blogs, which they would theoretically control and be able to, you know, they would have them no matter what, as opposed to a big corporate silo like Facebook and Twitter, you know, they don't interact.

They don't, if they were to close down your account for whatever reason, all your stuff would be gone and that would be it. Plus you have no control over the presentation of your work, you know. So you write a post or you write a tweet and it's all within the interface, the UI of that corporate silo. um a couple years a few years ago because also facebook has gotten the worst publicity in terms of you know being callous about their users uh lives and uh not to mention their employees um but i just thought i just don't want to i don't want to feed that machine anymore and i was going to quit twitter but i more just mostly stopped going there every once in a while. I'll, I'll check something out,

but I feel like I'm going to probably end up quitting that pretty soon. And I haven't joined anything new except Mastodon. That downside though, of them kind of de-platforming you is a real risk. My daughter is a budding playwright, and she's connected with a bunch of people. And Instagram, for a reason that we've never figured out, canceled her account. And we don't know why. I mean, she doesn't, she's a very, you know, she does not publish questionable material, you know, so, but for something happened and like she's lost connection with all these other people that were, that was her primary connection. And I told her, I said, well, that's what happens when you give that power to someone else.

But the real evolution for you, as I've talked to you, has been the focus angle of this. It's like these services are great at stealing your attention. And it's something that you have kind of actively avoided recently. to let them dictate what I think about or how I spend my time. And we know a lot of this has come out about all these services is they're designed to engage. I used to think, engagement, that sounds great. That's such a positive thing. Right. And now I have learned the dark side of engagement,

which is, um, there's the more they can engage you, the more time you are there to, um, look at their ads, which is basically what it's all about. And it's ultimately about money.

uh, so yeah, I've, I have really backed off of Twitter, as I said, and just go there maybe once a week. I'm, for some reason, I'll, I'll say, oh, I should post this on Twitter. I also feel like I like to keep people informed about micro.blog because it's like I'm a lifeboat, you know, sidled up to the sinking Titanic of social media, and I want to pull in people, you know, when they're ready to jump. I can tell them, hey, you know, let me tell you about micro.blog or other things that are like micro.blog. You know, that's, so that's, that's why I

have not totally quit Twitter. But micro.blog is very interesting. Sometimes I call it the slow social media, which I would never use in an actual tagline, but it does not suck you in in the same way. First of all, we don't have So you don't have that whatever dopamine hit of going to see how many people have liked my post. If somebody actually likes your post, they can comment on it. But you can't just click like and move on. And I think that was really hard for me. I think I wrote a post at some point about being addicted to likes. No, I think there's something to that. I mean, the way our brains are wired, it's that validation hit and it causes you to become increasingly

desperate for them. It's like the more you get, the more you need. It does have like a drug-like impact on the way our brains work. I was just recently listening to an expert talk about social media, and someone said, well, what are we going to do about it? And one of their recommendations was remove all of those affirmations. was, you know, remove all of those affirmations. You know, likes of any sort are very insidious with the way the human brain is wired. It's really interesting. So yeah, there's no likes on micro.blog and there's also no list of your followers. So if people are following you, that's great, but you don't see who is following you and you don't see um whether somebody follows you or not like you know or quits following you so so that because

that's the other part of that drug a social media drug is like how many followers do you have like manton was very um very clear about this from the beginning that he said like i don't think that this number of followers is a valid marker of whether you should read somebody's blog or not and so you know and we tend we can't help it you know I'm impressed I'm still impressed when I see something online and they have millions of followers I think oh you know but the truth is like that's for me on you know on a day-to-day basis I just want to read you know, on a day-to-day basis. I just want to read posts, blog posts from the people whose writing I like or whose ideas I am inspired by or provoked by or whatever. And I don't know on micro.blog if I'm the only one reading that or not. And I don't, does it matter? No, it actually does not. So that's, you know, I like what I have said, like, as I've gotten into this is that I like to, to micro all the things now, like every, you know, if you get really down to this, like basic level, it's like, everybody on micro.blog is an individual human.

level. It's like everybody on micro.blog is an individual human. And I really think that, you know, when we treat humans as a mass, you know, mass media, you know, mass communication, that then we see masses behaving a certain way. But when you actually go one-on-one with people, you know, people are complex and people defy labels. And I just have learned to really appreciate that, you know, all the people on micro.blog are, you know, they have such a wide range of interests and opinions and activities and skills and art. You know, I, so I have been enjoying that a lot to interact on that level.

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is not available for everyone. Do you need to hire? You need Indeed. And our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. the support of the Focus Podcast and all of RelayFM. Jean, a related topic is this book you recently read, Stolen Focus by Johan Hari. Tell us about that. Yeah, it was so funny because I had that book. I was in the middle of reading it when you contacted me to see if I wanted to be on the Focus podcast.

I'm like, oh my God, that's just very, you know, that's an interesting coincidence. Good timing. Yeah, it was a topic on my mind because of reading it. And so, Johan or Johan, I'm not sure how his name's pronounced. I think he's a British guy, and he has written other nonfiction books. He's one of those writers apparently really good at researching a topic and talking to all the scientists who are related to that topic and synthesizing it with also with personal data that's one of my favorite styles of non-fiction book you know is that that the person writing

about the topic is also kind of living it yeah and so he he does um he he does talk in the introduction about how much he was noticing people not focus on things outside of their phones or their devices and how his godson, for example, who as a kid was really into music and doing Elvis impressions. He was really into music and doing Elvis impressions. But as a teenager, he was very much wrapped up in games and video and the kind of stuff that you see kids wrapped up a lot, and adults. And so he's decided to take him to Graceland as a getaway from the screens and let's go on vacation. But of course, screens were also in Graceland. And it was just a really interesting anecdote talking about how there's no guided tours at Graceland. And they just hand you an iPod, I mean an iPad and headphones

and you tour yourself. And I thought it seemed kind of sad yeah i we just um the other day with all this construction daisy and i just couldn't take it anymore so we decided to go to up to disneyland you know it passes so we're sitting there at disneyland two nights ago having dinner together at disneyland you know the place where you pay money to get in there. And then you also pay money for your food. I mean, it's, and it's Disneyland. There's music.

Mickey Mouse is running around. It's great. And I was looking around us and like we were at an outdoor restaurant, as you do these days, and there were three tables around us. And in all three tables, not, it wasn't one tables, all three tables around us and in all three tables not it wasn't one tables all three tables there were families there parents and kids grandparents in some cases and they were all on their phones i i was telling daisy just look around us i mean here you are at a family vacation spot and you can't drag your eyes away from the screen. It's just, it was depressing seeing these people there. None of them were actually talking to each other,

engaging with each other at all. And, you know, Daisy's like, well, maybe my wife is the optimist. She's like, well, then maybe they're looking at pictures that they took together or something. I'm like, no, they're not. They're. Your wife is the optimist. I love her, her optimistic energy, but yeah, I don't think she's correct.

And yeah, so Johan, he decided to take a summer off of devices. He had a really hard time getting a phone that wouldn't connect to the internet, which was just funny in its own right and then he took a broken computer of a friend of his you know that didn't connect to the internet anymore so he could write on the computer he could get phone calls um but that was it he and so that was you know he got a lot of interesting insight to the problem just by doing this himself. But he weaves this into his chapters are about things like what is causing us to lose focus, you know, it's called, I mean, I think the subtitle of the book is why you can't pay attention anymore and What We Can Do About It.

And it's really interestingly organized chapters on different aspects of how we use our minds and what has changed over time. And reporting all the data from these various scientists. He interviewed scientists, including Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow. Sure. The drinking game name of all productivity podcasts. That's right. Mihaly. Mihaly.

And that was really interesting because I didn't know anything about him. And he sort of backgrounded it with Michaly's terrible experiences during World War II and, you know, how he became to be a psychologist and why he wanted to be kind of the opposite of B.F. Skinner, wanted to be kind of the opposite of B.F. Skinner, who is the psychologist people most associate with the kind of conditioned response laws, that we can get people to do anything if we condition them with some kind of reward. And that's the opposite of flow. So it's really interesting. I've really enjoyed the book. I confess I have not totally finished it, but I have peeked ahead because, of course, I want to find out what we can do about it.

And he has some chapters about how social media has intentionally, not just social media, Google, you know, in particular, Gmail in particular, how they have designed them to break our attention and grab our attention. And that eventually, you know, it's a manifesto for legislation to, you know, there's other things we have done in the world that are harmful to humans that we stopped doing when we found out they were harmful. Like he gives the example of lead paint. You know, we say, you know what, that's just, that level of harmfulness is not acceptable. uh i think it's hard for people to see it myself included because we're in it you know we're just in we're breathing that um you

know and it is a outcome of capitalism there's you know no real way around that if if companies have to keep growing and keep making money um by growing they're going to have to figure out ways to get money out of us or out of advertisers. And so, you know, it is a zero-sum game at some point. Yeah, I've thought a lot about this. I mean, since I quit being a lawyer, it's like, you know, what is my life's purpose? And to me, it's this battle. It's the reason we make this show. It's like, you know, what is my life's purpose? And to me, it's this battle. It's the reason we make this show. It's the reason almost anything I make is really aimed at solving this. Because the thing that took me a while to accept is that technology is the problem. And I'm a person who's always been very positive about technology. And I remember back in the days when

I'd ride my 10- speed to Radio Shack to learn how to program on a computer on the store floor, that computers were the future. They were going to solve our problems for us. They were going to make it easier for us to become what we were best suited to be and to, you know, to pursue our dreams. And somewhere along the line, the technology industry took a left turn because they realized that, you know, they make more money diverting our attention and really actively preventing us from being our best selves than they did helping us become our best selves. And that's the problem. I mean, now that doesn't mean that you can't use technology to become your best self, but you have to buck the system to do that.

And any time you can put attention on that, the better, because the more people that become aware of the problem, the more people can defeat it. Because I have no faith that legislation is going to pass and that suddenly social media is going to become healthy. I think this is much more a boots on the ground, one person at a time fight. Yeah, my 14-year-old son got to be a part of this thing last year where they went to the state capitol and they got to be a part of the legislative process. And he got to introduce a bill. And the one that he chose to introduce was banning social media for anyone under 18. It did not pass. But I was proud of him for trying.

Yeah, that's impressive that he's that aware. Well, we've got some resources that have helped us with that. I mean, one we haven't mentioned, but I'm assuming we've all, all are familiar with is the social dilemma. Yeah. And, uh, that's based off of the work of Tristan Harris, making that presentation at, at Google. That was the tipping point for me was recognizing that, uh, they were saying all the right things. This is a big issue. We're going to create this position for you, give you a promotion because this is really important and we need to address it. And then nothing happened because the money talks. And at that point, it's like this is never going to be solved by the companies

themselves because it is in direct competition to the organization's goals. So at that point, you can't have somebody else solve it for you. What are your options? You've got to take responsibility for it. That's uncomfortable for a lot of people. I think that there are some cool options, though, for people who understand the significance of this and want to make those choices. though, for people who understand the significance of this and want to make those choices. Like one of the things that my son has a cell phone, but he has what's called the light phone. Are you familiar with this, Jean? Oh, I just heard about it recently. There's a lot of

people on micro.blog who are following and doing these kinds of things. And I just heard about it. And since I was reading this book, I was like, I need to look into that. It's pretty cool. Yeah. We got it for him as an experiment. I almost ended up getting one for myself. Unfortunately, I do some screencasting for a screencast online and stuff like that. So that's the thing that I was on the fence. Do I get, because I have an iPhone 11 Pro at the moment. And as we're recording this, the 14s are about to come out, and I'm like, do I upgrade it? Because this one no longer works, and I can't get the lightning port to connect to the computer and do the screencast anyways. Like, should I just chuck it?

Should I go Light Phone like my son? And eventually I decided I was going to do the screencast thing still, but I was very tempted by it. I've done other things with my phone to limit it, but the beauty of the Light Phone, for those who aren't familiar, it's a phone that's designed to be used as little as possible. So you can do text messages. There is no internet. They do have maps and you can do podcasts and things like that, but it disconnects completely from the endless feed. So every time you go to use it, you are intentionally going to do something with it. You're never just checking it.

That sounds cool. I mean, there's a couple of points I want to follow up on there. First is, I'm not sure that we need to go to that extreme. I feel like if you're aware of the problem, you can mindfully use this stuff. And there are some tools where you can limit the amount of time you spend in an app or choose not to install an app, you know? I mean, there are ways around it that you don't need to give up the benefits of modern technology. I mean, the argument I would make is we need to be like, you know, we need to be like the rebellion in Star Wars. You know, scrappy group of people who realize that the empire is there,

but they didn't beat the empire by using rocks and sticks. They beat the empire by using technology just in a different way. And I feel like if we become smart about the way we use technology, if we're aware of the way these companies, which are run by boards of directors, which are chosen not because they want to do good for the world, but because they

want to make money for the shareholders, if we start to become aware of that, we can definitely get a leg up on the world. I mean, to look at it selfishly, you can get ahead of the rest of these monkeys that are lost in social media if you take this on so that that's like a whole thing for me i feel like you don't need to throw your window into your phone into the ocean but you need to be come aware of the problem the second thing though that mike raises which is even more insidious is the effect of this on non-fully developed brains which are what children have you know i mean and um i't know, does the book address that? I just bought the book since you talked about it, but I think with children in particular,

this is an issue. You know, when he cites studies of like, well, the percentage of people who don't read a book a year anymore, you know, it's gone up. It It also goes up for children, and that children are even more affected. But it's true. We do know that brains are not fully formed at these ages, certainly not at 13, which is kind of the cutoff age now for social media. Yeah, I found just a little explainer video with one Google search about how Instagram harms young women's thoughts about themselves. And there's like a bunch of data here. I mean, for someone like you who's made App Camp for Girls, Rock Camp for Girls, all the stuff you've done to help young women, it's just got to be so discouraging to see them fall into these traps with social media.

No, it's definitely true. ex-google engineers who uh who was a magic you know hobbyist as a kid and always liked magic and talks about the magic as a metaphor for these distractions because you know magicians do stuff that we don't see because they know how to manipulate our attention and so that's where you know i think well we can you know we we think we know ways to to work ourselves out of this problem but they have scientists thinking of more ways to get us back in yes and you know so we we have to be Yes. today that we didn't have, you know, 50 years ago, but it's also, there is a intentional wish to distract that's backed up with a lot of money and science that we need to be aware of, you know, so, and that requires more than just one person. We need people who will be activists in that way to keep us aware, make things like the social dilemma and keep us informed.

I do think there is another aspect to this, though, based on your comment, David, that it's not necessarily bad, the technology itself. comment david that it's not necessarily bad that the technology itself but recognizing the slippery slope for the default behaviors is the the point to to focus on pun intended there i guess like that that's where the tipping tipping point is if you can go into it with your eyes open, you have a much better chance of success in terms of using the technology to further your goals rather than just being a product in the company's goals. One of the books that I've read, I'm curious, Jean, if you're familiar with Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle? No, I've heard of her, but I haven't read that book. That one specifically is on the value of face-to-face communication conversation. One of the things that she pointed out in that book when I read it that really stood out to me was that anytime you involve technology, the default is that it is more surface level. And people will default to that because when they get asked a hard question, they want to have the time to think through things and

thumb out a text-based response. But the more effective conversation is when you do talk face-to-face and you can see their facial expressions. And even if the words don't come out perfectly, more is communicated that way. And I just think that's a great example of how technology is great. We can use it to connect to people. We can use it to build communities. I mean, that's a lot of the stuff that you've done, Jean, is you've built some great communities. So you can use it in a positive way, but you have to recognize the slippery slope there in terms of using it incorrectly. Yeah. And also just to use the technical term bandwidth, the bandwidth of a face-to-face

communication, you get so much more data. I mean, we've all done the thing where you text somebody something that you mean to be clear with, but they receive it in an entirely different way. Often, some people will receive a text in a hurtful way when you never intended it to be that way. But because they don't have enough bandwidth, it causes problems. And I don't know. This stuff is hard. I can understand the idea, Mike, of saying, OK, you know what?

I'm just going to make sure my kids have no access to any of this stuff, especially kids, with the way things are and how difficult it is. But also, it's a fact of life that this stuff exists in the world. With our kids, we did a lot of dinnertime conversations about it. And I tried to make them as aware of it as possible. And my oldest now is a high school teacher. She just started. And I talked to her the other day. I said, how are things going? She's like, Dad, these phones are a real problem. She's like, these kids, they can't stop? She's like, dad, these phones are a real problem. She's like these kids, they can't, they can't stop. You know, she's like, she had a kid in her class who had his legs crossed and his phone was up his pant leg. So like when she would turn around, he would slide it out to read it. And she's like, I'll tell them to stop. And they will, they'll look at me and I

believe that they want to stop. But then 10 minutes later, they get it out again. And it's just really an issue. And it just makes me more aware of the problem, seeing her deal with it on the front line. I would add real quickly that I don't think the right approach is just avoid it altogether. So with my oldest son, he doesn't have an iPhone, but he does have an iPad. And he does all of the editing for my other podcasts. We've tried to teach our kids not to avoid the technology because it's bad, but learn how to engage with it the correct way. So we have a mantra at our house, create, not consume. If you're going to

use the device, the computer, whatever, to make something in GarageBand or edit the podcast, he's gotten into Obsidian lately. Like they're using it that way. Everybody practices Spanish every single day. Yeah. I know I said the buzz the fact that mike that mike's kid is into obsidian you know obsidian yeah i don't know many teenagers that are familiar with that but he should join micro.blog we have so many um i call them the the tinkerers on our uh platform that that's all i know about obsidian is from reading people write about it and watching my, you know, people go from, they're doing obsidian now, now everybody's doing this. Oh, we think we'll go back to obsidian or whatever. Like, anyway, it's, he, he would fit in.

He would. That's funny. He refers to himself as a tinkerer. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. It's not just him, though. We have a 12-year-old son who has a 1,000-plus-day streak in Duolingo. Oh, good. It's just defining the positive ways to use it and letting him practice that and model that. And in our experience, we haven't gotten everybody through this yet. We've got five kids at home and my oldest is 14. So I know the hard part's coming up. But so far, they understand and they see their friends that are glued to their phones and checking social media all the time. And they are the ones who are kind of repulsed by that, which I'm going to mark that as a parenting

win for now yeah yeah you should you should but and you know getting back to the big topic it's not just teenagers i mean there are adults like i said they were at disneyland there were grandparents looking at their phones while they were sitting across the table from their grandchildren which i'm assuming are people they don't get to see that often. And I don't get it. I just don't get it, guys. And getting back to the main point of this show, focus. This is one of the biggest vectors against it. And if you want to get that focus, you need to have an awareness of what social media is doing to you and a plan to minimize that. thing, but there is one thing that we can all plan on, and that's where Ethos Life Insurance comes in. With Ethos, you get life insurance in 10 minutes for as little as $10 a month. Unlike other companies' long, confusing, and outdated application processes, Ethos' 100% online application takes

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8 to 10%. So get a free personalized quote at ethoslife.com slash focused. That's E-T-H-O-S life.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. That's ethoslife.com slash focused to get your free life insurance quote today. Ethos Technologies Incorporated operates in California as Ethos Life Insurance Services. Not available in all states and prices subject to underwriting and certain health questions. So one of the items on our outline here is reading books versus listening to books. And I'm just going to, before I say anything else, let you answer that question. What is your approach to this, Jean? I am curious.

I feel like it's a big trap. It's a trap. No, it's not a trap. Let me explain jean and i were talking okay and she listened to this book we just mentioned and she says oh yeah this is what i'm gonna have to read and i thought yeah jean struggles with that too yeah i mean one of the things you know why this book spoke to me like just the title is that i for several years now i can't remember when it started but you know might even go back like 10 years i kind of lost the ability to read a book and i used to read like books constantly um i'm a big big fan of detective fiction, so I would go through a whole series of detective novels, other kinds of fiction, nonfiction, biographies.

I would read it all, you know, and have like some fat book, you know, sitting on my nightstand. And then somewhere along the line, it just dropped off my ability. And I felt bad. I didn't really know. I thought, oh, it's just too much video, too much. There's other things that could take up my time and attention. But then I started hearing it from other people as well. And it wasn't just me.

And then in this book, Stolen Focus, it explains it is not just me. It's not just some small group of my friends. It's a systemic issue for a lot of people. So audiobooks saved me because I started downloading audiobooks, especially using the app Libby to get audiobooks from my library, I started listening to books and then I could finish them. I would listen, usually doing something else like chores or going for a walk or driving, I would listen to audiobooks. And then, I mean, I think I've listened to, I can look, you know, on Libby, but I probably listened to 100 audiobooks this year, 100, because I would just put them on and listen. And when I was listening to Stolen Focus, I realized, oh dear, this isn't going to work because I am trying to do two things at once, which I know you can't do and your brain can't do it. So I should just get the book and sit down and read the rest. So that's what I did. But I think it depends on the book, whether it's a good idea

or not, because certain books that, and I'll give an example, Eckhart Tolle, one of my favorite writers, teachers, thinkers, if I tried to read that book initially, I probably would have gotten bored with it, the power of now. But because it was in my ears, I can't flip around and try to find a chapter that's really the one that I want to read, looking for the answer, looking for the ending, something like that. Skimming, you can't do to somebody talk about what you, you know, need. And being present, staying present, you have to be kind of present in an audio book, whereas if you have a paper book, you might skim, you might speed read, whatever. So for things that are self-help, and I use that term very loosely, but things that are kind of inspiring, I'm going to call it inspirational nonfiction for me. I prefer the audiobook because I won't really read deeply the paper book, but I would like, you know, like having read Stolen Focus, I've been thinking about trying to be more intentional with reading.

And I will say that if I really like an audiobook, I buy a paper copy of it to have to refer to and, you know, to reread. But that's my take on audiobooks. I don't think there's one answer of one being better than the other. Depends on the book. I love to listen to it while I'm pulling weeds or whatever, you know, as a podcast listener, it's just such a natural. But what I found was over the last couple of years, I got in the habit of buying productivity audio audio books too. And the thing is I read books in Kindle and, and there's like a couple of reasons for that.

I grew up when you had to carry the heavy books. I love that they're on my phone. And I love that, that, you know, that, you know, I can use these read later services like read wise to, to, you know, give me a spaced repetition of my highlights. There's, you know, the digital stuff has advantages for me, but Amazon does the super insidious thing where you buy a Kindle book and they say, oh, for another $5, you can have the audio book. They always give you some really cheap discount in the audio book. So then I start collecting. If you look at my Audible list, I've got all these productivity books. And I realized halfway through last year, it just never works for me because I am not focused

enough to listen to them on an audio form. I need to read them. I need to be able to stop and read a paragraph again. Or like when they get some of these productivity books, they go into examples that go on for 10 pages and I can skip that. You know, there's just things I like to do with it as a book that I can't get with the reading. I have just officially abandoned nonfiction audiobooks. It's been a good move for me. Like you, everybody's a little different. Everyone is a little different. I'm glad to hear you say that, David.

Because that was the problem I was encountering. I realized that I listen to podcasts all the time when I'm at the gym, when I'm in the car. And there's an argument to be made there in terms of reclaiming focus of just not having something that you're listening to all the time. But setting that aside, what I realized was that when I'm listening to podcasts, I am listening, but I am not, to borrow the term, engaged. The conversation is going on whether I am paying attention or not. And so for me, that's where I would skim in audio version.

I just disconnect, think about something else, and I don't even realize what happened over the last five, 10 minutes. So in terms of reading books for me, I realized that that was not going to work. And I made a distinction that podcasts for me are solely for entertainment. And it just so happens that I am entertained by the discussion about productivity and creativity and things like that, that maybe other people would view as like a heavy lift or not something that they would choose to do that is enjoyable to me. But if I'm going to be listening to it, I'm not putting any pressure on myself to get anything from it. And so when it comes to reading, I read physical books only. And again, I think this is kind of knowing yourself and figuring out what works for you. Back to the previous segment, I realized that regardless of the digital device, Kindle, iPad, whatever, if I am actually reading off of that device, I will get bored and put it down after about five minutes. Whereas if I pick up an actual book, I can read for an hour. And that's not something that I could

do from the beginning. I've been doing this for a while for the Bookworm podcast I do with my buddy Joe Bielig, where we force ourselves to read a book every two weeks and talk about it. But having done that for 150 some episodes in a row now, I've built up that muscle enough that I can't possibly imagine doing it any other way. Well, if you read Stolen Focus, you'll be confirmed in your feeling about this because somebody did a study between paper and e-books. So same book, just different device or different mode of consuming and retention and comprehension was significantly lower with the ebooks so really interesting yeah when i talk to somebody in real life because the people that i connect with online tend to be a lot like me and they like reading the books and things like that anyways uh but every once in a while one of my real life contacts will be like, Hey, do you have a book recommendation that

I could read? And I give it to him. And then most of the time, nothing ever happens. Every once in a while, someone will come back and say, Hey, I read that book. I listened to it. It was great. And my response is always, that's like going to the gym and not putting any weight on the bar. Go back and try again. That's a little bit extreme, but that's a little extreme. I'm going to just say, all right, Mike, I knew you had a strong opinion. You said you had a strong opinion and now we know. Well, I think if you're, if, if you have a practice of it and you're buying the paper books for the ones that really resonate with you anyways, like that's a totally different thing. But I think for people who just, they haven't read for a very long time, going to an

audio version is a fine first step, but I would encourage people to push a little bit deeper and pick up a physical book and force yourself to sit down and read it because you will get way more out of it. And if you start doing that consistently, you'll start to see the collection of the ideas that you get from the books, which that's why I read nonfiction books, because I want to collect ideas. And then they bounce around in my brain and eventually they come out in something that I create. And I don't know how they're connected always, but once I create the thing and I force myself to express what I think about something, that's when I can look back and say, oh yeah, that came from that source and that one came from that book. And I can always see the value after the fact. And I feel like you just got to stick with it a little

bit and you'll start to see that for yourself. And that becomes really exciting for people who really want to grow and develop a growth mindset. Yeah, you know, I'm curious about that. Because like, we recently interviewed Tiago Forte with his Building a Second Brain book, and they sent us a pre-release physical copy. And that was the first physical book I've read in a long time, because I just read in, you know, for these productivity type books, I just get the Kindle. And I found it limiting having the physical book because I was trying to like, well, how am I going to, you know, keep this as something that I can act upon? And like, I have like a whole system when I read an ebook and maybe that's just it. I'm comfortable with the ebooks. I've been doing

them so long where physical books I have not done for a long time. But I also just remember what a pain in the neck it was, like storing them and going back and trying to find something in the book. There's no search on a physical book, right? And I don't know. And I'm a nerd. That's part of it, too, right? But I just find the e-book so much easier for me every time I hear this argument

because all my nerd friends read physical books. I mean, Mike is not the outlier here, you know? And like, I had a guy write me one saying, well, you got to get this kind of number two pencil and get the book. I'm like, this is all turning into a fetish, you know? And, and I don't mean that like in an, you know, in the negative way fetish is used. I just mean like you're turning into a ritual. I get it. But you know, for me, I just love, like we went on vacation for a week and I had all my books with me and you know, one night I could read this book and the other

night I could bring that book. It didn't matter which one I stuck in my luggage. And I just, Mike, that's something I need to like talk through with you someday. Because I don't know. Or maybe I just need to read physical books for like three months and see if suddenly it magically lands for me. I don't know. I secondhand quoted a study from a book that I haven't totally finished. I secondhand quoted a study from a book that I haven't totally finished. So, you know, on that expertise level, I said that e-books, you know, were harder to maintain comprehension. But it was a study.

It wasn't, you know, every person in the study wasn't the same. So don't worry about it. I do think that, again, it kind of comes back to the defaults. And I would argue, David, that the system that you have landed on for how you read books and how you get things out of them and how you benefit from the information that you've read, you've thought through how to leverage the technology and have it provide you positive benefit. But if you haven't thought all that through and you don't have that ingrained yet and you're not highlighting things in your

Kindle book and sending them to Readwise and all that kind of stuff, I do think if you were to just sit down with a Kindle book versus a physical book, nothing else, you know, just pick one and read it straight through, then yeah, you probably would get more out of the physical book. I don't think that that's the only way to do it. I do think that should be at least a consideration though, at the beginning for just about everybody, because it's hard. That's the whole point. The technology makes it easy for us to go and fill the void, the technology makes it easy for us to go and fill the void right in the minute that you have to force your eyes to move across the page and try to retain any of what you have just read you're forced to confront what uh your technology use has done to your brain yeah right for me it was the fact that i couldn't maintain my attention for more than a couple of minutes and i was like

this is messed up. I used to read for hours at a time when I was a kid. What happened? I got to get back to that. And so just for me, that was the place where I had to put up the intentional constraints to build up the muscle. Well, you know, Ryan Holiday's new book is coming out. Discipline is Destiny in a few weeks.

Maybe I'll just get that as a physical book, just for giggles. Read it and see how that goes. You are right, though, about all the downsides of that, the having to store them and having them be heavy when you pack them in your luggage. I've experienced both of those things. I put together another bookshelf today because I ran out of room. Gene, one of the things that you've done recently, you did a blog post on it through micro.blog, about your kind of evolution with GTD and the now world-famous meow system. Tell us about that.

Yeah, as I mentioned, I've been doing this podcast with james dempsey um for four and a half years and i really thought that doing a podcast would be the the final like you know way to make me get really on top of a getting things done style system because I have admired that system forever. Since 2006, I can point to the article in Macworld magazine where it was described by one Merlin man and I was like, I want this, you know, and then I got the book. I'm like, I totally want this. This makes perfect sense to me. But then I would do it, then I would fall off the wagon. I would start up again, probably four times I've given it like a real try. And this was the fourth time. And this year I thought, you know what? I just have to be honest. It's not, it's whatever it is, it's not working for me. I'm not really doing the weekly review, which is kind of the heart of the system. And I

need to do something that works for me. So I was just goofing around. I said, I'm just going to start making a list of things that I would do every week and I could feel good about and that I wouldn't procrastinate over. And so that's how I, and I said, I wish it had like, I could think of some initials for it, like GTD. And I don't know why the word meow came to mind and I couldn't get rid of it. And I don't even have a cat, but I like cats. And so I just started playing around with what could meow stand for? And now I think I've landed on what is going to be the final version, which is my evolving organizational workflow. Because it is evolving and it will always evolve. And basically it's a checklist of things that I do every week.

I've made it very low tech. so I stopped using OmniFocus, which I love OmniFocus, you know, and I love the Omni group, but I just was overwhelmed feeling, you know. So the Meow is basically a checklist that I do pretty much every week, and it's easy for me to do it. that I do pretty much every week and it's easy for me to do it and one of the rules of the meow system is if you don't check everything off that's okay so I consider it you know that I've done it even if I haven't done every step and that might feel like oh my god you know to people who are really good at keeping track of things and, and for sure,

reviewing them and checking them off all as a regular thing, you, you know, I can understand that would sound like, oh my God, how could you possibly keep track of things, but it's working for me. And that is what I was looking for is something, um, that would work for me. So I, and I think with the name meow, it sounds like such a goof. People can understand I'm not taking this super seriously. I am just doing a thing that works for me. It's really a checklist of things I do on mostly a weekly basis. Well, you've got a blog post, and you've got an episode,

episode 219 of the Weekly Review, where you go into this. We're going to link it. But I feel like, and I've said this before, a system should only be as complex as you need it to be to get your work done. Yeah. And no more complex than that. Right. And I do think people fall into the trap of making it overly complex. And I mean, the example I've used,

I've talked about it on shows before, but like when I was in law school, I literally wrote down my list on my napkin every morning, like in the morning cup of tea, write a few things down in napkins, stick it in your pocket at the end of the day, check them off. And that was, that was my system, you know, and it worked because I didn't have kids. I didn't have a wife. I didn't have clients. I didn't have all the stuff that I have now. Right. As my life got more complex, I needed something more complex, but I, uh, I really, uh, I really think people can get lost on this stuff. If they start, you know, you need like, um, one of my law school professors said you know i i gave

a long answer to a question and he said i asked you what time it was and you built me a rolex you know and that's that is uh that's what we do to ourselves sometimes with these systems yeah you made a comment gene about the meow system being more fun or more enjoyable. And I feel like that's a interesting point that we should unpack a little bit. I think the tendency to think about productivity is as a list of things that I have to do. And I don't know, at some level, certain jobs for sure, it is a list of things that you have to do because people need things from you. But you don't have to necessarily change the work to enjoy it more. You can just change your perspective with it.

And I feel like giving yourself permission to have fun with it and to play with it, that can be a game changer, even if the actual things that you're trying to do with your system don't change at all. Yeah. I think it was just important for me to finally recognize that I can figure this stuff out for myself, especially after what is like 16 years of reading and following David Allen, I know the principles and I just don't need to use those exact checklists. I mean, the main thing that fell off, never got added to the meow that's very important in GTD is all inboxes to zero it's like that that always would stop me because it'd be like such an feel like such an overwhelming task but so you know it's I just I enjoy I enjoy it now and I it took me a while many years apparently to say hmm I guess this doesn't really work for me, and there's not another thing out there that I should actually try. I should just come to some kind of system

that is my own, that I would never say, oh, here's a system that will, you know, I'm going to trademark and sell, because it's not that kind of a thing. And so I feel so much better. There's nothing wrong with getting things done. I don't think anything inherently wrong with it. It just doesn't work for me. And I'm just not going to be in that club of GTD enthusiasts because it's never really worked for me. I wonder what just the elimination of that

first thing that you mentioned, the compulsive checking of the inboxes, if you just disconnected from that expectation, what sort of impact that would have on people's perception of gtd we just recorded an episode not too long ago gtd audit you know i think there's a lot of people who are frustrated with gtd and maybe don't know why and maybe that's the thing that causes the the anxiety and the stress about it just because the inboxes have gotten out of control yeah well it is like the the ideal is you know that mind like water goal which means that inboxes do need to be at zero because otherwise you're keeping something in your brain i think i've just accepted that some things are going to be stored in my brain for better or worse and i might forget a thing now and again, but that's just me being human,

you know, that's me just doing, doing the best I can. Um, it worked before a napkin could work for probably a napkin could work for me as well, but I just, uh, I'm not, uh, I'm not a productivity machine. And as you say, it's not cranking widgets. And I was trying to crank them, but my crank was always jammed. I think that that's really important. You mentioned you're not a productivity machine and you're a human, so you're going to have these things bouncing around in your head. And being human is not a problem to be solved. Right.

I also think that one of the problems with GTD, and we talked about this on that GTD show, is that efficiency for efficiency's sake isn't good enough. I mean, the whole point of focus that we talked about earlier, spending your time on the things most important. And I think GTD tries to address that, but there is a version of GTD that is easy to fall into that makes all things equal. And that's not the point. And if you fall into that trap, then GTD is actually a disservice to you. Yeah. Comes back to the beginning of the episode and we're talking about the technology. The systems apply to here.

Use it to further your agenda. Don't just be part of part of their process. Yeah. My favorite part of GTD was was the 43 folders to be honest having you know a physical place to put things that needed to be looked at later on i've moved a few times and i don't have really a good filing system like that really requires a good spot with the folders and stuff but i might go back to it again i don't i i definitely come across things and i say if i still had a tickler file this is

where it would go well gene this has been a really fun conversation and it's been far reaching which are my favorite episodes of especially guest interviews on the focus podcast. We're going to have to have you back and you're going to keep us posted. But in the meantime, everybody go check out, uh, Jean's podcast with, um, with James Dempsey and,

the weekly review. We'll put a link in the show notes. We'll put a link also in for the, the meow system. Maybe this will encourage some people to rethink what they're doing too. Let's make a little help today on deep focus. We're going to be talking to Jean about her journaling woes and where that's going. So that's going to be fun for the supporters. In the meantime,

I want to thank our sponsors. That's our friends at Indeed and Ethos. And we'll see you next time.