5. Manage the Flow of Info

Welcome back top mental health tools, partfive, manage the flow of info. This part will outline how to better protect oursanity in the age of inference.

[00:00:25] What does it mean to manage theflow of info? One thing we need to recognize about living in this period oftime is that the internet has changed everything. And beyond that social mediahas changed everything. The way that I see like social media is one of the mostdrastic changes in lifestyle since probably the industrial revolution.

[00:00:45] Right. Let's say that there wasa shooting, right? Like a shooting that happened, you know, that involved,maybe a politician or something like that. We would know maybe 30 seconds afterit happened on Twitter that had happened. Right. There would be somebody therewith video that had happened. That's kind of just how the world works now.

[00:01:05] And that's an unprecedentedamount of information that we have an unprecedented level of immediacy. So sortof the expectation is that we're going to know everything that happens exactlyas it happens. That's a lot though. That's a lot of input. And especially ifyou have things that you're trying to focus on, like, imagine that you'retrying to get some details.

[00:01:26] Worked on you're writing a novelor you're trying to, um, figure out, uh, a vacation for your family, anythingwhere you're trying to just sit down and focus. You're constantly beingbombarded from the outside with notifications, with trending topics, hashtags,all these things that are trying to compete for your attention.

[00:01:43] And that's a lot. So I thinkthat's sort of our developmental task as a generation right now is to figureout how to regulate that flow, to keep ourselves sane and to keep ourselvesjust moving forward in life. And so we really do need to figure out how to getthe information that we want, because I do think it's important to be informedabout what's going on in the world.

[00:02:02] And they do think it's importantto be connected to other people. It's fun to have people like what you put outthere, all that sort of stuff. But. There's a certain level where you also justneed to be able to live your life on your own terms rather than letting allthese other things dictate what you do with your son.

[00:02:25] What is the risk of too muchinformation? I think it's important to remember, especially as it pertains tonews and current events, the news does not change based on your awareness ofit. So let's say that shooting happened or there was an election thing orsomebody put out a new viral song and there's people dancing to it.

[00:02:48] Country fell into a sinkhole,whatever, all that stuff can happen. And it doesn't change whether or not, youknow, that it happened. Right. If you find out that that thing happened fourhours later, it still happened. Your awareness of it doesn't play any role inthat, but we have this sort of guilt. We have this sort of sense of immediacythat we'd need to know what happens exactly as it happens.

[00:03:11] And if we don't. We're doingsomething wrong, right? We're not constantly refreshing. What's trending. We'renot constantly refreshing the news cycle. We're not constantly refreshing evenour emails, right? Like if you're going to bed, you know, you're starting towind down at 10 30 at night to get ready for bed.

[00:03:25] Uh, you don't need to check youremail and find out this fire that you need to put out the next day. You reallydon't need to. But our tendency is to do that because social media, our phones,all the technological stuff that we interact with. They're designed to beaddictive. I think there's a lot of stuff out there about that right now,documentaries and such.

[00:03:44] But if you think about justnotifications on your phone, it's kind of like a Vegas slot machine. They'retraining you to check your phone more and more often, because every time you goto your phone and you have a like, or have a notification or house somethingthat you're interacting with these little micro interactions reward, you.

[00:04:00] They reward you for checkingyour phone. You're like, Oh, I'm going to see if there's something that I needto know. Oh, there is something I need to know. And so it rewards you. And soyou're more likely to do that. I'm not sure if you've done this, but I foundmyself like, okay, I'm on my email, refreshing.

[00:04:14] It's taking a long time. So Ipull up my phone and check my email on my phone. I'm like, what am I doing? Ihave two emails open. I have big internet and small internet happening at thesame time. This is ridiculous. You know, the whole experience of you stand inline for Starbucks. Everybody is on their phone, looking down and that's okay.

[00:04:30] You know, we all have somethingbetter to do than stare at the ceiling now, but it's very, very compulsive.It's something we don't even think about. You just sort of like out of, you'veprobably done this too, where you open your phone with an intention, like I'mgoing to go. Put something in a, to do list or on my calendar.

[00:04:45] And next thing you know, you'reon Facebook. Like, how the hell did I get to Facebook? I never planned oncoming here. And then you forgot what you were trying to do in the first place.So a lot of this is about taking your intentional control back from thesedevices, from the notifications and trying to break that cycle of reallyreinforcement, because it's trying to reinforce you to do these things more andmore often.

[00:05:08] And that puts you a little bitback in control behind the driver's seat, you know, and, and, and lets youdecide what you're doing with your life rather than just bouncing around at thewhims of social media, all that sort of thing.

[00:05:27] What is the benefit to reducingthe inputs? Well, one benefit of reducing the inputs is kind of directlyrelated to the problem that I described before of feeling that guilt of notknowing things immediately, like there's something wrong that you did for notknowing what happened right. As it happened.

[00:05:45] The reality of it is. News andcurrent events, they only become more clear over time. Right? So in some waysit can actually be more responsible to not jump on the hype train, not beconstantly refreshing and refreshing and all of that to see what's happening ona moment by moment basis. And instead understand that something's happening,give it time to clarify and then come back to it and be sort of a moreappropriately informed consumer of that information.

[00:06:11] So in some ways it couldactually make you more informed, more responsible with that information. Theother thing is that you just have a little bit more conscious control aboutwhere you're putting your attention. A lot of us have kids or work or partnersor passions that we want to be focusing on that doesn't stop us from needing tobe aware of what's going on outside of our focus, but.

[00:06:32] When we're focusing on thosethings, that's what we should be focusing on. You know, we don't need to besitting with our kids with them, fighting for our attention while we're justdoing scrolling on our phones. Right. So it allows you to be more present,allows you to, you know, have your attention less split and you also have morecontrol over your mood.

[00:06:48] Again, if you're starting towind down for the night and you want to focus on relaxation and happiness, andthen suddenly, you know, your email on your phone, you look at it and it'slike, Oh crap. All that work that I did today got undone. I'm in for a terribleday tomorrow. You don't want to know that as you're going to sleep, becausethen you're not going to get good sleep.

[00:07:04] You're going to be pissed off.You're going to be unrested. And then you're going to do bad work the next day,right? Same with just, you know, tragedies that happen in the world. Stuff thatstresses you out, whatever you. Aren't going to want to know that information,but it's going to be better if you have control of when that information comesin, so that you have a little bit more control over your mood.

[00:07:22] At the very least you can stopyourself from other things, hijacking your mood. You know, you may not be ableto reach a 10 out of 10 mood every day, but you're certainly going to have abetter chance of getting up there if you're not inviting in all of these thingsthat might sour that mood at all times.

[00:07:37] So I think it's really helpfulto have sort of. Some sacred times that you block out, it makes a lot moresense to block out times that you are not engaging with social media or the newsor technology than it does to say, okay, these are the times that I'm allowedto. And if you say I'm not allowed to check the news in the morning, once inthe afternoon, once at night feels a little unrealistic these days, but if youcan maybe at least like book end your day and say, okay, I'm not checking myphone until I've had some coffee and took a shower.

[00:08:03] That's reasonable, you know, ifyou say, okay, I'm putting my phone away an hour before bed, or, you know, whenI get home from work to play with the kids, I'm going to put my phone away fora couple hours and actually focus on this thing that does matter to me. I feellike that's a little bit more reasonable.

[00:08:16] So blocking out this time thatyou get away from it. And again, that's sort of a practice in itself of justexercising that control of like, Hey, this little black box here doesn'tcontrol me. I can set that down, do something else and come back to it when Iwant to, rather than just sort of like, okay, every time I feel a vibration inmy pocket, My heart skipped a beat, and I know I need to check it.

[00:08:35] Right. There's something kind ofproblematic about that. The fact that we leave our house and if we don't have aphone in our pocket, we're like, Oh God, Oh God, this feels wrong. This feelsreally terribly wrong. So we are very, very controlled by this. And I thinkthat taking the power back a little bit is very important.

[00:08:49] It doesn't mean that you'regoing to be uninformed doesn't mean that you're not going to be interacting,but just doing it a little bit more on your terms is it's just really helpfuland it brings a little bit more intentionality to your life.

[00:09:05] What are some tactics a personcan use to be better at this? Yeah. So I think that. Like I said, blocking outcertain points in time where you're not inviting in these distractionsintentionally reducing the inputs. That's very helpful. I think thatnotifications are a huge one. Ideally you would be turning off just about allof your notifications and that doesn't mean that you're not getting theinformation, but that's putting it on your terms.

[00:09:29] So when you want to know what'shappening on social media, you go to that app and check. When you want to checkyour email, you go to that app and you check rather than. You're in the middleof playing with your kids, and then you get any emergency emails from worksaying, Hey, well, all hands on deck, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:09:44] Like you don't want thatnecessarily. Now if you really, really, really need that, that's a differentstory. You know, maybe you have a boss that will text you if it's at that levelor there's some sort of filter you can set in your phone inner do not disturbsettings, whatever. You can do a lot of different things to make sure whatneeds to break through does break through.

[00:10:02] But most of the time. None ofthis needs to break through. You know, we're just sort of asking fordistraction, we're asking for something to interfere. And so turning off thenotifications, lets the ball be in your court a little bit more and I thinkthat's helpful. One interesting experiment that you can do.

[00:10:17] And I did this this one time andwas really astounded by, by the results, uh, is actually move around, bephysically where your apps are on your phone, especially like the ones that arein like the little tray at the bottom, or depending on what phone you have sortof your most used apps. Again, a lot of this can be very compulsive.

[00:10:33] So you might find yourselfopening your phone, swiping quickly to Twitter, pulling it up. And before youeven realize what you're doing. What, if you change the location of Twitter tosomewhere else, suddenly there's just one more step in finding that app. One morestep to realize, what am I doing? I was coming here so that I could dosomething productive, taking a step further.

[00:10:51] One thing that I've done isactually replaced the location of that with something that is productive. So I,I took a little social media break for a while. This is probably a couple ofyears ago at this point. Um, I was like, okay, I want to see what would happenif I just took a break from social media.

[00:11:06] And instead of those apps, I putin place like the literal place on my phone, where that app used to be, I putEvernote, which is like my go-to note taking app of choice. So I found I'd bein the line for Starbucks or somewhere. And I would pull up on my phone andimmediately go push that button. But instead of pulling up social media to pullup my brainstorming app and I'm like, Oh, Huh, that's funny.

[00:11:26] And then I typed out my thoughtsand like, okay, well, since I'm here, let me write down some stuff. And at theend of that experiment, I had written another book because I had realized thatI just compulsively instead of checking social media was compulsively pullingup in my notes app and reminding myself of what I was thinking about and addingto it.

[00:11:43] You know, so by the end of that,you know, few weeks I had, you know, self published. It was a small book, but Istill publish another book. And I was like, okay, there's something here. Soit, everybody knows what a social media break is. People do it all the time.Even the fact that people needing to do a social media break to improve theirmental health should tell you something, people do this all the time, but, youknow, um, whether you're taking a full break from it or just shifting thingsaround, what I want focus on is bringing intention to it, deciding.

[00:12:09] When things are going to bechecked on their terms rather than letting their phones dictate their life.Since social media and really technology in general are so central to the waythat we live. I think that it's just so important for all of us to make thatwork for us instead of against us. Right now, there are a lot of ways wheretechnology and social media pull us along through our days with things likenotifications, things that are grabbing our attention and kind of pulling usalong.

[00:12:39] Instead. What I want people todo is have better control of. When they're engaging with that information. Andso still staying informed, still being active, still being connected, butdeciding when it's time to invite that information in and being moreintentional about that, I think that's the most important thing that's going tokeep people say to this period.

[00:12:56] Yeah.

[00:13:05] We've discussed the dangers oftoo much information, but you also recommend pumping in positive content. Canyou explain that? One of the good things about technology, because you know,there's a lot of things that can be pitfalls. And we've talked about that. Oneof the good things about technology and all the new platforms we have is justhow much good stuff there is out there, how much positive stuff there is outthere.

[00:13:26] You know, at any given time youcould find podcasts, you could find videos on YouTube, you could find eBooks,you could find blog posts, you could find all sorts of stuff that. Has apositive spin to it. And that could be things that are motivational or it couldbe things that are informational. Maybe you're trying to learn about the healthdisorder you have, or maybe you're trying to learn how to break into a field ofbusiness.

[00:13:48] You want to get into how to selfpublish your own book. I mean, myself, this is how I. Started a podcast I wrotein self published books, did all these things by looking it up and taking inthat sort of content. So there's so much stuff that's out there, but what'sreally cool is that, you know, a lot of stuff now is audio right now.

[00:14:04] I think you're probablylistening to my voice and chances are, you might be doing something else at thesame time. Maybe you're washing dishes right now. Maybe you're going for a walkwith your dog. Maybe you're driving to work. That's pretty cool because you canpair this really interesting and helpful and informative content with somethingthat's more boring or more routine.

[00:14:21] And since we have a tendency todo that mental filtering, where we pull out the negative things from life andkind of filter out the positive counterbalancing that. With stuff that ispositive or helpful is well, very helpful. You know, if you have this constanttrack of positive, inspirational, helpful information going on in thebackground, you're really playing the statistics because a lot of times wealready know what's going to be helpful for us.

[00:14:49] You know what? We know that, Oh,we should. Focus on exercising more or, you know, we should focus on our diet.We should, you know, have hobbies that are helpful. We should connect topeople, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of information that peoplesort of regurgitate as helpful. And that's true. And you know this, but whatyou need is to hear it in the right way.

[00:15:05] Maybe some of the advice thatI've given you is stuff you've heard before, but hearing it in the exact wordsthat I use, they go, Oh, that's, that's what they mean by that. Or it speaks toyour life because it's an example that actually applies to you. And so. Playingthe statistics means allowing yourself enough opportunity to have those momentsof realization, to have those light bulb moments, because you're constantlypumping in that positive content.

[00:15:28] It also helps to drown out thenegative stuff that's going on in your head already. You know, if you, if yourbackground process is always a negative voice, that's telling you, Oh, youdidn't do that well enough, you should worry about this. You should have thisregret then sort of balancing that out and saying, Hey, can you shut up?

[00:15:42] I'm listening to this thing.That's actually positive. That can be helpful to balance things out a littlebit. There's this really famous saying by, uh, Jim Rowan, who's a late businessauthor, really inspirational, popular guy. And his quote is something to theeffect of you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

[00:15:59] Meaning, you know, if you'retrying to up-level yourself, what you should do is Uplevel. The people that arearound you, you should increase the quality of the people who are around you.Well, I think in this day and age, the same thing goes for your contentsources. You know, in some ways you are the average of the five content sourcesyou spend the most time on.

[00:16:17] So if that's a Reddit, Twitterand something else in there, you know, very negative, the types of people thatyou're interacting with on there, you're probably going to be in a prettycrappy mood. A lot of the time. But if you're able to balance that out withsome positive sources of content, suddenly you realize that you're rising tomeet what you're surrounding yourself with.

[00:16:36] So I think that, you know, um,obviously each individual piece of content has its own merits, but just thestrategy overall of making sure that you have, you know, uh, not. Totallyconstant, but a frequent flow of good information and positive content comingin that helps to just balance the scales in your favor when your tendency isprobably to do the opposite and maybe be a little bit self-critical a littlebit negative, a little bit defeatist, whatever the case may be for you.