 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump! Mind pump! With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. We got in contact with Tommy because he was mentioned by Mark Weinstein when we had him on the podcast. And what you're about to hear is an interview with a gentleman who started a company, it's brand new, and the aim of the company is to get people to structure time away from their phones, which sounds funny, but business is growing because people see a need for it. It's really, really interesting. And he's a really interesting guy, too. When I first came across his Instagram and his page, I started looking into him, I listened to one of his interviews. What I didn't find out until way later after I dug through all the stuff was he's a Duke University grad and he's got a background in neuroscience, and he's got a killer background in Hollywood. I mean, he actually literally worked for Spielberg and Dreamworks. So he's got some serious connections. He's also, I think, was hearing things earlier than a lot of people. And I just felt the same way I felt when I first read the book that I talked a million times about, that everyone teases me about a couple of years ago. That thing just, it sent me down this rabbit hole of, oh my God, what do we have coming ahead of us? And I really believe that we are heading this way, and it was only a matter of time before other people started to recognize it and see it, and then somebody creates some sort of a movement to counter it, right? Yeah, I like what he's doing. I like that it's about creating boundaries and figuring out how to navigate through all these new technology pitfalls that we find ourselves in. And the thing is, it's addictive, but you don't have to feel ashamed that you're being addicted because that's really what's engineered into these phones. And I just like that he hasn't, the message isn't abandoning your phone. It's, you know, how do we now implement good practices? Yeah, total health and wellness today includes a practice that involves becoming more active. It includes a practice around understanding when it's appropriate to eat certain foods and when you should eat other foods and how to be healthy around that. It's also currently in modern times about developing a practice with your technology. And this is just a reality. It's digital wellness is how Tommy talks about it, and we couldn't agree more. So he talks all about that in this episode. And he talks about what his company is doing and then the app that they're creating that's going to help people create those practices to develop a better sense of digital wellness. Now, you can find Tommy, his last name is Sobel. His website is gobricknow, G-O-B-R-I-C-K-N-O-W dot com. And then the Instagram page is at gobricknow. It's because the company is called Brick and it talks about turning your phone off, putting it on airplane mode, structured throughout the day, literally creating, turning it into a brick, if you will. Before we get into the interview that I do want to remind everybody that MAPS aesthetic is 50% off all month long. This is one of our most popular programs. It is the bodybuilder focused bikini competitor focused type program. So if you're into sculpting and shaping your body, if your main goal for working out is the aesthetics of your body, this is the program for you. Half off, just go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, use the code black50, B-L-A-C-K-5-0 for the 50% off discount. And that's it. So without any further ado, here we are talking to Tommy Sobel of Brick. Two or three years ago I had read a book Irresistible and these guys were just teasing the shit out of me because... Not because the book, we thought the book wasn't good, just because he mentioned it. He just said it like all the time. Yeah, I just kept predictable. I just kept bringing it up. Are you familiar with Adam Attler's Irresistible? I know Adam Attler, I haven't read it now. Yeah, Irresistible is a really good read. Oh, I was thinking of Predictably Irrational, that's where... Okay. So I read that maybe over two years now. And it really impacted me because here we were right in the middle of building this social media business and using podcasting, YouTube, Instagram as a platform. And the storyline is just super compelling. They draw parallels to tech and cocaine and the addictiveness and the even scarier part that they try and talk about is that when someone's a drug addict it's pretty obvious because you see all these signs and we kind of shame that person. But we're in the middle of glorifying tech. We're not shaming you because you're using your phone or you're on the computer or you're doing these things. So their argument or his argument is how scary it is because of that. Like not only is it as addictive as some of these other things they're talking about, but then in addition to that it's also something that we actually celebrate versus something that we would shame you for and so it in turn can be even more dangerous because of that. Tommy, I found your... I think you should go over your background a little bit to the audience before we get into the discussion that Adam's starting because I found it fascinating. I found your background fascinating. I know you have a background in neuroscience and kind of how you came to what you're doing I thought was pretty interesting. So if you don't mind giving kind of short synopsis of... Yeah, definitely. So we are recording. We are. It's happening. Yeah, so I grew up in L.A. I grew up trying to be an actor basically in L.A. My dad was in the film industry and I wanted to be in movies and as I grew up nothing really worked out and so I got into a really good college. I got into Duke and was like, you know what? I'm going to become a doctor as a backup in case the film world didn't work out. I was very interested in the brain and behavior and I came out of that pre-med and ended up with a focus in neuroscience and basically was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I was working days as a production assistant at this film production company run by Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall who are Steven Spielberg's producers and then at night I was working on this long gestating project at UCLA this neuroscience project and then was going from there to like DJ and promote out in Hollywood and then on the weekends I was like producing and directing music videos so I was basically I felt like this octopus trying to experientially figure out what I wanted to do with my life and at around the same time that this neuroscience project got published I got offered this job to be Steven Spielberg's assistant pretty serendipitously and so I realized that I love science but I love the results of science I don't love conducting the scientific research and with this opportunity I was going to go full on into film and basically try to make science cool through this premium storytelling kind of in like a Michael Crichton type way where he'll take this idea of bringing extinct species back to life and wrap it in this broad thriller get this guy like Steven Spielberg to direct it and then people will come and watch it because of their interest in kind of an adventure thriller but then might come out of it and be interested in how chromosomes work or DNA or something. Oh, pop culture has done that for a long time Carl Sagan was responsible for thousands of kids wanting to learn astrophysics Yeah, exactly, so how can we how can we make science cool again was kind of like my career thesis for a long time You're trying to be PR for science Yeah, exactly That's a cooler hat in the making too by the way Yeah, someone should make that hat And so, yeah, I served for him for five years directly on set on a bunch of movies and TV shows and that was a pretty incredible and demanding experience and then about three years ago he placed me in a new position in a new department as the digital creative exec and so basic at DreamWorks Studio So what is DreamWorks going to do beyond film and TV? What are we going to do in VR? What are we going to do in podcasts? What are we going to do on YouTube and Facebook and Snapchat? These conversations are already happening? This was my job three years ago I was the first one, yeah It was like a whole new, what do we do in digital but it's like Spielberg, you know What does Steven Spielberg's company do? Oh, yeah, so they were already looking at all these brand new platforms Yeah, they were super curious about it We had a CEO who was super forward thinking and wanted to basically this became my argument with a lot of it that the average consumer buys four movie tickets a year and so this is in like the MPAA's 2017 or 2015 statistics So instead of being a studio that's trying to make your movie that year one of those four, how can you reach people where they are when they're also checking their phone 150 times a month So I think a lot of big studios have been asking that question a little bit You know if you're like a film exec and you're focused on film and then you come home and your kids are just talking about YouTubers and you have no idea who PewDiePie is and all this 100% my kids have no idea who's on TV or movies but they know all the YouTube stars Are they scrambling? Are they freaking out at this point? Because it's a big ship We're talking about Hollywood They're already making billions of dollars That's a big ship to try to turn Let's put our toe in the water and see what's going on I think they're freaking out Oh, I bet you So what do you think? We've actually speculated on the show before about movie theaters Do you think they're going to be a thing of the past? I think there always will be movie theaters but Stephen was actually one of the first guys to say it I think that it will kind of go the way of the playhouse where opera where back in the day opera and plays were the destination where the thing to go and now fewer people go for a higher price point It's a more mature audience and it's a rarefied event that still has this prestige to it but it won't be the same mass visual thing We are this mobile first digital first world where we're already paying for Netflix for $12 $13 a month now the amount of friction to get you to put on pants go out of the house pay for parking arrive at the movie theater at the right time like sit next to your friends get your friends to go get you and then you're paying $17 for a ticket and then you're also paying for popcorn $90 for popcorn and candy putting on pants is a real barrier for me and if you're a family and you've got kids you could easily spend $60 for two hours or it becomes so easy to just stay at home and live on the Netflix and Amazon I just think they're super smart and it's causing a studio model that thrived in the 20th century to really rethink how they're going to reach audiences I think it's a good thing Are you seeing anything that they're doing to make that pivot? I feel a little out of touch because I've been out of it for the last year and a half I unsubscribed from Deadline.com and the rap and all of the trade magazines so I don't know how what the zeitgeist is feeling right now But when you were in it did you see something that you think they're going to head in that direction or is nothing moved in that direction since you've left? What have you seen since then? It's been three years now They were having this discussion Is DreamWorks even on podcasting? Are they making moves on YouTube? What are they doing? I know when I left my understanding was the position shut down So I don't know what they're doing right now I do know that just generally as an industry all of the character driven films all of the basically creating a movie like the first movie of something let's say like The Incredibles that is basically just a pilot and the best you can do is have seven episodes and that's Fast and the Furious so the we're in a global world now where you're making a movie not for an American audience the domestic market is one out of 150 or so territories and so you need to think of things from an international marketing perspective it's now marketing people that are running these studios not old creative producers or directors and so that's why I think we're seeing more in like the last 10 years I would say this change from being this character driven industry where you would see movies like in the bedroom let's say or you know House of Cards would have been a movie 10 years ago and now all of that is going from trying to fit a two hour story into a 100 hour story where the writer is king that's all moving to TV and we are just seeing this franchise factory of superhero movies that's what works on an international level where you can translate super easily there's no loss of translation of humor and comedy because comedy is cultural it's difficult to translate action movies do the best it's kind of a race to survive and the best way to do that is have this international focus which leads you to the more action and marvel all the good writing is Netflix, HBO, Prime that's all marketing driven now is the movies that's crazy what brought you to what you're kind of doing now was it being in that position and seeing all that exactly so in this kind of exploratory position I built all these relationships with YouTube and Facebook and Snapchat and a lot of their influencers and realized basically that these kids that were super successful at social media felt this constant need to keep up with the algorithms and constantly create content in their own digital rat race and were so anxiety riddled and so lonely that I realized basically I realized I wasn't the only one that was addicted to my phone this again was about three years ago before it was mainstream that our phones have been designed to be addictive I kind of thought at the time that this was my own private shameful problem that I had these compulsions to overuse and didn't really feel like I was in control of how I spent my time with the constant scrolling and swiping on dating apps I thought it was my problem because I got to know all these kids who lived successfully on social media that it was even worse for them because they didn't even know what life used to be like before the smartphone they kind of developed in this hyper stimulated dopamine driven world and so I kind of realized it was this secret epidemic and then at the same time I was doing all this VR for my job and being totally blown away by it and realized that Facebook didn't buy Oculus for four billion dollars for fun but to have a stronger stranglehold on the attention economy and so if me and everybody I know multi-generationally is addicted to our phones with it just being this four inch screen in our hand is going to be game over once mass adoption hits for AR and VR and it's in all of our eyes filtering everything we see and I know that's coming so we all know it's coming we don't know how long but you know could be sooner than we think and how can we create so with those two things at the same time I realized we needed to create this ethical balance this boundary with our relationship to technology today there's a term for it and we're calling it digital wellness or digital well-being and but so my kind of my journey started there and I can talk more about it no it's um earlier when Adam likened or talked about the bookie resistable and how they compare to cocaine I don't think that is a good comparison because cocaine is not a necessary part of function in life now food is a necessary function part of life and we've gone through this processed food you know generations now and we've seen the results of that because you have to eat and it's everywhere and it's cheaper and it stays a long time in your shelf and it's hyper palatable and so we've seen the results of that and that's what I compare tech to it's like that that's necessary like you can't conduct business with that you know without it I don't think that's true I think I don't think it's we feel it's necessary because of what we're doing but it you still have a choice you still have a choice to not use well my point is it's it's if you want to run if you want to conduct business for someone you're going to use tech is my point tech is going to be you have to use it and so what I mean by that is you have to learn how to manage it it's not something you can just like cocaine I could be like I'll never use it again I think and I'd love to hear your opinion I really think that we're moving we're heading in this have you seen the movie surrogates no I haven't seen it so that's where I mean it's the Bruce Willis film right that's it's surrogates right that's the Bruce Willis one where everybody is you know living in this virtual world and they've made the virtual world so much like reality where you can buy things and do all stuff and everybody lays back in their chair and they get hooked up and you just you know and you think the way the movie plays out is like you think that's real life until they pull the goggles off and you go oh shit he's actually plugged in and everybody seems to be plugged in I've made the prediction that we're heading in a direction where we're going to have a split down the middle there's going to be the plugged in people and then there's going to be the plugged in people and we chuckle about it but I really believe that I really believe we're heading in that direction because as much as I'm pro your movement and what you're trying to do my fear is that majority of people will not adopt and a majority people will will go with this natural progression what do you think I mean you're giving me flashes to of HG Wells is time machine yeah we're basically he zooms like 100,000 years into the future and humanity has diverged into two species and one is like the underground species that never sees the light and they're like the smart ones and then you have the above ground beautiful idiots yeah I mean so basically what we're talking about is whether this technology is going to end up being an all or nothing thing I mean my hope is that we can find balance or technology I mean we're we're kind of more preaching we're not saying become Amish we're not saying don't use technology we're not saying social media and technology is bad we're saying take control of how you use it use it in a way that only serves you and not you just serving it and I guess to to respond to the first kind of conversation here I feel like with kids especially or teenagers their social system lives on social media and so you know people our age and higher can use Facebook can use social media they could they might get a lot of value out of it but could take it or leave it I mean kids if you are not on social media you don't have a social life that's where your invitations and the way that you talk to girls like it's you're basically choosing and not go to the party and so I do think that there's like now this cultural aspect to it that does create the feeling like you have to be on it whether whether you really do or not I wanted to ask you a little bit too like having a neuroscience background like as far as the brain development and especially with kids being exposed to this so young and how they're going through the process of living with tech now and interacting with it like what what potentially do you see happening as a result of this well what we're already seeing if you if you haven't seen some of the crazy studies is that teenagers today are number one they're safer than they've ever been they're not going out and getting their driver's licenses they're not going out and getting drunk they are not having sex and they are lonelier and more anxiety riddled than ever before and so basically what they've done is the reason why they're safe is because they're staying at home and they're on snapchat and they have replaced their real real world relationships with these relationships through technology and so the problem with that is that you can only get dopamine through your phone what you're missing and that's that's this this endless searching neurochemical where there's no real satiation point you can kind of never get enough and so and it's also the relationships that you form through social media are more surfaced because of that you can have 5,000 friends or 50,000 followers but but can you ask them to help you move how many of those people nobody wants to do that I'm going to try that I'm going to put it out there the next time it would be a great experiment it would be a great experiment you'll I'm moving this weekend who wants to help out crickets my lowest comment did it like to post it I do have a piano that's why I never bought a truck you own a truck you're always the guy that's got to help people move so what you're doing is are you trying to help people create practices are you you're putting together events right that's how it started let's talk about break yeah okay cool so so basically when I realized those two things I I realized that I needed to solve this problem for myself and and then could start helping other people for it so basically small anecdote my favorite thing in the world to do is to read and I have this bookshelf that's that's in my bedroom with like a hundred and fifty books that I bought over the years and airports mostly and I'd only read like five of them for a really long time and I would just sit in bed every night and every morning on my phone feeling my bookshelf looking down at me like yeah that's that sense of shame of basically not doing my favorite thing in the world and so when I challenged myself to put my phone down for an hour a day specifically to read at the end of that year I ended up reading 28 books and that sense of achievement of taking back control of how I spent my time to do my favorite thing was priceless and to regain regain that kind of agency and so and what I know now kind of on like a neuroscience and behavioral perspective is that's what they call a keystone effect where you have one behavioral change that creates a cascade of other positive habits and so my life really opened up after that I felt more confident just in the daily world and then when I was back on my phone I felt more in control of how to spend my time because this app feel good do I really want to be doing this right now it kind of helped me to get more awareness and ask questions of myself and so I started challenging my friends to do the same thing I got 25 friends was like hey put your phone down and do something engaging in the real world for an hour for seven days at the end of those seven days three of my friends ended up deleting their Instagram account this is I don't want this in my life anymore which wasn't even what I was looking for but was kind of an interesting find and then what they also told me was this is really great but I wish I could do this with other people like how can I know you know when someone else is off their phone so we can go and hike together or something and so I started throwing these phone free events it started beginning of last year started off as like dinner parties and game nights basically said let's all turns our turn our phone into a brick and then do something engaging in the real world and now how did you market these were these pay events or were these just friends coming together it was mostly just friends coming together I mean we would probably just split the bill at dinner yeah game nights were free would test a bunch of different things so at this time are you thinking of the grandiose vision are you just kind of really trying to solve your own problem and turn some of your friends in the same direction at that point I knew that I so at that point I created an LLC I had wrapped it around this brand called brick basically turn your phone into a brick which means set your phone down put it in airplane mode or put it into a box basically turning it into a brick and then go do something engaging in the real world and then our job was to make your brick time or your phone free time super fun and easy and social and so we were just trying a bunch of things I mean we're still trying a bunch of things well I would think it would be kind of challenging without utilizing tech I mean how do you orchestrate that right yeah I mean there is a lot of it's a lot of texting and creating events online and getting people to buy tickets and making it look cool and taking photos and using Instagram you know you use a lot of social media to create a company that doesn't use social media so this steps away from you know basically you're still using people with smart phones this isn't like you know abandon your smart phone get a flip phone get one of these dumb phones and that's the movement that we're trying to push towards is like going back in time and just like getting it out of our life this is more of like okay here's how you're going to be able to manage this and we're going to take a break yeah exactly that's exactly what we're pushing we are not saying go get a flip phone we're not saying let's go into the past we want to use technology but we want to use it in a way that makes us feel good and serves us and is a utility now how's the response around this bin has it been growing what do you see so crazy yeah I mean I feel like a year ago everybody was like oh man you're going to have people get off your phones like good luck you're you're it's a great idea man all condescending just like I don't know alright and in the last three months six months we've just continued to go down this path of kind of revelations with the negative effects that the more like the more time you spend on your phone the more likely you are to become depressed I mean all these kind of mental health studies are coming out and similarly you know issues with Facebook and privacy and Cambridge and I feel like it's just been this constant thing and I feel like in a really short amount of time there's been this shifting tide where now people care about getting off their phones digital wellness so at wisdom 2.0 which was this conference I was at till yesterday the keynote speaker was Tristan Harris who was the whistleblower at Google who basically was saying we are making we are the problem we are creating dopamine driven technology that now 2 billion people are using more people that even believe in Christianity are using that's being designed by 50 engineers or 500 engineers that are maximizing our weaknesses instead of maximizing our strengths that it's so I mean there and and then after that I mean the Q&A was like you couldn't not even standing room it was insane people really are interested the reason why I compare this to high processed food so much is because we you know we're trainers right so we talk to people all the time about getting fit and healthy and you know the number one thing or the top few things you should do when you want to get fit and healthy is watch your food intake make sure you eat too many calories watch your macros and get active but we know that it's almost it's almost unfair if you're going to eat highly processed foods to try to eat an appropriate amount they're going to attack your body it's it's you're you're you're fighting an unfair fight you're going to a fight with a knife and you're fighting somebody with a gun or is tech that way is it like oh no problem I'll just use it and self you know regulates not a big deal do you think it's so good at hitting those those dopamine circuits and so good at figuring out what gets you addicted that you have to structure a a plan to moderate your use because if you try to just rely on oh no one does whatever that you're not you're not going to win that battle yeah I really like the way you just put that absolutely yes you need to structure your life and your lifestyle in a way that is what we would call digitally well digital wellness and you know as as to look back you know 50 years ago I just read shoe dog so this is like in the front of my mind but look 50 years ago nobody went out of their house and strapped on running shoes and went on a run running was like unheard of you you just had a more active lifestyle and physical wellness physical fitness was not something that you had to create to put into your life now today you have to everybody has their gym membership everybody has their practice that you know you're running you wake up early you you set the alarm earlier to to do your push ups or go on a run whatever it is you have to structure that into your life for physical fitness which is part of your long term health that's the first pillar of wellness I say so then then then more recently we've had this this movement towards emotional wellness where you have your your mindfulness practices you have your meditation apps with the with the you know head space and calm being the top apps of the year you might have your much less taboo than I feel like it was 10 years ago so you've got your emotional wellness then you have your nutritional wellness where you now have to work hard to eat organic and if you don't you you will eat poorly you specifically are designing your paleo diet or whatever it is so so the fourth pillar of digital wellness is creating a healthy relationship with technology and it's only with all four of those pillars together that you have a wellness lifestyle what I find interesting is that you're getting this increased amount of activity and interest in what you're doing and I think it's because people are starting to recognize it themselves like what's the feedback that you have people coming to you being like yeah dude I'm here because I know that this is causing issues for me yeah there's two responses one is like oh my god this is amazing I need this and the more common one is oh my god this is amazing my girlfriend needs this yeah yeah like true like true true addicts you know but you need to help my friend exactly he's way over the top he's way over the top meanwhile I'm doing it too you know I think we underestimate people's ability to start to self-identify problems sometimes it takes a generation or two well I think we underestimate that because you know there's movements on the internet they're called no-fap movements I don't know you guys we're dudes talk about not masturbating and not watching porn that did that was 100% created because of the easy access to porn that didn't exist when we were kids nobody would have said well I also think it's easy to tell yourself too that you don't have a problem with it when you know somebody who's worse than you are and so because it's so predominant in our in our culture right now that everybody I mean we're now getting the point where we we're giving tickets away right you can't walk you can't walk in text across the street and more that's in soon we'll be like China where we have a texting lane yeah it's getting crazy yeah no it's getting crazy and so I think a lot of people don't think they have a problem because they're not as bad as their friend Susie right where my buddy Justin he's just he can't put it down right so they think like always throwing me out of the bus right so along those lines do you have a story or do you have a time like when you were the worst like do you have like a how would you like what did you streak some days like how what was bad what was like the ultimate well first I definitely think that this is cultural like we are now we all woke up one day as society and realize we are all addicted to our phones and and we now are trying to figure out what to do with it like and it's kind of like there's there's like two great analogies I think one is the organic movement that we kind of we're touching on a little bit and the other one is smoking where if somebody pulls out a cigarette you're more likely to pull out a cigarette and smoke is like social smoking you have these like social cues and so now today because we know smoking kills and it has all these negative health effects you have a smokers lounge where you have to leave the dinner the restaurant the party because second-hand smoke has all these negative consequences to go separate yourself and so yeah I mean I feel it's similar with our phones where if you're being fubbed if someone's using their phones with with you you feel more likely to you're more likely to pick up your phone I've done it I know I have I've been somewhere where I see the people that I'm standing next to they pick it up and I'm like well I always have something I need to do on there right you look at a restaurant any any lunch you know salad bar and you've got two people with each other half of them or more are going to be looking at their phone or at least their phones are going to be sitting on the table yeah it's that's the norm right now and I know I'm not really answering your question because I don't really have yeah I'm curious to what like you know because again I think so many people listening right now don't think they have a problem just like normal addicts that you would meet that have that have a drug addict denial yeah we're in complete denial yeah of that and so you know and and I know Apple came out with their screen time yeah the screen time thing which that just reminds me of like tobacco slapping a warning on the side of the cigarettes they're not really trying to but Budweiser you know yeah anti you know drinking commercials right right they're not really trying to solve the problem that's not like again like there's it needs more than sure awareness is maybe the first step but what what is a lot of time like what what's a lot of time on your phone in the day and what's what point or what are you seeing with these people that are coming to you like how bad is it are you getting the statistics out there yeah so for sure overuse overconsumption is a one specific problem one one like crazy tidbit if you just spend only two hours a day on your phone over the course of the year that's an entire month of your life so if you're spending the average today is up to ten hours of screen time on your phone so if you're on your phone ten hours a day ten hours a day that is uh like it's up to ten hours yeah so if you're on your phone ten hours a day that's five months out of your life over the course of the year if you sleep an average of eight hours four hours a night that's three months oh man I had this carry the two that's three months out of the year right a third of the twelve divided by no four months out of the year so you sleep so you sleep four months of a year if five months are spent on your phone that only leaves three months of each year of your life that you're in the real world so that's just crazy that's a very interesting way to look at it and so you know that the number was and this was back when I read Irresistible two plus years ago Ijin has these stats too in that book uh it was two hours and forty minutes is what the average person was and that was back then and I think yeah it's so much more now which is so crazy because we're talking about two years ago the growth is exponential the amount of use is exponential it's insane I would argue it's probably doubled since then you had mentioned that they brought up some health studies show that people use their phones more or more depressed or more anxious now I like to look at studies I like to read studies but I also like to reverse them at times because sometimes we think one is cause and one is effect but they might be reversed do you think maybe depressed people are just more likely to use their phone or are they finding that the phone that screen time usage is actually contributing to the issue of depression or anxiety yeah that's I think that's a really good question I think about that too I think that probably what's happening is both you have people that uh are susceptible so basically our phones have taken all of the historical vices whether it's drinking or smoking or gambling all of the reasons to to act out in those ways we can now find in our pockets so it has become the easiest way to distract yourself from an uncomfortable feeling to anxiety in an uncomfortable social social situation or if you're just had an argument with your partner and you don't know how to solve it you know you reach out to your phone where otherwise you might have had a drink the phone has become this kind of catch all for all coping mechanisms which once or twice is not bad but if it becomes a habit it becomes maladaptive and you end up never working on the problem and solving it which is addiction addiction is kind of a compulsive a habit that causes a negative effect in your relationships or in your career or in your work and so there's also a lack of quiet time and this is my girlfriend brings us up all the time how important it is to have time where you're not doing anything but just being with yourself and thinking and we never have that and I wonder how big of a role because the big one statistic for me that are a little bit alarming are the rates of anxiety anxiety now I believe is the number one psychiatric issue in America and it's exploded like it literally took off and if you looked at the chart it like matches the usage of these types of devices and I wonder if it's just we're so distracted and so have no time to be quiet that that's amplifying do you wonder if it's also that I mean you brought this up earlier that people also going to therapist and recording and reporting a lot of this stuff too I mean we didn't have 10 years ago it was taboo to go see your therapist where now it's almost cool to have a therapist or to meditate for 20 minutes so are some of these numbers skewed because you've got people that are reporting this that we weren't reporting it before I think the best evidence would be to look at past research on people who watch TV and consumed a lot of news just because it's so new technology is so new we have to kind of look back and I know that for a long time psychiatrist and psychologist somebody came to them that a lot of anxiety a lot of stress one of the first things they would say is stop watching the news don't watch a lot of TV and a lot of people notice relief just from doing that and I know that's exactly the same but but we probably I'm sure during that time we probably went through a lot of this when TV first came out I'm sure we were as a country we were probably freaking out before television I've heard a lot of people reference TV is like we were freaking out about TV but my concern was like I've noticed just the distance between like technology plays a massive factor like just watching my kids how they interact and so you know I've tried to actually move away from any handheld device to you know the TV because it's away from them and they access it but just having them have access to a phone right here and you see just the screen glowing in their face and they're so into this you take it away their behavior is crazy if you take it away well the question then is and this is where you know I Elon Musk thing is I've been tripping on that for fucking the last whatever him and Neuralink and all this stuff right like what you know is this our future though are we going to be just instead of beans you know TV here you know can now we're connected here soon not here it's here and now it's this that's just the natural progression or evolution for us and what we're all freaking out about the way people connect and do things well is it because we're going through this growth phase of this new way of connecting and is that potentially the future that like this is going to be the norm and that's where I think I still think there's going to be people like you I think there's going to be people like us who I think I would choose to be unplugged I really do but I think that for the most part I think the majority especially that are being born into it try telling a I'd be interested to hear from you Tommy like I mean how many 15 year olds do you have you know how many of these I bet your demographic is probably 25 or 8 ish and up yeah 20 to 35 yeah right people who knew what it was like before yeah and so they can appreciate but like a kid like I mean this blew me away we have a we have a 19 year old that works for us and he tells me a story about I'm asking him just I love it I love picking his brain in here and I'm so you know 20 years out from high school right so I like hearing about what's going on in high school with him and what's what's cool it's not cool whatever and he's like yeah house parties aren't really a thing he goes that's it's rare he goes that they happen I'm like wow that's we live for that every Friday night we are you're out at somebody's house you know illegally drinking beer or whatever right so that was the thing and he's like no that rarely ever happens and I go ever and he's like yeah well every once while they are and I'm like why aren't those the funnest times it's whatever and I go then how do you meet girls you know how does that work and he's like oh well if you're at a party and you and there's a house party and imagine 30 40 people and they're doing their thing as high schoolers do and there's a girl across the room that you're attracted to and you know oh she's in my you know third period class or whatever like that and you're attracted to her you don't go over and talk to her the way you what you do is you actually look her up on facebook and you friend request her first and it isn't in there like then you're you're hoping that she opens it up accepts it and then you now have the right or the it's okay for you to message her then you message her if and only if then and she responds would you then go over to interact with her and I just find that fucking crazy but that is normal that's and you would be more weird if you didn't get the permission from her and that she's requested your friend and you just walked over to her touched her on the shoulder said hey I think you're beautiful or start a conversation with her you would be the outcast yeah so how do you break through to that generation that they need to disconnect from this when it is now already and I'm a part of them and that's the part that I wonder of movements like what you're doing and what I what I think we need and what will happen is I wonder if we're just going to divide people in half that some of us are going to agree with you and then the other half are going to say you're crazy this is a part of me yeah well I do think what you're describing with narrow link and having the internet in our eyes is the future and now we're in so in the industrial revolution everybody's lives sucked like they were they were covered with soot and coal and like coughing like lung cancer everybody was suffering that lived during the day was suffering of building all these factories in the revolution today our lives are awesome because we are reaping the rewards of an industrialized nation we are currently in a new digital revolution where the technology in the future with AI and Neuralink type stuff is going to be awesome and we are just suffering the consequences because we haven't built up our ethics and our boundaries with technology to catch up with it yet and that's what you're talking about that's a very interesting way to look at that's cool yeah and that's what you're talking about practices for people and teaching them how to create practice remember I'm not saying don't use your phone I'm not saying live without it I'm saying this stuff is coming let's use it in a way that I use social media I would use dating apps that is a part of life I want to enjoy that and use that I just don't want it to be taking advantage of me what are some of the practices you guys talked about you talked about the one hour phone off, make it a brick, do something engaging are there any other practices? yeah so we have this thing called brick mode auto reply which is an auto reply for iMessage so right now with our always on world one of the reasons why we don't put our phone down one of the reasons why we don't take vacations is because we feel like that feeling of when we come back to our phone we get this notification flood and the guilt of having not responded to someone fast enough or also having missed on something so when you put on this auto reply which is like an out of office which email has had forever it relieves you of that pressure because anybody that reaches out to you knows that you haven't seen it yet you're not ignoring them and that you'll get back to them when you're back on the phone and so that's like five steps it's kind of a hack of do not disturb while driving on our website that's a super great way to just live for a few hours off your phone without any of that kind of subliminal twinge of guilt or friction that makes you not want to do it so you can do that right now there's a way to do that right now? oh wow and you said it's kind of a hack it's a five step I just found this out literally like two days ago a good client friend of mine was messaging me back and forth and I got back to her like two hours later and I got an auto reply that she was driving I was like what? I didn't even know that existed so that has been on phones for a couple years and we're using that technology to change that message so you can set that up manually so it's not just when you're driving it's whenever you don't want to be on your phone what we change that to is hey I'm in brick mode I'm on my phone right now I'm off the grid enjoying life I'll get back to you when I'm back oh very cool and so you then knew oh like she hasn't seen this yet it also we feel like we get upset with people when they don't reply quickly it's kind of this two way street and this always on culture we're in right now and so you know it relieves you I just had this with my two best friends and baseball, baseball is my least favorite sport and I don't like talking politics that often and so I just had an auto reply well no I hadn't responded but it was just in a day's time and it was just funny to see them hey they asked me the next day hey Adam everything okay with you are you alright? and I'm like no I'm just busy doing other things and the topic you guys were addressing I just didn't care to get involved in it just to get involved in it so it's funny how we've created this culture now I didn't expect people to do that the same thing with Katrina I had I was on my way to where was I at? I was on my way somewhere to meet somebody and what ended up happening was I just got caught up talking to them for like two hours and when I interact with somebody like we are right now I get rid of my phone I definitely began to make that practice already and notice a difference when I as soon as I get in a setting like this especially people I don't know very well or I'm meeting them to talk to them in person I put it away and she got really upset at me because I didn't I ended up dragging on for like two and a half hours and as soon as I got out I called her and let her know she's like why didn't you tell me you were going to be that long I said I didn't know I didn't know and then I got to talking and then we got caught up in this deep conversation and it was really it was all positive it was all good I was telling her this and she's like I wish you would just text me and I'm like yeah I just know I wouldn't I don't want to have my phone on me and realize like oh you've been talking for 45 minutes you know let me text my let me text my wife here and just let her know that I'm going to be home for another five hours or whatever it's like come on dude so maybe that brick mode auto reply could have saved you I love that I love that I think that's a great idea are there more practices yeah so you have the daily hour that we preach to collect at least one hour brick time of day we actually have this five step challenge five step digital that is a great kind of one new step a day way to establish a healthier relationship with your phone and technology the first step is to turn on screen time Apple's screen time feature if you don't have it on already and look at your data just to get baseline so just have an awareness of how long you are spending on your phone whatever it is whether it is one hour or ten hours just knowing that kind of sets your bar and then you want to the second half to that is to release the shame you have associated with it to basically realize that our phones are designed to be addictive and they are constantly battling each other for our attention and so it's not a surprise that and the smartest people in the world are doing it by the way to try to get our attention that's why Facebook and Google and Amazon and Apple are literally like the five most profitable businesses in the world they've done a really great job capturing our attention and so it's not your fault that you are now spending a lot of time on your phone so it's turning on screen time getting a sense of your baseline and then releasing the shame that's step one step two is now that it's on looking at which apps on your phone you're using intentionally and which you're using unintentionally so like for instance Google Maps nobody wastes their time on Google Maps you put your destination in the phone and you use it as a utility the moment you're there you shut it off no one's been like no one's wish they spent less time on Google Maps Uber would be another good example there Uber exactly unless you strike up a great conversation with your driver as you lost had a flat there's conversation that was fun and then you have typically social media apps or the apps that have the bottomless feed they're much more likely for you to get lost in you might reach out to your phone to check the weather but then 45 minutes has gone by and you realize that you just watched five videos on YouTube and now you believe in the flat earth theory it happens guys so which apps do you use intentionally versus unintentionally I just gave you a couple clues for like what's typical and then also which apps you're using and then you're feeling worse after using them like Instagram if you go on there and you look at all these beautiful people connected to you with all these awesome filters on it and then now I feel fat and less about myself just common Instagram is a very common one and Instagram can be used very intentionally like if you want to go on to get good information or learn from people but most people don't most of the time people spend on there are not to do that it's the perfect example where it's just a tool like it can be used for good like a lot of people are finding out about brick through Instagram specifically because it's more than anything but then at the same time especially with young people and especially with young women biologically we have a tendency to compare and it's basically comparing fitness back in the day you used to compare yourself to like the hottest girl in your high school and maybe you would see like 17 magazine or something in the supermarket but now you're not just comparing yourself with people in the local the local realm you literally have the entire world of all of the most beautiful people plus the photo shopping element I mean it is the most impossible of impossible standards and in addition to that you're comparing your inner reality to their outer highlight reel and so you actually have no idea how happy they are or if they actually look like that not to mention it completely skews your perspective too like it completely makes you think that that's more common than what it really is I mean you follow if you follow there's only about 10,000 super super fit people on Instagram you know and we're all following the same 10,000 and they're spread out all over the world but because they're in your feet every single day five days a week looks like a norm and I use the analogy to people who don't realize this is go walk into your local gym I used to say this as a trainer when people would be telling me about a magazine like I had to get clients to come in and say oh I want to look like this Adam and then I said are you sure you really want to put the work in discipline to look like that or you just want to be healthier better fit and then I would stand them up and I say look around in my gym and I said find me five bodies that you would like to look like and they couldn't it's like most people in there are working towards getting in better shape and there's a little bit of a self selection bias these are people going to a gym they're going to a real world and you're not going to find we evolved to compare ourselves to the people around us we evolved in tribes and our brain doesn't know that we're not living in tribes anymore and so now you're on Instagram global tribe I use the analogy of how often have you ever seen someone who's seven feet tall in real life I've never in my life have I ever seen anybody who's seven foot tall except for when I went to an NBA game that's the only time so if I've never seen basketball players I would not know that people who are seven feet tall existed it's the same thing with the super small waist big butt fake boob you know whatever people on Instagram didn't one of you guys just post that there's like a one in 88,000 chance of dating a supermodel or something yeah so we have a tendency to compare and that's natural and that's an example where Instagram maximizes our weakness where we're susceptible to that and so that step two is kind of in like a little innocuous way helping you kind of pay more attention to that step three is turn your phone into a brick for an hour a day and do something engaging in the real world we challenge you to choose something that is meaningful to you or something that you love to do and something that you can do everyday so like skydiving is not as good of an example as like going on a hike or watching the sunset or something that's step three step four is moving that brick hour to the morning so the first hour of your day becomes phone free now why is that the most challenging one of my biggest issues I think that I was struggling with was exactly that where first thing you wake up you grab it yeah first thing I wake up I would check my phone in the middle of the night this kind of imagine how much that's fucking your sleep with the blue light even if you don't even respond to the emails just reading that or seeing that your brain can't help but start to grind its gears and you're pretty much guaranteeing to lose an hour of sleep when you do that so that's the worst case scenario but what's predominant and much more common and we now through people that have filled out is brick for you survey on our website we've had like 2000 people do it I think like 70% of people check their phone first thing when they wake up so it's pretty common now and what you're doing is you're coming out of the dream state when you are most suggestible and also you are are basically you know trying to set an intention for your day you know what is your day going to look like if you go straight to a phone that puts you in a very reactionary state where you're suddenly needing to respond to other people's request of you to the emails or the agenda instead of setting your own agenda and also collecting and integrating you know what came up for you overnight you know through your dreams and through the kind of you know wherever we go and so when I moved my brick time to the morning and spent the first 20 minutes meditating and then showering and making coffee and then checking my phone I mean it totally changes changed my day and I mean that I could not recommend Tommy in exercise what you do before you work out priming and if you treat it if you treat it properly you will have a much better work out by priming your body properly to do squats or deadlifts or whatever it only makes perfect sense that you're going to come out of an extremely parasympathetic state where you're basically unconscious recover recuperating and then you wake up and the first thing you do is prime your brain for the short dopamine hits all this input that's only going to make it much worse later on so what you're saying makes absolute perfect sense that priming your brain first thing in the morning with your phone is probably not a good idea I love that I'm going to use that of priming your brain for how you want to spend your day exactly that's really cool hopefully it sells more tickets for you I got you what's the next what's the next one then step five is whenever you are with other people that should be brick time so we argue that phone time should be solo time because the moment you're on your phone and you're with other people you're not really with them you're in Instagram land or you're in email land and there's also studies about it that show that having your phone on you or visible makes for less meaningful connections less meaningful it's called the iPhone effect which is similar to another study that shows that just having your phone on you actually reduces your IQ by 10 points I think just the kind of baseline distractibility that you have that I've personally noticed which I feel like I totally agree with you where you were saying like my phone's not on me it allows me to be more present and be engaged and not kind of wonder like oh what time is it or feel the vibration in your pocket yeah well I'm even worse than that I don't even need my phone is on do not disturb all day every day and I still check my phone constantly I don't need any external stimulus anymore it's I've been programmed you know my own internal programming and dopamine drivers are well I also find too like just the critical thinking aspect like being away from it it's like I feel like that part of my brain somehow gets like atrophy because I'm so it's so accessible all the time like I have Google answer everything for me all time and for me to sit back into you know really analyze what somebody has told me or you know how I'm gonna deal with the situation like I need that time to process you know for people hearing what Justin's saying right now and who are thinking oh that's not really what's here's your example right now think of five people that you talk to on a regular basis and tell me their phone numbers you can't you don't remember anybody's phone number anymore now when we were kids I could tell you foot my aunts phone numbers all my aunts phone I still tell you phone my child but I can tell you the people that are five closest to me now right because we've we've basically you know outsourced that to our technology and what Justin's talking about is starting to happen we're outsourcing all of this critical thinking and abstract thought and whatever to our phones I think the last that last step that you said when you're with people that you don't have your phone on you or you make it a break I personally I think that's the most impactful one that I that I think would be the most impactful I haven't tried any of these steps yet but I feel like that's the most impactful one like when you're with people just up that's it off the phone turn it off and then just be with those people have you have you have you started to create any sort of like parameters or even like a graph to give people like I'm curious right now like man I wonder if I started to do putting my phone on brick every time that I put it down and put it away from me I have no idea what it would amount to in a day so do you have like these like what's really bad and what's really good and where everybody kind of is and what we should strive to be do you have any parameters like that well we are developing an app that will allow you to track your brick time and kind of gamify it so you can see how much brick you know if you're collecting your daily streak of at least an hour a day how many days in a row you have at least very smart so you build a house or a wall with your bricks or something yeah brick road yeah path to a new path to follow the yellow brick road yeah that's like what our billboard could be it's a bunch of phones on the ground brilliant oh my god that so where you can track your phone time did you did you collect more phone free time this week versus last week I think that it's similar to like physical fitness apps like you know or you know if you're familiar or where even just the 10,000 steps I think that you know there might be aspects of a leaderboard or an ability to see how you're doing versus your friends and kind of an aspect of positive reinforcement through peer pressure so that's something that we're working on yeah ever feel conflicted developing an app that has like the open loop theory and trying to attract people to utilize it while you're also like do you feel conflicted a little bit I don't feel conflicted at all I feel like it's it's kind of like me part of what I'm trying to preach where we're not saying the phones are bad we're not saying that apps are bad we're saying that technology we're using the same techniques that are currently being used against us yeah with the endless scroll with the red notifications that boost the dopamine response we're using the same competitive and social drivers for habits but for positive habit change to get you to spend more time in the world look at it look look technology is a tool it's no different than if I put a hammer on the table and I said is that a good or is this hammer good or bad well if I swing it at you and hit in your head then it can be bad if I use it to build something then it's good technology is is incredible it's an incredibly powerful tool it's all in how we wield it and I like the term that you use what do you call it digital wellness yeah I think that's absolutely brilliant because I think you're right I think it's something that we're going to have to wrap our arms around and really start to manage and develop practices around because it didn't exist yeah 20 or 30 years ago we didn't have to have practices around technology like we are going to have to have today so walk me through what this would look like if I mean we've got people that are listening right now that are you know you have one half that are probably denial you know the other half they're like okay I need this in my life or one half wants it for their girlfriend yeah yeah yes yes yes exactly right so for the girlfriends out there right what are the steps that you that you would tell someone to do to get involved in what you're doing I mean the easiest thing is just to sign up and join the crew on our website so if I join the crew what does that mean I'm part of the click then you then you get the brick challenge so you get an email that says hey you know it's kind of explaining our mission this is what we're about this is what it means to turn your phone into a brick we challenge you to turn your phone into a brick each day and then if you're in LA you'll get our invites to come to our phone free events so we yeah I guess I didn't really talk about this that much but so beginning of last year we started throwing dinner parties and game nights and then it kind of grew into takeovers of big venues typically with a focus of wellness so we took over this huge co-working spaces movie theater in Hollywood and did a holotropic breath work experience phone free we took over a meditation studio a week before it opened and had 70 members come in and do a free meditation class and then they were able to you know get a discount on the membership and so and then this year we're doing quarterly retreats so phone free weekend getaways typically for people who are super successful at social media but have then felt this obligation to be on it all the time and keep up with the algorithms we provide a structure for them all to get together and connect reconnect with themselves and others more meaningfully in the real world in the natural world off their phones and so our weekends are like fully programmed wellness weekends with like yoga and meditation and hikes by wilderness survival experts and we've got like impossible meets is going to do a meatless taco night which I don't know if they've done before and so so we bring health and wellness brands to the table as well to say hey we have this influential young demographic of people who care about getting off their phones and who are very rarely fully present this is an opportunity for you to engage as an athleisure brand or as an outdoors brand with these people that that are interested in this and you're saying the response has been growing pretty when I talked to you on the phone before we did the podcast you're saying how it's kind of this exponential response yeah it's crazy I mean we that's I think what I was saying in the last three months I feel like people really have started to care about finding the structure for phone life balance for themselves you're gonna have to you're gonna I know we were comparing it to TV earlier but here's the difference TV can't carry TV's like caffeine TVs like caffeine tech is like crystal meth I mean they're both stimulants and they're both kind of addictive but TV had limited bandwidth you know you had one or two in the house maybe three max wasn't in your pocket it was very limited what you could look at what you couldn't look at it couldn't change instantly like if I'm watching a TV channel I have to kind of watch commercials and change a few chat with with tech it's like boom boom boom boom and it's very fast very fast feedback and it's personalized to you you are seeing specifically what the smartest algorithms in the world know you will respond which will make you most aroused I think and look I see this with my kids I have to develop a structure with my kids around food and activity okay that's not there's nothing crazy about that a lot of people do that but I also have to put a structure around tech with them to teach them skills to manage their relationship with technology because if I just let it be no different than having just all the candy and processed food and shitty food in the house available to the kids and allowing them to govern themselves they would never develop the skills they just can't the human body did never evolve in an environment this way it's just not fair and I feel like if you count on your because I've done this I'm a very I can serve myself very self-aware right all of us were all fitness guys and so we're all like okay we're very self-aware and I've tried to self-regulate with technology without practices doesn't work yeah I've had to develop like I'm like one rule in my house now that I've started to do is the only time I can look at my phone my phone has to be plugged in and so it's in one central area and so if I want to check it I got to walk over and if I didn't do that one practice right there that one practice has helped me significantly but you have I think you have to start you're gonna have to start to create these practices and it's a growing market we're seeing it now with you're doing these retreats but we see it in like obstacle course racing and all you know all these other kind of getaways and stuff that popular before I think people are starting to feel it oh that's a that's a great one to talk about is OCR is because it's just like it's exactly like that who would ever thought that people would pay tons of money to go beat themselves up and climb a climb under bob wire fences in the mud and do all this bloody and money but we you know there is this we all have this in us like it's this you know animal instinct to want to feel to want to do these things and we've been so plugged into the tech that there's opened up an opportunity for somebody to create to create Spartan in this massive movement and it's continuing to grow because we need it yeah and we're all I mean all we want is connection that's why we reach out to our phones to social media we're trying to see if we got a new like or a new follower where that's that's what is driving us towards it the problem is is that those aren't meaningful connections and so we are we are so lacking in these meaningful connections in this sense of like tribalism you know we are we are we have evolved to to live in in working groups and create human bonds and so that is why things like this are starting to exist and why people are responding so well to these phone free experiences because we we don't do anything in the real world unless there's a structure for it now nobody just goes out to play right like kids don't just like go throw a ball anymore you don't go walk to your house three doors and knock on his door need to specifically structure it into your life yeah you have play dates you know when I hate that term you have to you have to schedule play dates the thing that worries me most is and again I keep going back to to to the way people eat and that's just because that's the the field that I've worked in for so long but I know when people eat hyper palatable high sugar salt fat type foods that are processed after a while actually your brain becomes wired towards those things so then when you go eat a strawberry it tastes bland you eat food that's natural it just doesn't taste good because you've been your brain is now being conditioned and what I noticed when you go off those those other foods first for a long time then you go back and eat a strawberry and all of a sudden taste delicious again my fear with tech is that we're our brains are getting wired to respond to these quick dopamine hits so much that there's gonna be a serious withdrawal like you unplug and shit's not gonna be normal boring it's gonna be depressing boring it's gonna be like quiet and what do I do now and that's my fear the kids like when you say that that's why I brought up the point about this the generation that's is it too late you know did they have they already made it such a part of their life for so many years that you try and pulled away from them and they're gonna spiral out of control ask any parent I guarantee Justin will agree with me when my kids are on their their phones or on their computers and they've been on for an hour or two hours straight and I take them off takes them about an hour to get back to normal yeah yeah I mean we all suffer I mean the withdrawal is real and and that's that's what our retreats I think tackle so well that people come out of them they go through the withdrawal however long that lasts a couple hours they're not kids so maybe it's different but I don't really think it is I think we're all in it would be interesting to see if you're attracting the people that really needed or more people like your like yourself or like ourselves I need it I'm doing this because I need it I need it more than anybody you didn't tell me how bad you got I wanted to hear a fucking bender don't be don't be shy if you went on a fucking nine day cocaine bender never came out of your room type of deal did you ever I mean when did you really tell yourself like holy shit this is a major problem did you have a moment where I mean are there kids right now that don't leave their room for two days straight like does that exist absolutely yeah does yeah I noticed with myself it was I've been working out consistently since I was 14 and my workouts have always been my place of solace you know meditation if you will I'm alone I'm in my zone and I noticed the problem when it completely infiltrated my workouts in between sets I was on my phone and taking selfies and I unplugged I mean you would too you know I unplugged from my workouts and I got back to my old like feeling from them and I was like holy shit man it it totally if it infiltrated something that I've always respected and valued and loved gosh it's got to be like that with everyone I tell people now when I coach them like turn off your tech when you work out listen to music but don't go on your way well I'm all for the you know that I did response for driving because I noticed and and I've always pride myself as a really good driver and you know very aware and like you know present in my driving and I've just noticed over the years like just like I'm so distracted so constantly distracted and I didn't really attribute it to my phone I just knew that I listen to podcasts I commute every day here to work for like an hour or so a day and I just realized and it's funny because I got in a fight with with my wife about this a bit because she started so you're starting to drive like an old man like you're swerving like you're off the road a little bit and like I was just getting mad about it I'm like no I'm a good driver like I don't get in accidents like that but I'm realizing like I I am my mind is in other places but I'm constantly like looking down where my phone is and like I got text messages hit me you know things are just always on and I I'm gonna start implementing that practice I'm convinced it's it's from that let me know how it goes what kind of feedback are you getting from people who are attending your events applying you know your steps and practices there's one guy who said that he can never remember anybody's name and he's just something he's had a problem with since he could remember and he came out of that retreat remembering 52 other people's names and he didn't even try and he was so surprised at himself he was like giddy that he effortlessly remembered everybody else's name and it was because he was just fully present he was engaged and he was connecting with these new people that everybody was basically a stranger when they when at the beginning of the weekend and came out of it like best friends it was so crazy but people are saying that that they felt like they were more themselves than they had ever been at least in recent memory so it's super cool do you do you from from a you know neuroscience background what are some of the fears that you have surrounding this we talked about dopamine but you know with your background and with the way people are using this tech are there any fears from that perspective yeah I mean we are to use the food analogy we are eating donuts breakfast lunch and dinner constantly getting we are constantly feeding that dopamine response through our phones and it creates this this low-grade distract ability and the need for a fix that's why people that's why I would wake up in the middle of the night for no reason except to check nothing nothing it's no reason how many times do you do you reach for your phone when you just put your phone back in your pocket there's no like we are doing these things out of habit and so that's that I don't want to say that we're all addicted but those are addiction like you know those are habits that are not serving us and so the goal is to and this is I feel like the conversation to have with kids where don't lock up the cookie jar and set it aside because the moment you get the cookie jar you then like want to want to binge it it's really more having the donut but having it only for dessert being able to structure it so you have your your maybe I shouldn't use that analogy at the same time those are kind of two different points well now or your workout you could use it like that where it's like you've you've earned that time for you to utilize this tool and so you're learning to integrate it within your life is what you're saying yeah we're not saying yeah exactly we're not saying don't do it just don't have it right when you wake up or don't have it constantly throughout the day I mean it is the unstimulated mind that is the most creative mind that allows you to integrate and the irony is to that you you'll find yourself way more productive on these apps that you quote-unquote feel you need or you have to do and I'll use an example like Instagram because that is an app that we use a lot because we're on that platform and we've recently grown to the point where it's now impossible for me to respond everybody like we just there's too many DMs and emails every single day that even if I stay on all day long I just can't I can't get to all of them so but one of the things that we all pride ourselves on is our engagement with our audience and trying to respond as many questions as possible and so you know what do I do it's gotten so overwhelming and so there's always right now there's just messages coming in so how do I handle this when I actually follow this structure and I'm not a hundred percent on this there's days I do and there's many days I don't where I tell myself okay I'm gonna lock myself 30 minutes sometime in the morning so sometime before 10 or 11 a.m. where I'm going to sit down and for straight 30 minutes I'm gonna answer as many questions as I can get through and then I'll do it at the end of my day one time the irony is I actually get way more of the work actually done I respond to more people than if I allow myself to just check it all frequently all day long and try and respond to a few, respond to a few I actually get more work done in the smaller amount of time because it's very focused on what I need to do and get out of there versus getting caught up you know scrolling up and down and checking somebody else's Instagram and what they're doing or a distracted booty pic or whatever that makes me hang a left you know and then I go down the rabbit hole so there is something to be said about you know people are probably some people might be freaking out oh god I got to put my phone down and I can't be on it that I won't be able to do this you know I know there's people like us who use these tools for their business social media business your emails your website all these things well I've found personally that when I structure it and I follow the structure that I've laid out for myself I actually get a lot more fucking done and then then allowing myself to use it all day long anyway yeah you're just using it you're using it more intentionally you're creating a specific intention a purpose for using your phone and you don't stray from it if you grab your phone without an intention it's much easier to find yourself using it unintentionally and you're also kind of doing what you know the Pomodoro method where you do a specific task for 25 minutes and then you give yourself a short break and so that is a really nice way for like focus and productivity so you're like okay for 25 minutes you can do anything so I'm just going to do this one thing and then give myself a treat a reward of a break after it interesting now you were talking about the app how long until that's ready for use we're going to do our first beta test for a small number of people hopefully in about a month and we are also developing a physical product that I'm excited to share more about but basically it is a physical box that will allow you to collect your brick time and kind of has the central concept that out of sight, out of mind is one of the key components to actually doing the phone free behavior now how the hell do you make money I mean you have a neuroscience background you come from Duke University I'm sure there's plenty of jobs that you could have done that pay you very well I can't imagine this being very profitable to build how the fuck are you supporting yourself I'm not yet sorry did you come here in like a minivan and you're living in the back of it right now yeah I'm basically just been living on my savings from my last job and got a little lucky and bought some cryptocurrency kind of early and I've kind of just been building the business off of that the 2018 was community building and kind of testing the value proposition and the message which we I now have a lot of confidence in 2019 is going to be making more revenue so that I can survive well I think yeah a lot of ways we're testing right now for that so I think you're tapping into a movement that's already building and happening yeah if you don't do it someone else will it's my personal opinion yeah no and so separately from brick the reason why I was at wisdom 2.0 is because I'm involved in this group called the digital wellness collective so it's 90 other people like me who have devoted their careers to digital wellness to solving this problem whether it's with apps that block you from from social media or it's therapists or researchers or authors that are writing about this all working together as a membership based organization to support each other with like peer mentorship and events to then make this a true bona fide industry and raise the whole tide so we had a booth there and you know that's that's the grass roots organization that is trying to support and give a voice to all these people like me I think the smartest thing you did was calling it wellness have you gone yet to like health and wellness conventions that are not tech that are just about health and wellness because if you haven't that's probably a great place for you guys to go this was the first conference I've ever been to for this stuff I've kind of been building in the dark a little bit I almost like didn't even go it was like on Thursday that I was like okay everyone else in the leadership team is going I have to go but yeah I would love recommendations on I could see the wellness sphere I mean we're talking to you about it I could see the wellness sphere really adopting this as part of you know their mantra which includes the ones that you listed which I thought was also brilliant you talked about food exercise activity and now digital wellness I think that's a very smart strategy you've been centralized around the LA area or have you gotten a good response you know throughout the country so I'm based in LA and I'm trying to I feel like LA is the perfect city for it everyone's so image focused and has their dream they're trying to you know they're all trying to become successful on Instagram and so I think it's the perfect place to help people find a balance I want to make it work there first it's also just where I have the strongest network we have thrown events in New York in San Francisco but what it will probably be as we expand specifically for BRIC is like an ambassador program where anybody can throw a BRIC event anybody can put together a phone free experience invite their friends whatever it is whether we are going to go to a concert or going to have a game night or something and everybody knows and opts in to hey we're not going to be on our phones during this time let's just like have a fucking good time well good deal man I mean wish you all the luck in the world I think you are grabbing on to a trend that's growing so I think if you do everything right you guys are going to do very well it really feels like it really enjoying it too wouldn't want to be doing anything else awesome man well thanks for coming on the show brother thank you so much thank you for listening to Mind Pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy for overall performance check out our discounted rgbsuperbundle at mindpumpmedia.com the rgbsuperbundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise 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