the true cost of being on your phone too much

Summary

social media is the new cigarettes. back then everyone smoked and nobody asked questions. then the alarm bells went off and people kept smoking anyway. that’s exactly where we are with phones now. some will quit. most won’t.

1. the screen time math gets quoted a lot. if you got 3 hours back per day you could get a pilot’s license, start a business, learn a language. true, but misleading. those 3 hours come in 5 minute increments all day. you don’t actually get a 3 hour block back. so that’s not even the real problem.

2. the real problem for a business owner is sparks. a spark is the small idea that comes when your mind has room. Saturday morning over coffee, you think “I should go do that workout I keep skipping.” that’s a spark. if your brain is constantly fed by a feed, the sparks stop.

3. these aren’t shiny objects. don’t act on every YouTube video like it’s a breakthrough. a spark is a small idea you sit with and then act on with discipline. the sparks are what move a business. lose them and you stall.

4. be a producer, not a consumer. the only reason an entrepreneur should be on social is to produce. once you cross into consumption, you’ve lost the leverage.

5. tactically, I use Opal. strict schedules. the second I sign off work, I can’t access email, Slack, or any social app. only nav, text, and call. mornings and evenings are family time, fully locked. paid tier with the deep setting so I can’t override. weekends start Friday 5pm, can’t get back in until Monday.

I’m also looking at a phone like the Wyze that only texts, calls, navigates, and takes pictures. for now, locking myself out works. set a screen time goal and use the app. quit making excuses. try harder.

Transcript

the new cigarettes

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. What’s the true cost of you being on your phone too much or scrolling social media too much? What is the true cost? Do you know? This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. And a few weeks ago, I published my closing remarks from the PT Biz live event.

And in those closing remarks, I do mention the use of social media and how I think it’s not the best for you. And I think we all know that we’re all aware of it. In my book, Killing Comfort, I framed it as the new version of smoking, right? Back in the day, cigarettes were just cool. Everybody did it.

Nobody really asked any questions about it. It was just something that was done. Then over time, it was like, hey, everyone’s doing it. But some people are saying this is bad. We’re in that stage right now where the alarm bells have been sounded, but we’re still all just doing it. That’s where we’re at with social media right now.

And are we going to listen and do something about it? Are you going to do something about it? Are we just going to keep going and just, hey, let’s see where this social experiment goes. You have to make that choice on an individual level. Nobody’s going to do it for you. They’re not going to ban social media anytime soon, if ever.

So you need to take this upon yourself. And I need to as well, especially if you have children. I have three kids I’m thinking about when I’m talking about stuff like this. But I want to talk about what I think the real issue is, especially if you’re a business owner, with being on social media or just on your phone.

On your phone. So if you’re like, hey, I don’t use social media. How much do you use your phone in a day? Let’s just go to phone usage because there are a lot of different ways to waste time on your phone. Now, we could dive into mental health and some of the study and research around the adolescent brain and young minds and how social media is leading to more anxiety, depression and suicide.

screen time isn’t the real cost

We could talk about that, but that’s not my strong suit. I don’t know enough about that to talk to you about it. But you could look at the research. It’s painting a pretty clear picture. Now, we could also talk about, hey, if we added up all your time, all your screen time, you could go do these amazing things.

You could get a private pilot’s license. You could start a business. You could do all these things if you were given that time back. But it doesn’t really feel that way, because maybe to get a private pilot’s license, you would need three dedicated hours per day and not three hours worth of five minutes here, 10 minutes there, 15 minutes there, because that’s how real screen time usage is added up throughout the day with the phone, right?

It’s five minutes here, 10 minutes there, 15 minutes there, seven minutes here, 11 minutes there, all throughout the day. That equals that three hours. So you don’t actually have this gigantic three-hour time block just sitting in the day. So it is a bit misleading when you look at screen time. Three hours is three hours, five hours is five hours, wherever your number is on screen time.

So you need to pay attention to those things. But that’s not really what I’m worried about either for the business owner. What I’m worried about and what I’ve noticed with myself is if I’m on my phone too much or if I use social media too much, I don’t notice as many sparks in my life or in my mind.

So what’s a spark is the idea we all have. It’s when you’re sitting there Saturday morning and maybe instead of looking at your phone, you’re just sitting there having a cup of coffee and you think, hey, I should go do that workout that I wanted to do today. That’s a spark. Now it takes, you need the willpower and the discipline to go do that thing.

But that’s what a spark is and they’re small, but they happen all the time. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you might be using your phone too much or social media because the more busy we keep our minds, the fewer sparks you will have. So try to free your mind, be less busy and you’ll see more sparks.

Now these kind of sparks for a business owner pop up all the time. Don’t confuse it with shiny object syndrome where you’re just going from one new thing to the next new thing to the next new thing. Every podcast episode you listen to is a breakthrough that you have to act on and every YouTube video you watch is something that just has to be implemented right away.

You still need enough time on task for anything to pop up. The podcast episode can have a lot of value and tactics that you can implement, but you need to make sure you implement all the way before you go implement other things. So as a business owner, we have sparks, we have ideas that pop up. Things that if we were to just sit down and think about, if we were like, hey, how do I fix my lead generation problem and I just sat here for an hour and thought about that, more sparks would start to pop up.

what a spark is

I would have ideas. Things would start moving in that direction. Some people have called this kind of idea like the law of attraction, but the law of attraction gets really woo really fast and I’m not talking about the law of attraction. I’m talking about a very logical train of thought. So if I’m sitting around thinking all the time, how do I get more leads?

How do I get more leads? How do I get more leads? And I’m asking other people, how do I get more leads? How do I get more leads? And that’s all I’m doing. Your brain is working on that consciously, subconsciously. So you start to get pushed in directions that have your brain thinking about that. You start to consume content that’s around that.

You want to read books related to that. You want to have conversations about it, then eventually you’ll have breakthroughs, you’ll have ideas. And so that’s what people call the law of attraction and it’s more from like this woo standpoint, but to me it’s just logical. If I want to be a real estate investor and I’m talking to people who are real estate investors, I’m reading a book on real estate investing, I’m asking realtors for what deals they have in there, I’m joining investing clubs, no crap at some point I will be a real estate investor.

And that’s what these sparks are. But we don’t allow sparks to happen when we fill all of our time being busy, when we fill all of our time scrolling or checking whatever favorite app you have. You can check your screen time and see how much time you’re wasting every day, but again I don’t care necessarily about the time.

Maybe you’re okay with your screen time, but what you might be doing is killing all the sparks that are, hey go do that workout right now, hey let’s read this book right now, hey let’s dive into this next thing right now. It kills the spark because if I have that spark to, hey I’m going to go exercise right now and it’s that one little spark, that one little tiny bit of motivation I needed and then I go do it, now that’s where it gets harder, right?

Now I need that full hour to accomplish that task, I need that willpower, that discipline. But when the sparks stop popping up at all, that’s a scary world I don’t ever want to live in. So how can we work around this, like I said I have had this conversation with more than a few people now, employees and clients, asking what I do, what do I do about my screen time and what do I do with my kids?

So I’m going to tell you real quick exactly what my strategy is and maybe some things that you can implement. I’ve been pretty good for a while about not using screens, not being on my phone too much, but that kind of tilted, like I started using it a little bit too much and some of that was this year because I was trying to get into Instagram a little bit more and I noticed that screen time was going up and I honestly felt like I wasn’t thinking as clearly.

As someone who had been incredibly disciplined on just being able to focus and have time on task and do all those things, my screen time went way up because I was actually trying to grow an Instagram following and I honestly felt like my brain was fuzzier. This is just my own personal experience. So I immediately, once I noticed that, I was like I got to put locks on this, I can still try and grow this account, I can still do these things, but I have to do it within rules and parameters.

producer not consumer

And so what I’ve done is I installed an app called Opal. I have no affiliation with these brands, I’ve tried Freedom.2, that one was pretty good as well, but Opal does seem to be the best. So it’s O-P-A-L if you want to give it a try. And I just set very strict guidelines about when I can use stuff and when I can’t.

So the second I sign off for work, it’s a scheduled session, I basically can’t, I can use almost no apps on my phone after work is over. I can use like navigation, text messaging, and calling. That’s about it. Everything else I’ve locked out. I can’t get into email, I can’t get into Slack, I can’t get into any social media accounts after work through the evening.

And then same until that next morning, I can’t get into anything until that next morning. I only allow myself to use my phone at its full potential during my work hours. Because the only time I should ever be using social media for me as an entrepreneur is when I’m trying to grow the business, not when I just want to see what other people are doing.

You have to get away from that consumer behavior, you have to be a producer. What am I producing on social media is very different to what am I consuming on social media. So I use that app, I set very strict guidelines around I can’t check it in the morning, I can only do things during work, and I’m really disciplined when I’m at work.

So I don’t have any fear about me being on my phone too much during work because it’ll just sit on my desk, I won’t even look at it unless I’m specifically working on a task that I planned for that day. Now my evenings and mornings are completely dedicated to my family. Can’t even check those things.

They have a setting on there called this deep setting where if you click that, there’s no getting past it. You can’t be like, no, it’s an Instagram emergency, I have to log in, ignore, nothing. They have that on there. If you don’t do the paid plan, you can skip or take a 15 minute break. I don’t recommend that.

Go to pay for the subscription, do the deep version, and then you can’t even get into these apps or your phone. So very tactical for you. That’s exactly what I do. A lot of people have been asking. That’s what I do. I use that app. I have been using it for most of this year in different levels of severity.

opal and the locked phone

Like the weekend now, it just cuts off at 5 a.m. and I can’t use my phone again until Monday when work starts. Like any of those apps. Again, I lock myself out of Slack, email, everything. Social media apps, everything. I can only use it as a phone. Now another thing Emily and I have considered doing is getting something called the Wyze phone.

I’m mentioning some brands here, but I don’t have any affiliation with these companies. And all this phone actually does is like text, call, nav, and take pictures. That’s it. That’s all this thing can do. So we’re considering getting phones like that, but then I run into these issues of, okay, if I’m on a business trip and I need to get an Uber, how am I going to get an Uber if I have this kind of phone?

So there are other alternatives that you can look into, but the one I’ve found the best other than getting basically a dumb phone, which I’ve almost done several times, is just to lock yourself out. And isn’t that sad? Isn’t that sad? That’s where we are as a society. But I feel like what we’re dealing with in social media, our brains are not equipped to handle.

Our brains are not equipped to handle these devices. They are very addictive and you can spend too much time on there. And the only thing I really care about, like I said, it’s not the waste of time, mental health. Those things are important. But if you feel like you’re good in those regards, which I feel like I’m okay in those regards, then the only thing I’m worried about losing is my mind, not being able to focus as clearly, think as deeply, or to not get any more sparks about what the next idea is or a slight bit of motivation that can get me on to the next thing.

That’s what I’m looking for. And that’s why I’m protecting my kids very heavily from these things as well. So I could do a whole another podcast about that, but my kids are very limited on those things and I have to protect their brains as much as I’m trying to protect my own. So we have really strict rules around those things, but I’m going to end this podcast right here.

I know this is a lot to do. I know you’re going to probably feel like everyone feels slightly attacked, but we’re all using our phones too much at the end of the day. So I say go to your phone. If you’re using an iPhone, I don’t know anything about Android, go to settings, go to screen time, see what your average has been for the last week, whatever, however far you can go back and set a goal for reduction and use the app I mentioned.

You can try some other ones out as well, but if you’re using your phone five hours a day, can you get it down to four? Can you get down to three? Because let’s be realistic. I’m not trying to have zero minutes on my phone, but I’m trying to be in a very realistic usage of my phone. I want very realistic usage of my phone, meaning like it’s for text, it’s for calling, it’s for…

There’s always a purpose and there’s not just me filling time and avoiding or killing sparks that could otherwise move me forward. So I challenge you to set your goal and do that. Quit making excuses about why you think you should be on your phone and just try a little bit harder.