right now there’s a fierce battle for
the most important resource that you and
I will ever have but I’d like to start
us on a lighter note and with that I’d
like to ask you to please indulge me in
an experiment would you please raise
your hand if you checked your phone or
would you please raise your hand if you
check your phone or tablet within five
minutes of waking up this morning
interesting what I’m about to tell you
today applies to most connected devices
but the reason I was asking about your
phone specifically it because I believe
they are the worst culprit I believe
that we’ve created a digital leash to
something that is always by our side and
always connected in fact we touch our
phones more than 2600 times a day and I
caught myself doing that a lot I feel
compelled to touch it to check email to
see if anyone’s liked that photo that I
posted or commented on that clever thing
that I wrote this morning and it’s kind
of ironic that I’m telling you about
this because I’ve spent the last 10
years as a digital marketer but I also
noticed that it didn’t feel right I
noticed that it was starting to affect
my ability to stay focused and to keep
working on things that are meaningful to
me that we’re even even this talk I
found that it was starting to affect my
ability to spend quality time with my
two-year-old daughter and at times it
was even starting to make me feel
unhappy and it turns out that I’m not
alone some of you might have felt the
same way at some point in time as that
most of the entrepreneurs friends and
parents that I talk to and I was curious
why that is and here’s what I found when
you get a like a notification a text or
if you unlock on your level of candy
crush your brain releases a burst of
neurotransmitters
these are oxytocin dopamine and
serotonin these are chemicals that make
you feel love happiness and joy they
also make you feel motivated to want
more of those types of feelings so what
happens is that you unlock a new level
of candy crush you get a hit you post a
photo and someone likes it you get a hit
you check your email before you go to
bed you hit and every one of those
interactions especially if it’s coupled
with a unlocking of some kind of new
content or if there’s some kind of a
recognition of your existence like for
example if you get a text message from
someone you get rewarded by a burst of
those neurotransmitters and a tiny
fountain of joy fills your brain and as
this continues to happen as this
continues to happen interaction reward
interaction reward a compulsion loop is
created and this is why people can’t
stop using their phones while they’re
driving or at the gym or at the dinner
table it’s the same kind of behavior
I’m gonna assume some of you just felt a
now what’s kind of interesting about
this there is that there are also side
effects to this so what happens is that
once your brain gets used to that level
of stimulation and that level of
neurotransmitters if the stimuli ever
drops it actually starts exhibiting the
symptoms of withdrawal
so you actually start feeling anxiety in
some cases depression there’s even a
name for this it’s called nomophobia
which is a new term for people that
experience a fear of being without their
phone and it was starting to happen to
me but I don’t want to feel that way
there are much more important things in
this world and to keep checking social
media feeds for likes and to keep
salivating for that next notification
and so my way to break that digital
leash was to go analog I just heard
another date was to go analog and so
what I ended up doing is I did a lot of
research and a lot of reading and I
looked at the different habits and
practices and mindfulness porn you know
there was the article that say these are
five ways they can be more mindful and I
tried a lot of different things and I
failed a lot of things that I finally
settled on three simple practices that
have really made a big difference in my
life and those are dedicate connect and
create one of the things that I deeply
believe in and this is what I’ve come to
find in all of the work that I’ve done
is that your job doesn’t define you but
your work does and so dedicate is a
practice of setting aside time to do
things that are important and meaningful
to you and what I do is a write and i
podcast and I interview people about
meaningful work and I share my own
experiences and my own journey and I do
this as a passion project so I still
have my business and I still have my
clients but this is something I take the
time out to do because it’s really
important to me and I started with
two-hour time blocks and I like two
hours because it has a star
as an end in two hours is enough time to
really dig in to something and really
get focused and do some work and
sometimes you know you get really into
the flow of things and six or eight
hours will go by and you’ll completely
lose a sense of time I’ve done that many
times I’ll forget to go to the bathroom
I’ll forget to go to eat granted it’s a
little bit harder now with the
two-year-old running around at home and
it was after one of those marathon
sessions where I ended up writing an
article about people doing meaningful
work later on in life and then a week
later I got this email so I’ve read this
a couple of times and I’m gonna try not
to oh my trike hold it together here so
here’s the email that I got thank you
for the second-act
article for the last two weeks have been
trying to find the time to connect with
my boss and let him know that I will be
leaving my current full-time position my
intention is to create my own company
and still represent my current boss as I
was reading your article today and
identifying with everything he popped
his head into my office and asked me to
join him for lunch so now the
opportunity to speak with him as
presented itself I’ve read your article
twice so far and will read it one more
time before leaving for lunch I’m 54 so
I have maybe 30 more years left to make
my mark and leave my legacy I want to
spend time working on things that really
matter to me and your article arrived in
my life at the perfect time so this
wouldn’t have happened had I not set the
time aside to research to write and to
publish that article time that could
have been spent scrolling through
screens like I’ve done many many times
before and so for you it might not be
writing articles but it could be
something else that has taken a backseat
because you don’t have enough time the
next practice that I found that really
made a big impact for me was Kinect last
year I interviewed this amazing young
entrepreneur Kylee toll she has spent
the last four years building an
organization that helps women transition
careers into technology and
entrepreneurship
he’s had coding workshops and networking
events and late last year she ran her
first big event it was called the geeky
summit she had hundreds of attendees
dozens of volunteers they were
international speakers from Amazon
Google and IBM and some attendees were
as young as 8 and 11 and that was really
really awesome so when I interviewed her
I asked her how did you get to here how
did you build this community and she
said I built my tribe one one-on-one
conversation at a time and this is a
practice that I also adopted so if
there’s somebody that I want to connect
with or if I go to a meeting you can’t
focus on the other person if you’re both
of you’re constantly compelled to be
keep checking your phone so what I ask
that we do is I’ll ask to be turn our
phones off or a set them on top of each
other somewhere out of sight because
this changes the nature of the
conversation it becomes more real and
it’s also a promise that you make I
promise to be here with you and it’s the
same kind of thing that you could do
with your family and at home life as
well so one of the things that we used
to do we used to have a really bad habit
of checking our phones and tablets at
breakfast and at dinner while we’re all
sitting together and you see this
happening all the time if you go to a
restaurant a family will roll in and
while they’re waiting for their food
everybody’s on their phone in their own
world somewhere else and so we stopped
doing this now what we do when we get
together for a meal we ask each other
what is one good thing that happened
today and there was an idea that I
picked up from a book called life is
good and it’s a really great way to
connect with each other at the end of
the day and the last practice is create
a couple of years ago I picked up urban
sketching it’s basically a practice when
you draw or paint on location so people
places fire hydrants lamps whatever you
see and what I like to do is I take my
sketchbook and I go out to a coffee shop
and I secretly sketch people and so it
can sometimes lead to some interesting
encounters and so a few weeks ago I was
trying to draw this older gentleman I
was sitting on the other end of the
for me and I was really into it I was
trying to get the eyes right of the
eyebrows and all the rest of that kind
of stuff and I look up and I see this
woman making a beeline straight for me
and we locked eyes and this is one of
those moments just to kind of explain it
to you is that if you were secretly
trying to take a picture of someone and
then you get caught and I got caught but
lucky for me she was really really nice
and so she asked me if I’ve been
painting for a long time and next thing
you know she was taking pictures of my
drawings that of me and then we’re
taking selfies together and I’m telling
her about this guy that I was trying to
paint and all of a sudden she goes hey
Fran come over here check it out it’s
you so a few minutes later in a bit of
an awkward moment later we parted ways
and they walked away with a sketch of
Frank and I felt happy and I find that
it was this creative expression the act
of building something doing something
creative it really encompasses it’s
really immersive it takes all of your
attention when you’re doing something
like that and that I found was
instrumental in breaking that compulsion
to keep checking my phone every five
minutes and so it was these three simple
practices dedicate connect and create
that have helped me take back time to do
things that are meaningful to me to
connect with myself and connect with the
people around me and I hope that they
inspire you to do to say because there’s
one more very important thing that I
wanted to share with you when I was
doing this research I came across a few
studies from Q research and Nielsen and
they say that an average smartphone
owner in North America spends 2 and a
half hours on their phone every day so
if you take that number and you
extrapolate it over an average lifespan
of 81 years and assuming that you’ll
also sleep at some point it’s 13 years
of our lives that will spend staring at
a phone screen so why am I telling you
this I’m telling you this because we
each one of us has finite amount of time
and time is the most precious resource
that you can never get more of my hope
is that
take some of the things that we talked
about today and take some time back to
do things that are meaningful and
important to you maybe you can write a
book maybe you can go out and take
photos maybe you can fix a broken
relationship or maybe you can go out to
a coffee shop and secretly sketch people
because at one point in time we all run
out of time life is short look up