Smartphones - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Okay. According to data AI, the average American spends over 4 hours a day on their smartphones. It's linked to increased attention deficit issues, sleep disturbances and anxiety and depression. But it also allows us for improved connection with friends and family, better health monitoring, and more control over our finances. We all know the scene. We walk into a restaurant, and people are barely talking to each other. Nose is in the phone, and attention is focused on this little glowing rectangle. No one is talking. No one is communicating. Just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Completely out of the moment and disengaged. This can't be good for us. I'm Joe. This other dude over there, he's Kurt. And we are dudes in progress. Hello, Kurt.

Good morning, Joe.

Good Friday morning to you, my friend.

Always great to talk to you every Friday morning.

I didn't want that introduction to be sour and depressing or anything like that, but this is a reality that we're facing, right?

Yeah, I think it's something I've noticed. I thought I was the only one with attention deficit until I did that scene, like you say, walk into a room where there's a lot of people getting together socially, and they're all staring at their phones. There's some famous pictures in my podcast, Disney group, where they're at the parks, at the Disney world parks with tons of stimulation. They're sitting on a curb, all looking at their phone.

What is that all about? I don't understand it. We're going to talk about it today, Kurt, but I don't. I still don't get it. I did a little bit of prep for this, for this episode, and I still don't understand what's going on. I have a pretty good idea. I think some of it is manufactured and intentional. Right? We have. There's some real geniuses behind how to get us to stay in our phones, right? How to get us to keep looking at the screen and keep flashing us ads and keeping us in that moment, right?

For sure. There's definitely a lot of psychology. They know how to get our attention, apparently.

But there are some good things about phone usage there. There are some benefits. A lot of benefits, actually. We'll talk about those as well. But how do you feel about your relationship with your phone, Kurt? You personally, through this conversation?

I wonder if I'm going to feel guilty that I'm doing all these things, because I'm not surprised you brought this topic because I know it's near and dear to you, but, dude, I'm an introverted geek with tons of interests and the Internet and technology. I just feel it greatly enhances my life. I don't feel like I overuse it. I think it's primarily enhancing because I'm okay with being the quiet person in the corner in a social setting.

I understand that, and I'm okay with being the private person alone. Is that how you said it? Or the private person alone in the corner? And I'm okay with that myself. And many times, I find myself in that situation. But still, there's a difference between being a private person alone in the corner with your nose in the phone and being the private person alone in the corner. Just kind of people watching or even leafing through a magazine or a book or something like that. There's a difference. You're still engaged in the moment without being disengaged through the phone. I really don't know what to do about this. So, would you say that you're. You don't think that you have a real issue with phone usage and your smartphone experience?

I think I have a healthy usage of my phone. I don't think I have an unhealthy usage of it. But there are times where it certainly draws my attention when it shouldn't be. And to acknowledge this is a good thing. And I've been taking some notes ever since you told me about this topic. And you know what? It surprises me. My kids did this to me where I might have been having trouble with my phone, and I was near them. They're all adults, and they noticed. He's like, dad, check out what you got. Open up for apps. And you do this little swipe, and you see all of the apps that are loaded, and I'm like, oh, my gosh. You're trying to close them one by one. Holy cow.

I have 27 apps open.

For real. I had no idea.

I think what shocks me, Kurt, is the average American spends 4 hours a day on their smartphones.

Yeah.

Now, you got to wonder, is that 4 hours a day on their smartphones while they're watching tv or while they're trying to talk to somebody else? What does that mean? Is that 4 hours just isolated on their smartphones? But that's a lot of time. If it's 4 hours a day, that's an amazing amount of time to have your nose in this small, glowing rectangle.

Well, it's just competing for time between television and video games.

Also, how could our time be better used? And that's the biggest question. How is this impacting us? Do you put any guide rails, like conscious guide rails, on mobile phone usage.

I think mostly in a social setting, primarily if I think it's really important when you're, when you are out with people that you actually acknowledge and communicate directly and not be looking at your cell phone during a dinner, that kind of thing. That is something I have to be conscious about. Yesterday I went in, I don't go into work from home primarily. I went into work yesterday, spent a lot of time. I felt like I joked with my boss later. We have a stand up morning meeting every day. They said the next day I said, I got nothing done yesterday. I spent so much time at the water cooler chit chatting with people. But yeah, and there were people I hadn't seen in a long time. We've got some contractors there that I was meeting. We had a fellow, a young guy who's joined our team who came in from New York state purposely to meet us in person. So I spent some time with him. As you're talking about this and something, I was listening to a podcast this week. How important relationships are to your, like we've said to your own personal health, but your career, who you can get information from, the more people you're, the people you're connected with, really drives your productivity and your success in your career.

There's so much about mobile phones and smartphones that, that bother me and so much that I like when I think about my relationship with, with my smartphone and I don't want, because this is overused, it is a love hate. I setting aside and what that's not even the best way to say it. We have to consider even the manufacturing of our phones and that whole cobalt mine issue and child labor and all of that stuff. Every single smartphone out there at some point has gone, the components have gone through, or a component has gone through the child labor process or even slave labor process. So there's that whole thing that we have to think about. But even beyond that are the personal usage. I find myself doing a lot of good things with my phone. I check email, I stay in touch with people. I'm able to communicate with people across the world at a moment's notice. But I spend a lot of time not being bored or easing anxiety or doing something easy instead of the hard thing that I need to do, scrolling on YouTube and scrolling on Facebook or whatever it might be. If I'm just being honest with myself, I find myself doing that way too often. Doing those things way too often, just as a distraction, just as that dopamine hit. And I used to be one of those that said that would say, I don't have a problem with it. I don't have, and I'm not saying that you're being disingenuous, but what I'm saying about myself is I used to be one of those people that said I don't have a problem until my wife pointed it out to me. And my kids say, dad, just put your phone down. My kids, dad, put your phone down. Right. So. And when I stopped and thought about it, yeah, I'm on my phone way too much. And I have put some guide rails on my mobile phone usage, and I've talked about the big three or four that I do off the top of my head. I don't take it to bed with me anymore. I put it in a, on a shelf that's across the room. I don't take my mobile phone into restaurants with me unless I'm going to be there alone. I want to make sure I'm engaged with the person that I'm with. I don't take it into church with me anymore. I used to take it into church with me and I found myself sitting there in church checking a text message message or responding to a Facebook post or something like that. So I've had, I have put some guide rails on my mobile phone usage. Definitely. What are your favorite things to do?

I had fun with this question because I started listing things. You don't realize how many things you use your phone for. All right, here's my list. Phone calls, email, calendar. Joe's got me using the calendar now. Matter of fact, I got the pop up message, Joe for this meeting in my calendar today.

Awesome.

Music, which I love, videos and podcasts. Gps helped me out greatly this week, getting to a restaurant with my coworkers, the Facebook group for my podcast, text with friends and family, banking, candy Crush, minesweeper, baseball scores, weather. I check every day, browse web pages, Disney apps in the park. They're great for mobile ordering food. I got the work apps. I got my email. I got teams and engage. There's a couple of apps from work to stay in touch with work, which is pretty cool. I can shut off my fish tank light and I can monitor my outdoor cameras.

Wow.

That's just the start. There's probably more, right?

It's quite a list. Yeah. You know, many of the same things that were on your list are on my list. I'll just give you a handful because you named a lot of them podcasts. I probably use my phone to listen to podcasts more than anything else. If I think about it, because I've always. I always have a podcast playing in the background. Most of the time, even if I'm not actively listening to it, it's playing in the background. I probably. I do make phone calls, believe it or not. With your smartphone. Not many people do that anymore. I stay in touch with my kids and my family and pals like you on a regular basis. I'm not great at texting. I have a couple friends that if you text a man, you're going to hear back from them in five minutes. I'm more of the type that. Okay, I'll probably get back to you by the end of the day, but if. I wouldn't count on it unless it's urgent. Right. But I do text, especially with those. The closer you are to me, the more I'm respons, the more responsive I am to your texts. But I definitely use it for GPS, and I find that fantastic, even though I know how to get someplace. The biggest benefit for GPS and mapping and Google Maps is to know when there are traffic jams and avoiding traffic. And Google Maps has gotten a lot better at that. So I definitely use it on almost every day for. For GPS. Definitely. Online banking, email, I use it. I use my cell phone a lot for some really good things. So, yeah, those are some of my favorite things to do with my mobile phone. And I don't want to discount the good things that you get taking pictures. How about that? I don't know if that was on your list, but I do that a lot with. I take pictures and the video and the cameras that we have now, or our phones are fantastic, and we can capture moments. I read a statistic, and I'm part of this. I'm making up. But you'll understand the spirit of it. Like, more pictures are taken now in 15 minutes that were then. Were taken from 1970 to 1980. Isn't that amazing?

It is. And it's something like that useful when I go to the grocery store and there's 25 different varieties of something my wife has sent me to get, and I take a picture of the entire aisle. Which one do you want?

Sure. So let's not discount the good things that we use our phones for. How does it make your life better, Kurt?

Generally, I feel it's really connected me to my podcast community of friends and family all around the world, which is a huge thing that I never would have gotten without the cell phone. And I just love music. The fact that I have. Remember when we were kids, you had to go get the album if you wanted to hear the music or you had to listen to the radio and wait for that song. And we used to record songs off the radio, off of this little AM radio. I remember a buddy and I sitting there recording music, and it's just, it's almost too much. It got everything I need in this little phone to listen to music. So that is a fantastic thing. But one thing I wanted to say, joe, is, yeah, I've just been able to communicate with people from around the world virtually, and it really enhanced my ability to meet them in person because it's hard for me to walk up to a stranger and strike up a conversation. But if I've had conversations virtually, for, in my case, maybe it's years and then I meet them in person, it really eases that relationship and then it really enhances it, meeting them in person. But that was one thing I wanted to talk about with all this technology that's helped me throughout the years, and that was when I went to conferences for technical conferences. It helped me to get involved with that community and now my own that I built over the last few years.

Yeah, I think about music, and I definitely use, I'm an Amazon music subscriber. I'm in that Amazon ecosphere, which can be dangerous. That's one of the dangers of mobile phone usages. Usage for me is I can buy anything I want right now and have it tomorrow at a couple clicks of a button. That's it. At a couple presses of my thumb, I can have anything that I want and probably have it tomorrow.

We didn't even list that. We love reading books. We could download a book right now and start reading it right this second.

You could recommend the book to me and within an under a minute, I could be reading that book. And that's great. But it's also, boy, it does take some of the wonder out of it, right? When you have all the music at your fingertips, percent of the music that's ever been published at your fingertips through Spotify or Amazon music or Apple Music or whatever it might be, does it take some of the wonder out of it for you? Does it take some of the wonder of waiting for that music or waiting for that album? There are many people, I mean, we have a whole generation or generations younger than us, Kurt, that really don't know what it's like to wait for an album to come out, to wait to stand in line to buy the cassette or the atrium or the record and go quickly to your favorite song, but also read the notes on the album. What do they call that the liner notes, all that stuff? Does this instant access to everything take the wonder out of it? And smartphones are the, if you want to call it a culprit, it's a good thing and it's a bad thing. Do you think it's taken some of the wonder out of that, some of that creative process to go get the album or to go get the. Go buy that thing in the store or whatever?

It might explain the popularity of vinyl albums. Now to go. I can't even tell you why I go down and buy vinyl albums, which are getting expensive. We were talking about this last week. We had record store day, and I was really excited to get the Neil Young album that was coming out, even though they were sending me the CD. I'll have it probably in the mail a little later. But that whole experience is fun for me to go to the store and flip through the physical albums. I don't think. I'm not buying that. That sounds better. There's lots of people that will say that. I don't know, that sounds.

What record sound better?

Vinyl records, then? I don't think they do either, but.

I think it's nostalgia is what.

There's definitely a fun level. I have fun with it. I enjoy talking to the guy who owns the record store. There's just a lot of things that I enjoy about it. I like the artwork. I have it displayed all through here. I've been trying to figure out how to even display it better. Yeah, for sure. There's. We've lost a little bit with all this ease of getting that music. We don't appreciate it as much.

I'm a huge Garth Brooks fan, and I have access to every single one of his songs whenever I want. And I remember my very first music owning experience was foreigners. Single double vision. Not double vision, hot blooded. And I loved that song when I heard it on the radio and I got the little record. What do they call those? The little ones? The.

Yeah, the 45?

No, the. Yeah. Forty five s. And I remember that. Wow, man, I have this music right here, this whole song, anytime I want to play it. And there was a bit. There was a one, that one single song. I was, and I was a kid, I was. Whenever hot blood, it came out, I think my mom bought it for me or my sister bought it for me or something like that. But mobile phones and smartphones and access to this, they've definitely changed the way we consume and we do life. I like a lot of things about this smartphone. I really do. Kurt I like all the things that we've mentioned. It's definitely made me more productive in some ways. I have access to my calendar. I can arrange a meeting at a moment's notice. I can reject a meeting at a moment's notice. I can touch base with somebody about how they're doing, how they're feeling. I don't like the idea that I text somebody and ask them how they're doing instead of calling them and saying, hey, what's going on, brother? And hearing their voice and having a human experience, I do miss that, and I try to do that as much as possible, but it's definitely made me more productive. Like I said, access to calendars, text, being able to communicate quickly with people, access to information. I can. We can do our show notes right now on our phones, and right there, as we're doing something else, watching tv or taking a break or whatever it might be, it's definitely made me more productive.

Yeah, there's no doubt that it's. Again, going over this list reminds me how much I'm using this thing for taking notes. Yeah. Talking into the phone and it typing it for you, you got a thought that comes to you and using that technology, it's just mind boggling where we've come.

I I'm blown away by it. I'm blown away by the smartphone technology, and I don't want to discount that because there's a dark side to this, there's a dark side to the whole smartphone thing, and we'll talk about that here in a minute. But according to Pew Research center, social networks and strengthened community ties through messaging and social platforms, people report that as positive aspects of smartphone use. Let's talk about education, Kurt. Platforms like Libby, Udemy, Duolingo, Babel to learn languages, Khan Academy, all these. All this access to information and education that we can learn something right now in the moment as we're waiting in a doctor's office or something like that. My wife has been doing and learning Portuguese because she is Portuguese and her heritage, her family is from Portugal. And that Duolingo led us to a ten day upcoming trip to Portugal, a.

Language over her cell phone. My wife's learning German also, and she's got. Her parents were German, or at least her mom and her dad. They all spoke German when she was a kid. She understands it, and she's trying to learn to speak it better.

I think about Libby, the library, apparently, and I love it. I can go and get a free book if it's available within minutes and be reading it. Within two minutes right now, I can visit the library, get the book without leaving my home, and start reading it. Isn't that awesome?

I thought I would not like reading electronic books because everyone will say, hey, you got almost like we spoke about with the vinyl records. You have that physical book and you've got them on your shelves and all of these things. But with my getting older, with the eyesight issues, that ability just to have the text larger, I can't get away from electronic books. I like it better for a lot of reasons.

I do, too. But I also miss going to a library or going to a bookstore and just perusing books, looking at a book, going to a section of the library and seeing what's there.

I love bookstores and libraries.

I still go in just perusing and wasting time and that whole process. I miss that now. Libraries still exist. I can actively pursue a library book from a physical library if I want, and peruse the shelves at a bookstore if I want to. But I miss it. I do miss it. And I think we've lost something by slowing, by speeding up and not slowing down, not going to the library. We definitely have access to all the information and education that we could possibly want. We can practically get a college degree. Not officially, but we can get the information. When you think about some of the even major colleges offer free courses. They're not degreed courses unless you pay for them. But if you just need the information, you've got it right there. I also think about how it helps us with our health. The Journal of Medical Internet Research showed that health apps have made a great impact on helping people manage diabetes. Track blood sugar, blood pressure, heart rate, stress levels, diet tips, healthy eating. All of these things are good things, right? Especially if we can, if we're right on the edge. If we're right on the edge of these problems, the. And we really need to track them on a regular basis. My my father in law has a patch on his arm that speaks to his smartphone and tells him when his blood sugar spikes, tells him when his blood pressure is up. I have a watch that communicates that I wear, that communicates with my smartphone that tells me my heart rate and reports that and gathers all that information. And sometimes my doctor has asked me for that information. He says, hey, do you have a smartphone app that you track your health? And he says, yes, and he'll ask me to send that to him sometimes. That's all awesome, awesome stuff to help us with our healthy journey, I guess you would call it.

Yeah, for sure.

And there's also the financial benefits. You think about apps like M Pesa that I just learned about that. That's helping Kenya with banking, where there are no banks in Kenya invest, access to investment opportunities, Robinhood acorns, betterment, speed of transactions. You think about PayPal and Venmo cash app. It's more. Do we hear, oh, I'm sorry, I can't pay you back. I don't have any cash on me.

I didn't bring my wallet.

I didn't bring my wallet. That's all right. You have your phone on you, right? You can just PayPal me or Venmo or cash app or whatever it is, and think about instant deposits. I don't go to the bank anymore. I just. When I get. If somebody does send me a check, God forbid they send me a physical check, I take a picture of it, deposit it right into my account. We've covered a lot of positive aspects of smartphone use, Kurt, and I wanted to make sure that we talk about those first, because I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about the bad stuff, because it's not all good news. It's not. With the good comes the bad. And smartphones are certainly no exception. According to the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, heavy smartphone use has increased dramatically. Anxiety and depression amongst the american population. And I know it. I see it. We've talked about people in their phones. I use my phone as a drug. And I know you recently read a book called Digital detox by Thibault Mauricio, or whatever his name is, right?

Dopamine detox.

It's called dopamine detox. So what that book, Kurt.

Yeah. To understand that it is an addictive thing, it takes you away from productivity, and the things that you're focusing on are important things that you should be doing. You have these lies that you tell yourself, I'll get to it later. I'll do this tomorrow. While you're going through all of that dopamine hit you're getting from your phone, those videos you're watching, Joe, that takes you away from that action you should take. And. Yeah, and all those simple things that you could be doing during your detox, and it is. It's just like shutting everything down and focusing on the right things and getting away from it can be really beneficial.

Does it offer you any tips or guidance on how to detox and processes for detoxing?

Yeah, I mean, he gives, like, three different programs to think about. One is 48 hours, and some of the activities you could be doing during that time, like going for a contemplative walk, journaling, meditation and relaxation, practicing awareness exercises, reading, stretching, exercise, all these things that you're not doing when you're stimulated from all that dopamine from your phone and other distractions.

I think that we've just forgotten how to be bored. I think I mentioned this earlier, how to entertain ourselves, how to think. And again, I'm just going to speak for myself. If I'm being introspective and honest with myself, there is a problem there. There is a problem with, instead of handling a stressful situation, you grab your phone and you watch a YouTube video or you check Facebook or you text with one of your kids. As much as I like talking to my kids, right, there's other stuff that needs to be done. But I'm distracting myself. And it's so easy with a smartphone to distract yourself. And the reason I'm being honest with it, with it here openly is I know for a fact I'm not the only person with the problem. In fact, I would guess that I'm on the. I probably lean towards the good side of the problem, and I don't do it as much as many other people. And I'm not trying to say that those people are worse than me. I'm admitting that, yeah, there's a problem here. I have a. I have it in a significant way, and I think many people have it. The question is, what do we do about it? What do we do about having our noses in our phones all the time? What do we do about showing up at a restaurant with a friend and their phone sitting right next to them and your phone sitting right next to you, and you pick it up 15 times during the conversation. That 4 hours is coming from somewhere. Right? That 4 hours a day on our smartphones, that's coming from somewhere. It's certainly not happening when we're sleeping. So we're spending way too much time on our phones in a distractive way, in a way to. In a way that just gives us a dopamine hit. And I think it's just as bad and just. It can be just as destructive as a drug.

Yeah, he does talk about, and I think you've done this already to solve this problem, which, first of all, is identify that there is a problem. Recognize that. Well, your kids pointed out to you that's how you knew, or your wife. But then to add friction, meaning the things that you've already tried to do, you're talking about going to a restaurant. You could leave that phone in the car.

And that's what I do.

Those are types of tricks you can do to get around this. And then your morning routines. You can eliminate the phone from your morning routine. There's no reason for you to check email as soon as you get up. There's lots of things you could be doing. Like I've talked about the meditation, journaling, quiet time, listen to good music, sit down and listen to a record, and then writing out goals. All these things that are productive that you can get done in the morning that have nothing to do with hopping on your cell phone right away.

It's funny that you bring up those things because most of all those things I do. But I also find myself spending way too much time just scrolling, scrolling instead of just taking that time. Even if you don't take that time to, quote unquote, engage life, just take that time to be bored. Take the time to sit there and stare off into space and let your mind just wander. Do you remember doing that, Kurt? Do you remember just sitting there in a doctor's office? You don't want to read the latest woman's home journal or whatever it is, or the National Enquirer, whatever, sitting there and you just sit there and stare off into space? I have a hard time remember doing that.

Really? I do have a hard time. That's why I said I always felt like I had a little bit of attention deficit syndrome when they come up with that term because I always seem to have some kind of attention going on. For sure. It is something I have to work at, and it's. It is definitely very fulfilling when you do those things. Little time for quiet. I like watching my birds in my bird feeder is one of my favorite things to do. But, yeah, it's definitely an issue. I don't have that problem with scrolling on the phone. People will tell me about all the things they saw on social media and Facebook, or x, as it's called now. I've never had that. I've never done that. I've never really gotten. I get a little bit more into YouTube now, but not usually on my phone. It's mostly on my computer. I sit at my computer, maybe way too much.

Yeah. I think the difference is you actively have to sit at your computer, right?

Yeah.

You can't look at your computer, your pc, your laptop, typically, if you're sitting at a red light. And how many times have we been behind somebody and somebody's scrolling on their phone and the light turns green. I've been that guy, to be quite honest with you. I've been that guy to. That somebody had to honk at, and I've been that guy that's been. That's doing the honking.

Yeah. I'm guilty of that.

I just wonder what it would be like if we really could just set our phones aside for a couple days. A week, maybe a couple weeks. Could you do that, Kurt?

Wow, that's a tough. I wouldn't have thought of a couple weeks. I am the person that, when the phone rings, I don't answer it.

Yeah, that's definitely. I've always been that way.

I've always.

Smartphones.

I was always that way. And now if I don't know who it is, I don't answer it. Of course. Wait two weeks. That's really tough. Like I said, the dopamine detox talks about 48 hours, which I think would be a fun exercise. I don't know. That's a real challenge.

What if you limited it to only work related?

Yeah.

Or my activity and not entertainment?

Oh, okay. Ooh. Probably do it again. I like listening to music and podcasts, but sometimes the podcasts are. I'm trying to learn how to be a youtuber. For instance, I found a podcast that I really. I've been listening to recently, so that's productive time you can be walking and listening to something educational, which is. We missed a bunch of stuff that's really good on our cell phone.

Yeah.

Yeah. It'd be hard. No lie.

We definitely have to figure out a way to manage it. And we spent a lot of time talking about the positive aspects, because I think we know the negative aspects. If, again, if we're introspective and we just watch, we know the negative aspects. There's social isolation despite being more connected than we ever have been. There's certainly evidence that virtual interactions on our phones lead to loneliness and isolation if that's the only kind of interaction that we have, especially with the younger generation. But I know my generation, Kurt. Our generation, we have this problem, too.

Don't forget, we were the kids that our moms sat us in front of the television.

Yeah, that's true.

To babysit us. And we were there when the Atari games came out. That was the best Christmas ever when Atari. I didn't have to go to the play, pinball all the things at the arcade, because I had it right at my house. We were in the beginnings of all of this huge technology swing.

Something that. Something telling about my mobile phone or smartphone use is. I don't know. A couple years back, I got a new phone and I'm an Android user. I'm not a big Apple fan. I have an apple for work, an iPhone for work, but I'm not. I'm not a fan of it. But I had that phone for probably six months. This is the truth. Before I knew how to turn it off.

Think about that, right?

Think about that. Now, it had several times that it restarted itself with updates and all that stuff, but I never had. I never actively turned it off. It just goes on the charger or gets plugged in or whatever it is.

Yeah.

About six months before I knew how to turn it off. How about that? Man?

It was always on.

It's always on. It always is on. How often do we actually turn our cell phones off? We have phone free zones in our home.

Only if it gets frozen and you got to reboot it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's even that much I remember thinking about. I've had this phone six months and I've never turned it off. This is the first time I've ever just turned it off. And that was one of those reboot situations.

Exactly.

So I think it's good. I think it's important to turn our phones off, actually. Just turn it off. Not set it aside, but turn it off for a certain period of time. Maybe we start with half a day, right?

Yeah, I like it. I think what I'm learning from this conversation, a couple things which we've always said is important, is all that is that quiet time, the contemplation, the reading, the journaling or planning that you want to do, focusing on things that you want to accomplish. I think that we don't do enough of that. And the phones and all the technology is a huge distraction. And you just mentioned sitting at my computer. I am guilt, especially working from home. I sit here way too. My wife the other day, I was caught up in a technology problem. I never got up, like the whole day. She's like, what happened to you? Where have you been? I gotta get. They say sitting down is a killer. They've had studies recently that you just gotta get up and stand up and walk. People are standing at their desk now. You gotta get up and get some steps in which I need to focus on. And that's important.

Sitting is the new smoking effort.

Yeah, I think those two things are really important. The quiet time, contemplation, studying, and then just get out and get some exercise.

I think what I learned from these conversations, and including this one, is we have to actively pursue life and not just let life happen to us. When I think about my smartphone use. I let it happen to me. I just, I actively pick it up and I actively hit YouTube. But from there, it's just this thing that I'm letting happen to me, just scrolling through videos and watching 30 seconds at a time and laughing at something. To actively pursue life, not let life happen to us, I think a digital detox is a good idea, even if it's starting with one day. I think it's a good idea to establish boundaries even in our own home where, hey, cell phones aren't in the dining room. Mobile phones aren't in the dining room. You can't take, you can't take your mobile phone into the bathroom with you, right?

Hey, well, let's not go crazy.

I'm convinced that that bathroom time has increased by at least 50% just because people have cell phones. You can tell when somebody's really serious about going to the bathroom when they take their phone in with them, right? I'm not going to see him for a half an hour. His legs will fall asleep when he gets up. But I do think that it's important to establish these guidelines and these guide rails. Some of the stuff that I talked about. Put apps, there's apps that you can put on your phone that. That will monitor and block web, web pages and apps for a certain period of time or altogether. Right. My daughter has her screen in grayscale, so she doesn't, it's not so. She's not attracted to the flashy colors. There's a lot that we can do, and I think it is important to understand that there is a problem. The mobile phone, the smartphone has some really great things. We talked a lot about that. But if you find yourself just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and half hour, an hour, maybe a couple hours go goes by and you're still in your phone. If you find yourself not engaging in relationships, personal human interactions, because you're sitting there on your phone, take a look at that. If you can't be bored because you have your nose in the phone the whole time, take a look at that and see that as great as smartphones are, they're a tool to be used. Not your whole life, they're not. You don't live in this world, the smartphone world. It's a tool to be used. And this is something for that. I'm saying, back to me and advice that I'm throwing out there. Let's figure this out, man. Let's reengage each other as human beings. Let's reengage life. Let's figure out how to bring wonder back into our life and processes that we, as we engage life and as we, as we think and be bored and ruminate and meditate and have some silence in our life. Those are all good things. In addition to all the great things that the smartphone can do. Let's figure out how to reengage life. Yeah, I think that's all I want to say about it.

I like this, what you're talking about, Joe. I've had this anxiety recently. I've been so busy with so many things. I have going all these balls in the air and I'll have an evening even with a two or three hour space where I have nothing to do and I feel anxious about that. Yeah, I don't know what to do with myself. It's a weird thing, but you're making me feel I should embrace it instead of feeling weird about it. Yeah, I like it.

As long as you're not stuck in some crazy tv show the whole time or just do something that engages your brain. Yeah, engages. Engages you physically build a relationship. Take a walk in the park, say hi to your neighbor.

Oh, boy.

When's the last time we did that? Right?

It has been winter.

Let's wrap it up right there. You have a win for the week, Kurt.

Good fun.

Yeah.

I think this is related to all the technology we've been talking about. I was really excited about this week, Joe. This is a work related thing. And I know you're not going to understand anything that I talk about in the next few months minutes here, but I got into some new technology we're building. We have a new project. We've got lots of contractors helping us out, which has been great. I've been learning from them. Amazon Web Services. You've probably heard of Amazon Web Services because it's broadcast in commercials on the Super bowl. But it's a fantastic platform to, when I was talking to this young guy, just how lucky they are today with the technology that's out there, you can spin up servers and all kinds of resources to build your applications. And we're building an application that takes data from many different sources throughout the company and we're bringing it into a single source of truth, a database. And I worked on listen to all these platforms. I'm learning this past week and I'm really happy I had some success. You got the AWS admin panel. This technology is called AWS Glue, which is the one that does all the data transformations. Postgres database that they use. Python is the coding script that I'm learning visual studio code is the ide that I'm using to build my code. Copilot AI code assist. I thought you would really love this, Joe Copilot for Microsoft is built right into visual studio code. Dude, I was asking it how to code some things, and it coached me all the way through. And one of the offshore developers gave me one piece of line of code that I was struggling with to transfer some data, and it didn't have all the answers, so I started there, and this copilot helped me understand the errors I was getting as I was debugging. It helped me understand what the next line of code was going to be. Codeassist. It wrote the code for me. It was just unbelievable in a language. I have never wrote any code in python. So I was blown away. I was giddy, and I called my manager, and I was like, because he showed it to me, it's right in line. You just call it right up and you start chatting with it like a person. It's incredible.

So, yeah, that's amazing.

Very excited at the. The speed that we are end moving in, building this project. And, hey, teaching an old dog new tricks has been a lot of fun this week.

As long as you're willing to learn, I'll tell you.

And at the end of the day, it's probably going to. It's incredible how fast I've gotten up to speed with this. I don't want to get too cocky, because as soon as you do, that's when you'll get knocked down a bit. But, yeah, it's been a really incredible ride the last week learning this stuff, man.

I didn't understand 75% of what you said, kurt, but I heard in your voice the excitement.

Yeah.

I heard in your voice the intrigue in the engagement, and I'm so happy about it. Dude, that's awesome, man.

I had this conversation again with the young guy that came out to visit us from New York. I said, you have no idea what we used to do. You had to go to a conference or a user group and to meet people and, or you're someone working next year. How do you. How did you learn how to do some of these skills in the past? I said to him, I hate to go back this far, but what a great tool the Internet was when we were able to search frequently asked questions and all these code repositories to find things that we were trying to accomplish. But this AI stuff, oh, my gosh. It's at another level that it's just such a huge game changer.

I'm not afraid of AI. There are many people, especially people that I know who maybe lean towards conspiracy theories, but there are many people that are afraid of AI that think it's going to take over the world and that we no longer will have the ability to think for ourselves.

With coding, if you think about it, whatever you're doing, you're usually taking a piece from here and a piece from there. It's always been that way, right? It doesn't. Maybe at some point you could just write a paragraph and it'll write the whole code. I mean, it'll do a lot of that for you. It write full functions and they're out there, but instead of searching and you find you got to sift through a lot of garbage before you get to what you need. I was shocked at how precise this was.

Yeah, that's awesome, man.

That's some abstract kind of things, too.

We both love AI. I'm a big fan of AI. I love where the directions is, it's heading. And this is just another example of how it's going to help us be more productive and be more creative. I firmly believe that AI will help us be more productive and more creative. And it's going to open up worlds of opportunity, not only in business, but in our personal life, and it's just going to make life easier. We're going to be able to engage life more because of AI, because it's going to take some of these processes and do the thinking, the technical stuff for us to open up more creativity. And it'll also help us defeat the blank page. My gosh, we could go on. I could go on forever about this and we'll do more shows about AI. But congrats on the Amazon Web services glue and getting all that done, man. I can tell that you were really excited about it. I have an interesting win for the week.

I think I know what it is.

I officiated my nephew's wedding.

Yes. I saw a picture. I was scrolling through Facebook on my phone, Joe, and I saw a picture of you officiating a wedding for your nephew.

It was awesome, man. It was awesome. My nephew and I have been connected for a long time, of course, but we've maintained a pretty good relationship. And when he asked me to do this, I was just overjoyed to do this. Honored and really happy to do it for him. And it was awesome. It was a lot of fun. I had a blast creating the vowels because they. He said, uncle Joe, I know you will. You just write them for us. Wow. And I asked, did you want a mix of humor? Did you want it to be reverent? Did you want it to be formal? And he says, nope, I want your humor, Uncle Joe. I want it to be casual, and I really want you to do this. And I was happy to do it. And the response that I got from the people at the wedding was overwhelming. Of course, it was their wedding. It was about them. But I'm talking about my win for the week. I'm so happy that my nephew got married and he found himself a great, a great partner. His wife is an incredible young woman, and I love them both. But the fact that I did the wedding was really exciting. And like I said, I got some great feedback about how well it went. More than one person said, I tell you, Joe, at 1 minute you had us laughing, and the next minute you had us weeping. And that's cool. Yeah.

I remember you telling me that you were licensed to do this. I don't recall. When's the last time you did one of these? Have you?

This is the first.

Oh, really? Wow.

Maybe this is the first.

Did you hand out some business cards?

I became, yeah, I did. I got licensed in the state of Ohio back in 2017 when my niece asked me to officiate her wedding.

Yeah.

And she goes, uncle Joe, I don't know if you'll do this or not, but when I get married, I want you to do the wedding.

Oh, wow.

And later, I went and got my officiant's license for the state of Ohio.

I hope you do more.

You know what? On the same day that I officiate at my nephew's wedding, I attended my niece's, that same niece's engagement party.

Oh.

And the first thing that she asked me was, Uncle Joe, are you still going to officiate my wedding? And I said, absolutely.

You got another client for your next one now?

Yeah.

I love it. Yeah, this is right up your alley.

This might be a little side gig. We'll see. This might be a little side gig, but I had a blast. I had a blast. It was a lot of fun.

That would be a great side gig. Like you said, you had to do a lot of preparation, especially if you don't know the people.

But I learned a lot. I used Google forms to ask them some questions. I used chat GPT to help me structure it. Google forms, they just, I ask them probably half a dozen questions, maybe, I don't know, probably six to eight questions, I don't remember about how they went at the wedding. With the wedding to go. And that was very helpful. And then, quite honestly, I plugged some of those questions into chat GPT, and it gave me a good format and a good starting point for the vowels. And then I interjected my own personality and my own jokes and my own view on things and love it. It really helped.

Well done.

Yeah. How about a resource? You got a resource or tip or hacked for us?

Yeah, I probably shouldn't be using this one because you're criticizing my time spent on my phone, but this wasn't on my phone. This was on my television. I had heard that there was a really good mini series happening on Hulu called Shogun, and, dude, I don't. This has not often happened to me that I get hooked into a program like this, a series. But I am enjoying this immensely. I am hooked. There is a fantastic show. I love historical dramas like this. I can remember seeing. This is a redo from years ago of a miniseries. But it's. The acting's. Everything is just fantastic. The intrigue that's in it and the action. Really loving Shogun on Hulu. Have you checked that out yet?

Definitely check it out.

Why?

Because you get hooked on your recommendation. Yeah, I'll get hooked. You recommended a show to me, was a docudrama years ago, Kurt, that every once in a while, revisit it because it's so good. It's called pirates. Do you remember that?

Yeah.

That meant that docu drama. Yeah, probably eight to ten.

Netflix, wasn't it?

Mini series.

Yeah, on Netflix.

Yeah, it was awesome. It was awesome. So, Kurt, I always take your ticket. Tv watching recommendations.

I think you'll like this, you know? Yeah, I do think you'll like this. It's the. It's the japanese warlords, and it's very historical. I wonder how much it's close to reality, but Shogun on Hulu, check it out.

Definitely. You always have great recommendations for watching tv, Kurt.

I'm very limited. What's your resource?

I found an app a few weeks back, and I've tried a few of these here and there, and they never stick. We'll see about this one. But so far, I'm liking it a lot. It's called stay focused, and it's right up the alley for this conversation. It tracks your phone usage, it blocks websites and apps, and you can put a timer on it that tells you how often you can use something. Or if you can use it at all, you can completely shut it down. It's called stay focused. And I'm really liking it. I have the free version. So there's some ads and stuff that you have to go through every once in a while, but for the most part, it's. It's not really intrusive, the advertisements, but this app is pretty cool. Stay focused. I don't know if it's on. On Apple or on the iPhone. It's definitely on Android. I got it from the Android Play store. Completely free. Hasn't charged me anything. I have a few ads here and there that I have to go through. I like how it works. I like how it blocks websites and apps and tracks your phone usage. And when you go to turn it off, it gives you a prompt that says, are you sure you want to do this? That kind of. It's just pretty cool. All right, stay focused app.

Are you staying focused?

Of course, everything can be overridden, but if you just implement a little friction in life to stop you from doing the things you don't want to do, it helps.

Great tool.

You got a quote for us?

My quote comes from Munya Khan. Do you know who that is? I have no idea.

No idea whatsoever.

Smartphones are definitely smarter than us. To be able to keep us addicted to it.

Well, that'll preach right there.

They're tricking us, Joe.

They. They are. You know what? There is an algorithm here, and we maybe mentioned it a little bit. There is. It's programmed to do this. It's programmed to keep your nose in it. Yeah, all of them. All the apps are. They're all programmed to keep you there, and they do a really good job at it. Think about this. When you walk into a restaurant or doctor's office or getting your hair cut. Or pay attention when you're at a traffic light and look over to your right and look over to your left. Everybody, just as soon as they're at the red light, they pick up their phone. They're looking at their phone.

When I used to take the bus, including me, when I commuted to work on the bus, especially after. While I was waiting for the bus in Hartford, I would sit there and watch people that drove by car after car, and count how many are on their phones, driving down, not paying attention to the road. Not a good thing. So, yeah, don't let that dumb phone take your attention to what it's not supposed to be.

Smarter than the smartphone. Thank you, Munia Khan, whoever you are. Mine comes from John Stuart Mill. He's a british philosopher from the 18 hundreds. Now listen to this quote from the 18 hundreds. A state of contemplation is in itself, a more real and fuller life than that of high pressure activity. It just goes to show that they didn't have phones back then. They had a much slower lifestyle. And we look back fondly on times like that, those simpler times, quote unquote simpler times. But they dealt with life pressures, they dealt with high pressure activity. As Mister Mill says here, they dealt with their own stresses and problems. But I like this. I like what he says, especially considering it came from the 18 hundreds. John STuarT Mill, this british philosopher, he was born in the early 18 hundreds and died in the late 18 hundreds. So he is full on 18 hundreds. A state of contemplation is in itself a more real and fuller life than that of high pressure activity. When you back then, you needed to stop and think.

Yeah. When you watch Shogun, I think, Joe, you'll appreciate it, because now this is in the 16 hundreds. The japanese culture, a lot of contemplation and conversation and that quietness and the culture is so much about the meditation and thinking and those kinds of things. I think you'll appreciate that from those cultures, the way they were very aware of this quote and concept.

Let's learn to slow down no matter what we have to do. Our website is dudes in progress.com. Dudes in progress.com. If you want to reach out to Kurt or me, dudesudesinprogress.com is how you can reach us. That's our email address. Remember, Kurt, as we go into this next week, put your smartphones down, engage life a little bit. You can make progress. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you're not going to make the progress you want to make if you're distracted with your nose in this glowing box. Progress is better than perfection. Let's keep moving forward.

This I'm not gonna feel anxious at all, being a little bit quiet, having some quiet time in this upcoming week. Thanks, Joe.

Hey, I just, I just heard a Facebook notification. I gotta go. Talk to you soon.