Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of your Brains Coach podcast . My name is Angela Shurina , I'm your host , I'm your Brains Coach and , as you learned today , your Brains Guardian against Phone Monster . Here on Brains Coach podcast , I'm excited to bring to you , share with you , all the fascinating curiosities from different branches of performance scientists , from health to mindset , training to productivity and getting things done , getting the right things done and getting them done better . All of this on this podcast . And I'm learning as I go , just as you do , folks . Just yesterday I was doing organizing of all my processes , from my workflow to my nutrition routine , to how I structure and organize my work with clients , my content creation , my learnings . I either created the structure or put time on my calendar . So I get back to that and work on that . Because sometimes folks let's face it , folks , let's face it doing organizing projects might be a bit or a lot overwhelming , because just too much stuff and we already are short on time . But guess what , you don't have to do it in one go . You can spread it out , schedule it and then come back to that with ready to attack mind and time on your calendar without rush , so you could get through this , one step at a time , creating more flowy and streamlined life experience . But anyhow , today , folks , I'm going to be sharing with you what I went through yesterday .
Speaker 1Today , folks , I'm going to be sharing with you what I went through yesterday . I was working on organizing my workflow and I realized that , heck , I think I'm just like everyone else , addicted to my phone . When I see it , I'm going to use it . I'm going to check my WhatsApp messages if there are any missed calls , I'm going to check my bank account , my reading app , and none of that . Let's face it , most of the time is urgent . You could be checking in now , or three to six hours from now , and guess what ? It's all going to be okay , but you spend , you waste five , at least five minutes For me it's always like 10 minutes , sometimes more looking through all this stuff and then you forget what you were doing in the first place and you lose that creative flow . Oh , my phone just fell , but fear not , I was too enthusiastic , we're going to continue and I realized how much time , and also how many ideas , I could be wasting , how much productivity is wasted all the time . And then again , my mind is in a completely different space , I'm thinking about these messages or the things and I forget what I was working on to a degree , and then it takes time to get back into focus and the more you see your phone . Well , folks , let's first get back to what we were talking about on our last podcast .
Speaker 1Habit or behavior , is a function of a person in any given environment . Habit behavior any action has this cycle Trigger something , you see something , you hear something , you feel , so trigger action and followed by a reward or some sort of outcome . And when the outcome is rewarding , like for example , when you see a phone , you use it , you get some dopamine because you maybe learned something or you connected with someone , for whichever reason was it productive or not , it's another story , but you get the reward . Especially the newness is the reward of itself for your brain and that's why this behavior and also the ease of it picking up our phone , checking it , getting those reports , those micro , sometimes macro dopamine hits and you get a habit that is solid . So every time you see your phone , every time I see my phone , I want to pick it up and more often than not I do . Even if it's for two or three minutes , it still steals my attention from all the other things that I were doing before and I sat down with myself and , like Angela , this is not working . Let's be honest with ourselves , let's face it , this is not working and I decided to go back to my three-hour rule that I used to have .
Speaker 1When the rule goes like this , my phone lives outside of my workroom , in the kitchen , in the living room , whatever it fits , wherever I was at the moment , whatever it was a good place outside of my room . So I don't see it at all . Or sometimes it lives somewhere in the wardrobe , so I just don't see it and very often I would forget where it was . So it lives outside of my working area , out of sight , out of mind . It's in the airplane mode , so there are no notification , nothing is coming through , and I pick it up every three hours to check on things . So I'm not that anxious that I might be missing on something . Maybe a client wants to connect with me and say that let's reschedule something , et cetera . So I decided to get back to that rule . Three hours again is enough time for me to make sure that I'm not missing anything urgent or essential , and it allows me to have peace of mind and be in that state of flow for the next three hours and get a lot more done . And so I decided to introduce it right then and there , and yesterday was my first day getting back to that rule .
Speaker 1And what do you think happened ? Three things happened , actually . Let me share them with you and you might notice . Exactly the same thing , and it also happened to quite a few of my clients who I recommended to try this as a challenge for a week . So what happened ? Three things that happened . I felt more present and more relaxed . Like you know , you are present . For the moment , you're not trying to check something . Your mind can wander , can go into the dreamland and really think about what you're working on , instead of checking your phone in those micro moments of rest . So I'm present , I'm relaxed , I'm not feeling like I'm missing out . I don't have this formal anxiety .
Speaker 1Number two I felt way less cognitive overload and fatigue , probably because my brain actually had those micro moments of rest here and there , when I allowed my brain to wander , instead of again being glued with my eyes to my screen and thinking about all of the conversations and things happening how am I going to tackle this or that or this happening . So I allowed my brain to rest . A lot less cognitive overload and , plus , a lot less different processes and thought patterns . All of this this interrupts the thing that I was working on with this additional information that my brain , of course , had to process . So way less feeling of cognitive overload and cognitive fatigue , less , a lot more less scattered attention . That still goes to the point number two less cognitive overload , less scattered attention . And number three I've gotten a lot more things done , much faster and better . It's like I plan two hours and then I'm done in an hour . I'm like , oh , that was fast and that was because my brain stayed on one task uninterrupted in the flow .
Speaker 1There is a power in being a unitasker , not a multitasker . Your brain gets a lot more efficient and effective with handling any task at hand . So those three things happened More present and relaxed , less cognitive overload and getting things done much better , much faster and I'm here to argue much of better quality . Even writing this newsletter that I'm writing every day , by the way , and you can subscribe by following the link in the show notes One newsletter a day that your best will thank you for . Even writing this short newsletter got a lot more creative .
Speaker 1So my challenge to you this week , just like to myself , take a week and check your phone , not whenever you see it , but set yourself a time period that makes sense for you and folks . If you feel scary , terrified and anxious just by thinking about turning your phone well , not turning it off , but putting it , for example , in the airplane mode and putting it away and being unreachable , if you already feel anxious and terrified , realize that is normal , but also realize that for most of you out there , completely unjustifiable , meaning there is no excuse . But your feelings are totally valid . We all are addicted to this constant stream of social interactions and information , and when we remove that , plus all the thoughts that are going to be flooding you additionally something that you might have been hiding from , but that's for another story . So your feelings of discomfort are completely valid , but , again , completely unjustifiable , and there is no excuse why you cannot try this . Well , there are some cases and excuses , but that's not the case for majority of people all of the time .
Speaker 1So I'm inviting you , just like I'm inviting myself , to take this challenge and set the rule for your phone usage and put this phone away out of sight , out of mind . And why is that important ? Fun fact , fun study out of University of Chicago . The study's title goes like this Brain Drain the mere presence of one's phone , smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity . The mere presence of one's own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity . And the thing they did in the study they make people do cognitive tests and cognitive tasks with their phone present on their desks a little bit away , like in their back , a little bit away , and then completely out of sight , out of mind , somewhere in the other room . And people's performance on cognitive tasks improved as the phone was placed further and further away . So the link to the study , if you want to dig into that , is in the show notes Brain Drain Study that's the title for short .
Speaker 1Check it out and take the challenge . And take the challenge . Think about the way you're going to use . You're going to limit your phone this week , put it away without notifications , figure out a system there's always a way to do that and then test how many more things you get done , what's the quality of that ? And also , how much anxiety do you feel ? Overload , fatigue , how's your creativity going ? Just check on those parameters . You'll be pleasantly surprised . I have zero doubts about that . So take the challenge .
Stay tuned for more episodes of your Brain's Coach podcast this week . Check out the study in the show notes and , folks , don't forget to share this podcast episode if you find it valuable and please do share . We don't run any ads and we want to help . I myself personally want to help as many superheroes as possible to come out of their shell , to bring their greatness into the world and build awesome things , living an extraordinary life experience . So let's help each other out , share this podcast , help me share and reach more people . Take the challenge and I'll talk to you very soon . Have an awesome , extraordinary fun , free or close to that week .