498. Eli Singer

Email: bidemiologunde@gmail.com

In this episode, host Bidemi Ologunde speaks with Eli Singer, a marketing executive turned founder of Offline.now, about building a healthier relationship with technology without shame, panic, or unrealistic "digital detox" promises. What happens when our devices stop feeling like tools and start shaping our moods, attention, and family life? Why do willpower-based screen-time fixes so often fail? And how can parents, high-achievers, and everyday users move from feeling stuck or overwhelmed to feeling confident and intentional? Eli shares the story behind Offline.now, explains his framework for mapping digital habits (Ready, Overwhelmed, Stuck, or Unconcerned), and offers practical ways to use technology wisely without quitting modern life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Thank you for joining me once again on another episode of the Bait Picture Podcast. I have a special guest from Toronto, Canada. Over to you. Nice to meet you, Ben. How's everything today? Going good. The cold front is finally blowing over. I cannot imagine how that feels for you all the way up there.

SPEAKER_04 1:05

I love it. We're going four hours north tomorrow. We want the cold, we want the snow, we want to have fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Nice, nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

I was in Montreal in April 2023. I pretty much landed during the middle of a snowstorm that caused a blackout.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

Sounds about normal, but I mean Montreal's a fun town. Did you enjoy yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Yeah, yeah. It's very quaint, old buildings, nice architecture, great food, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 1:38

Lots of fun to be had in that town. Really nice people. We got a lot. My wife's from there.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Nice, nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

So to launch into the discussion for today, um, what was the exact moment when you realized that your family's relationship with tech had quietly crossed the line? Great question.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

I mean, I think it was probably shortly after the pandemic when um, you know, just the kids, especially. So I have two teenagers, maybe they were like 13, 17 then at that point. It it was just too much time on devices. I mean, I had always been keenly aware of these things. My background is in digital marketing and technology. And so we had always been very uh aggressive and you know, the weird parents have we've been told around like use of technology, but it was sort of inescapable during the pandemic. And um yeah, it was it was having an impact on everyone's mental health in the house, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Wow. Wow. So what did you notice as a cost at first? Was it sleep? Was it mood changes? Was it family connection or even patience? Yeah, I I or the kids.

SPEAKER_04 3:03

I'll say, like, you know, from a parenting style, uh my wife and I are our like roles became police officers, it became policing device and device times, and that changed the relationship with the people around us, right? Like and it it also, you know, established like familiar battle lines, like we're gonna have this fight every night, you know, and so sometimes it's you know, in a power dynamic, people just want to win. Right. So even if even if you don't mind if they use their device a little longer, you still better take it away because it's time. And even if they don't want to use it anymore, they're gonna you they're gonna demand to use it just because that's human nature. So it really was uh it really kind of affected all of the dynamics in the house. And that's just one example of many different examples, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Right, right. And I could definitely imagine my own boys. I have three boys under the age of six who they're not quite there yet, but it's starting to show because we limit the oldest, the first two, we limit them to screen time on weekends, and I actually prioritize them going outside to play. Yeah, great. Yeah, if that involves me driving them somewhere at the risk of, well, I'm chugging coffee the whole time. Well, they're getting outside playtime, it's good for them, they're making friends, and so on and so forth, rather than an eight-inch screen the entire weekend.

SPEAKER_04 4:42

So yeah. I mean, there's there's I think there's like there can be activities on screens that can be helpful. There's education, there's social connection, certainly, right? Right. Um, and even like family activities. You can watch things together, you can play games together, you can do lots of fun things together. But I think at that age, they just have so much energy. They'll have lots of time in their lives in front of screens. There's nothing that a screen can give them at that age that they can't get from a book, from a family member, from a friend from like sticking their face in the mud and like falling off a swing or like getting a ball smashed in their head or the feeling of like learning how to ride a bike. Like you get it. Like these are cool things that their brain needs to experience.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So when people say um they need a digital detox, what are they really asking for?

SPEAKER_04 5:42

You know, I that's great. I mean, I think if someone is saying that they need a digital detox, I think they're saying that they really have hit their limit. Because, you know, a detox like a detox is some sort of an intervention, whatever that might be. A cold turkey, I'm going somewhere else, I'm taking things away, I'm locking things up. It just means that you cannot manage what's going on in your normal day-to-day. And, you know, I'm not gonna say there isn't value for a digital detox and having those kinds of experiences, especially if it's you doing something really fresh and immersive and engaging your senses, and it's a great way to break behavior patterns, but it's not gonna be sustainable. It's very likely not gonna be sustainable. Because if you have to like leave your house and leave your job and leave your, you know, whatever you normally do to go be somewhere else and different to have an offline experience, then when you're back in your life doing all the regular things like carpool and work and taxes and speaking with family and being a caregiver, like you have not figured out how to adapt those um those activities in your life in a way where you can moderate the screen. And you know, the work that we're doing it offline now, it's not about being anti-tech. It's about finding a digital balance, whatever that balance means to you. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Because whenever I hear people describing their need for digital detoxes, I have friends who every now and then, because I don't really use social media, so they go off social media, I don't notice because I keep in touch with them, the traditional methods anyway. So then they tell me they're going off social media for a while, and I'm wondering to myself, what was that thing that made you decide to go off social media for two months in the first two months of the year 2026? And I'm thinking, was it loneliness? Was it anxiety? Was it guilt? Was it tied to new year resolutions? Was it just them feeling overwhelmed? Because these days, depending on your social media platform of choice, it's easy to get overwhelmed within the first 10 minutes of opening up the app, whether it's Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, and depending on what your algorithm is presenting to you, maybe you are seeing things that make you feel like you cannot afford a vacation, or you are seeing things that make you feel like you are a bad parent, or you are saying things that make you feel like you are in the wrong career, in the wrong job, working in the wrong company, and so on and so forth. So, what are those things you've noticed that are the common thread that people that say, well, digital detox is next on my checklist for this week, month, or year?

SPEAKER_04 8:37

Well, I'll answer the question a different way. So on our site, we're posting a lot of you know articles and content by us and by therapists and social workers and counselors and coaches on our site. And what we're consistently seeing is the content about relationships is getting the most and and secondarily around ADHD. But like we'll focus on relationships, things content around intimacy, around connection to partner, um, around just kind of relationship hygiene the screen as a third member in a relationship. Connecting also to parenting and kids and family screen habits and broader relationship stress. But I'm I'm seeing that. And I, you know, just what you've shared about having kids and you know, the stress of work and parenting and you know, the present economy and everything that's going on. Um, I think it creates a lot of additional stress on just kind of the adults or the parents and the relationship in the house. And relationships are hard to begin with, especially with young kids, especially with three young kids. Yep. Right. And so I think that's where it can get picked up a lot. Maybe that's uh maybe that's a a riff off your comment around loneliness, but it's an extension of that.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So you've you've said you watched tech shift from community building to attention harvesting. So what changed and around what time did you notice that change? And when did you notice? I guess I'm asking the same thing. Around what time did you notice that change?

SPEAKER_04 10:33

I mean, I think I really felt it around, let's say, 2007. I mean, you gotta I was into computers since I was a kid. Late 90s was like the heyday of the internet for me. I was involved in blogging before Blogger was bought by Google, right? YouTube before YouTube was bought by Google. So the internet that I got uh introduced to and fell in love with was one that was bringing people together, artists, diarists, photographers, you know, people from all over the world, finding community, creating things. And, you know, I built blogs for big companies. I built a blog for the Museum of Modern Art. I just loved bringing people together and discovering new things. Uh, it was, you know, as the major social networks, and I'll say like specifically Facebook at the outset began to grow, it became clear that the business model was in selling ads and media. And the way you target those ads and media is by collecting information about the individuals uh that are on your platform. And then um, as the algorithms became more sophisticated, the way you get more ads served is have people take more actions on the site, which means they're just going to see more content and want to see more things. And so as those algorithms figured out that the best way to get engagement was to, you know, or or very, you know, not necessarily the best way, but like a really good way to get engagement is to rile people up, give them things to react to, give them things to be, and because they knew everybody in so there there comes the attention harvesting piece, right? The harvesting of data and the attention we we need you to give us more and more and more and more and more. And then, you know, those kind of algorithmic and design principles are baked into, you know, every platform. Like even LinkedIn now, which 10 years ago was just a resume site, is now a social network too, right? Yep. So, you know, not to mention the infinite scrolls of uh of uh TikTok. Even the New York Times changed their video page on their mobile app to be an infinite scroll TikTok style piece. They did that a couple weeks ago. Wow, and I and I felt a difference because I I like the New York Times app on my phone. And I was like, this is a different video experience. It's like serving to me as opposed to giving me the control of what I want to say.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Wow. So and of course, you have a marketing background. Um how did that play into the way you understand compulsive tech use?

SPEAKER_04 13:42

Well I would say that I am a strategist by trade and and I am I'm sort of a systems thinker. So I kind of look at things from like 50,000 feet and see how the dots connect together. So I'm not a behavioral psychologist. I'm I'm not like a user experience designer. I don't truly understand, you know, the specifics of human behavior and you know the addictive patterns, the dark patterns. Like I don't know the deep specifics of it. Um but it was clear from a strategic perspective how the web was shifting. Right. And how how different platforms were changing. And like as a marketer building a social media agency, the early parts of my career were building blog community strategies so brands could feel safe in this conversational medium where they didn't own their voice and how or they didn't like own the conversation the way you could in broadcast media. You put something on TV, no one can answer to it. So, but what started to happen was these brands could not generate as much traffic organically to their owned media, to their sites, as well as they could by buying advertisements and banner ads on other sites or even the data on social networks. And if you think about, you know, large brands, they're made to buy advertising, right? Their whole operating procedure for many, many years was we're gonna film a commercial, we're gonna put it on TV, we're gonna film a radio spot, we're gonna put it on the radio, we're gonna make posters, we're gonna put them outside on buses and bus shelters and billboards. And so we're gonna make websites and we're gonna buy advertisements on the internet. And they're great at having large advertising budgets. So this, so the online advertising networks focus their business around giving them an audience that they could buy. And so it be building community on the web is hard. It takes effort, it takes one-to-one communication, it takes people time. And like in some ways, a lot of brands would put junior intermediate people on their social media channels, which creates a risk, right? If you're like Coca-Cola and someone sounds off on your feed, it could be very, it could, it could be on the cover of the New York Times, right? I mean, I've seen those situations happen before. And so it's just a lot less risky to like make a YouTube video and put out YouTube ads, make a Facebook page, Facebook, like so it's just kind of the system kind of feeds itself. Sorry if I went off deep on that.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Oh no, no, no worries. These are the kind of conversations I actually like to have. And I've noticed this coming up several times now, especially with these new methods the social media platforms are using. Um, the infinite scroll is one big one, and it's keeping people on the app much longer. And they do that because they want to turn around and show their advertisers saying if you advertise with us, you're guaranteed 2 million eyes within a span of 30 days. So therefore, come advertise on our platform compared to this other platform.

SPEAKER_04 17:35

Yeah, exactly. And they and they know more about you, the more you click, even if even you know, so yes, they have they'll be able to say this is how many users, this is how long a session is, this is the topics people look at, so they'll have that data. But the more you click on things or comment on things or like things, the more they can learn about you. So the more they can target things. So someone can say, Oh yeah, we have all these 16-year-old girls that like fashion, and we have all these 50-year-old guys that are like looking at workout videos. So, you know, it's a big I can't pret I can't go much deeper than that, but I think you can just everyone can envision in their minds how deep this matrix goes and how important it is to like be mindful of understanding that it exists and then taking some personal responsibility of like, okay, you want to make a change, let's let's you're gonna have to work at it at the beginning because there are a lot of these forces that don't want to make change easy.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Right. So why build offline now instead of just publishing content or even running coaching consultancies?

SPEAKER_04 18:47

Great, great question. So um this is a really big problem, and a lot of people need help. Certainly more help than I can do on my own. Um, and so the book and the matrix and the methodology are meant as a way to say to lots of people like we have we have a way to help you. There's a there is, you know, a lot of the content out there around behavior change and screens is like rule-based, you know, two hours a day of Instagram, otherwise your brain's gonna turn to mush, right? Or like use your screen time app. So a lot of it's rule-based. And while I think that's valuable, our approach is a little bit different. We're saying to people, you define what digital balance means for you in your life right now. And it's not rule-based because your life doesn't operate by rules, right? Weekends, weekdays, you're an accountant, it's tax season. Like you've got, you need flexibility. Um, and if you have a rule-based situation that's driving you, well, then the second you click, no, I need more time, you feel like, oh, I screwed up, I failed, I missed it again. And that hurts your self-confidence. So we want to create this shame-free, non-judgmental approach. So that was that was a notion. But, you know, there are other communities and groups that are also being impacted by all the changes happening on the web and businesses. And one are these therapists and coaches and social workers that have unbelievable training. And not just in areas of screen addiction, right? Like relationships, ADHD, depression, anxiety, um, eating disorders, you know, all kinds of like every, you know, online shopping addiction, online porn addiction, you name it, all of it. And these people are also being challenged by the gig economy sites to, you know, it's being challenged, it's hard for them to find business. So uh offline now is there's the book for everybody, there's the web and the resources for everybody, but we're also building uh the world's largest directory of therapists, coaches, and social workers that can help you make a change in your life. And we have like hundreds of very specific areas of expertise. So you can go and find a human to have a conversation with about what's going on. You can like book a free conversation with someone. And you know, what we're finding is that you make the first step, like, I want to make a change really easy. And so the book and the matrix and our website should make that really easy to do. But then as soon as you're like, okay, I want to do this, your personal life situation and whatever is going makes things very, very complex and niche. Like everybody's unique. So it is not one, some one size fits all approach is going to help everybody, you know? So that's why we want to have a huge diversity of practitioners on this site so that someone can find an individual that they really feel like a connection to, because that's a huge contributors to success. Human empathy with someone that you can really have a connection with who can help you with the training. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

So I was gonna ask you about screen time. What's the biggest misconception that you want to retire about screen time? It's gonna be a hard question.

SPEAKER_04 22:14

I don't know. Screen time's not bad. You can do a lot of fun things on screen time, right? Like I love using my screens. And there's all different kinds of screens. Like I got a music player that's not even connected to the internet and that's got a screen on it, and I love that thing. So screens are not bad, and screen time is not bad. It's just I I like to say that if you don't manage the screens in your life, they manage you. Screens want to manage your time. So you just have to like learn how to manage them.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Hmm. So my my own story, and I like to use this as an example, not in a way to say, well, I'm the best at doing this. It took me years to figure it out. So I use the screen time app on my Apple iPhone. And my social media, I only use one social media platform, Instagram, and I use it to promote the show. I set a time limit on Instagram for 15 minutes per day. No questions asked. If my 15 minutes is up at 7 a.m., then I'm not using Instagram for the rest of the day. Sometimes my 15 minutes is up around 10 p.m. because I opened the app at 9.45. So that's what works for me, but I didn't start off that way. I had a time in my life where I would spend six, seven hours on Instagram per day. Now I spend 15 minutes on Instagram per day. And the thing like the half-joke I like to say is well, if someone posts a comment on a post I make, that means I'm not gonna see it until I open the app the next day. Yes, I'm not gonna see it until I open the app the next day. And if the person deletes the post before I see it, maybe I'm not supposed to see the comment anyway.

SPEAKER_04 24:04

Yeah, great. That's like uh that's that's just an outstanding um hack that you made for yourself. So how do you decide when you want to use your 15 minutes every day?

SPEAKER_01 24:19

So usually when I open the app, it's for me to check messages first thing, because some people correspond with me on Instagram, funny enough, because we met via some maybe page and then we correspond, and usually it's pertaining to the podcast. So I open the app, I check messages, and in that case, someone corresponding with me regarding the podcast on Instagram, that person would have my email and my LinkedIn. So that Instagram wouldn't even be the first thing they would use to get in touch with me. Or just in case I still check messages, friends that are trying to keep in touch. Friends wouldn't send me something urgent on Instagram DMs, they would text me or send me an email. So that means the messages I even check on Instagram are not exactly urgent messages. So they can wait a week before I reply them because they are not even urgent anyway. And I post about the episodes I release and then I close it up. Every feedback, every like, every comment on that episode, I see them later because they are not urgent. If it's an urgent feedback, the person giving that urgent feedback knows how to reach me urgently. Right. Instagram is not for urgent communication. So if there's an urgent feedback, maybe I said something I shouldn't have said on an episode. Well, I get the email immediately, and then I go and correct it, I upload a new version of the episode, I make the correction, and then I go on. So social media platforms are just there for like, okay, I'm promoting this show to this audience. I also promote on LinkedIn and then I also promote on other platforms where the promotion actually captures a good enough section of the population. So that way I can afford 15 minutes for a day on Instagram. So that's cool.

SPEAKER_04 26:23

I I mean I I think that's great. I the that that's kind of what I'm saying is the solutions to this are just so personal. Right? The people have intimate relationships with their devices. A lot of people sleep with them, use them in the bathroom on their commute, right? They're intimate relationships. So like the changes or the interventions people want to make and how they use them are need to equally be personal and fit. You know, how is your house or apartment laid out? You know, how is your neighborhood laid out? What is the weather around? Like, what do you do when you come home? Where, you know, just how is how is everything structured? Are you a primary caregiver for someone who's older or younger? Like, do you need a device for that? There's it's very like I was speaking with someone who didn't want to be sleeping with their phone next to the bed because it, you know, like all the social and everything at work and emails and everything, but their mother was someone who was ill and could call at any point in time of the day. And if her phone wasn't in the bedroom on next to the bed, she couldn't sleep. So we talked about it for a while. And basically the we figured the solution was was to get a Bluetooth handset so it looks like it's a phone and keep that by the bed. And then at night, only allow the you know, the siblings and the parent, like the key numbers to be allowed to ring through. And if it rings, that phone rings, she picks it up. But everything else is silent, and the phone can be out of the room because Bluetooth has range. And that was just like just like, wow, I can buy like a$30 Bluetooth thing that looks like a phone that I grew up with and put it by my bed and look like I've got a phone by my bed. Like it, like, like the solution becomes cool. You know what I mean? It's not like uh it's like I got this cool, like I'm gonna go buy something neat on my I want this to be successful, like it's going on my next stand, I want it to be awesome. You know, it's so it's like it can be fun as opposed to like a chore or something you know that's embarrassing or gonna be a hard job, hard work. Take the stigma out of it, you know?

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Yeah, yeah. So walk us through the offline note matrix. Um, why did you decide to map habits on motivation and confidence?

SPEAKER_04 29:17

Right. Well, I mean, uh the the the short So the story on that one is when I was 20 in my 20s, I worked a researcher on a book called The Power of the Two by Two Matrix. And so I worked on these two by two decision matrices, and my brain was programmed in that way. And I always felt it was just a matter of time until I created one myself because we researched hundreds of them and what makes them work. And so this is a two by two matrix of motivation and confidence. But, you know, so you have motivation high and low, and confidence high and low. And, you know, depending on where you are on each one of those, you can have one of four outcomes. Uh and so basically when it comes to habit change, you want to make sure you start in the right place. Because if you start in the wrong place, you set you can set yourself up for failure. Right. Like if you haven't gone to the gym in years and you decide, I'm gonna start going to the gym, and you go every day for five hours and just like start working out, like you'll hurt yourself and you'll you'll never go back. Right. But if you build it up really slowly and strategically and figure out what you like along the way and you build it into your day, it'll probably stick. So that's sort of the thinking. So this is it's the same approach for using your phone. So we ask you two questions. You know, how moted are you, how motivated are you in your desire to change your phone habits? But it could be change your bedtime habits or stop using your gaming as much or online dating as much, whatever it is. How motive are how motivated are you to change your phone habits low high? And how confident are you in your ability to do it when you want to? And that creates four types the ready type, the overwhelmed type, the stuck, and the unconcerned. And each one of those has its own starting place. Now, what we've seen from our data is 80%, 81% of people um have high motivation. So it's not a motivation issue for most people. It's self-confidence. Uh 51% of people are in the overwhelmed quadrant. High motivation, low self-confidence. I really want to make a change. I don't believe I can do it. And so the the strategy is just meet those people where they're at and start building their confidence with them. And so the starting point is to pick interventions that you know you're going to be successful at, right? Because the goal is not to change your phone habits right away, it's to build your confidence. So, and our data is saying that the best time to do that is on weekdays, is let's say between 5 to 8 p.m. That's when people are most ready in the evening. So, you know, you pick a moment in time during that part of the day when you're feeling strong, and you just like, what is the most simple thing that you know you can be successful at? Like, can you put your phone, turn it upside down for five minutes while you're reading on the couch or cooking dinner? Right? Can you, if you eat dinner with your phone at the table, can you spend like can you turn it upside down for the meal? Can you put it on the counter across the room? And you just slowly, you slowly work up. Can you can you leave the phone inside the house and go for a one-minute walk outside to the end of the block and back? Great. Next week, can it be like a five-minute walk? Right? You, you know, so you start like experimenting, right? You don't treat it as like I better do this or I'm a loser. It's like, I'm gonna try this. It's an experiment. Uh it'll either succeed or it won't succeed. And if it doesn't succeed, what do I learn from that experiment? And then what am I gonna do differently? And so we're just like, that's the those are that's just some insight into the matrix. The the key was just what is the simplest, like, what is the simplest way to get into a problem? Two questions. Like two questions gives you an insight. And what we're finding is really interesting is there's no vocabulary around people's relationships with their phones. So when they do this and they're like, oh, I'm overwhelmed, that's what that feeling. They they feel better just by knowing, oh, I'm overwhelmed. Okay, all right, that makes sense, or I'm ready, or I'm stuck, right? Okay, so I'm stuck. So now I can put a label against it. So what does it mean to be stuck? And what do you do when you're stuck? It's good. Tellful. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

So you've you emphasized um confidence over willpower. How do you rebuild confidence after years of failing at detox attempts?

SPEAKER_04 34:01

Right. So, I mean, rebuilding confidence, I think I just explained that, right? You just kind of start really small and you prove to people that they can be successful. You rewire their brains, right? But the trick is just picking those interventions that they can guarantee their success at. Working like you don't want to try an intervention at like 2.33 in the afternoon when you're at work and you're freaking overwhelmed and you know, exhausted. Like it's not, you don't want to try an intervention like at 11 45 at night or 12 30 in the morning. Like those aren't those aren't the right times, right? Especially at the very beginning. You're like you're you're you know, so what we're finding the data is we like between like after dinner to around early in the evening is ideal and around 11 o'clock in the morning. Those are ideal. Um, you know, certainly bedtime and morning routines, if you can work on those outstanding, the longer you can not use your phone in the morning, right? Um, the better. You know, the the more time you can have before you fall asleep without using your phone, like the science says, get that blue light out of your face an hour before bed, you'll sleep better. So um, but I'll say the another way to build confidence is to build motivation, right? Because um it's good to have motivation to help you power through challenging things to do. So the ways you can build motivation is you can look backwards. You can say, like, was there a time in my life when I wasn't using my phone as much or in front on the gaming system as much, or you know, just on Instagram or online shopping as much? And what was I doing with my time? Do I want to do those things again? Was I like cycling or playing guitar or you know, hanging out with buddies? Like, what did that feel like? And I want to maybe I want to try and get back to that. Alternatively, you can kind of look forward and say, like, what's a skill that I would like to have or like to develop? And um, you know, how can I maybe maybe it's like drawing or learning how to illustrate again or something like that, you know, and just using the desire to be have that skill as a reason to yeah, to help you build that confidence, right? Motivation to build that confidence.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Got it.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

Sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

And for me personally, it's one of the things I'm starting to realize that whatever I set my mind to do, I can do it, but I need systems in place. Motivation, the ability to stay focused, the ability to even break that task into chunks. Yeah. So this podcast is one big example that is, I guess, obvious to even people that don't know me. And they wonder how I am able to do all these episodes every week, and I still have a regular job, and I'm a dad of three boys, all kids. And I'm thinking, well, it took me years to arrive at systems that actually work for me because a bunch of trial and error. I approach everything with a curious mindset. I like to try things, and my life is a series of experiments, basically. That's how I describe myself at this point. So I've tried editing episodes at 4 a.m. And then I tried editing episodes at 10 p.m. just to see which ones I can chunk up into bits of time, and I would have enough focus to do a good job of editing those episodes because I cannot do those things during the day, and I cannot do them during the weekends. So I'm limited to early morning on weekdays, late nights on weekdays, but I want to edit a one-hour episode, so that means I need way more chunks of time. What is the best time of the day where I can find those chunks of time? Is it early morning or late night? And then I just experimented over a period of months basically, and it's a combination of both time frames early morning, late night. And before you know it, every Thursday an episode is ready. And people are like, How do you do it? I'm like, I really don't know. I just figured out a system and it keeps me motivated because now I'm looking forward to the next episode I'm gonna edit, which sounds crazy, but maybe I'm a crazy person. Who knows?

SPEAKER_04 38:33

It's good to be a little crazy.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 38:37

Yeah so because you gotta surprise yourself too, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

Right, right. And it's basically a series of challenges I give myself and everything toward a productive end goal. Yeah, because the results speak for themselves. People look me up and they see all these things I do, and they're like, How do you find time in the day? How many hours do you have per day? I'm like, I have the same 24 hours you have, and I manage to use Instagram for 15 minutes per day. Maybe that's where all my time comes from. Not using Instagram for seven hours a day.

SPEAKER_04 39:10

Yeah, that that could be a big one for you. You know, I mean, I uh I applaud you. You're setting a good example for your kids. Um but it takes a lot of work. But also just want to say that, you know, every I I was on a podcast the other day with a woman who's focused on caregiving and um and their whole community, it's a pot a community for people that are caregivers, and they have these really hard jobs where they're working with, you know, they have really hard jobs and they use Instagram like she was talking about how just like having downtime on the social web is a way that people can calm themselves. And uh so I make that comment just because your your 15-minute Instagram rule that works for you is like might not be something that works for someone else, and it might not even be close to the right objective for what other people should set for themselves. So it's like the effort that you went to to experiment and figure out the rules and the systems and the processes that work for you and and how strict you need to be. I mean, other people should go through that process on their own for themselves, and who knows what they're gonna come up with. But whatever they come up with will work for them. And like, you know, and we we even and and they might spend a lot more time on the web, but that's okay, right? If they're achieving their own personal goals, I'm sure you you agree. I just felt it was important to say that.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:48

Because what you've achieved is not the average.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Right, right. To still man that argument, I would say, well, if someone is a digital marketer, by default, they spend a lot of time on social media platforms. Yeah. So now all it boils down to is how efficient are they using that time because now they have a legitimate reason to spend eight hours a day on a social media or multiple social media platforms because their nine to five job requires them to be on social media platforms.

SPEAKER_04 41:22

Yeah. I'll tell you when we were working in the agency and and like I didn't really use the social media, I never really liked it so much, but I was like, we were managing people, like we had over 25 staff, and then another 25 like contractors. It was a lot of people, it was a lot of stress, right? You got to make payroll, clients. It was intense. And uh we would just we just want to get as far away from the city and from computers as we could over the weekend. So we would just go up to friends' cottages and we would go camping. And so, so you know, work was computers, and then not work was not computers. No, we wouldn't see movies, we couldn't play video games, we just we just had to run. Literally, we ran. We learned how to use a chainsaw and a and a uh and then splitting axe to m to cut wood, chop wood and make fires and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

No. So in line with that, you've created a digital wellness directory. Um what gap does expert help fill that content or self-help cannot fill?

SPEAKER_04 42:29

Oh, that's easy. It's human empathy. I mean, paired with like extreme training, right? I mean, um I mean, all the life experience and the hundreds of clients that these individuals have seen. There's so much diversity on the of the individuals. They come from different ethnic backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, you know, cities, geographies, they speak different languages, um, married, single, polyamorous, they queer communities, like there's just been through a lot of situations themselves or have seen it and helped many others. Um, so that's just, you know, there's that. I don't think anyone, like this is a hard job to change your relationship with your devices. I don't think anyone should like be expected to be able to do it on their own. Um yeah, and you know sometimes the behavior change is um it's like more coaching or executive function. Like, I need a new bedtime routine, I need help with strategies to manage my work-life balance, right? But sometimes it's clinical. Like I have ADHD and I I I'm I have depression, clinical depression, and like I'm stuck on these devices. I have I have a body image and eating disorder issue because what's going on with these devices, let's say, and other things that's going on. You these are things that need treatment. And so oftentimes, like if someone is spending two hours on their phone on the toilet while their family's having dinner, there's a very good, decent likelihood the problem is not the phone, but has something to do with the relationships and the personalities involved. And so, I mean, I would just encourage people that are just thinking that they want to make a change, just go on our website and look through all the people that are there and find a couple people that seem interesting to you and just book a 15-minute conversation with them, you know, just just to have a conversation about what they do and what you're thinking about, and maybe that'll give you some insight.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Nice, nice.

SPEAKER_04 45:24

That's a good question, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Thank you, thank you. So um this show is about building healthy relationships with technology. Um, what would you say safe by design looks like? Um you mentioned how you are a systems level thinker. Um ideally, we should have safe by design in every technology device, every technology platform, and so on. But then guardrails are not necessarily present because the companies, the bigger the companies, the more. Lawyers they can throw at a system to make sure they find a loophole around setting up guardrails and so on and so on. So, what guardrails should be default in terms of having a safe by design system in place?

SPEAKER_04 46:16

I can't say that I know the technical definition of safe by design. So I don't know if I can properly answer that question. But I will say something that I've always that has always been on my mind that might like ameliorate the situation a little bit. You know, they have a saying in in product in technology. It's like if you're not paying to use the product, you're the product. Right. And I was like always aggravated that you could not, let's say, go into Facebook and like, I want to pay, pick your number$20 a month. I want to pay$50 a month for use of Facebook with no advertising, uh, no one gets my data. Um, and the reason they would never do that is because the people with money that will pay for it are the people that the advertisers want to reach. Right. Um But I I uh, you know, having sort of an option on systems and platforms and websites for that model where I want to take myself out of your advertising pool and I just want the service that will connect me to my peers without getting minehacked, you know, and I'm willing to pay for that. Right? Like I'm willing to pay to use Instagram or Facebook so that I can legitimately just connect with my high school buddies and hear what they gotta say and like see a feed that's like um that it's uh what's it called, uh temporal, like it's like it's a it's a proper time, like the way it used to be in like 2005, right? Like everybody that you followed saw every one of your posts and there were no brands on the platform, right? Like you should be able to be able to pay for a service like that. Wow, wow.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

So if you could rewrite um a product specification for AI that helps humans live better, what are some non-negotiables that would be in that product spec?

SPEAKER_04 48:33

Um I certainly would you see rules get you in trouble, right? Like if I were to say um you should never have kind of romantic or emotional conversations with somebody, right? But then you turn around and like what about that like 80-year-old, you know, widow who's got partial dementia that needs a companion. I don't know. Like maybe that's a way to help somebody out. Like, I don't know. I'm I don't know. So, but I do feel I do feel that um the convert the the conversations many teenage boys are having with AI and that AIs are coaching them, like those kinds of they can be like unhealthy romantic conversations. I think the syncop sync psychophant I can't get that word out right. Um the you know, these platforms that flatter everybody at every answer, I think that that is not necessarily helpful. Uh like it, like it drives more engagement, right? But it and that's like relatively new. Like I think in the last year it really kind of dialed that up. But I think those kind of like small, you know, they talk about like microaggressions, these are like micro, I don't know, impressions. I don't know what you want to call them, but they're they're small little design changes that could have massive impact on like people's. I mean, maybe maybe it's setting um time limits on AI, you know, maybe. But I'll tell you, like, my son is taking, he's studying for a test. He takes pictures of all the study notes and all the his work, and he asks the AI to generate tests for him. And it generates tests with multiple choice quests and diagrams and all kinds of stuff, and it's incredibly helpful for him. So, you know, you don't want to accidentally knock out some of these incredible resources for people. So maybe I evaded your question, maybe I partially answered it.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

Yeah, I think you answered it because it's also in line with what I've been thinking about this thing for the longest time, pretty much since November of 2022, when ChatGPT came and disrupted everything. And what I was envisioning was more along the lines of the same way we wouldn't just hand over a liquor store, the key to the door of a liquor store to a 16-year-old, simply because they would go and drink and then turn around and get behind the wheel of wheel, the the steering wheel of a car, and then cause an accident. Grown-ups know how to handle them well. Most grown-ups, I all things being equal, know how to handle alcohol and set their limits and observe their limits and so on. Even video games. There are people I know who have video game consoles and maybe they play once a month or once every six months with their friends, and there are little teenagers who play video games 24-7. The same video game console from the same company. You are legally allowed to buy video games, but then you use it differently. Same thing with drinking, underage drinking, anything that involves self-control. The people that designed not being able to get a rental car until you're above 25. Well, you can, but it's more expensive. Because if you're below 25, you're more likely to get into an accident. Well, the rental car company does not want to have to deal with that risk. So therefore, it's more expensive to get a rental car under the age of 25. You can get a rental car, it's just more expensive. So they are discouraging you because they think, well, you're more likely to get into the car.

SPEAKER_04 52:36

Yeah, there's an economic disincentive.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

Right. So maybe the same thing should apply to AI systems and platforms saying, well, maybe if you are of a certain age, you can use our AI platform, but the things you can do would be limited to homework and changing your outfit combination or whatever it is that they can limit teenagers to on AI platforms. Once you are above a certain age group or above a certain whatever the demographic is, then you get exposed to more things on the same AI platform. Maybe that's what we need at this point.

SPEAKER_04 53:15

Yeah, and you know, you know, maybe also healthy education on how to use these tools, right? Like it takes a lot of time to learn how to drive a car. You gotta have lessons, and then you know, you take a course, then you have lessons, you have you get your driver's license in in, you know, first you can drive in a city, then you get a then you take a test on a highway, and then you have to spend a lot of time behind the wheel to have different situations before you even drive at night. Yeah, or in the snow. Like, because there was a big my daughter just got her license uh in the summer, um, and then there was a big snowstorm a couple weeks ago, and I was like, let's go. Like, you gotta learn how to drive in the snow. It's nice and deep, and it's fresh, deep snow. There aren't that many opportunities to learn. Um, so let's go. Um, so I think you know, handing kids these or people, like anybody, frankly, these large language model tools without like brief education on like how they operate, what they do, and how to use them well. Right? Like, because there's there like if you want to get quality work out of them, you know, asking like form how you formulate the question is not always intuitive. And what strategies you can use to get a better, more helpful, more accurate answer is not necessarily intuitive. And ChatGPG just uh they just launched their advert, they're just launching their advertising model systems now. So we'll see how that goes.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yeah, I mean, it's it's one of two things. Either they're trying to recoup all the money they've spent on data centers, or they are just going the natural way every social media platform goes. Well, they start off being saying they're gonna do the right thing, and then they realize, well, the economic situation needs you to be able to generate internal revenue outside of what your enterprise customers give you. So here we are.

SPEAKER_04 55:30

Yep. Yeah, I remember I remember there was a time when Google did not have AdWords as a product. Yep. There was a they didn't have Google Maps as a product. Yeah, I remember those days. They were great. The internet was, and you know, it's really interesting. And but in the early days, buying AdWords was like something you could do on your own. Like you could figure it out. You can't do that anymore. You need help to compliment. Facebook was set up for classmates to get in touch with it. Facebook was really fun. Yeah, yeah. There was a time where you couldn't be on Facebook if you didn't have a university.

SPEAKER_01 56:06

Yeah.edu. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 56:08

Yeah, if you weren't in a university. And it was, and it's it was a time when it's yeah, so I mean, anyways, I'm aging myself. I'm turning 49 this June. Who could who who saw that one coming?

SPEAKER_01 56:19

Oh I'm I'm closer to 40 than 35. So let's just put it in. It's good. It's all good. I I stand up and my knees remind me of why do you why did you think you need to stand up right now?

SPEAKER_04 56:36

Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

This has been a fun conversation. Thank you. Yeah, this has been great.

SPEAKER_04 56:42

I really enjoy meeting you. I I uh I really enjoyed this. Come up to Toronto, we'll hang out, it'll be fun.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Hopefully this year or early next year. Yeah. I'm looking for conferences to come speak. So good.

SPEAKER_04 56:56

Yeah, okay, legitimately. If you come to the city, look me up. Yeah, we'll have a good time.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

Nice, nice. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Catch you later, bit.