Our Greatest Strength, Our Biggest Distraction

Welcome back to Proof It's Possible! In this engaging conversation, Jamie and Dayle explore the multifaceted impact of technology and social media on our lives. They discuss the benefits of AI and social media for productivity and knowledge, as well as the downsides like distraction, time-wasting, and social disconnection, offering practical tips to harness technology positively. Tune in to discover: 

• How our phones provide us with so much convenience, but also take away our time and our ability to be comfortable with boredom
• The value of setting strict phone and tech boundaries
• Why AI may be replacing some jobs, but not replacing the value of human support and connection
• How unrestricted tech influences our youth's abilities to develop their social skills

What boundaries do you set around tech? Share your thoughts with us — we’d love to hear! DM us on Instagram @dayle_sheehan_designs & @jamiedfrancis! See you next time!

This episode is sponsored by our Ultimate Girls Trip! Be sure to go to www.proofitspossible.com for more info.

For More Information:
• Proof It's Possible Website
• The Ultimate Girls Trip Instagram

Dayle:
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Website
• Interior Design

Jamie:
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Website 

Transcript

Jamie (00:01.557)
Hi guys, welcome back. Today we are talking about something that is maybe a little controversial, but everybody can acknowledge that it is a part of our life. And we are talking about technology, not just our phones, but our laptops, AI, all of the things that we use to run our business, but are also stealing some of our sanity, I think.

Dayle Sheehan (00:30.166)
Mm-hmm. I think so too. And I'm a huge fan of it because I need it to do all my jobs. Like every single job that I get to do from home is the result of technology. you know, I love it, but I'm also like, find myself having days where I'm scrolling and I'm hearing information midstream through the day that like gives me negative.

Jamie (00:34.219)
Good! Me too!

Dayle Sheehan (00:57.41)
thoughts, you know, and like it's thoughts about like, politics or it's thought, you know, it's just news about bad things that are happening in the world. And I'm like, I didn't go searching for that. And I don't really want to see it. I wanted to like, quickly pop on to socials and see what my friends are up to today or whatever that looks like. But then I'm also when I do feel like catching up on the news, I'm grateful to social media that there's news stories that are not just mainstream news stories.

Jamie (01:02.165)
Well...

Jamie (01:14.09)
Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (01:24.054)
and that there's another side and it's the only place to maybe get another side of what's going on in the world. So it's so hard.

Jamie (01:24.117)
Yeah.

Jamie (01:30.113)
100 % because our news source is owned by the government. It's propaganda is what it is. So it's the only way to see other perspectives other than what the government wants it to see. But I agree with you. There's days where I'm like, I just need like a brain break. And then you go on there and you're like, this is the farthest thing from a break. This is like, won't be spiraling about things that I hadn't even thought about today. And I don't really want to think

Dayle Sheehan (01:36.702)
one side. Yeah, exactly. 100%. So.

Dayle Sheehan (01:45.73)
Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (01:54.903)
Exactly.

Dayle Sheehan (01:59.246)
Yes. Yes. And I think every single form of technology honestly has good and then it has a bad. That's just, and now we're talking AI and it's like, the thing about AI is for a productivity tool. think it's phenomenal. If I know my email needs to be more professional, I love running it through and being like, just clean this up. It's so bad. You know, like

Jamie (02:00.148)
But here I am.

Jamie (02:07.52)
Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (02:26.04)
Cause my brain's going hundred miles an hour and I'm trying to get it all done. And that can like take out 20 minutes of me thinking about how to say it clearly or make it more step by step or whatever it is that I'm looking to do so that my, the recipient of it doesn't have to read through my craziness and my ideas that aren't organized. So I absolutely love it for that. But then I'm like, yeah, but I know that there's a side to this where it's going to take my job.

Jamie (02:33.951)
Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (02:53.408)
it's going to take potentially, right? Like it's going to make everything make people less necessary. And that is kind of terrible because what's it going to do to our economies and what's going to it going to do to people's lives that, you know, let's say make social media and this can make us 30 social media posts in 30 seconds. Right? Like what happens next?

Jamie (03:21.535)
Yeah, it's definitely going to shape and shift the actual people that do jobs, but I think it also creates jobs too. it's like, it's not, it's not like, it's fully taking away jobs. It's, it's eliminating certain jobs maybe, but it's adding tons of new jobs that we didn't have before. So.

Dayle Sheehan (03:30.048)
It does. It does.

Dayle Sheehan (03:45.238)
And so far, I've found that people are really in desperate, like even though it's early in the AI world, people wanna talk to a person to ask their questions. That's what I've noticed like in my website work and things like that. People want me to explain it to them. And I'm like, I'm surprised we didn't just chat this. Like you can just look on AI about this question, but they did and...

Jamie (04:05.12)
Well.

Jamie (04:08.885)
Thank you.

Dayle Sheehan (04:12.022)
AI doesn't show you exactly on their website or the things that AI is explaining don't look the same or show like aren't listed by the same name. So then there's this missing link and people are just like, I give up, want somebody to help me.

Jamie (04:26.081)
Yeah, here's the perfect example. Have you ever gone onto like a bot chat? Cause you're like, you know, struggling with something. How do I add a column into whatever? So you go on to the, you know, the software's support and it's a bot and you're like trying to add a column into my accounting's invoice, you know, or something. then the bot's like, you completely misreads it. And it's like,

Dayle Sheehan (04:31.112)
yeah, it's horrible.

Mm-hmm.

Dayle Sheehan (04:48.162)
Yeah.

Jamie (04:53.761)
here is the help guide for how to set up a new business. But that's not what I asked. So then you attempt to ask it a different way and they're like, how to change the date in your accounting software? And you're like, that's not what I asked. You do that a hundred times or have you ever called in to like, know, tell us or something and then you get like the, can you repeat that for me? And you're saying like, speak to the operator. Yes.

Dayle Sheehan (04:57.324)
Yeah, well exactly.

Dayle Sheehan (05:07.777)
Yeah, exactly.

Dayle Sheehan (05:18.4)
Yeah, you have to say your like ID customer ID or something and they are mishearing it. It's like.

Jamie (05:24.885)
Yes, it's so frustrating. You're like, just let me talk to a real person. Like, well, I think that as much as technology advances, it's not perfect and it's never gonna be perfect. So there's always gonna be a need for a human somewhere. And I do think that there's so much efficiencies that happen with technology, like, and so much advertising. Like look at social media.

Dayle Sheehan (05:29.12)
Mm-hmm. Well that and the other thing is is yes

Dayle Sheehan (05:44.843)
Mm-hmm.

Jamie (05:49.154)
Look at 20 years ago, you would have to take an ad out on a billboard, at a radio station, perhaps in the Yellow Pages. All the ways that people would find your business before are just literally extinct. Billboards are still a thing, social media marketing all of a sudden became this relatively low cost, low cost, like anyone could just...

Dayle Sheehan (06:02.52)
Yeah, the newspaper. Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (06:09.848)
deal like the biggest way. Yeah.

Jamie (06:15.261)
start advertising their business and quite honestly more effectively than an ad that only certain people will drive by. know, like a billboard ad is only gonna be seen by the people that drive that road where the billboard ad is. Social media, you can reach people in other countries, you can reach people in other provinces, states, whatever it looks like. And so the reach is so much greater. But that being said, social media is also in order for people

Dayle Sheehan (06:20.524)
if you were to put it in a paper, newspaper. Yeah, for sure.

Dayle Sheehan (06:30.211)
Mm-hmm.

Dayle Sheehan (06:34.018)
Absolutely.

Jamie (06:44.533)
to see your ad, they have to be scrolling. you're, you know, it's the war on someone's attention. And what does that like?

Dayle Sheehan (06:52.014)
For sure. Well, and when you do have a problem with like your technology, let's say, so I use the website example, someone will have a problem and they're like, they can't figure out why their site is behaving a certain way because of the way that they've designed it or formatted it. And what ends up happening is they don't even know how to explain the problem properly to AI because they don't know what the problem is. Cause if they knew what the problem was, they would

Jamie (07:14.592)
Yes.

Dayle Sheehan (07:20.684)
Like that's why we're getting the wrong answer from AI is because we don't know how to explain what it's doing. And it only knows how to explain very specific, well thought out questions. So who's going to tell you how to what your problem is so you can explain it to explain it to AI so that it can help you. And it's like, well, then just go to the who is going to tell you because they know how to fix it too. And so I

Jamie (07:46.678)
Well, and have you ever gotten through to somebody, like, you know, software help or something, and you get through to somebody and they're like, hold on, let me just look it up. And I'm like, I've already looked it up. You know, like, what do you mean? But they're the person who can ask the question better. Like, so.

Dayle Sheehan (07:52.696)
Mm-hmm.

Dayle Sheehan (08:03.53)
Exactly. Well, it's one of the reasons also that I love working as a Wix partner because they have incredible support. So when I have a problem with the client's site, I can call them and they don't send me some like AI thing. They send me like a real person with a recorded video on the actual website I'm struggling with showing me exactly what the problem is.

and why it's behaving a way that I can't figure out the problem. Or somebody actually answers the phone and walks through all the issues that I'm having with me and explains how to do it properly. And like, I appreciate it to a level that when people are like, I might go to another platform, like I don't care to be on Wix. I just kind of saw the advertisement for it and I started here. So I thought I would, you know, and I'm like, but they'll help you in the future. Like they will help you in the future. So I think that you need to consider this and also

I'll help you in the future to the level that I can, which is pretty high for most people's needs, right? Like they get to call me back after I design their website. And if I have a website that I don't understand, I want a human helping me. So.

Jamie (09:16.705)
But I think everyone, regardless website, whatever it is, you want a human. You want a human. That's when you have a problem though. I think there's a lot of things where it's not a problem and you can use technology to just find efficiencies. Like, so the things that I, I'm going to give you my top like three things that I love about technology is,

Dayle Sheehan (09:24.032)
I agree.

Dayle Sheehan (09:31.96)
for sure.

Mm-hmm.

totally.

Jamie (09:46.254)
one that it's basically free. You can use it as like free advertising, not just for your business, but also for like what your life looks like. You know, if you, if you see your life as almost like a, you're showing the highlight reel to your family and friends that might live far away. Like I love that about social media. the thing I love about AI is that

It builds so much efficiency. Like, you you need to clean up an email. Like you said, well, for me, it's like, can you read this document and summarize it for me? Or can you, you know, I need to copy and paste this. I don't know all of this information into an Excel spreadsheet and I don't want to have to type it all out, but this is a PDF and I needed an Excel. Can you do that for me? And it can do it for me, you know, like something that would have taken me. Yes.

Dayle Sheehan (10:18.248)
yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (10:32.654)
Exactly. Even our Dext, like how you started using Dext and then it does like an AI scan of all your receipts and makes you a beautiful document ready for your QuickBooks or your Bookkeeper or whatever. And it's just done and you're not doing your own spreadsheets. It's doing them for you. It's so good.

Jamie (10:50.593)
Totally. that, that, the efficiency piece for me is just like, absolutely.

Dayle Sheehan (10:57.708)
Well, and it's not taking away a job because you were doing that for yourself. I was doing that for myself and like truthfully. Exactly, that's exactly it. It makes me more efficient and makes me back to things that I can make money at and make, you know, that make me happy because I will say my expense account day does not make me happy. It's a very sad day of the month.

Jamie (11:01.971)
I was just wasting a lot of time doing that.

Jamie (11:16.757)
No? Absolutely. And then the last thing is, is that I feel like we have access to so much information because of technology at our fingertips. Like I was driving home last night from a tournament from one of my kids and even just within the city that I was in, it's like there's roundabouts and turnoffs and...

It's a city that I'm not super familiar with and there's underpasses and overpasses and it's just like, I'm like, I thought to myself, how on earth did people 25 years ago find their way to the ball diamond in this city? Because my hotel is only a 20 minute drive, but it's, I took about 40 exits.

Dayle Sheehan (11:48.194)
Did any? I know. I know.

Exactly.

Dayle Sheehan (11:57.058)
Mm-hmm.

I know. I it seems like you went three circles to get there. Like

Jamie (12:03.495)
100%. Could you imagine if someone was trying to navigate with an old fashioned paper map? Like, I just think to myself, how lucky are we to just have this at our fingertips and order lunch from our phone while we're sitting at the ballpark so that it's ready by the time, you know, before the next game starts. It's just like, you know, there is so much amazing things that

Dayle Sheehan (12:08.213)
Nope. Nope. I asked. Yes.

Dayle Sheehan (12:19.598)
You go, yes.

Jamie (12:26.079)
that technology brings us. So when people are like shitting on, everyone's addicted to their phone. Yes, I agree. There's a lot of downsides, but man, has it made life so much easier.

Dayle Sheehan (12:28.216)
for sure.

Dayle Sheehan (12:37.006)
Oh, for sure. And like I asked grandpa, so our grandpa's 90 years old, and he was coming to watch Penn play baseball last summer. And I said to him when he got there, I'm like, how did you find the place? Because he didn't know we knew we didn't know where it was, we had to call him. Yeah. So we we called him to before he left the house to tell him that which ballpark and the address. And then without a phone, what, how do you find the place? And so what's

Jamie (12:50.416)
He doesn't even know his cell phone, so we knew that was an option.

Dayle Sheehan (13:06.19)
crazy is he lives in a very small place. And where this was, was the town over that's also just a small little place. But he didn't know where any of the ball diamonds were. And so he's like, well, if I'm ever lost or don't know what I'm doing, I'll just go to the visitor center. He's like, so I went to the visitor center, and they told me it's right behind here. Like literally this ball diamond, there's like five ball diamonds in this place. And the one he needed was essentially in the parking lot. And I'm like,

Well, that's lucky because you could have been 20 minutes away, you know, and then like miss the first game. Well, he knows where the visitor center is because he goes there all the time for his questions and his maps. And yeah, but like talk about not being efficient. That's not efficient. Like having to stop, go right downtown to this place, find parking, get out, go talk to somebody. I'm like, yeah, that's the stuff I'm really wanting to miss. That's the stuff I don't need to do.

Jamie (13:38.753)
Well, and like, how do you find the visitor center is the real question.

Jamie (13:47.315)
Yeah, much busy.

Jamie (13:53.269)
Boy, toy!

Jamie (14:03.871)
Absolutely. Okay, so what are the three things that you, like maybe the downsides of technology and how you can limit the negative effects of those?

Dayle Sheehan (14:05.292)
Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (14:12.692)
so.

Dayle Sheehan (14:17.26)
Well, so my downside by far and away is that my phone is in my hand all the time. So, or a close by all the time. So what ends up happening is it's 11 o'clock at night. I get a text from a client. My reaction is to read it and then want to respond or want to do the thing that they're talking about so that it's done for the day because that's my nature. Well, that's not a life. I need to have a like business hours. And so I've had to really establish

when I respond, when people can get in touch with me, you know, when like I break my own rules sometimes, because if I'm very busy, I will work on the weekend. And I kind of hope somebody will write me back if it's a decent hour, if I send them an email, I love when they do, because then I can keep moving once I get the question answered. But do we think it's great to like just be able to be at people's beck and call 24 hours a day? Definitely not. And do people that have different hours than me want you to be?

Jamie (14:58.272)
Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (15:15.724)
Yes. And that sucks. So I've had to really put in a whole bunch of parameters around responding, working hours, when it's time to take a break, when it, that type of thing. What about you?

Jamie (15:27.456)
Yeah.

One of the biggest things for me, I would say, and I think I'm not alone in this, is that it is a time suck. Like, you know, it's such an attention grabber. You're bored. Like, we just don't have the art of being bored anymore. You're bored, you grab a phone and you start scrolling. Like, you need a mental break, you start scrolling, you start looking up things, you start online shopping, and you start, you know, like just the little things that...

Dayle Sheehan (15:38.39)
yeah.

Jamie (15:59.126)
that you do to just fill in all of those moments where you could be doing other things. And I'm like, this is just not a useful way to spend my time. like we said earlier, oftentimes you see things that you're like, I didn't want to see that. I'm trying to have a happy moment here and like catch up on my friends' lives. I absolutely don't need to see debates and things like that online.

Dayle Sheehan (16:01.966)
Totally.

Dayle Sheehan (16:13.111)
Exactly.

Dayle Sheehan (16:22.049)
Yeah, exactly.

Jamie (16:26.837)
Yeah, so that I would say it just like it just steals everyone's attention. And there's nothing more frustrating when you're like out for dinner or something and the person, even if it's a work call or a work text or a quick like, I better tell the babysitter this it's like, Yeah, but I get it. I hundreds I get it and I'm guilty of it. But you're also not present with the person if you're sitting on your phone the whole time, your errands via phone, you know.

Dayle Sheehan (16:31.598)
for sure.

Dayle Sheehan (16:48.828)
totally. Mm-hmm. Well, and you know how many times I get like a, I never wrote that person back. And it doesn't matter what I'm doing. My natural reaction is to do the thing. Cause I feel like I'm already late. So it's outside of my work hours. I am having dinner with Darren. I am somewhere with somebody else. And I am like, I just have to quickly do this. So I've like had to make some rules for myself around use of my phone in that I'm not strict, strict, but

I do like to try to put it away when if we're like watching a show at night or I try to not have it like I don't like going on it in bed. I want it to like be there to be my alarm or be there to be my like emergency, you know, need something it's close by but I don't want to like be texting in bed all night and then scrolling like I get in bed at bedtime and then I don't look at my phone so that it's not part of my like falling asleep routine or anything like that.

Jamie (17:34.623)
Yeah, yeah.

Jamie (17:43.745)
Mm-mm.

Dayle Sheehan (17:48.541)
but it's hard.

Jamie (17:49.698)
I think that if you have a limited ability to control yourself, you just know that once you pick up that phone, you truly need to set an alarm and be like, get 20 minutes of phone time and then I'm putting it away for the day. I think that you have to get really honest with yourself if that's your inclination is to overuse your phone and set some boundaries until they naturally come to you.

Dayle Sheehan (17:56.333)
Yes.

Dayle Sheehan (18:05.496)
for sure.

Dayle Sheehan (18:14.178)
Yeah. Well, in my chaos brain, like I'll be going on there to like check the email or search for an email that I can't find on my computer. And to be like, where did that, which email address did that come to? And a pop-up will say, you've got five notifications on Instagram, five messages. And I'm like, from who? Why? I wonder why I've got five right now, you know? And the next thing you know, I'm an Instagram writing people back, scrolling, buying something from an ad.

Like an hour is gone and I'm like, my gosh, I have no idea what I picked my phone up for. I was actually going to make an Instacart order to order groceries and I didn't even look at Instacart yet.

Jamie (18:47.467)
Yeah.

Jamie (18:53.409)
totally.

Dayle Sheehan (18:58.038)
And Darren, Darren will even say, he's like, you're not looking at Instacart, like, cause he's standing there waiting to tell me what we need to order. Cause he's looking in the fridge. you. And I'm, I got distracted and I'm answering an email. I'm looking on social media. I'm reading a thing. I'm watching the political memes. Like, you know, I'm just all over the place. And so he's like, do what you went on there to do. So I almost have to be like,

Jamie (18:58.561)
me.

Jamie (19:08.097)
That's me.

Jamie (19:19.936)
Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (19:28.18)
answer the email, answer the email, answer the email, like, or whatever my task was. That's what I have to prioritize. And I have to like, keep it in my mind on, on like a loop.

Jamie (19:29.589)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jamie (19:37.631)
Yeah, I would say the last thing that I dislike about technology is that I feel like it's making such a disconnected world. Like I feel like someone was saying to me this weekend that her son's high school never used to have parameters on cell phone use. And so he had basically no friends and he's like, nobody has any friends. Everyone, as soon as the like lunch bell rings, everyone grabs their phone and sits basically

Dayle Sheehan (19:43.032)
Mm-hmm.

Dayle Sheehan (19:46.51)
totally.

Dayle Sheehan (19:55.276)
Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (20:06.286)
you

Jamie (20:07.285)
by themselves and goes on their phone. Yeah, and or plays Roblox. I don't know what kids do on phones, but you know all the things. And I was like, how sad is that school with the my favorite part of school was going to hang out with my friends.

Dayle Sheehan (20:08.834)
watch his TikTok or whatever. no.

Yeah.

Dayle Sheehan (20:19.31)
It's so sad.

Dayle Sheehan (20:23.511)
It was the only part and it was the part honestly that I like well was the part that like actually got I got to bring into my adult life as like a skill is to socialize and be part of things and be brave because you had to like make new friends and like honestly that's where I learned the bulk of what I learned in school was socially it was recess it was lunch hour it was breaks

Jamie (20:25.353)
So now we have room.

Jamie (20:32.969)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Jamie (20:48.673)
100%. So if you, know we're not, most listeners probably aren't still in school, but if you are guilty of living in a silo because you're always on your phone, take this as your encouragement to like get out into the real world. Do something face to face with a friend, make a phone call.

Dayle Sheehan (20:50.828)
Yeah, I agree with that.

Dayle Sheehan (21:04.174)
on your phone.

Jamie (21:12.853)
Like I love that like old school phones and stuff are coming back so kids can actually like pick up the phone and learn some phone etiquette and like all the things that are just like a little bit of a lost art.

Dayle Sheehan (21:19.331)
Hmm.

Totally. Well, and use it for productivity because it's one of those things that can be a great asset to us all. But it doesn't have to take over our life either.

Jamie (21:28.107)
Wow.

Jamie (21:32.193)
For sure, 100%.

Dayle Sheehan (21:34.626)
All right, have a great week and thank you guys so much for joining us again.

Jamie (21:38.655)
Bye guys!

Dayle Sheehan (21:43.33)
Done.