Next Level University

This May Be The #1 Thing Holding You Back… (1879)

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Have you ever felt like staying focused is more challenging than ever? In this episode, Kevin and Alan explain why endless notifications and digital distractions might hold you back. They reveal how our habits with phones, social media, and streaming can sap time and energy, stopping us from hitting our most significant goals—whether in fitness, relationships, or careers. Discover practical tips to take control of your distractions and create space for what matters. If you’re ready to spend less time scrolling and more time building a life you love, this episode is for you!

Link mentioned:
Next Level Monthly Meet-up #35: “How to Get Crystal Clear on Your Priorities and Stick to Them” November 7, 2024 @ 5:00 pm ET - https://bit.ly/3BPR2B4

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NLU is not just a podcast; it’s a gateway to a wealth of resources designed to help you achieve your goals and dreams. From our Next Level Dreamliner to our Group Coaching, we offer a variety of tools and communities to support your personal development journey.

For more information, please check out our website at the link below. 👇

Website 💻  http://www.nextleveluniverse.com

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Any of these communities or resources are FREE to join and consume
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
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Next Level U Book Club - https://bit.ly/3BQBYDr
Next Level Monthly Meet-up:  https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/

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We love connecting with you guys! Reach out on Instagram, Facebook, or via email. We’re here to support you in your personal and professional development journey.

Instagram 📷
Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/neverquitkid/
Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/

Facebook ✍
Alan: https://www.facebook.com/alan.lazaros
Kevin: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.palmieri.90/

Email 💬
Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com

LinkedIn ✍
Kevin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-palmieri-5b7736160/
Alan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanlazarosllc/

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Show notes:
(2:47) The concept of “phone hygiene.”
(7:07) “Elephant and rider” analogy
(10:28) The power of smartphones and how to use them intentionally
(12:04) Next Level Dreamliner: the planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/9fPpxEt
(18:11) Setting up the emergency bypass for important contacts
(22:48) The dangers of convenience and overconsumption
(24:14) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

🎙️ Hosted by Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.

Kevin Palmieri

you can't call me back because if it's not from this number. It took me like two hours. It was a whole thing. It was a pain in the ass, but the amount of time I've saved from not having to silence calls or answer calls that aren't for me, that's been huge. But I understand the anxiety around well. What if something happens and I miss it? I don't know if I have a good answer for that.

Alan Lazaros

If you want a great physique, you want a great relationship, you want a great career maybe business, maybe not you're going to have to eliminate the peanuts that are taking you constantly off the path.

Kevin Palmieri

Welcome to Next Level University. I'm your host, Kevin Palmieri.

Alan Lazaros

And I'm your co-host, Alan Lazarus.

Kevin Palmieri

At NLU, we believe in a heart-driven but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers.

Alan Lazaros

Our goal with every episode is to help you level up your life, love, health and wealth.

Kevin Palmieri

We bring you a new episode every single day on topics like confidence, self-belief, self-worth, self-awareness, relationships, boundaries, consistency, habits and defining your own unique version of success.

Alan Lazaros

Self-improvement in your pocket, every day, from anywhere, completely free.

Kevin Palmieri

Welcome to Next Level University, next Level Nation. Welcome back to another episode of Next Level University, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. Today, for episode number 1,879, bold statement, but sit with me. Sit with me. This may be the number one thing holding you back. If you are watching on YouTube, this is the thing I'm holding it in front of the camera. If you are listening on audio, only I am holding up my cell phone.

Kevin Palmieri

We live in a very interesting time in history where you can quite literally do almost anything from your cell phone. You can watch videos. You can post content to people all around the world. You can buy stuff on Amazon. You can sell stuff. You can make money. You can watch videos. You can post content to people all around the world. You can buy stuff on Amazon. You can sell stuff. You can make money. You can spend money. It's wild, one of the best things ever, but also one of the easiest things to get distracted by. Things. That has helped some of your clients. A ton is going through their phone and getting what we call Alan calls phone hygiene in check. Maybe the least sexy thing ever of all time, but oftentimes yeah, oftentimes the least sexy things are also the most valuable. So let's talk about phone hygiene. Does your phone have BO?

Alan Lazaros

Pretty good Phone hygiene. Oh yeah, super sexy, let's talk about it. So what I often do is I'll screenshot my home screen and then I'll send it via WhatsApp to the client, and then I'll pull it up live on Zoom and I'll say look at this, bad Larry, take a look at it, take a look at this.

Kevin Palmieri

take a look at it.

Alan Lazaros

Take a look at this, and the reason why is because I want them to know that I'm leading by example. So in the upper left hand screen I've talked about this in previous episodes, but I have a folder called the rabbit hole and it has the six apps that are distracting. It has text massages in there it has whatsapp. It has emails, electronic mails. That's that's what. That's what it stands for electronic mail yeah, nice facebook is in there.

Kevin Palmieri

Instagram you've heard of it well, yeah, I've, I've, I've been a piece of it I've explored it.

Alan Lazaros

You've explored it linkedin tiktok messenger, which is facebook messenger, and then threads, which is a new spinoff of sort of what twitter used to be, but for instagram. You know it's interesting. Yeah, we're experimenting with the experiment. Okay, so the distractions in the digital world are all in that one folder and I put it in the upper left part of my screen because I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max and it's big enough to where I have to use two hands in order to get distracted. So the apps that I use regularly I put down here so I can click them with my thumb easily. So, like YouTube, spotify, my calendar podcast app, the little Tesla app, I can make my car do stuff from my phone. We have Alexa devices throughout our house, so that's there. Google Tasks is there, my Aura app is there, but anyways. So if I want to fall down the rabbit hole, I have to use my both hands. I have to use my left hand to go and click in the upper left hand corner of my screen, and that one little trick has changed, changed my life. Yeah, it's been unbelievable.

Alan Lazaros

Now here's the other piece. If I were to show you some, I'm showing on YouTube my home screen. Look at that. Hello, wow, not a single notification. And I didn't clean this up before this episode, that wasn't what I was doing. So if Kevin were to text me right now, Kev, can you shoot me a text?

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, this is going to be fairly I won't say useless for anybody listening, because you'll get the gist of it, we will narrate.

Alan Lazaros

Okay, so see how it just came up with the notification in the rabbit hole folder in the upper right. Okay, that is Kevin. Kevin texts me. Very few human beings text me, which I'm grateful for. I use WhatsApp for business and then text for personal and since I have no personal life, I'm kidding, but really Kev texts me occasionally when things are an emergency, because he knows he can get a notification to me.

Alan Lazaros

But ultimately, the point of that is I was with someone this past weekend and I saw their phone and this has happened to me several times because many years ago we read a book called Indistractable by Nir Eyal. We interviewed him. I took a course called Insane Productivity many years ago probably six or seven years ago now and it talks about how to limit the triggers. The idea and this is in Atomic Habits, a bunch of different books, the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg the only way to control your behavior is to control the triggers in your environment. So when you get a ring, a ding or a bing, I don't know- why I say bing, there are no bings, alan, a ring, a ding or a vibrate.

“Elephant and rider” analogy

Alan Lazaros

It triggers your attention to go and check. And even if you don't go check and you resist the urge to go check, it actually causes anxiety Because well, what if someone's hurt? What if something's wrong? Right, that kind of thing. So the idea is, how do you put put? And there's this great book called switch by dan and chip heath and it's a behavioral analyst book and they talk about this really cool metaphor that I use with my clients all the time.

Alan Lazaros

I actually pull up this terrible drawing of me. I drew an elephant. It's atrocious but, uh, it's pretty funny and it's essentially a rider, little stick figure riding an elephant. It's an elephant and then it's essentially a rider, little stick figure riding an elephant. It's an elephant and then it's a path. And the idea is that the prefrontal cortex, the part of you that has goals and dreams and cares about making a difference and cares about productivity and wants to actually have a meaningful future, that's the part that's the most powerful long-term but the least in control of you short-term, and that's the prefrontal cortex. Okay, so that's the rational long-term thinker, that's the rider. The elephant is the part of your brain that only cares about right now. It just wants shiny objects and it just wants peanuts. And the idea here is the path. The path is your environment. If you put peanuts off the path, no matter how hard the rider tries aka willpower the elephant will go off the path.

Alan Lazaros

So Kev told a story recently about him going off the rails binge drinking. I'm being playful, but ultimately at the end of the day, if you want to, I remember when I wanted to quit drinking. I had to for a while. I don't have to do this anymore because I've fallen out of the habit, but in the beginning of me trying to quit drinking, I had to stay away from people who drink. I had to stay away from environments where there was alcohol. I had to. I remember weddings were the challenge. You know, no one knows anybody open bar bar and I kept falling off. During weddings. One would turn to two, two to four, four to eight, and then before I know it, it's 4 am and everyone's partying in my hotel room, and so that's an actual story. But ultimately you need to make sure the peanuts are not in the elephant's peripheral views, otherwise you basically will, and I do this all the time with my clients because they all have peak performance tracking, they all do habits and I had a client just recently actually take Netflix off his phone. I've had clients that have said.

Alan Lazaros

I was with a client yesterday and he said Instagram is my rabbit hole, instagram is my issue, and we actually assessed this and I said, okay, well, how long you been on it? He checked. He's like oh, I've been on it for 16 minutes today. I'm like dude, you're fine, you're fine, you're good. Um, and, by the way, that's the only social media he has. This dude is shout out to you. You know who you are. You're crushing man. He's like yeah, I really have an Instagram problem. And then we look it up 16 minutes. It's like dude, I, I think you're probably good. Um, I mean, we can still track it, but you're a sicko, uh. So, anyways, some people are spending hours and hours and hours scrolling on meaningless stuff. We've all fallen down the rabbit hole.

The power of smartphones and how to use them intentionally

Alan Lazaros

Now here's the cool thing, last piece for this part of the episode. These phones are amazing. To kevin's point, you can change the world from your phone. You can put a video out there and get 500 views. That's like giving a speech in front of 500 people, and we really do underestimate the power of this phone. There's 8 billion people on planet earth. There's 5.45 billion human beings on the internet and that's increasing drastically with Skylink and that's increasing drastically with Skylink. So Kevin and I have a global community of individuals. We would not have ever met half the, we wouldn't have met any of the team members like without these devices, without social media.

Alan Lazaros

It's similar to the fast food conversation. It's like okay, yes, you're right, food is becoming more and more exponentially addictive. Yes, you're right, the social media platforms are designed to be addictive. Yes, you're right, amazon shopping is easier than ever and you can have something to your door the same day, I think one time it was like an hour and a half. How did you? How, how did this get here? The truth is our weakest part of our nature, the part that wants immediate gratification. We have more available than ever before, so we're all constantly overwhelmed.

Alan Lazaros

Way back in the day, long before Kevin and I's day, I would have to write Kevin a letter and it would have to go on a ship and then it would go across the country and then he'd have to think of a thoughtful response and then write a letter back, and then I'd get it back a month and a half later and by then he will have aged, and then, by the time it gets to me, he probably would have wanted to say something differently. And now we just do that all day, every day, so we've just sped up the treadmill exponentially. However, fast food's delicious and social media is great and X Y, z and you can build a global business with a global market, whereas in the past you had a store and it was just the town. That was the only people available my local gym they only can basically get people from the town or the surrounding towns. So with Kevin and I's business, we can reach anyone in the world. But here's the problem Anyone can reach us too.

Kevin Palmieri

And so we have to reach anyone in the world, anything in the world, not necessarily just the things that are aligned and whatever else it may be.

Alan Lazaros

Hello, hello, hello. Nlu listener. Thank you, as always, for listening to Next Level University. Real quick, I just want to jump in and let you know about the Next Level Dreamliner. This is a journal that I use every single day. Achieve your dreams 90 days at a time. It breaks down your dreams into goals, milestones and daily habits. We hope you enjoy it. The link will be in the show notes. So when I first met you, kev, I was farther along and again, I don't want this to come off as pretentious, but I was farther along on the protecting my time and attention.

Kevin Palmieri

I do want to say this.

Alan Lazaros

I'm going to disclaimer real quick I'm an engineer. I'm going to keep saying that. I just have to. I'm an engineer. So permission to be very candid.

Alan Lazaros

Human beings, myself included, are easily distracted. Our willpower is super low. I feel like our level of self-discipline is alarmingly low. I feel like it's very difficult for people to set a new year's resolution and actually stick to it. Almost no one actually does. You and I did the 10 pound in 10 week challenge, but as soon as it's over, we're immediately back to you know whatever, unless you set another goal and then another accountability. So To me and I'm just going to be very brash in saying this if you cannot focus your time and attention, if you cannot control what gets your attention and you cannot focus for extended periods of time, you kind of will not succeed in anything really meaningful.

Alan Lazaros

And I know how hardcore that sounds, but the truth of the matter is is way back in the past, people used to work five, six, seven, eight hour days without a single distraction they would focus on. I mean, I did some projects on Sunday. It took us five hours without a single notification, not a single interruption, not a single, and we got a lot done In this noisy world, we've become wildly underproductive. And then we wonder why we're struggling underproductive. And then we wonder why we're struggling. And the truth is and this is something Kevin and I have noticed with podcasters, business owners, different people we coach if I notice that you cannot focus almost at all and that you struggle with focus and you can't track habits and you can't stay on track and you can't be consistent and you have very low self-discipline, there's almost nothing anyone can do for you unless you start there. So the ability to control your attention that's my number one priority.

Alan Lazaros

Underneath all of the things that Kevin and I do is. I am constantly unceasingly protecting my focus from any distraction whatsoever, and while that sounds exhausting and terrible, it has allowed us to build something that turns our passion into purpose and to profit. I know that all of our listeners you know heart driven, but no BS self-improvement for dream chasers and and holistic self-improvement for dream chasers. If you want a great physique, you want a great relationship, you want a great career maybe maybe business, maybe not You're going to have to eliminate the peanuts that are taking you constantly off the path. And so, kev, I wanted to kick it over to you and ask you how the hell? Because when I first met you, you were, mr Distracted with all the love.

Alan Lazaros

And it was alarming for me and I knew over time.

Kevin Palmieri

There was a lot going on.

Alan Lazaros

There was a lot going on and you were on Instagram all the time For sure. What's your journey been with this?

Kevin Palmieri

I think the hardest thing is going from having the bings, rings and dings. Is that what it was, or just rings and dings.

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, the noises to just going on silent. That was one of the hardest things for me is to put my phone on silent, because I remember thinking, well, what if somebody messages me and I don't hear it? And especially, what if it's an emergency and again I don't know? I know there's a lot of parents out there, there's a lot of caretakers. My phone is always on silent, always, every night. It's always on silent All day. Right now it's on silent.

Kevin Palmieri

You can call me. I also have RoboBlock phone, isn't? If your number is not saved in my phone, it goes directly to voicemail, so you can't even call me unless your phone is saved. Your number is saved in my. Now that becomes a pain in the ass at times when you're trying to. I remember I called the credit card company because I was like doing something and they're like, yeah, we'll call you back and I was like, no, no, you can't. You can't call me back because if it's not from this number. It took me like two hours. It was a whole thing. It's a pain in the ass, but the amount of time I've saved from not having to silence calls or answer calls that aren't for me, that's been huge. But I understand the anxiety around. Well, what if something happens and I miss it? I don't know if I have a good answer for that?

Alan Lazaros

well, the good answer is remember what it was like before cell phones, that would be the answer I would give.

Kevin Palmieri

That would be a piece of it.

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, probably people survived just fine before cell phones yeah, again just fine is probably the wrong approach. But but the other piece of this too you can do emergency bypass. So this is phone hygiene. I love this conversation. I have you and emilia on emergency bypass so kevin actually can call me In the middle of the night. If you called me, it actually would ring.

Kevin Palmieri

How do you make it so? I have Taryn as my emergency bypass, but when she calls it doesn't ring. Are you on? Do Not Disturb.

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, same yeah. So if you put it on, do Not Disturb. You sure you have her on emergency bypass.

Kevin Palmieri

I don't, maybe not. I have her on emergency bypass. I don't, maybe not. I have her as my emergency contact.

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, no, that's not it. So you got to go to her contact.

Kevin Palmieri

Oh, okay, see, we're going to do this live right now. So if you want to do this, if you want to silence your phone and live on silent more again, I'm not saying you have to go from zero to 100, but maybe right now, if you're like right now, if you're like, well, I really want to focus, I really want to dial it in, I'm gonna put my phone on, do not disturb. Maybe this could be the the primary thing. And then, supplementally, when, when the kids leave the house and you know they're going to be out, maybe you, but let's see, let's see what happens.

Setting up emergency bypass for important contacts

Alan Lazaros

All right, let me go to my wife she is in my phone as my wife so nice, all right, so click on that and then ringtone, ringtone it says for you. So I'm on kevin palmer. You can see my screen, kev. Yeah, see how ringtone it says emergency bypass on I don't have ringtone what does?

Kevin Palmieri

yours say it says emergency contact. It says message edit in the upper right okay okay and then you should be able to ringtone and then put emergency bypass on oh, and you gotta throw that on for the kid too, man okay, all right, now, let me do that for alan.

Alan Lazaros

So now this this helps with the anxiety of okay, if emilia or kev really do need to get a hold of me, it will ring and and kevin's my business partner. Emilia is my life partner, so that is that gives me a ton of peace of. It will ring and Kevin's my business partner. Emilia is my life partner, so that gives me a ton of peace of mind, and when I have children, I'll do the same thing?

Kevin Palmieri

Do you have to call twice within a minute or whatever? Nope, just once.

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, so if I call you, if you put me on emergency bypass, it should work. And again, these are iPhones, right? So obviously the Android is going to be different. Yeah, yeah, yeah so if you have an iPhone, but the principles are the same, there's no way the Android doesn't also have similar features.

Kevin Palmieri

Interesting, so this may be the number one thing holding you back it's the phone.

Alan Lazaros

Oh, it's not. Maybe it is. This is the number one thing.

Kevin Palmieri

No, well, yeah, maybe whatever, don't chef my title, Come at me like that.

Alan Lazaros

No, I'm just saying from coaching so many people it always is the phone.

Kevin Palmieri

So in here and this is a good example, if I said to you there are two people One person is watching seven hours of television. Let's just say they have an eight hour window where they could be productive and they could be working on their goals and their dreams, their relationships, their finances, their body all that Seven out of eight of those hours they are watching television. Versus somebody who, one out of eight of those hours, is watching television. Who are you going to bet on? You're going to bet on the person who's only doing it for one out of eight of the hours. This, essentially, is now the television, except maybe we don't watch, maybe you're not watching Netflix, but if you're watching six hours of TikTok, you're watching six hours of TV and, honestly, it's probably worse, because who knows what you're watching? Who knows the comparison game you're playing? Who knows the misinformation you're getting?

Kevin Palmieri

Whatever the triggers, the addictions, if you're, if you're following I know this is something I did in the very beginning I was following a ton of models that were half naked all the time. Of course, I'm going to want to watch that all day. That's natural human condition, of course. So that was one of the things too is purge the people that you follow that don't add value to your life. That was another thing. But yeah, I think you've been very helpful for sure. Sometimes I'll give alan my phone and he naturally like just starts swiping away. He's like let me, let me get rid of all these screens that you have open. Like you gotta take it easy, sir. He's like I do my bad, my bad, I'm an engineer, it's just totally understand.

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, totally understand.

Kevin Palmieri

But yeah, I think with great power comes great responsibility and yeah, you can change the world from your phone, but you can also really really bottleneck yourself into success if you get lost in the rabbit hole. It's really freaking easy to get lost down the rabbit hole. It is designed that way. We need to increase our discipline because, as we do, then you become a creator and more of a creator and less of a consumer. We're always going to have pulls on our attention, but it's up to us as dream chasers and creators and whatever business owners and whatever you want to label yourself as, to make sure that you're on the discipline side of. I will consume content supplementally, not primarily. I'm not always going to consume it. I'm going to create it and then occasionally, maybe my 20% R and R will be consumption. Last thing I never get a jump.

The dangers of convenience and overconsumption

Alan Lazaros

Imagine walking into someone's office and there's just a giant tornado, like a bomb went off. It's a giant mess. It would create a lot of anxiety. It would be hard to be productive. I purposely make this office as boring as humanly possible because I don't want to be distracted and I am all for the right media. I, emilia and I are watching the first gladiator because the second one's coming out soon and we're splitting it up into two evenings and it's the extended version. I love film, I love media. It's it's the too much that's the problem. And so to kevin's point. It's not that the phone is bad, it's not that social media is bad. It's not that Netflix is bad I have Netflix too. It's the overconsumption that's really bad. It's not like I eat fast food every now and then too. It's not fast food that's bad, it's the overconsumption of fast food that's bad. And so, ultimately, you'll be more productive and you'll have a more meaningful life, and you'll you'll really. One last thing, this this person reached out and they said I'm so grateful for NLU and I'm so grateful for your coaching.

Alan Lazaros

I just had the courage to delete all the video games from my phone. Just start small. Delete the kryptonite, whichever one's the big one. Maybe it's Instagram. Delete that. Maybe it's a video game that you keep wasting time. I spent so much time on video games back in the day. I do regret it. I genuinely regret it. I time on video games back in the day. I do regret it. I genuinely regret it. I should have been building my future and the future of my family and changing the world. I should have been. It was a giant, massive, freaking waste of time, and that is the hard truth. Your future self will regret wasting your life.

Kevin Palmieri

Convenience is wonderful, but when you make convenience a very consistent habit, that's when it gets dangerous. Yeah, fast food is easy, but it's not supposed to be what you have all the time, every single day. It's good, it's a nice treat. Every once in a while you want to watch Netflix on your phone occasionally on a flight Awesome. I don't work on flights. Alan always works on flights. I ain't working on a flight.

Alan Lazaros

Or he sleeps.

Outro

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, or he sleeps. I'm about to have a damn panic attack. Let me watch Parks and Recreation. All right. Tomorrow at 5 pm Eastern Standard Time, we have our 35th in a row monthly meetup how to Get Crystal Clear on your Priorities and Stick to them. Totally free, you don't have to participate if you don't want. You can participate as much as you want, but Alan and I are going to go deep on priorities and how to stick to them and maybe we will even bring in a little cell phone talk based on what we talked about today. We'll have the link in the show notes to register. We'd love to have you there, totally free, totally virtual, over Zoom, as always. We love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you. And at NLU we don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow. Stay focused. Next Level Nation. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level University. We love connecting with the Next Level family.

Alan Lazaros

We mean it when we say family. If you ever need anything, please reach out to us directly. Everything you need to get a hold of us is in the show notes.

Kevin Palmieri

Thank you again and we will talk to you tomorrow.

Head Shot

Alan Lazaros

Host
Head Shot

Kevin Palmieri

Host