Can We Escape Our Internet Hell?

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the negative impact of phones on our lives is larger than we’d like to admit. Maybe it’s time to move beyond tips and hacks to explore more serious interventions. But what would these look like? In this episode, Cal dispatches correspondent Dale Davidson on a world-spanning investigation of some of the more extreme solutions people have deployed to reclaim their lives from their devices. Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: https://bit.ly/3U3sTvo Video from today’s episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia (0:00) Can we escape our internet hell? (4:36) Act 1 (27:37) Act 2 (41:40) Act 3 (1:06:46) Closing comments Links: Buy Cal’s latest book, “Slow Productivity” at www.calnewport.com/slow Get a signed copy of Cal’s “Slow Productivity” at https://peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/cal-newport/ https://internetaddictsanonymous.org/ https://www.thatpracticalmom.com/ https://hangingup.substack.com/ https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/ https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/phone-screen-time-prison-pg-sittenfeld-8c3b186b?st=JjqsTg&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12978896/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9d5anXG3QM https://hangingup.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips https://substack.com/@camclaren/note/c-98575673 Thanks to our Sponsors: https://www.incogni.com/deepquestions https://www.cozyearth.com (Use code “DEEP”) https://www.calderalab.com/deep https://www.indeed.com/podcast Thanks to Jesse Miller for production and mastering, Nate Mechler for research and newsletter, and Ben Crain and Rob Montz for video editing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Cal Newport?

  So there's an article that's been on my mind recently. It actually came out in August in the Wall Street Journal and it was titled, I have it here, "I didn't realize how addicted I was to my phone until I went to prison." Now, it was written by a Cincinnati politician who went to jail for some white collar crimes. And what he talks about in the article is that when he was in prison, where he obviously couldn't have a phone, many things in his life actually became richer. He talked about noticing with detail the changing of the seasons. He talked about having deep conversations with his cellmate. He even began writing poetry, which is something he had never done

• 0:44Cal Newport?

  before. Okay, then he gets released from prison, yay, but what happens between him and his phone, well, perhaps this is predictable, but let me read to you from the article, what happened once he got home from prison. As he writes, "Within just a few months, I reverted to my old habits, immediately glancing at and engaging with every ping and alert and reflexively picking up my phone to scroll through my rotation of go-to websites. It's an irony I'm still grappling with that a kind of freedom I learned in prison, I couldn't manage to bring back home with me." Let's think about that for a second. He's basically saying, look, there's kind of a balance, a wash here between all of the depravations of prisons, but also the joys I got from

• 1:27Cal Newport?

  not being on my phone. That being on his phone, in some sense, was almost as bad as being in prison. This article stuck with me because it matches a thought. It helped inspire, I should say, a thought that I can't quite shake. I think we are lying to ourselves about just how serious our negative relationship with our phones actually has become. We're saying, oh, it's not so bad, like, you know, I probably should use it a little bit less, but I think we are lying to ourselves. That's what this article sort of helped me understand. I think we've got a real problem with our phones that's worse than we thought. And if

• 2:07Cal Newport?

  this is true, it means that we have to move past the sort of friendly, not so hard to implement tips and hacks that we talk about so often for how to use your phone less, put it in grayscale, have an app you use to reduce some of your screen time. And we have to begin considering more serious interventions, interventions that take the problem of our negative relationship with our phones as seriously as the problem actually is. But what would that look like to take much more serious interventions in terms of our relationship with our phones? Well, I wasn't quite sure, so I decided we should go find out. And so I dispatched our correspondent, friend of mine, a friend of the show, Dale Davidson,

• 2:51Cal Newport?

  to go find out. He went around the world from the emerging internet AA movement to a remote farm in Denmark to talk to people who had gone to extremes to change their relationship with their phones and therefore to change their lives. I wanted to understand what radical interventions actually look like. And so this is what we're going to do in today's show. It's going to unfold in three acts, and in each act, Dale is going to bring us his reporting on a different person or place he went to learn about extreme measures people take to change their relationships with their phone. Once we've got through

• 3:29Cal Newport?

  those three acts, I will then distill the core lessons from Dale's reports. What does it mean for you and I? What can we pull away from these stories we're about to hear and apply them to making our own lives better by becoming much, much more serious about how we fix our relationship with our phone? So if you've had this sort of inkling as well, that maybe the issue you have with this device is something that a listicle of suggestions is not going to fix, then you need to listen to today's episode because I do actually end up with a very clear answer. And I got to tell you, I did not know this was going to be the answer when I went into this, before I heard Dale's reporting. But when I got to the end of that reporting, I think this answer was clear as day, and

• 4:14Cal Newport?

  it's an answer that you can actually act on. It's a great episode. Glad to have Dale. Excited about the work he did. So let's get into it.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  I remember there was a time I had done a scholarship to go to New York and work on an independent project. It was like my dream sort of scenario, and I couldn't stop watching YouTube videos. And I remember one night being like staring at the screen on my phone, like begging myself in my head to stop because I was tired and I wasn't enjoying these videos, and watching my hand click on the next video anyways, and like seeing my body moving and having no control over it. And that was very scary. And that's when I started to think like, maybe this is sort of like what an alcoholic experiences

• 5:10Speaker 01

  when they take a drink of alcohol and kind of lose control to stop.

• 5:15Cal Newport?

  All right. So that voice you just heard was from someone who we're going to call Jack, who is a self-proclaimed technology addict and one of the founding members of the Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous, or ITAA group. Dale reached out to Jack to better understand what it means to think about excessive internet use through the lens of addiction. All right. So Dale, first of all, what did you discover about how prevalent this idea is of people seeing their technology use as an addiction?

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is kind of a new concept and has only recently been studied. But I pulled up a recent meta-analysis that showed the following. Approximately 14% are considered to be internet addicted. Just under 27% are addicted to smartphones, which rose to around 31% during COVID. And 6% are considered to have a gaming addiction. And because it's so new, people don't really understand that they are addicted. And in fact, Jack was one of those cases where he didn't think he was addicted at all, until he discovered

• 6:35Speaker 02

  a group of gamers who were having problems just going down this rabbit hole of gaming more than they wanted to.

• 6:41Cal Newport?

  Interesting. So 30%, and so it's a meta-analysis, right? So that means it's looking at multiple different analyses that are trying to get at how many people are addicted to technology. And in COVID, you said by various measures, 30%?

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:56Cal Newport?

  That's a lot of people.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's one out of, you know, almost a third, and that probably doesn't capture everyone who has a problem with smartphone addiction. So I suspect that number may be higher than the meta-analysis revealed.

• 7:14Cal Newport?

  Okay, so Jack helped found this ITAA. So what did you find out about that group before you found your way to Jack?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  It's pretty impressive. So it was founded in 2017 based on the principles of the 12-step program. Currently, it conducts 100 weekly online meetings worldwide and roughly 30 in-person meetings per week.

• 7:42Cal Newport?

  But there's some irony here. I get it, because there's not enough density to all meet in person, but I'm sure this is a comment that's brought up jokingly at every one of those online meetings is that internet addicts have to go online.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  It's just one of many tabs they have up on the screen. Another has a YouTube video. But they actually post the transcripts of a lot of their meetings on their websites. It was pretty interesting. You can listen to them and they follow the format, kind of of a 12 steps program thing, and people talk about their experiences. So it's really fascinating and still impressive that they can do it online despite, you know, the fundamental problem they all have.

• 8:22Cal Newport?

  So you reached out to the organization and it was them who put you in, they put you in touch with a couple of members, including Jack? Is that the way it went?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Yep, that's the way it went down. I basically said, hey, I'm looking for members to talk to. They even have a whole, kind of like a press or public relations arm to screen for interviews because they still want to protect anonymity. So they put out a call to see if anyone wanted to be spoken to. They knew they were going to be mentioned on this podcast. And Tom and Jack reached out.

• 8:54Cal Newport?

  And, okay, so tell us a little bit more. They're both men. And like roughly what age, what age are we talking about here?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  They're both in their 30s and they both have professional type jobs that require them to use a computer and phones. They're not, they're not working on some remote outdoorsy type jobs. So just any normal, the kind of normal people you would see every day at the office.

• 9:21Cal Newport?

  And they use the term "technology sober"? I mean, so what does that mean? Because again, it's a little bit different if you were like alcohol sober, but you worked at a job where you were taste testing whiskey. You wouldn't really be sober. But so what do they mean by, is that the right term, first of all, and what do they mean by it?

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's how they describe it. They describe it like any other addiction, but they do acknowledge that what it means to be sober may change based on what their particular addiction is. But basically, it means something like uncontrollable. And they describe like binging as an example, and that was a pretty common term between the two interviews and what I saw in other reports for addicts. So when I spoke to Tom, who the other interviewee, he described a technology binge as entering a, like a black hole. You may start doing something like enjoyable. You're watching a YouTube video and say, oh, this is fun, or you're playing a game, but then the black hole grows

• 10:23Speaker 02

  and grows and swallows you and you lose all sense of time and yourself, which is different than you just watching one video or two videos and that's it. It's this fully encompassing effect it has. And I think that's pretty common. That was not quite the language everyone used, but the effect was similar.

• 10:43Cal Newport?

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• 11:23Cal Newport?

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• 12:03Cal Newport?

  experts will handle the corporate takedown for you. They can't harm you if they can't find you. So take back control of your personal data today. Go to incogni.com/deepquestions and use code DEEPQUESTIONS for 60% off an annual plan. That is I-N-C-O-G-N-I.com/deepquestions, promo code DEEPQUESTIONS. It's a completely risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee. Check the top link in today's episode description to get started. I also want to talk about our friends at Cozy Earth. Look, the holiday season is upon it, upon us rather, and with it comes the inevitable questions about what gifts to give to the people

• 12:46Cal Newport?

  you care about. Here's my rule. When in doubt, give something you already own and love. And for me, that includes Cozy Earth. I have actually, I've given, this is true, I have given their bamboo sheet set as a gift on multiple occasions. I keep saying this on the show, they're absolutely the most comfortable sheets I've ever slept in. And I'm thinking this year, I might add to my rotation, their Bubble Cuddle blanket. We have one of these at home. It's, it's soft. It has just enough weight. It's so cozy that my kids fight over it. It's a great product. So I'm going to give that away this year as well. Now here's the cool thing. Cozy Earth is putting their best sellers into holiday colors this year. So you can give them as a gift that the people in your

• 13:30Cal Newport?

  life will love, and they'll also know it is, it will remind them of the festive season, and they'll know it is a special gift you were thinking about them for the holidays. I think that's really cool. But now is the time to order, because now is the time that you will get Cozy Earth's best pricing of the year. That pricing is active right now. It's gone live and it will last through December 3rd. So order right now and you'll get the best possible prices. And remember, Cozy Earth orders come with a 100 night trial and a 10 year warranty. So there really is no risk. Cozy Earth's biggest sale of the year ends December 3rd. That's coming up. So head to cozyearth.com and use code DEEP for 35% off home and sleepware. That's cozyearth.com code DEEP. And when they

• 14:12Cal Newport?

  ask at checkout where you heard about them, let them know that I sent you. All right, let's get back to the show. That's interesting, because that reminds me of if you read memoirs of people becoming sober from drugs or alcohol, they often talk about that, that the binging is, was like the characteristic sign of like the serious alcoholic is, it's not, oh, I have a few too many drinks. It's once I start, I'll have, you know, it'll be two days later. And I'll say, oh my God, like I can't stop when I, once I get going, which is what sort of differentiates alcoholics from problem drinkers from social drinkers. It's kind of degrees, like the problem drinkers probably

• 14:52Cal Newport?

  drink too often, or maybe they'll have one or two too many at the party. The alcoholics will binge and be like, okay, I'm gonna all night long, I'm gonna lose days. And then the social drinker is like, oh, we had a glass of wine at dinner. So it sounds like what makes Tom and Jack tip over into them describing themselves as real addicts is like, once they got going on the right thing, they would just go, like to the great detriment of anything else.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's absolutely right. And one of the differentiators between like a technology addict, a smartphone addict, is that, or sorry, and a like an alcoholic, is that it's probably less obvious. I mean, everyone's always on their phones all day. So if you go on a binge, yes, you may like not sleep all night, but they may, you may still be somewhat functional going into work. You don't reek of alcohol or anything like that. So for both of them, they, I asked them if anyone noticed, and they said, no, like actually, Jack described himself as a pretty high functioning addict. He did well in college and had some early professional success. And for a long time,

• 15:58Speaker 02

  he just thought it was an annoying habit he couldn't kick, which turned out not to be the case.

• 16:04Cal Newport?

  They talked about something like the cycling, which I've heard again with other types of addicts, where they will stop for a while, which you hear from substance addicts too. You're like, I'm done. And then you come back full force. So this seems like it was a big part of their experience?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Yep. Tom told me an interesting story. He, you know, he's the one who had, had the experience of the black hole. He said, hey, I'm done with this. I'm gonna go detox. And so he went to Sweden and, you know, rented a, you know, stayed out somewhere nice and had a hotel room and kind of did this, you know, experience where he'd go outdoors and not use computers or devices. And he did it for a few months. And so he was successful in the sense that a detox can be successful temporarily. But as soon as he got back home, as soon as he, as soon as he returned, you know, to his house where he had access to all this, he rewarded himself with a binge. And it was at that point, he couldn't, he realized, hey, can't really do this on my own, or at least

• 17:00Speaker 02

  not forever. It's a very temporary thing. Jack similarly would go through these cycles of white knuckling it for a few days. And then, you know, something, he would slip up and then he'd feel disgusted and then say, ah, never gonna do that again. So then he would just go again. And then, you know, the cycle continues with yo-yos. I think anyone familiar with dieting, or has tried it may, you know, have gone for a month or two and lost a bunch of weight. And then all of a sudden, they eat a cookie and it's like, oh, I can't stop. And then eventually get back to the point where, you know, you've gained all the weight back and you feel disgusted and the cycle continues. So it's not a sustainable way of curing yourself if you're at the point that you consider yourself

• 17:45Speaker 02

  addicted.

• 17:46Cal Newport?

  All right. So then 12 step programs, this actually worked, it sounds like. So what, how did they talk about that? Like what the 12 step programs were, why this was differently? How's it work for them?

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's a few things that stood out. And I don't think it makes sense to go through each of the 12 steps now, but there's a few elements that they both talked about. One was the element of submission to a higher power. Now 12 steps kind of came out of this whole, it was kind of like a religious, it's a religious background. And a lot of the, you know, technology addicts, probably more secular, maybe even atheist, but they still held to the principle that they would submit to a higher power. And that could mean any number of things. But the point was to acknowledge that you couldn't do it on your own, essentially, as they, as they personally experienced. So that was kind of the foundational belief in the 12 steps program. The other effort, or the

• 18:44Speaker 02

  other point there, that was really interesting, was they really valued the group support aspect, which is again, a core part of 12 steps. And they, you know, these are people that may not be totally super social all the time, but it serves multiple purposes. You can receive support, just having, having people understand your experience, which is, you know, that's one of the key reasons you go. But that you could also give support when you're in a position due and show you can understand other people's experiences. And you get accountability, which is one of the key parts that's hard to do on your own. You know, you can cheat on your diet by yourself, but if someone's checking in on you

• 19:24Speaker 02

  every day, it makes it a little bit harder. So those are a couple of points there. And the last kind of really fascinating piece was the deep.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Behavioral and psychological training that occurs. And they had this really fascinating way to describe the problem, which is, or describe addiction, which was they are solutions to a problem. The addiction itself is not the root thing that they're trying to solve.

• 19:52Cal Newport?

  The final part that you mentioned was interesting to me because it reminds me of Johann Harari's book, Chasing the Scream, which was about drug addiction. And he talks about exactly that, that what they discovered was you shouldn't think about, you know, drug addiction as this chemical is addictive. And if the chemical goes into your body, you are now addicted to it. Right. So I remember you had this, this set piece where he's, you know, we imagined the way like I was raised or you were raised in like the nineties, right? Was if an evil scientist straps you down and injected heroin into your body, you would be a heroin addict or whatever. And they discovered, oh, that that's not true. If that was true, all these little old ladies in the UK who are essentially given heroin as painkillers after hip replacements and dimmer all with the same idea, would all be addicts, but they're not.

• 20:37Cal Newport?

  He's like, no, no, it's all about when you're trying to, you're solving a problem with the substance. That's when your mind builds that incredibly strong loop of like, oh, now we need this to make this bad thing specifically go away. So this is, this is an interesting, it's not at all surprising if this is an addiction to hear it in that framework, but it's really an interesting thing to hear, at least for me, this idea that you're going on these binges or you're using your phone too much. You're trying to create a feeling to solve another problem. I assume, you know, you're, you're numbing something out. You're unhappy about something. You're avoiding hardship. You are dealing with anxiety and you know, if that problem still exists and you do nothing

• 21:20Cal Newport?

  but just stop trying to use the internet, then every time you feel that uncomfortable feeling, your body like, look, we need to make this go away. And this is the, this is the tool we have that you're fighting, you know, trying to make a bad thing go away, not just a, addiction's not abstract. Like, oh no, something got rewired and now for no reason, like Frankenstein's monster, I just have to reach for this thing. So it sounds like that's, that's, that's very interesting. That's the way they were thinking about it.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  And they have really great language to describe how you might go categorizing or identifying maybe the types of situations or problems you're in, right? So they call them bottom line, middle line and top lines. So bottom lines are kind of situations or think, you know, behaviors to avoid entirely. So if you're playing a video game and you know, you can't just play one round of a game. For example, you know, there's no way to resist like almost a hundred percent chance you're going to go down that rabbit hole. Just, you can't play the game like.

• 22:24Cal Newport?

  You don't play video games. Interesting. You don't play video games. Maybe Tik Tok is like this for some people. It's so engaging. If you're looking to distract yourself, just that, that app is not available.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Right. So there, there are, you know, so it's a bottom line. Hey, I'm not going to do it. There's no ambiguity about it.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Next are middle lines, which are a little more ambiguous, but you might consider them kind of higher risk, either emotional states or physical situations you might be in. So if you come back from a day of work and you're tired or stressed and you just want to shut your brain off for a minute and you, you can identify those points and say, hey, if I open up YouTube or whatever it is here, it's very likely you will go on a binge or fall into an addictive behavior.

• 23:10Cal Newport?

  If you're in the, in the wrong mindset or the right mindset for binge, but anyway, if you're in certain mindsets, you're saying, you're like, I won't do this. But would that mean if you're not in that mindset, it's not like you're completely abstaining from it. So if someone sends you, here's a, a link to Cal Newport interviewing this person, you might find it interesting and you're having your morning coffee, you might be like, that's okay. But if you're super tired or sad, you know, upset, like let me just.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 23:34Cal Newport?

  The YouTube app and let it wash over me. There, you're going to see Cal Newport's flexing videos or something. That could be a rabbit hole you'll fall down.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Yes, it is a, it is a risk point. Generally Cal Newport shows are considered top line behaviors, which I'll describe in a second. But yeah, I asked, I asked Jack, you know, for example, if he, if like just going on YouTube for research, something for work would be, would be a middle line situation. And he said, no, it's a very different state of mind when you have a particular task or goal to accomplish and say, hey, I just need to research this, you know, how to video to accomplish a very specific thing. It's not triggering, but it's very, but if he was just saying bored or something like that, then that would be a, a middle line situation where, you know, it's a, it's a high risk thing.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  If you come up with an alternative plan to address those, those plans. So go for a walk or something like that.

• 24:30Cal Newport?

  Yeah. Oh, okay. Interesting. All right. So then what are top line?

• 24:34Speaker 02

  So top lines are basically just positive situations or behaviors to put yourself in. So say, hey, instead of rewarding myself with Netflix or whatever it is, a video games. It's like, I'm going to go, you know, have a drink with a friend. Obviously it doesn't apply if you're also an alcoholic, or I'm going to go have coffee or go for a walk or go for a run or something like that. Things that are positive and make your life richer and more meaningful. Those are just, you know, just good things to have in your life. I was kind of curious why they had to identify these, but if you're trying to categorize everything and trying to structure how you're going to behave, I think it's very important to say, hey, I like this. This is a thing I'm going to do. I'm going to try to do more of it.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  So top lines were just generally any good situation that's not addictive, not related to your technology or anything that can make life more meaningful for you.

• 25:25Cal Newport?

  Yeah, maybe you're, you're rebuilding better habits. Okay. When I'm feeling this, I'm trying to rewire towards a top line activity, like going for the run or something like that. And after a while that can take over. All right. So then how'd you, did you come out of this? I could see either way. Did you come out of this knowing that there's AA communities just for internet? Did that make you depressed or did watching Tom and Jack and seeing their experience with those communities somehow make you more optimistic? Where did you land on this?

• 25:50Speaker 02

  I came away very optimistic. I mean, I obviously didn't hear from too many people. I don't have a formal study here. I don't know how many, you know, AAs that, or the ITA process is not successful for, but the fact that they, that this works and that it has, can change your life and make it, make it in such a way that you can still be around technology and not be triggered into binge situations. I found it very hopeful, especially for the rest of us that, you know, may, may not have problems that rise to the level of addiction. If true addicts can actually solve this, then hey, I think the rest of us can do it as well.

• 26:28Cal Newport?

  All right. I like that bit of optimism. All right. So let's move on to our second act.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  The thing is a smartphone is quite addicting on its own, right? We can check our emails continuously, even if we're not expecting something important, recheck the weather again, Google any random thought that comes into our head, read the never ending news. Most of us signal out social media as the culprit. And to be fair, I do think they are one of the worst offenders, but you would be surprised how many of the apps on the device you carry around everywhere can pull your attention endlessly.

• 27:03Cal Newport?

  All right. So that voice you just heard there was Callie Bransford describing how making her smartphone boring wasn't enough to cure her from constant digital distraction. Now, if, if that last name sounds familiar, it might be because Callie is a successful creator of the media brand known as That Practical Mom, which has a YouTube channel with over 1.3 million subscribers. She's a mom of four and she spent a year working on trying to wean herself off of digital distractions and kept finding this was not enough. This was not enough. And she documented the whole thing. So Dale dived into that to try to see what we could learn about this one mom's attempt

• 27:45Cal Newport?

  to make the analog part of her life more important and the digital less. All right. So you watched a lot of mom YouTube content, Dale. It sounds like this is the, the long and the short of it here.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  It wasn't, it wasn't even for this, this episode. It was just my normal routine.

• 28:03Cal Newport?

  Your normal routine of four hours of mom YouTube content a day. Yeah, you came across it.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So there's not a lot of dad content. So this is what I got. So, um, yeah. So I.

• 28:17Cal Newport?

  Yeah. Who else? And there was another person too, you looked at, right?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yes. C A McLaren, not a media mom creator there. She is a writer in England who, who documented her experience, giving up her smartphone on her Substack hanging up. So it, these, I like these two examples because they, it was well documented what, what happened when they tried to remove digital distraction from their life. Specifically their smartphones. Yep.

• 28:45Cal Newport?

  Okay. So what, um, what caught your attention? So you, you went through these long accounts. What was like a top line thing that came to your attention?

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Okay, well, first, in my general research, there's lots of people that are trying to be less distracted by their smartphone. There's even a whole Reddit community, like r/dumbphones or something, where people kind of talk about their configurations of their Nokias or whatever it is they have to remove distractions. So first, this is a common problem that's being tackled by all sorts of people, and there's online communities to address it. Now, what was interesting about Callie was she is very online, and her whole business relies on being online. And the interesting point here was she first started, she started with her phone,

• 29:36Speaker 02

  but specifically trying to get rid of her social media apps and everything. So she said, ah, you know, being online, trying to check the likes and all this kind of stuff, it's not for me. So she started that. And it helped. But what she noticed was, she was still checking her phone a lot. She mentioned, hey, you know, all these normal apps that aren't social media, like checking the weather, checking your email, whatever it is on your phone, like, she was still grabbing for it. And it still got in the way of her being present. So it, social media, sure, that was a great first step. But eventually, she made the switch to what I think was a light phone, that only has a few particular apps,

• 30:18Speaker 02

  like maps and things. And she had very positive effects. And basically, she said, once you made the switch, it was a little bit hard, but not that hard in the end. So what struck me about that was just that, oh, just by swapping out one device for another, maybe a slightly less cool one, you had all these positive impacts to her life.

• 30:39Cal Newport?

  All right. But the interesting point here is that it sounds like, it's really, once you have the habit loop of looking at that smartphone, it's hard, as long as you still have a smartphone.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:51Cal Newport?

  Because it's, there's always going to be stuff, I mean, your browser will be there, because you, you know, it's just very hard. The weather thing, by the way, that came up in Digital Minimalism, my book, where someone talked about, they got rid of all the apps off their phone, but they kept checking the weather app obsessively. So like, the device itself holds a certain power after a while that can only be turned off by replacing the device.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know if you've ever gotten phantom vibrations in your pocket, where you just pick it up, oh, did someone get a notification or something like that. But it's real. And yeah, she, all these apps are just not social media, not innocuous, they, just the fact of it being on a phone, and you have that habit loop, like you said, of reaching for it, it's pretty addictive. And, you know, I keep using the diet example, but maybe because I went on a diet this spring, and then, you know, went off the diet later. But it's kind of like trying to diet and having snacks and desserts in the house, and saying, hey, why, you're just making life harder for yourself, just to swap them out for the boring granola, or whatever it is you're going to eat, you know, don't try

• 31:56Speaker 02

  to, don't try to fight your environment. So that was one of the more interesting parts, was just saying, hey, I don't need to white knuckle it, I just need to make one decision to switch my phone to a dumb phone, and the effects are pretty good.

• 32:08Cal Newport?

  How did they talk about the number one objection or concern people have about that strategy, which are inconveniences? Because they're documenting this. So like, how did that hit them?

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So I want to go to McLaren for a second. She had this really funny Substack note about day two of her, going to her dumb phone. So I'm just going to read the account, it should be quick. "Day two of the dumb phone, I drove downtown, forgot my credit card, no way to pay for anything, no way to pay for parking. Drove in circles for a while, found a free parking spot in front of the coffee shop I wished I could go to, pulled out my laptop and used the wifi. Online gift card, only redeemable at the online store. Found a cafe that would take an e-gift card, bought it, put my laptop on the glass display case and said, can you take this? They said, never had someone tried to pay with a laptop before. Showed them my Nokia, they liked it. Walked out with a coffee and

• 33:03Speaker 02

  cookie. Thought about how inconvenient life can be if you don't have the most convenient device in the world." So I thought that was a pretty funny anecdote, and I'm just imagining going to my local coffee shop and presenting my laptop to try to pay for something.

• 33:18Cal Newport?

  I used to have this, Dale, I had this problem with my smartphone, because I don't understand smartphones. I would go to work, my wife finally solved this for me, I would go to work, and I would say, to Georgetown, like, oh my God, I left my wallet at home, but I'm going to be here all day, I'm going to starve. Because how am I going to eat food or whatever? And like, eventually, my wife was like, you know, you can pay for things using your phone. This was like, six months ago, Dale. So I just want to say, I understand this, I would just starve was my strategy. I was like, I guess I'm not eating today, was the way I thought about it. Yeah.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Well, maybe combined with the diet problem, this could be a good.

• 33:52Cal Newport?

  It's all, it all comes together, all, all full circuit, circle. All right, what about Callie? Did she get into the inconvenience factor?

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, she absolutely did. So she, you know, she found things like, hey, I need to schedule something or look something up. There was a lot of little inconveniences. And I think society, you know, generally now is kind of working against you in terms of assuming you're going to have a smartphone to form a lot of functions. But one of the things she brought up was the things we don't tend to calculate, which is the amount of inconvenience that smartphone technology can also add to our lives. So she, you know, she's a, she, her, she has a mom media company, and, you know, she talks about, you know, things like organizing and cleaning and things like that as part of her content. And she

• 34:44Speaker 02

  describes how she has a Roomba or some other smart vacuum cleaner that's always going around. And the initial thought there was, oh, this is going to be so convenient, I don't have to, you know, vacuum every day myself, it'll just be constantly going around. But regularly, it would just get stuck, or it needs some kind of update that requires your phone. And you spend a non-trivial amount of time just, you know, trying to solve your Roomba problem, and you already ate up all the time savings there. So I think eventually, she mentioned, oh, I'm just going to switch to, instead of fiddling with this, I'm just going to switch to just using a normal, old school vacuum and spending a few minutes

• 35:24Speaker 02

  when I need to do it. So I think we do underestimate the value technology brings from like, a productivity or convenience, convenience perspective. And it's, it kind of reminds me of a lot when I'm trying to build out all these automations with Excel or Claude Code, and it says, oh, I just could have done that manually in like, five minutes instead of spending hours tinkering around with this software. So that was another.

• 35:49Cal Newport?

  You do like your Claude Code. I do know, I do know this about you, if there's a, if there's a custom tool to build.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  I don't know if you know this, but I'm actually an AI avatar at the moment, so.

• 36:01Cal Newport?

  I only talk to AI avatars now, I find it much easier.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  That's right. They're very agreeable, I think.

• 36:06Cal Newport?

  Yeah, they're like, you, you're the best. Actually, if you're an AI avatar, you would say, you are right, except for one thing. I think you're mainly on the right track, but I think, you know, I would do this. And then you would say, it's not this, but it's that. It's not the whatever, it's the, and then I would feel smart.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  That's right. Or this, this argument's doing a lot of load bearing, or something to that effect.

• 36:32Cal Newport?

  With a lot of, yes. All right. So how, how did you come away from diving into the world of people turning to dumb phones? So that seemed to you, is this just like a learning opportunity, or does it actually seem to you like a strategy that we could actually keep in mind as something to try?

• 36:48Speaker 02

  I actually think it is a low-hanging fruit in a lot of cases. So both the examples of Callie and McLaren here, they're both independent, so they don't have a, as far as I know, a day job where that requires them to be responsive and all that. But I was so impressed, which is how making one switch solved so many of their problems in terms of getting their brain space back and being able to just be present in the moment around them, whether it's boring or not. I will say, the flip side of that, though, is that it also wasn't a cure-all. Basically, yes, you'll get more, more your brain space

• 37:33Speaker 02

  back, but you still got to figure out what you want to use that for, whether it's to be more present with your kids, or whatever, you know, just enjoying looking outside. So it doesn't automatically give you this magical amount of time back, but it does seem to.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Get, you know, it just seems to be like a solution that seems relatively simple. Once you figure out how to swap SIM cards and all that kind of stuff. So I was just impressed by just one decision can get so many benefits.

• 38:03Cal Newport?

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• 38:48Cal Newport?

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• 39:29Cal Newport?

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• 40:14Cal Newport?

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• 40:53Cal Newport?

  Indeed on this podcast. So again, that is indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. All right, let's get back to the show. All right. Well, this brings us now to the third act of our investigation.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  I would have this little notebook where I would, you know, write down things I needed to look up on the internet. And then like twice a week or something, I'd go to the library and, you know, do my errands on the internet. And, and, and it was very enlightening to do that because you go to the library and you look at that list. And I remember in particular, like once I looked at the list and was like, look up Justin Bieber's "Net Worth." And I was like, why on earth did I write that? You know, like, I don't need to do that. And so it kind of really enforced how much stupid stuff I was looking at.

• 41:45Cal Newport?

  All right. So that final voice that you just heard there was from Henrik Carlsson, who's the author behind the successful Substack, "Escaping Flatland." It documents his stripped-down life as a full-time essay writer who lives on a farm on an island in Denmark. Carlsson caught my attention, right? He's someone who writes many hours every morning and it's sort of built his life around this sort of creative act and trying to simplify everything else. He's really gone to an extreme. He's changed his location in a way to make that possible. So since we were looking for interesting stories of what it really takes to escape

• 42:22Cal Newport?

  our internet hell, I sent Dale to talk to Carlsson himself to see what he could learn. So what did you discover?

• 42:34Speaker 02

  All right. So again, he's a really fascinating guy, making a living in a very difficult way in a not easy to live place. And when I started talking to him, the most important thing I noticed was that he and his wife has have spent and still continue to spend a lot of time and energy thinking about the life they want to live. And they've been doing this since they got together, I think sometime in their, in their college days. They were trying to think about where they want to live, where, you know, if they want to have kids and what environment they want to raise their kids. And they both kind of

• 43:17Speaker 02

  converged on maybe not the exact same idea, but had some version of like an autonomous creative life. And then when they actually had kids, they decided they wanted to homeschool, which was, which you told me was basically illegal in Sweden. You know, the state considers it some very strange thing and you need some weird exceptions to be able to do it. So they moved to an island farm on, or a farm on an island in Denmark where they, they built this life. It took a while where he, where he had to work like 100 hour weeks, kind of doing freelance programming and, you know, worked at a, at an art gallery that that happened to be in town and, and, but eventually they, you know, they persisted.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  And now he's able to make a living off his Substack essentially, and live this cool life with his wife and two kids that is very autonomous and very creative and very deep.

• 44:11Cal Newport?

  Wait, when he was working like 100 hours early on, was this like, we need to pay off the mortgage or something? Like why? It was like, we have to make this much money, then they'll allow us to be more autonomous?

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think it was both paying for the farm and then the house needed a lot of work. So you just need stuff to pay. You need the living expenses. So that $100 a week is not just paid work. It was, you know, doing paid work plus work on the farm in terms of like fixing things up and whatever that was. And that wasn't even in their, in their skillset at the time. And then just, you know, normal family stuff. So it was a lot of years of just grinding in a way just to be able to afford and, and do that, you know, kind of have that lifestyle out there.

• 44:55Cal Newport?

  So tell me if I have this right, but something was interesting about, you know, Carlson's story was that unlike the other examples where people were living their life and got increasingly brought into the digital world and then sought to escape it, there was sort of the opposite here is because they were living this very intentional life for a long time, the phone wasn't affecting him, right? I mean, so, so in other words, it was, it wasn't even a problem. So it's sort of the reverse. But so, so talk to me about like the relationship of the internet to their life.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. So really fascinating. So because they had this, they started having this conversation early on when they're, when they were younger and Henrik never really, he just never got a smartphone. He just said, well, I don't need it. So I never got it. And in the process of kind of imagining what their life could be like together, it just, the smartphone and a lot of technology centric activities just never, never fit into it. So they decided, hey, we're just not going to do it for the most part. He only recently got a smartphone last year because I guess his bank required some security thing. We had to get a text or something like that.

• 46:08Cal Newport?

  We should clarify, how old is he? It feels like a clarifying. He's not a 98-year-old grizzled man.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Yes, he is a very relevant example. He's 98 and we can learn a lot from our elders. No, he's in, he's in his 30s as well.

• 46:23Cal Newport?

  Okay. That's key. If it was like a Wendell Berry type situation, like he's very impressive, but he moved to that farm in the seventies and, you know, that's different. Okay.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  It is different. Yeah. And, you know, he was a, for a while, he was a, he was a software programmer and did that freelance for a long time, even, even when smartphones started to come out. So it was pretty interesting. But even today, so he has the smartphone, but he really only pulls it out when he, when he needs to for transactional things or if he's traveling for various reasons. And they do have internet at the house, but it's a mobile hotspot that you just, you know, like you plug into the wall and it uses a cell signal and it's unplugged by default. And the process is he, when he needs to do something online, like our interview or something like that, he tells his wife

• 47:12Speaker 02

  he's going to plug it in and kind of gives her a time estimate of how long it will take him. And then he just does it. And if he's on there too long, his wife comes in and says, hey, what's going on? What are you doing here? And so there's a little bit of a check in there, but it, it really is so interesting. It really falls kind of in line with what your digital minimalism messages was, was like, hey, add tools in as you think you need them. And then he, him and his wife, he and his wife just assessed that we don't really need them for, for most of our, you know, what we want to do and, and to live our compelling vision of our life. And in fact, it's kind of an impediment in many ways.

• 47:51Cal Newport?

  Does he ever have issues with the internet in terms of it being a distraction?

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, he's a, he's a normalist person, I would think. I mean, it's normal in, in the sense that he's not immune to the pull of the smartphone. So when he was traveling in London recently, you know, he brought it for navigation and, you know, calls family and everything. He said he was on the subway and he was, he was tired from his trip and he had his smartphone out and he just found himself, you know, scrolling or browsing on the internet. Normal behavior for just for mostly every, everyone. But he found himself in one of those kind of middle line situations where you're tired and, you know, that was just a way to feel, turn your brain off for a minute or to, to

• 48:38Speaker 02

  relax. So, you know, he's, he's not immune to it. And then sometimes he, he says he'll, you know, accidentally leave the, the hotspot plugged in and then he'll wake up in the morning and somehow he ends up checking his email and he described it as having a, whenever he does that, he has a 30% reduction in his creativity, which is Pretty bad for someone who makes your, makes his living writing. So, uh, so yes, he's a, he has the same susceptibility to technology as anyone else, uh, except he has a compelling vision and systems to help him, uh, minimize, uh, the negative effects of it.

• 49:18Cal Newport?

  So what's his, tell me more about what his life is like there. This is, this is like put in my veins type of stuff as far as I'm concerned. When he's on the island, on the farm. Yeah. What is this life like? You, you talked to him for a while.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I asked him and he, he said, oh, it kind of changes day by day, which is itself kind of nice, but it sounds like he wakes up relatively early, maybe writes for, you know, I think he said like four, four hours or something. He may have breakfast with his family, do kind of family stuff. Him and his wife switch off for their own, uh, projects in terms of, uh, kids responsibilities, may go out on a walk, may go out and do more brainstorming, have lunch, have, uh, you know, some fun activity with the kids, have dinner. Basically just a lot of walking and thinking and family time for the most part, uh, interspersed with

• 50:12Speaker 02

  all the various chores that need to be done from living on a farm, uh, island, uh, in Denmark. So it, if you want a simple life in that kind of dreamy state, I mean, he's, he's doing it. Uh, it seems much harder than I would imagine in my vision, but I can still, uh, fantasize that it's way easy and that, uh, you know, I should do that.

• 50:35Cal Newport?

  I feel somehow the secret sauce to him is always that hardness, like the chores and it's, it's a pain and the weather there is not, you know, like it's not, it's not Miami. Let's be honest. But like that somehow in two ways, A, you're not just sitting there when you're tired or whatever. You're not just sitting around like I have nothing to do, which is like prime phone period, but also, I don't know, there's a feeling, that feeling of accomplishment feels good, even if it is, I, it was a menial chore on the farm, like that fence is fixed or this chicken coop got whatever. And if you're getting a steady dose of that, I don't know the neuroscience, but I feel like that, that fulfills something. If you don't have, because you just spent on a computer screen all day and now you're in London going back on the tube and it's, you know, crowded, you're going to seek out

• 51:19Cal Newport?

  those chemicals some other way, uh, whether it's like on the video game or just let me just generate something that like, we don't generate enough chemicals outside of, I don't know, anxiety. So I always thought that was the secret sauce. Like if we took him, if, if he had like, hey, here's a staff that's going to take care of everything. So you can just like sit and look out the window of your farm and ponder. Yeah. I don't know. Like it'd be harder for him. The business helps.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I agree. Uh, and he has this, uh, great clip from our interview where we can wrap up, but, um, he talks about living his life on hard mode.

• 51:54Cal Newport?

  Hard mode.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  And, and, uh, you know, when I described it, he used that, that meme or that joke where, uh, what, what does it go? It says, oh, we do this not because it's easy, but because we thought it would be easy.

• 52:08Cal Newport?

  Yeah. So let us now, here comes the part we promised. So we, we've heard Dale, thank you for sharing these stories. We heard three different stories of people who went to, um, relative extremes to try to reclaim their life from the worst excesses of the internet. And now I promised early on that I would try to, uh, synthesize what we learned to come up with some sort of conclusion for the rest of us. Once we realize, hey, this internet, the way I use it might be causing more harm than good. So Dale, I'm going to give you my conclusion.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 52:38Cal Newport?

  And then I want to get your thoughts on this because you, you talked to all of these people. This is going to sound self-serving, what I'm going to say, but I actually think it is right. I think what all of these answers, what we learned in all three stories is orbiting in some degree around the central idea of my next book, which is coming out in March called The Deep Life. And the, the core idea of The Deep Life was after all of these years of me talking about technology and how it impacts us and how it's bad and how you want to avoid these things. And it's taking you away from other things that are more meaningful. I, I finally learned, and this was a lesson that emerged basically unavoidably during the pandemic, that if you really want people to get away from the worst dehumanizing aspects

• 53:20Cal Newport?

  of technology, you have to stop focusing on the digital things they need to avoid and focus more on making the analog alternatives so compelling that all these sort of gadgets and devices and apps no longer hold the allure. In other words, you have to make your life so intentional and remarkable and lived on purpose that the digital is no longer having this dominant role in your life because your life's too interesting. It's too meaningful. All of this seems to center somewhat. I mean, I'm trying to go through this, right? Like the addict, uh, the, the internet addicts were talking about, look, this is, this behavior is, um, it's, it's responding to things happening in your life. You're filling in a hole. You're covering over gaps. You have to like fix the psychology that's leading you to these distractions and they have to be very intentional about the activities

• 54:05Cal Newport?

  in their lives. That really helps. You know, you said, why are they talking about top line activities that have nothing to do with technology? Because that's the main thing they needed to get away from the technology. The phone, uh, the practical mom and the author that, you know, talked about it. They made a major change in their life. They're like, I'm, I'm, I'm taking this out of my life so that I can have the breathing room to figure things out. And, and Henrik did something similar, like I'm going to rebuild such an interesting life that when I'm there, I don't even think to plug in the hotspot. And when he left and went to London and was in like a normal, busy, you know, type of, I'm on the tube and bored type of life. Suddenly he had a problem he hadn't had before. So this is what I'm taking away from this is the internet can be a major problem, but the major solution

• 54:49Cal Newport?

  has to go through creating a life that's so deep that the allure of the digital suddenly becomes much more diminished. All right. You talked to all these people. How am I doing here?

• 55:02Speaker 02

  I think that's right. Uh, I think you need a reason and to, to basically answer the question like, why bother? Like why bother giving up my smartphone? Why bother, uh, reducing my internet usage or, or getting a mobile hotspot or switching to a dumb phone or whatever it is. And that only comes from having a really, you, you only have that motivation if you have a compelling vision of your life where the phone is, or whatever technology tools you're using is, is minimized or deliberate. It's a, it's a secondary thing. I think in the case of addiction, it, it skews on the negative side where like, this is really

• 55:45Speaker 02

  bad. And some vision of the good life is getting rid of all this badness and then complemented by the, all the, all the top line, uh, great, you know, top line activities that make life worth living. Uh, I think with Carlson's case, he, he was a little bit more unique in that he kind of, like you said, he kind of started off with a compelling vision of life and just never bought into the, the technology, um, that causes us so many problems now. And with the middle case, kind of with, with, with Callie and McLaren there, uh, I got the sense that, uh, they, once they got rid of the dumb phone or got switched to the dumb phone, they had more space to think about, uh, what, what made

• 56:30Speaker 02

  life more meaningful. And, you know, there, I think they're on that, on that path. But in all cases, I still think it requires, like you said, like this, like analog vision of a life that, that is so, you know, so compelling, you can't bother, can't be bothered to have a smartphone or, or whatever, whatever it is.

• 56:48Cal Newport?

  You know, I, I think about this sometimes, uh, the degree to which the, the issues we're having with our phones and the internet and these apps that, that, you know, drove the people that you explored to these extremes, the degree to which they really are a canary in a bigger coal mine. Right? Then in other words, it's, as always happens, we sort of came out of a period and, and for whatever, modernity got very powerful. The sort of organizing narratives of meaning were beginning to diminish. And in that situation, phones and what they offered, there was a lack there. We need to, we need, we need to distract ourselves from lack of meaning. We need to distract ourselves from a sort of creeping

• 57:30Cal Newport?

  anxiety or nihilism. And now the phones could come in there and feel that. Uh, I hadn't thought about it before like that, but this more recently, I keep hearing this come up again. I, I would also point listeners towards my interview with Arthur Brooks about his most recent book. And I, you know, I did this, I, earlier in the year, but this was, I remember Brooks was talking about exactly this point. Don't think about this as we were great. And then like these evil people came along and like the mad scientists injecting the heroin into our veins while we're strapped down. We're like, oh my God, they forced us to be an addict. If I could just get rid of this, I'd go back to being great. It was, no, we were suffering. Family, community, religion, um, you know, uh, predictable professional

• 58:11Cal Newport?

  trajectories, uh, patriotism, whatever it is, like these, these binding things that gave meaning trajectories to our lives sort of unraveled in digital post-modernism. And we needed to have some succor for that lack. And that's a perfect place for the phones to enter and these other things to enter. So I, you know, it's, this was not an idea I thought a ton about, and now suddenly it's everywhere. And so I'm not surprised that that's what goes through it. So it's almost like when someone says, man, I can't get off this phone. The question is, you know, what's waiting for you when you do? And when they don't have the great answers, like great, that's where we need to start. You know, let's, let's, let's work on that. Um, of course it's self-serving because of what my whole book's about. But this came up, you know, this came up again and again. There's

• 58:55Cal Newport?

  a book, so in my book I talked about, I, I want to get the author's name right. Um, so it's Amy Liptrout, The Outrun was a book I talk about in my book. It reminds, it would have been a great example. It reminds me of these stories. Um, she, she, Amy Liptrout fell into serious alcohol addiction, living in London, returned to where she grew up, which was the Northern Scottish Isles. And she went there to get sober and rediscover herself. And one of the core things about that book is what makes things go well is the rediscovery part. She, she could go through periods of sobriety. Right? You can white knuckle it like, man, I really don't like myself when I'm like that. And so you can have periods of sobriety, but it was rediscovering herself and her life and in nature and her

• 59:38Cal Newport?

  meaning. That's what made it last in some sense. So, you know, it's, it's, we can escape the internet hell that a lot of us are, are increasingly disliking. Um, but to do that, we have to focus on the, the analog life outside of it. All right. But look, there's also some practical stuff here. Like, so what, what caught your mind? Well, um, I have a few notes here. Just like going from that down to some like more practicalities. Anything else catch your mind that we should probably keep in our toolbox here as people trying to be deeper?

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  I really enjoyed the, and thought hard about the, just the bottom line, medium line, top line, observation framework, like even if you're not addicted, I think just that having that self-awareness can really help, even just curing, not curing, but mitigate the effects of bad habits or just know when you're susceptible to stuff. Like, I know I have a, my wife calls me out and sometimes I'm tired, I'll be kind of short with the, with the kids and not tolerant of their nonsense. And I've, a lot of times I just now can recognize like, hey, I'm tired, I know I'm prone to reacting to this, I'm just gonna observe

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  that. And that usually prevents me from yelling, hey, stop doing whatever. So I, I think that's a nice way to have a more organized framework for observing when you are likely to, you know, do something that you don't, you know you shouldn't be doing or don't want to be doing. So, so I, I found that pretty helpful. The, I'm very compelled by switching to the dumb phone thing. It's, it seems as if that is a low-hang fruit. And if you can maybe like separate having like a work phone that only has a few work-related things on it from a, you know, just your personal phone, which you can, can be a dumb phone in this

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  case. That seems like it would at least make you aware that, you know, how often you're reaching for it. And then if you're stuck with no alternative on the, on the toilet, you can go back to reading the shampoo bottle like we used to do as kids back in the day. That'll give you space to visualize what life could potentially be like without the smartphone, you know, sucking up all that, all that brain space. Yeah. So I, I think between those two and then having, taking the, taking the, creating a vision of life seriously. And again, just all the lessons we learned from the, from the interviews.

• 1:02:17Cal Newport?

  Those are good.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Those were, yeah. I, I think those are great places to start.

• 1:02:22Cal Newport?

  I, I like the lines as a practical thing. Like with technology, right? I mean, first of all, your story about getting short at your kids. I've never yelled at my kids, you're a monster. So let me just establish that.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  I outed myself.

• 1:02:33Cal Newport?

  Yeah. I have never, I have never shown any anger towards my kids. But I, I think applying, everyone applying that, that ITAA, that's probably not how they say it, IT, ITAA, right? Because AA, they say alcohol, yeah, ITAA. Everyone could apply that to their technologies. Just to remind people, I'm looking at the, the notes here again. It's like, your bottom line is have a list of, I just don't use these technologies. If you don't, everyone should have that list. Like the ones you just don't use. Like I, you know, I'm in my, if you're in your 30s, you're like, you know what? I just don't, I'm not getting Grand Theft Auto VI or whatever. Like I can't play video games anymore. Like I have responsibilities in life, they're too addictive. That makes sense. Or TikTok is, or Instagram, I can't get off of it. And I don't really need, like, okay, have

• 1:03:17Cal Newport?

  bottom lines. Middle lines then say, okay, certain technologies I do use, I have certain circumstances where I don't. And it, and I have to have that. I love that idea that, I don't know if it was Jack or Tom had of like, here's my list of alternatives. If I'm stressed or tired, it's like, I don't want to think about, I take that list off the refrigerator. I could do this, this, this, and this. Like I have my alternatives ready to go, so I don't fall into it. And then top lines, what are my like positive alternatives? I'm trying to program. I think that's great. I think having the personal dumb phone, I agree with you on that. People are very worried about if I no, no longer have access to X, it's going to be a problem. But what you're talking about, that's the way to do it, is well, I have both. And like more often than not, I grab the dumb phone when I'm going

• 1:04:00Cal Newport?

  out to do something. And so you just kind of get more used to it, right? And you still have the other phone for work, or if you need to go pay for the parking garage or whatever. But like more and more often, you can just have the dumb phone. Like that's what my middle schoolers have dumb phones. And it works, right? They need it. They take it when they're going somewhere where they might need to call us and, or text us and be like, hey, it's a, the thing ended early. I need you to pick me up. Or the bus didn't come. And like it, it captures that emergency situation without any other temptation. So all right, well, here's how we'll leave it then. Like topline, make your life so deep that the digital is no longer as a lure. Like that's ultimately what you need to do. If you're looking at your phone too much, if it's making you unhappy, like I want to,

• 1:04:42Cal Newport?

  I need to focus on my life before I think about the tech. All right. Then on the practical things you can do once that's underway, bottom, middle, top lines, everyone should have those for technology. And consider like some of these more drastic, I mean, I think having a dumb phone, not as your only phone, but having a dumb phone, it's like if you're really getting serious about getting in shape is getting the gym subscription. Like it costs money. You have to go. It's like a big change in your life, but it's not completely transforming your life. But like, it's like hiring a trainer or something. This is really going to like help force some action that otherwise I was struggling to do consistently. So I, I don't know. I think we solved the problem, Dale. I think we've got that.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  I think so. But I wasn't really listening while I was browsing.

• 1:05:25Cal Newport?

  Yeah. I saw this, this thing you just posted on TikTok. And I just want to say that's, it's oddly disturbing. I, yeah, that's.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  That's, that's what all the comments say, but it's not going to keep me down.

• 1:05:38Cal Newport?

  I gotta stop. You're gonna make a fortune. As a, yeah. This is where I announced, Dale, that I have decided to become a eight-hour-a-day Twitch streamer. Because I think that's the real lesson of this, is they weren't using enough technology. All right. I appreciate this. Thank you for going out there in the field and getting these stories. Sometimes you just have to talk to real people to get the real story about what's going on. You gotta have that flavor, those layers. And so, thank you for doing this, Dale. We'll have to, we'll have to launch on another investigation soon, because I had a lot of fun hearing about this.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Thanks, Cal. Really enjoyed it.

• 1:06:11Cal Newport?

  All right. So there we have it. That was my report with correspondent Dale Davidson. I like this idea. I like this approach of occasionally being able to send our correspondents to do a lot of work, a lot of reporting that they can then bring back for us to make sense of. So maybe we'll do some more of that in the future. I think this went long enough that I'm not going to do Q and A today. But I'll be back next week, as always, with another episode of the show, and maybe even a shorter episode before then. So stay tuned. And until then, as always, stay deep. Today's episode was produced and mastered by Jesse Miller. Nate Meckler provided research and newsletter support. The video was edited by Ben Crain and Rob Moss. The theme music is adapted from an original composition by Jay Kirstens. For weekly ideas from me to

• 1:06:53Cal Newport?

  show up in your inbox, sign up for my newsletter at calnewport.com.