Breaking Free from Tech Addiction: Tips for a Healthier Digital Life

Sarah Kettel: 00:00:08

Welcome to Talking Hospitality.

Timothy R. Andrews: 00:00:20

Talking Hospitality is a podcast looking at issues within hospitality solutions and inspirational stories.

Sarah Kettel: 00:00:27

The podcast is shared on all major platforms, iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud and Spotify. And it's marketed on social media. Welcome to our podcast, Talking Hospitality. I'm Sarah Kettel and this is my co host, Timothy R. Andrews.

Hi, Tim.

Timothy R. Andrews: 00:00:41

Hi, Sarah.

Sarah Kettel: 00:00:42

How are you doing?

Timothy R. Andrews: 00:00:43

Good. And how are you doing today?

Laura Willis: 00:00:44

Very well.

Sarah Kettel: 00:00:45

I'm very well. Today we're actually joined by Laura Willis, who is the co founder of Shine Offline, a digital wellbeing and management expertise. Hi, Laura.

Laura Willis: 00:00:54

Hello, Sarah and Tim.

Sarah Kettel: 00:00:56

So, Laura, you're here to talk to us today about what you do, which is really, really interesting.

And for those of you who are listening purely from a hospitality basis, this is going to sound a bit strange that we're actually going to talk about social media today, but it's very, very poignant for a lot of us and we're going to go into why. So Laura, why don't you give us a bit of an instruction about what you do?

Laura Willis: 00:01:17

So I basically help people to understand and improve their relationships with their technology, predominantly their phones, because that's the thing that we're carrying around with us all of the time and then our laptops as well.

It's all around social media news, the stuff that we access at our personal time and then stuff that we're using for work as well, email, instant messenger, et cetera.

So I work with businesses and I go in and basically create spaces for people to examine the role that their devices are playing in the world at the moment and start to explore small adjustments they could make so that they basically have space to breathe in a world where we are frazzled and constantly on and it's 24/7, you'll be.

Sarah Kettel: 00:02:02

Aware of a documentary that's been on Netflix, which everybody has watched, which is terrifying, I think, has been described to me as, by most people, which is about how addicting our phones are and how they're meant to be.

Laura Willis: 00:02:14

Yep. Every time I say the words "Social Dilemma", I pay myself a pound because I'm talking about it a lot at the moment.

And I'm overjoyed that that has got to Netflix because a lot of the people that feature in the documentary, it's a lot of ex Silicon Valley executives, senior executives like co founders of Twitter, co founders of Facebook, et cetera, coming out and being very candid about the mechanisms behind how they develop this Stuff and the impact it's having on us, sort of at an individual and local level and then at a really global cultural level. And anybody can watch it on Netflix.

And it's amazing because when you hear the makers and masters talk about it, the fact that they don't want their kids near it, that they themselves really struggle with it, and that they think that it's wrong in a lot of cases, I think that gives us a chance to go, okay, I am really pulled and it daws my head in and it doesn't make me filled with joy, but it looks like everybody's struggling and it's designed in that way. So, yeah, I'm thrilled about the social dilemma.

Timothy R. Andrews: 00:03:16

Why do you think people are pulled or so attracted to mobile phones? What is it that makes them addictive?

Laura Willis: 00:03:25

It's pretty complicated. They're amazing. You know, who doesn't want to know what's going on in the world?

Keep entertained, stay connected to their friends and family all the time. They're amazing.

We're carrying little computers around in our pockets, so that's obviously one reason the benefit they've brought to our lives, our reliance on them is pretty recent. If you flip back to 10, 15 years ago, the world looked very different. Mobile phones existed.

But the smartphone revolution is quite new in evolutionary terms. So it's become central to our personal life and to our working lives pretty quickly.

And there aren't a lot of people out there talking about guidelines and putting structure around your digital diet. So with the lack of those sort of official guidelines, it can be hard to take the time to step back and reflect on your own behavior.

We are living in an attention economy. Whole economies are built on getting your attention, converting it into cash.

And all this stuff is set up with dopamine in mind, the body's reward substance.

Whenever you get a post or somebody likes your photo, or you get an email or a text or a WhatsApp, you get a hit of dopamine, which makes you feel good. And it's set up using the psychology of the casino on purpose.

Because the way that this stuff makes money is through clicks and hits and views, because it's advertising revenue. We as human beings are designed to be distracted. It's part of our survival mechanism.

Because whenever the saber toothed tiger was our greatest threat, we have to hear the rustling leaves so that we could physically run and save ourselves. So distraction isn't built on us.

So if we're dealing with something on an hourly basis, that is built in a distracting way, of course it's going to take up an awful lot of our time. I think also there's a ripple effect of behavior. You know, if he's doing it and she's doing it, then I'm doing it too.

And you see that on like trains, platforms, restaurants, anywhere where there's a group of people, everybody's on their device and I think we copy each other.

And when it comes to workplace cultures and technology that we're using at work, which we're doing an awful lot more in the past few years, it's been really, you know, people are overloaded by their inboxes and they're overwhelmed, etc. As a result of work tech. There's a culture now of a sort of 247 expectation.

You know, if you respond to an email after hours, outside your official hours, that makes you good and conscientious and ambitious and somebody who should be watched. And that's sort of normalized now. Whereas the flip side of that is there's no chance for downtime for a lot of people. So it's complicated.

There's lots of different reasons and they're all sort of piling up on top of each other to result in the situation that we're in now.

Sarah Kettel: 00:06:11

I think that's really interesting that you mentioned downtime because, you know, when you work in an industry like ours, you'd be very hard pushed to find people who work a 9 to 5 anyway. So we already have unsociable hours, we already have long hours.

And for a lot of us that are pivoting, you know, myself included, and have had to create businesses or save businesses using our phones and using social media and using technology during lockdown, it has seemed to become this endless loop of work and it's not even enjoyable anymore.

So for instance, if I go on Facebook, I'm not on there to see my mate's new baby or see what the kids have been up to or that photo that everyone posts in September of first day of school, here's the new uniform. I'm not on there to see that. I'm on there to see how many people have looked at my business. I'm on there to post about my business.

So in some ways all the joy has almost been sucked out of it. And it's a very double edged sword.

Laura Willis: 00:06:59

And also I think you've touched upon probably the most important thing that you need to understand, which is the trigger that's driving your behavior. We launched the business because I had a dysfunctional relationship with my phone. It was my work Email on my personal phone. That was my pull.

And I ended up in a state of insomnia and panic disorder where I just couldn't exist anymore and I had to go through a journey to make myself better. I wasn't obsessively checking my inbox because I love getting emails.

I was obsessively checking my inbox because I was self employed, I was on contracts, I wasn't on retainer work. The wolf was at the door. The way that people communicated around my business with me regarding new jobs, et cetera, was through my inbox.

So that fear was driving my behavior. I think we need to take time to understand that the triggers that drive our behavior need to be worked through. I've been saying since day one.

As a small business owner myself, I've got really good digital balance. I've got no email on my phone. I've got two phones, a work phone and a personal phone. And my work phone stays in the office.

My personal phone stays in the cupboard where the tea bags live at home. I'm not on social media and yet I'm now running a business that is working at a global level and has been successfully for over four years.

You do not need to be constantly connected to be a success. You need to use the stuff with intention and you need to use it to fulfill purpose.

But it's when it becomes habitual and there's no control around your behavior. That's when we need to take a moment and say, is this actually causing me more pain than good?

You know, I've been out and worked with small businesses who have said, but if our neighbor is responding straight away and we're not, how can we possibly be competitive? And my response to that is, okay, say for example, you're working in a creative sector. What are you striving to be and your customer facing?

You want to have good rapport with your clients. You want to be innovative. There's lots of things that you need to be in order to succeed as a business.

And if you're on all of the time, you can't be those things because you're exhausted and you're tired and you're distracted and your mental health is going out the window because your head's so full and it's not healthy.

You know, when we ask 90% of people since COVID say they're digital causes and stress and overwhelm and this stuff was invented, the intention was to provide and to assist us in our lives. And you know, I've worked with tens of thousands of people.

And I've met very few people who have good digital balance, because as a human being, you're not meant to be stimulated. 24, 7. We haven't evolved as a species since Stone Age.

And the amount of information we're processing these days is beyond anything that the brain can cope with.

Timothy R. Andrews: 00:09:43

I went for a walk by the Thames and saw these benches, thought that'd be great, nice, sit down, have a look at the water and the geese and the ducks and everything.

And then I noticed on all the benches where somebody was sitting on their own, every single person was facing the water, looking at their phone, not looking at the water at all. And I thought, there's a real problem. This is a real problem. There is sunlight glistening off this water.

And you've sat there, you've chosen to sit opposite this water for a reason, probably to relax. And what you've done is you're looking at your phone. Yeah, it was. I just couldn't get my head around it.

There's this beautiful sight and everybody's heads are down looking at the. At the phones.

One of the questions I wanted to ask you, actually, there are going to be people listening to this that are perhaps living on their own or feeling quite isolated.

And they view is that this technology that they've got is their only source of contact with people and that might make them reluctant to actually look at their behaviors. How would you address that sort of objection?

Laura Willis: 00:10:53

I think you need to look at the quality of the exchanges that you're having through social media. You know, a lot of social media use in particular is very passive.

So I've been reading studies recently that have demonstrated that passive use of social media, where you're just scrolling through other people's feeds, has a really negative impact on your own self esteem and could increase anxiety and depression. Whereas WhatsApp, which is much more interactive, has been found to decrease feelings of isolation and loneliness.

So I think it's about taking the time to think about the way that you're using the technology and how you feel after you've used it. Of course, through Covid.

If it wasn't for Zoom and Teams and Skype for business, I wouldn't be here because I'm relying on conference call software to keep my business running. And it's not about chucking the phones in the toilet and running a living in a forest. It's about reframing our relationship with it.

If we think that it's not bringing benefit to our world, there can be an emptiness to silent exchange over things. Like social media.

Whereas if you actually have a physical voice conversation with somebody, what you'll get from that is a lot richer and a lot deeper. And there's experts out there who have written about this, there's Ted talks about this.

So it's not about not using it, it's about being mindful of not allowing all your time and worth get lost in it.

And obviously whenever you're face to face with somebody, that's the richest type of exchange that you can have because you're picking up on their social cues and the expression, their face and all sorts of stuff going on.

Whenever you can't be with somebody, the phone or a zoom call can be a good replacement because you'll still be able to look into somebody's eyes, see their face, see their expression and hear their voice is really powerful, isn't it?

Timothy R. Andrews: 00:12:46

Emails and texts, you miss things out and people sometimes get take umbrage at things. I myself have done that when I've read an email the wrong way because I haven't had the person speaking to me.

When they explained to me the email, I'm totally realized I'm completely off track. What they meant was not what I read.

Sarah Kettel: 00:13:07

Yeah, exactly. I think we've all been there.

So Laura, it's really interesting to know from your perspective actually what employers can do to help people who are in an industry like ours. Or it's all encompassing, it's all go all the time and everything is very much technology based.

What can employers do to encourage good habits in their staff?

Laura Willis: 00:13:30

Well, every business is obviously different. So you know, if you're in hospitality, you've got a range of staff, some are desk space, some are back office, some are front of house.

So it's understanding that everybody's relationship with technology is going to be different. I suppose we're thinking about work tech and personal tech.

So everybody's relationship with their work technology for example, is going to be different depending on their job role and the position that they hold within that business. So understanding the differences is the first thing and then it's really about encouraging people to strive to have good digital habits.

It's about supporting people to do that, it's about communicating with people because this stuff is really simple but people don't talk about it.

And my aim is to make it normal in things like one to one meetings for managers to talk to staff about their digital behavior and their digital well being, creating dialogue and encouraging conversation around it and then just supporting people to do things like think about how they spend their Break times.

Think about how the expectation around things like email response times, instant messenger response times, out of office or out of off shift, contactability around that and encouraging people as well.

I suppose that whenever they're in their personal time, you know, they need to be thinking about things like their sleep and if that's being disrupted by tech.

Sarah Kettel: 00:14:50

So on the flip side, actually, I'm just, just thinking about you talking about employers. So quite a few friends of mine who are chefs are working shift work at the moment. That's kind of the way things are.

There's a lot of people working freelance and they are not being communicated with in work hours as to what they're doing the next day.

So for instance, a friend of mine was sat there at 8 o'clock at night a couple of weeks ago saying I don't know what time I start work tomorrow, nobody's texted me, which.

And I said that's appalling because that's, in my opinion, that's a manager's job before the end of the working day, which everyone accepts is I suppose somewhere between 5pm and 7pm to make sure that that messaging is done. So I think there's a lot of work to be done on both sides, isn't there?

Laura Willis: 00:15:36

100%. And you know, this is a brilliant example of how we have allowed technology to enable behavior that's unacceptable.

You know, because when someone leaves at the end of the day and hangs their apron up, we can still contact them and we don't have to make a decision at the end of the day because they've got a mobile phone and I know their number and I can text them or email them or WhatsApp them. The responsibility that that manager's taken on board to make that decision is gone because all those barriers have changed.

But that's adding stress into everybody, into that person's life. It's like the out of hours email contact.

You know, if you're desk based in the hospitality sector and you have finished work at half five and you're home by, we'll say, well at the moment, and I know a lot of people are working in hotels and they are still going in and then coming home, you could still log on in the evening. That wouldn't have been considered 20 years ago because you'd left work. But now, because it can be done, it is being done.

But just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Just because you can carry your phone around with you everywhere you go doesn't mean you should.

Just because your phone can notify you every time somebody updates their Facebook status doesn't mean it should. Just because your phone can wake you up in the morning doesn't mean it should.

And just because you don't need to let that guy know what time he's on tomorrow morning, because you can contact them at 10 o'clock tonight, doesn't mean you should.

Timothy R. Andrews: 00:16:59

People listening to this who may be finding that they are looking at social media a lot, scrolling through, waiting for that notification to come through, waiting for somebody to pick up, and then realizing that they're feeling unhappy with the situation and feeling a state of overwhelm and perhaps lack of control. Have you got any advice or some sort of key tips that they can try and implement that might be useful for them?

Laura Willis: 00:17:25

Well, those people who are Netflix subscribers need to watch the social dilemma because that's definitely a good starting point to start to understand your behavior and why you're pulled in. Because you're not unusual, it's designed in that way. You need to understand that behavioral change is really hard anyway.

And if you're trying to change behavior around something that's designed in an addictive way, it's going to be difficult. So you've got to be kind to yourself and realistic and maybe think about one small change that you could make. And it's about making small changes.

It's about creating boundaries and putting barriers in place. You can use your phone to analyze your screen time so you could maybe start to go into your settings and look at your screen time feed.

When were you on? Right. What are the. Is it your break times? Is it evening? Okay, it was two hours today. Could you get it down to an hour and a half tomorrow?

You can set a limit on the screen time features within the phone so that once you hit your one and a half hour limit, you can't get back in until tomorrow.

Taking the app off the phone so you can't access it at all on the phone and using it only on your laptop and creating a rule around that is a great way of minimizing that constant. Just check, check, check, check, check. Because the phone is there in your hand, there are apps you can download to your phone.

Off time is a great one. We've got a blog on our website all about apps that help you manage your relationship with your phone.

And ofttimes one that we talk about, basically it allows you to disable your phone, but customize what you can do. So say you wanted to have the evening and you didn't want to be disturbed by Facebook or WhatsApp or news, for example.

But you wanted to listen to a podcast, you could set it so that the only thing that works on the phone is the podcast app. Don't double screen.

If you're going to take the time to sit down either on your own or with other people to watch some telly, be that I'm a celebrity or a movie or whatever, do it and be present and enjoy it together. Don't sit and scroll through your iPad or your phone while you're on the tv.

This stuff, a lot of people spend a lot of time creating this stuff and it's amazing and you're paying for it. So get as much out of it as you can. They're just. They're the sorts of things that we talk to people about. It's about small, tiny adjustments.

And I would always encourage people to make one or two changes around a behavior that they think is a pull for them and just keep bringing curiosity to it, keep bringing experimentation to it. It's hard. So treat yourself with a bit of kindness and don't beat yourself up.

Timothy R. Andrews: 00:19:54

You know, I believe that you have a blog where people can go and find out a lot more about this. Would you like to share that with us?

Laura Willis: 00:20:01

Yeah.

So if you go to shineoffline.com blog, there are a number of articles there about understanding the pull of technology, how to get yourself into a place of deep focus and minimize your digital distractions, how to reclaim your breaks and manage your work life balance. Mindfulness is a big one because there's a big correlation between mindfulness and this distracted world that we live in.

And it's all explained in the blog. So I know there's another one about sleep.

There's loads about the importance of having holidays, all about the relationship we have with our tech and what we can do different things. So if people want to check that out, please feel free. Www.shineoffline.com blog so thank you so much.

Timothy R. Andrews: 00:20:48

For your time today.

Laura Willis: 00:20:49

Thanks guys. It was brilliant.

Sarah Kettel: 00:20:50

Thank you.

Laura Willis: 00:20:51

Take care. Bye bye.

Sarah Kettel: 00:20:53

We look forward to you joining us in the next episode of Talking Hospitality Available on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play and YouTube