Pete Clark
Welcome to this week's episode of The Freedom Fridays podcast. I have a fascinating guest this morning who, having just had a chat off screen, we've realised we live about 100 metres from each other. And here we are doing it in a digital forum, which is perfect, and I'll explain why in a second. But please, first of all, welcome to the show Dr Kristy Goodwin.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Great to be here Pete. Thank you for having me. And we are, as you said, within arm's reach of each other but doing this digitally,
Pete Clark
Yeah, which is perfect because that's partly your expertise. You're a digital researcher, author, speaker, and you're going to share with us all sorts of things and tips and tools about the ever expanding it feels, world of digital. And so Kristy, I start with the same question, and for everyone that I speak to, and it's very generic, so we can go anywhere here. In terms of the work that you do, what should we be seeking freedom from?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Pete, I get goosebumps when I talk about this. I think many of us, if we're really honest, are slaves to our screens. We are tethered to technology, both professionally and personally. You know, we savlivate like Pavlov's dogs, every time we get an alert or notification or the ping of an email, we cannot go - I call it going on holidays and going laptop plus. You know, we still need to take our digital appendages with us.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Research tells us 90% of people reach for their phone before their partner first thing in the morning. And 47% of us allegedly engage in a behaviour - I'm not going to look at you when I say this Pete - but it's called "Toilet-tweeting" using our phone in the bathroom. So I think that indicates to me that many of us are slaves to the screen.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Technology is wonderful. I'm not, you know, demonising technology at all. But technology is designed to be our servant, not our master. And I think if most of us critically examined the relationship we have with technology, we would acknowledge that it certainly plays an important role. But switching off, digitally disconnecting, is really, really challenging, but it is so vital for our performance.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
So for me, if I was to say what is freedom, freedom is certainly using technology, but using in ways that is congruent with our most basic human biological drivers. I often talk about our biological blueprint. And I say, you know, we're not machines were not designed to be plugged in switched on processing information all of the time. And so we have these, I call it out a neurobiological blueprint, these human constraints that we all have to work within, but we're not. And so this is why I think technology is having a huge impact. I think there's very few facets of our lives where you know, technology has crept into every crevice of our lives. And it's here to stay. So we've got to start to find healthy and helpful ways to use it. Because otherwise, as I said before, we will be that slave to the screen.
Pete Clark
Kristy, well, you've triggered many thoughts. I've got already about 7 or 8, even 10 lines of what about this? What about this? Thank you. That was a that was a very interesting and triggering set of language. And the one that triggered me most was 90% of people reach for their phone in the morning before their partner that's astonishing. And I'd like to pick up later on the consequences of that.
Pete Clark
I've got two men kind of, I guess, introductory questions. How did we get here? Given you said it's not necessarily natural? How did we get here? And can we stop it?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Great questions. So to answer your first question, I think if we're really honest, technology has been intentionally designed to hold our attention. We are now living in what's called the attention economy. And technology, particularly our leisure based technologies, social media, streaming services, group chats, they have been designed to rob us, I think, of our two most important resources in life - our time and our attention.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
I think there's three chief reasons how we got here. And this also applies if any of your listeners are also parents. These three reasons also explain why kids throw techno-tantrums. Why they emotionally combust when we remove the digital appendage from their grip. And it explains why we find it hard, as I mentioned, to go laptopless and shut the lid on our laptops. While we go on holidays and desperately try and find the one bar of Wi Fi signal, so we triage our inboxes or get a dose of the news feed that we need to catch up on. So I think the three big reasons the first reason is that technology, particularly our leisure, but also our professional technologies, have been designed to tap into our three most basic psychological drivers. As humans, according to self determination theory, we have three core psychological drivers. The need for connection, competence, and control. The online world fulfils those needs so perfectly. This is why for young people multiplayer video games, social media. For us why email is and group chats and things like Teams and Slack have become so immersive is that we are biologically designed to be part of a group to be part of a tribe. So we fulfil that need for connection. The need for competence, you know, we want to be perceived to be competent by our peers by our colleagues. So we will respond instantaneously to messages and emails. And that need for control is often met by googling information or responding within a timely sense. So we fulfil those basic needs. So that's the first reason.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
The second reason is that when we are online, there are a whole lot of neurobiological changes happening. For most of us being online is usually a pleasurable experience. Somewhere along the line, we got an interesting email, maybe it was news of a promotion or praise for a job that we've done well. And so we start to attach that sense of pleasure to our inboxes, or to social media, or to the crazy things that we watch on on streaming services. And so our brain is actually giving us a hit of dopamine when we're on there. Now, the problem with dopamine is not only does it make us crave more of whatever that stimulus was, that made us feel good, but dopamine floods our prefrontal cortex. So the part of the brain that helps us regulate our behaviour, it's our impulse control centre, it turns off when it's getting a hit of dopamine. And so this is why we, you know, find it really hard to switch off the Netflix series that we're watching. Because we're getting this flood of dopamine, and it's overriding that regulation part of the brain. So that's the second reason there's a whole lot of other things happening.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
We know many adults suffer from a condition called email apnea. We literally hold our breaths, when we go in our inboxes. We dump a whole lot of cortisol, our pupils dilate, our heart rate accelerates. And so we're actually changing our physiology when we're online. Just recently, a study was done, that tells us that we physiologically sigh, much less when we're looking at a screen. This helps to regulate our sensory system and our nervous system. So we're often in this dysregulated state, because we're spending so much time online.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
The third reason, and this is where I'm going to deflect responsibility. And I'm going to wag my finger at all the big tech companies and say it's all their fault. And if anyone's watched the Social Dilemma, you would be familiar with some of the very persuasive design techniques. The fact that our notification bubble is read is no accident - red is a psychological trigger for urgency and importance. The fact that there's a metric in your email notification bubble telling you that you have 49 unread emails, drives that that pressure to respond. The fact that when we are online, we get what we call intermittent variable rewards. So we never know when we go in our inbox is there going to be something fabulous, terrible, or somewhere in between? If we knew that every 12 minutes, every 32 minutes, a great email will be in my inbox, I wouldn't go in and keep constantly checking. So I think it's this interplay of those three factors. Our psychological needs are being met. There are these whole raft of neurobiological changes happening when we are online. So our sensory and our nervous systems are dysregulated. And the third one is we're going to deflect the blame and say it's the persuasive design techniques. I think for most of us the most persuasive design technique, especially for kids, and why this is such a huge issue for any parent with what I call "Screenages". I call it the state of insufficiency. And in the online world, it's a bottomless bowl, there's no stopping queues. There's no end point. We never get to inbox zero. Our young people, there's always another social media post they can look at, there's always another thing they can watch on a streaming service, there's always another level in the game that they can get to. For us, there's always another Teams or Slack notification. And so we never feel like we are done or complete. And again, a lot of the tech companies exploit this characteristic. The autoplay feature, is now the default setting on YouTube and all the streaming services. So again, there's a whole lot working against us. But having said that, my answer to your second question is that there are things that we can do. We can start to take back power, we can start to use technology in congruent ways with our neurobiology. And that's really, I think that we're where we're at, I think we're at a really critical juncture in time where people are actually starting to question, you know, what is my relationship with my phone? And I think, you know, the pandemic really thrust that into the spotlight for many of us,
Pete Clark
Kristy, we could probably spend the next two hours talking about tips for all sorts of different cohorts. And I'm going to go there. I would like, I'd just be interested in your view. Kind of a parallel 1uestion. If technology is meeting all of those needs, to some degree or other, what's prevented us from having those needs met elsewhere, prior to even technology coming on board, or did we just because we're most of us are asleep to our thoughts and our thinking that it was always going to happen?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
I think it was technology striking at the right time. And I think it's exemplified that. You know, I mean, many of us struggle with lockdowns because that fundamental need for human connection was was fractured, it was done, many of us would agree like nothing beats meeting in person. You know, thank goodness for Zoom and Teams, and WebEx and all the other digital replicas. But we know, for example, that we release oxytocin. And oxytocin is the social bonding hormone when we are in close proximity, physical proximity to people. So I think those needs have always been there, I think we're now fulfilling those needs in a digital context. And it's no replica, it's no substitute for those basic human needs that we've always had. I also think that tech companies knew this. You know, we know that when Facebook, which is now meta, but when Facebook was being designed, not only did they have computer programmers and software engineers in the back rooms. They had psychiatrist, psychologist, neuroscientists, so they were very aware of, you know, some of the very persuasive techniques they could deploy to really tap into those psychological needs. I think the chief on is that need for connection. The fact that we just that is there is no other knee that that tops that irrespective of our gender, socioeconomic status that really drives our human behaviour.
Pete Clark
And has it been your experience, Kristy, what's the research telling us about, does oxytocin get released on Zoom, you know on a 2D version? And the reason I'm asking is, I think through the lockdown, many of us connected I certainly connect with many colleagues and friends and family that hadn't been in touch with for a while. And I remember, on Sundays, in the first lockdown, six families got together four o'clock on a Sunday and had like a trivia quiz. And it was great fun. It was, it was just a lot of laughs. And so is oxytocin getting released there?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Look I'm not familiar with any studies that have looked at that Stanford University are leading the field in terms of video meetings and the impact on the brain. There is some really interesting things they have discovered, do you want me to share? Again, it doesn't matter if it's zoom teams, WebEx, they're just looking at generic video meetings, but they coined the term 'Zoom Fatigue' to try and start to explore why is it that yes, it's great to connect online, but it is depleting. You know, many people are saying, you know, I come off a day with back to back video calls, and I am fried and I haven't had longer time in meetings. Although the research tells us we've seen a 158% increase in virtual meetings since the start of the pandemic. And what we know is there's a couple of really interesting things happening on video calls that is cognitively taxing. One of the things is that we know it is the very first time in history, where we see what we look like in a social context. We see our mannerisms, our idiosyncrasies, our hair that is receding, our hair that needs doing, and it is amplified, it would be akin to us walking into a boardroom and putting a mirror directly in front of us. It's socially jarring. The other thing and we call that impression management. So we're watching what's happening.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
The other thing that we know, and I think we've all could share some great stories of the unsavoury things that we wished we didn't see in the background of somebody's Zoom or Team call. Is that there is often superfluous information in a social context we're all in traditionally in an in person setting, we're all in the same environment. So our brain isn't processing all the superfluous background information because that's a common denominator if we were meeting in person, as opposed to online. But I have found this one makes me laugh every time, is that one of the reasons we're finding online so taxing is because we are seeing depending on the size of your monitor, and the number of participants on the call, but typically we are about 60 centimetres away from another person's head. Now that space, our brain reserves, it's called the intimate zone. It is reserved for cuddling, consoling, love making, wrestling, and fighting. And all of a sudden, we are 60 centimetres from Bob from accounts on our zoom or our team's call, or a prospective new client. And so it's socially jarring. And again, all of these little things are causing our brain to be in a much more stressed state.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
And Microsoft has also done some great studies on video calls. And they have clearly shown that fatigue sets in between 30 and 40 minutes on a virtual call, they've done brain scans. And we also know that stress will accumulate throughout the day on video calls. And they're suggesting that we have about a two hour threshold, before stress becomes so heightened that it's almost hard to recover from. But again, they've also shown some really simple things, you know, putting in a 10 minute buffer between your video calls. Research tells us that closing our eyes for 10 seconds, gives the occipital lobe, which is processing visual stimuli we're getting from video calls, it gives it a break. So again, there are things we can start to do to say, look, we are going to have more virtual calls, whether we like them or loathe them, how can we start to use them in ways that meet our biological needs? So I don't know. That's a really interesting one about the oxytocin. I will see if I can find anything there. But I deviated sorry.
Pete Clark
No, not at all. Because I've I've often felt the way I describe it is when you're meeting in person, you have a molecule exchange.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Yep.
Pete Clark
Whereas online, it seems like we're having a pixel exchange.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Yes, that's a great analogy.
Pete Clark
And I feel it feels even anecdotal. I didn't know if there was any science issues. Anecdotally, if it was very different.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
And there's other things happening, we've got truncated views of each other. So all of the regular body language and justiculation. We also know, that depending on your internet speed, if there is a lag between you saying something and the other person responding - in real life experiences, that lag could indicate disapproval, it could indicate, you know, rumination about the idea. But again, we can misconstrue that could just be a technical glitch that we're having. The fact that sometimes you don't know when the next person is about to speak, and you speak over the top, and when there's so many anomalies in this virtual hybrid space. And again, they're all those little social cues that are really jarring for our brains.
Pete Clark
I'm dying to dive into the tips Kristy but I'm going to hold off for a second as I've still got a couple of questions. I know nothing really about the metaverse. Or what version is going come next and blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'm wondering, will the metaverse solve all this for us so we can then meet in a more wholesome way online? And is that going to be different to a 2D Zoom version?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Look, the preliminary discussion in this space is indicating that yes, we will have a more augmented reality, we will have a digital experience that will more closely replicate an in person experience. But I'm not yet convinced that that's not going to be without its shortcomings. I mean, there is just I think that the fact that when we all were let out of various stages of lockdown, that pure joy of seeing other people even though you felt weird about do we do the elbow tap? Do we, you know, bump shoulders, to say hello, do we pretend to cuddle? I just think that speaks volumes about this just fundamental need. So I think it will be a certain improvement on what we've got. And to be honest, tech companies are working brilliantly to try and come up with tech solutions. But they're not without their shortcomings. This is an interesting one. So Microsoft said, look, we know everybody's stuck at home trying to do remote work and you're having a lot of virtual meetings and they called it the 'leaf blower effect'. And so what happens when the neighbour next door gets out is leaf blower right at a critical point in your presentation or your meeting? I know we'll use AI and we will automatically pick up any background noise for you, as the speaker or as a attendee, and will automatically mute it so you don't have to worry about the background noise. But what happened in this particular study was that the person who was in that environment, still could hear the leaf blower but didn't mute their sound. So these people were agitated, but their colleagues on the Zoom call didn't hear that sound. And so they were behaving in really peculiar ways. Or they felt like they needed to say, look, just to let you know, there's a leaf blower going on, I really can't concentrate. So their AI solution didn't actually solve the problem, it actually amplified the problem. So I think we go back to, you know, good humans, good technology, then there will be some exciting things, but I just don't think we can ever replace that human experience yet.
Pete Clark
Another big question, perhaps, Kristy, for you to share your thoughts on, I appreciate, you know, our time on this earth is, you know, minimum, We look at the doomsday clock and how close we are to midnight. And you know, I get that. So we are obviously very early in the technology piece. But I'm interested in, what what are you seeing, what does the research tell you that it's doing to our brains? And therefore, our evolutionary biology over time? Is it affecting how we are humans? Is it affecting humanity in our biological way?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Yes. So I'm often asked, people often say to me, we've evolved so much that we can multitask, we are now quite prolific at, you know, listening to music and responding to a Team's message, and hearing an email. And the research still conclusively tells us, that we actually call it task switching or continuous partial attention, we cannot do it as humans. And huge public apology to all the men who have ever been told that they should multitask like women. Women, we got it wrong. Men, you were right. Our brains are physiologically incapable of what we can call parallel-processing information. And it is having a huge dent in our productivity when we think we can constantly task switch or split our attention. We know for example, that say we're doing some deep focused work and the ping of an email comes in, and we may not open it, but we may see the subject and the sender, and then it dances off the screen. And we keep going back to our deep focus tasks that we were doing. Research. And this has been repeated many times, research tells us it takes the average adult 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back into that deep focus state. It's referred to as the "Resumption Lag". And that's just one example of the many digital diversions that are splitting our attention throughout the day. So we're seeing some research, that basically is telling us as humans, we have to mono-task, we cannot multitask. I think, the work I'm doing at the moment is suggesting that technology, and the digital intruders, are eroding some of our biological buffers that used to help us deal with stress, and that also use to help us be focused and alert. And these are the two complaints I'm hearing from lots of people, my stress levels have risen. We've got global evidence telling us that 34.7% of adults now have clinical symptoms of burnout, which is really concerning, because burnout is unresolved stress. So I think our digital habits are impacting our stress, not in significant ways, but I call them micro-stressors. And as humans, we are designed to cope with stress. We're designed to cope with short bursts of stress. And we're designed to close the cycle on our stress state. But our digital, always-on world, there are constant little micro-stresses that accumulate. And you know, we go from a video call, to our inboxes, to an alert on our phone, back to a calendar reminder on our screen. And these little micro stressors are accumulating. So I think some of our digital habits are eroding some of the biological buffers that used to help us cope with stress and make us focused and I think the three our sleep. Our sleep is being significantly shifted and shaped by technology. It's not the only cause but our sleep is definitely. Our physical movement levels. We are more sedentary than we have ever been. And we've displaced the incidental movement, especially if we're working remotely. You know, we used to get up and walk to the coffee shop or walk to the photocopy room or to the printer. And I think our exposure to sunlight. I think they're the three big ones that have been shaped. And again, we've got these human needs. So the research, I will admit is still in its infancy in this space, but I think there is enough evidence to suggest that yes, our brains are being altered, but perhaps not the way we would want.
Pete Clark
It may be a controversial question, Kristy and then I'm going to dive into some of the tips and I'm going to link it specifically to sleep first of all. I've read, inconclusive and often contradictory views that, you know, digital -, you know, having an iPhone using earbuds actually is causing EMF to infiltrate our brain and it's changing our brain. And I don't know where to, these days, look for the truth. What's your view on the, I guess the dangers of that, if at all?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Great question. And I will say, I used to think that people that worried about this were crazy scientists, people that had run off with the fairies and had let the truth escape them. I went to, and this will make me sound very boring, but I went to an electromagnetic radiation conference with global leaders in this space and I left that conference, my husband now tells people Kristy's become a Wi Fi Worrier and not a Wi Fi Warrior. And I'm here to say that we don't yet have enough conclusive evidence to prove that Wi Fi is safe. And if I'm really honest, I don't want to be alarmist, but in some ways we have conducting a bit of a living experiment. The World Health Organisation and the American Academy of Paediatrics suggests minimising Wi Fi exposure to children. So keeping routers out of high traffic areas of the house, turning Wi Fi routers off when not in use at night, avoiding young children using phones up against their head, avoiding using phones when you've got a really weak signal because your phone's actually pumping out radiation to pick up a signal. I, to be honest, have read enough research that tells us that we don't have necessarily proof of harm. We are far enough down the path have we done enough empirical research to actually substantiate that? We do have evidence that tells us that with rodents, there are potentially harmful effects. So I acknowledge I'm 'Cautious Kristy', and so I probably err more on the side of caution. So I think until we've got proof of safety, I think we need to err on the side of caution. So not, you know, I walk around I see young people with, you know, phones in their pockets or in their bras are on their physical body, you are pumping radiation through your body. Sleeping with them, we know many teenagers now have their phone adjacent or underneath or like literally on top of their their devices. So I think minimising our exposure where we can so switching it off at night, avoiding using it when we've got a poor reception, sending a message as opposed to picking it up, putting it on loudspeaker more than you do up against your head popping in headphones where you can. Again, I think just minimising our exposure because I would hate to come back in 10 years with the evidence that tells us that it is having a detrimental effect so I would err on caution.
Pete Clark
It reminds me, of do you remember, I'm certainly, you look far too young for this, do you remember in the 40s and the 50s when all the smoking adverts were suggesting this is really cool. This is really good for you. And now, oh my God, if we only knew.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
We had doctors that used to prescribe Marlboro cigarettes. Yes. So there is often that, and that was discussed at this particular conference. You know, we just don't know yet what the potential detrimental effects are. So I think yes, I think stepping back and again, going back to what we know we, as humans need for sure putting those biological needs first and foremost, and just minimising. You know, even if you're at home, if you go down into a garage or an area underneath your house, your reception is really impaired. So try and minimise your exposure, keeping it off your physical body for as much time as you can. We created these - we've got little timber charging boxes so people can actually put their phone in them because a study was published a couple of years ago that told us that just seeing your phone, even if it is on silent and Do Not Disturb mode and face down will reduce your cognitive performance by 10%. Wow, simply seeing your phone makes you 10% dumber because you're sitting there your brain is starting to think - what message will I meet. Will i reply to that tricky client email.
Pete Clark
I've seen these online Kristy, which is kind of different but similar, where, I can't know what they're called. But the essence of it wasm you could take a bag of cookies and put them in these locked boxes. But you can see them so you reach for the cookie but you've set it on a 20 minute timer. So your your needs - Oh I want a cookie I want a cookie. Oh right, press open and it takes 20 minutes for it to open. By then, possibly, hopefully most of the desire to have the cookieis gone. And I'm guessing its the same sort of principle.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Yes. So we know Jill Bolte Taylor conducted a study a couple of years ago looking at cortisol and she discovered something very interesting. And that is that cortisol only lives in our body for 90 seconds. So when we feel like we want to reach for our phone and that adrenaline sort of rising, and you really feel like you need to, you've basically got to ride the urge. And so we've got to try and overcome that in 90 seconds. So if, and the problem this is the problem why our phones have become so immersed in our daily lives, is because they're frictionless. I can literally, I don't even have to tap in a six digit passcode any more, I can just look at it and unlocks. And I tap, and there's a gateway to what I need. So other strategies that I often say is take your tech temptations off the home screen of your phone. So when you go to unlock the phone to heaven forbid, make a phone call, all of a sudden, if it's LinkedIn, or if it's Tik Tok, or if it's the cricket app, or if it's the news site that draws you in, drag that off the homescreen. Another really simple strategy is to log out of your tech temptations because again, I know you can hopefully, if you don't have digital dementia, you remember your passcode. But what you're doing is just creating that greater friction, so that again, it's putting up that barrier. So it's not as easy and effortless as what our phones have been designed to be.
Pete Clark
Wow, Kristy, this is one of the main reasons I started this podcast was purely to speak to people like you and be interested in intrigued and I could listen and ask more questions. I'm conscious of you said, you know, online 30 to 40 minutes. So I may speak to you offline about a further conversation. But I'd like to pivot if I could, if you wouldn't mind with some of the tips? I'm going to start with perhaps a counter view. I'm sure you might have heard of a lady I think she's based in harbour Kelly McGonigal. I heard the story on a Tim Ferriss podcast where they did some research and in terms of sleep, right, again, we continue and more often now see, sleep is a superpower. Getting to sleep, staying asleep, quality of sleep, REM all that sort of stuff. The one piece of research that she was talking about was people that used Tetris for 10 minutes prior to going to sleep got to sleep quicker and better, which seems counter to all of the things we know. And I wonder if you've come across that on to the killer idea would be
Dr Kristy Goodwin
that good. Okay, you're back. Sorry, I'm not sure what happened there. I heard the question about Kelly and the Tetris being countered to conventional sleep advice. So my theory here, again, I have heard this particular example. Because most conventional advice is that we should have a digital curfew 60 minutes before we go to sleep because the blue light effect is affecting out melatonin production. We also know interestingly, in recent studies telling us that blue light exposure is not only delaying the onset of sleep, but once we do finally fall asleep, it is creating shorter rem and deep sleep stages. These two stages of our sleep cycle are critical for memory consolidation. And this is why during the pandemic, many people said I was still getting the same, you know, hours of sleep, but I'm just so tired, what's going on? And what we know is that many people because they had more time in front of screens, they had less time out in natural sunlight, which we know resets the circadian rhythm. And these two things combined meant that they weren't getting that deep restorative sleep. What I think Kelly's example points to is, and we have to be really careful because I would hate for people to say Kristy said playing video games. Every teenager listening to this will be like this woman's said that playing video games will help put me to sleep. The thing with playing Tetris is, we know it's quite methodical, it's very repetitive. And so what that would possibly do is enter the brain into an alpha state. And the alpha state is where we're focused and we're in a relaxed state. That is really important that we enter that state is one of the precursors before we go to sleep. However, if we've had a control group, and this is where the researcher in me wants to say, hang on, let's have some other variables. If we had a control group who were scrolling social media right before they went to sleep, another control group that were playing a different type, you know, fast paced, first person shooter video game before they went to sleep. I think we'd see different results. I think what Kelly's study perhaps points to is not so much the screen but that calming, restorative hypnotic type of activity that we should be doing before sleep. Would you agree with that?
Pete Clark
Yeah, the the essence of it and I'd have to listen again, to be accurate, but the essence of it, I think was, it was helping people who struggled to get to sleep because they're so wired. They've got these thought pinging in and out. And Tetris was the simplest, easiest example to take us out of our head, if you like, on to, unfortunately a screen, because it's a visual representation. And that and then takes us out of the kind of noise and wired inside our head. So we've got some external representation, which I think slips us from beta down to alpha.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Yes, yes, and, and that's why many of us in this elevated stress state over the last couple of years, because we are in a constant beta state, we go from video call to video call and beta. For anyone who's wondering, it's the busy brain state. And we are designed to be in beta states, but not constantly throughout the day. And so I think, again, we're working against the way our brains are designed. So I think anything that you can do, that helps you into that relaxed state will be optimal for sleep, but my suggestion would be making it screen free. Or I often say do a textbook, you know, if you really must do something on a device at night, watching television is a better choice than watching something on your phone or your tablet. For two reasons. Most televisions don't emit as much blue light depending on your model. And hopefully we don't sit as close to the television as we do our phone, laptop, or tablet. So that can be a better choice. Listening to music is much better than tapping, swiping and pinching. Listening to a podcast or an audio book, or doing a mindfulness app are better choices. So it's not a hard and fast rule.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
We also know keeping phones ideally out of bedrooms. This is one just give me a moment, I'll just pick one up here. This is an Australian designed product. That is working wonders for families. These are charging boxes. So it's called In-charge Box. So it is a device that holds your 15 laptops, 12 smartphones etc. And in a metal case, it's got breathing ports. So you literally plug the devices in, you lock it and out of sight out of mind for the next morning. So I often recommend that families create I call them their digital guardrails. Tou know, have a landing zone, have a set spot where the devices go, and have that digital curfew and hold yourselves accountable.
Pete Clark
Kristy it's fascinating. I'm going to dive into some of the tips that I'd love you to share. And I'm going to be selfish first. I'm going to go sleep first, then I'm going to go to kids. But I want to talk about if possible, kind of the younger kids primary school, secondary and then older kids in some way. So lots to talk about there. And then I'd probably like to finish with if I may, some of the I guess do's and don'ts if you are trying to be productive and do some deep work and kind of the workplace productivity aspects. So have you got a couple of major do's and don'ts or tips around sleep?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Yeah. So my first one is definitely establishing that digital curfew ideally 60 minutes. A Another tip is to keep phones out of your bedroom. I know a lot of people say but they're my alarm clock, we've been creating some digital wellbeing boxes, and one of the gifts that we put in our wellbeing boxes is a good old fashioned timber alarm clock. If you would disregard that advice, which I know a lot of people do in your phone comes into your bedroom. My two rules, two non-negotiables - it must be on Do Not Disturb mode. Research from an Australian university tells us that one in 20 Australians are woken up each night because of alerts notifications. When we are woken up, we do not go back, we don't pick up from where we were, when we fall back asleep we go back to the beginning of the sleep cycle. So a lot of people aren't getting enough completed sleep cycles. And the other reason is, if you see it to get a glass of water going go to the bathroom, just seeing your device can be a psychological trigger for you to start to think about it. If you do say you're meeting a deadline, there's a really critical task and for whatever reason, you have to be online at night. My two strategies, number one is dim the brightness on your screen. So go just go into the devices settings and dim the brightness. And number two is to consider investing in some blue light blocking glasses. They will block a lot depending on the makeup in the model. Then there are some that can block 50% some block 80% of the blue light that's emitted from your screen. I'm just careful who I would recommend them to because a lot of teens think well I just put glasses on and I can game or scroll until midnight and then turn off and go to sleep.
Pete Clark
So that pivits nicely into the kids because, my youngest - I've got three kids my youngest is 18, and ike many kids of all ages we haven't been that good at disciplining them with digital curfews. So they're just adults. I did buy a blue light blocking screen protector. Hoping that my youngest is never going to wear the orange glasses. But she might not even notice this kind of purple hue that shows up on the screen because it's a, it's a blue light blocking protector. Now, does that make any difference?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
They can work yes. Was it an in flux.
Pete Clark
I can't remember. But I think. I saw that there's a number of brands. But I just thought - I hadn't seen that before - what an easy get an easy way to solve the problem that we shouldn't have in the first place.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Yes, so they can work really well. So those filters. Yep. So my tips for parents. I've got three. I talk about the parents need to be the pilot, or the copilot if you've got teenagers, so pilot, primary school co pilot for teenagers of the digital plane. Meaning that you need to be sitting alongside your kids in this digital world and pilots get freebies. Pilots establish boundaries and borders with their kids and teens. They don't present them with an iPad contract or a technology agreement and say sign here effective immediately. They do not work. What I recommend is sitting down with your children and your 'screenages' and coming up with what I call your 'textpectations'. What are the borders and boundaries around, not only how much. Unfortunately, most parents narrowly obsess over the time metric. And time is important. But it's not the only thing. We've got to establish boundaries around what they do. When they use them, where they use them in the house, you know where you're no go tech zones? How do they use them, and with whom? I think they're much more nuanced conversations rather than just the how much. And I'm going to say something a little controversial, but how much is actually going to become redundant in a few years? We will soon have wearable, well we already do, wearable technologies, artificial intelligence, virtual reality. The notion of a screen like screen time, it will be obsolete. Boundaries and borders are the first theme. The second B is that we have to make sure that young people's basic needs are not being displaced by screens. Are they getting enough sleep? Are they physically active? Are they playing? are they connecting with real people in real time? Are they eating good quality food? Are there the basic human needs physical and psychological needs being met? The third B is boredom. We have to digitally disconnect our kids, we have to let them sit with uncomfortable emotions we have to get them used to. And I think it's important for two reasons. One is, I don't know about you Pete but, I've never had a great idea while I've been in my inbox or on an Excel spreadsheet. My best ideas come when I'm swimming when I'm running first thing in the morning in the shower. And the good old fashioned days when I used to get on a plane we enter that mind wandering state. Kids don't know what that's like if they're constantly being placated with the screen. And I think that leads to the second part of why boredom is just so critical. Because when they're bored, they get a sense of identity. They know what makes them tick, what interests them what terrifies them, what they're, you know, interested in what disinterest them. So they're the three B's boredom, a circle, boundaries, basic needs, and boredom and it works whether you've got primary school or secondary school. It's just whether you're that pilot or more of a co-pilot.
Pete Clark
I read recently, Kristy, that we've kind of gone from screens to at the moment, you know, wearables and even now starting to do injectables. Which is for me, that's like, you know, day of the Triffids - that's like you know, it's happening!
Dr Kristy Goodwin
It is and the American, I want to get the title right. It was an American College of Plastic Surgeons, I think reported a huge surge in requests for cosmetic surgery once people were spending a lot of time on video calls. People saying that their face looked you know, because we were spending hours staring at ourselves. And not just that it's our young people, our young people who are seeing doctored, filtered, edited photos, you know, completely unattainable unrealistic depictions. That used to be just the supermodel. You know, I grew up in an era where it was Elle McPherson and Cindy Crawford on the cover of a magazine. We all used to look and hope one day we could look like that. Now the girl sitting next to you at school looks like that on her phone, but you see her at school and she looks nothing like that. So we've got these unattainable. And for young people whose brains are very impressionable, this poses a huge threat.
Pete Clark
That scares me the most.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Yeah, I haven't hear that anaolgy befre - it's true though.
Pete Clark
Yeah. Kristy, I'm conscious of time and, I've really enjoyed the conversation. But I do want to try and tap into the, whether we're working from home or working from the office or working from anywhere, really, the necessity of working from home means we probably have to have some sort of digital access, I think depending on your role. What kind of do's and don'ts do you have for people who are working?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Right. So a couple of do's and don'ts. So first and foremost, you want to to try and boost your focus, you want to try and do similar tasks in a similar location. So I don't mean you have to sit at your desk for the whole day, because that will drive most of us crazy. But you need to do your say you're doing your analytical work, you do that in one location. And what we know we call it state dependent recall, our brain is processing 11 million pieces of sensory data every second. The reason that we found the move to working at home are working remotely, all of a sudden really challenging was because their brain was getting what we call muddled cognitive associations. All of a sudden, I'm sitting at the kitchen table, and I'm in an Excel spreadsheet. Hang on, the kitchen table is where I laugh, it's where I eat, it's where I feel relaxed, and all of a sudden, I'm on a Zoom call or in an Excel spreadsheet. So we're getting these muddled associations. So try and work in predictable places for similar types of tasks. Another strategy, and this is what I believe is the silver lining of the pandemic for knowledge workers, is that now that we most of us have disembarked, or abandoned the idea that we have a nine to five workday in the office five days a week, the biggest benefit is that we have now not created, I don't like the discussion around flexible work arrangements. I think the conversation needs to be shifted towards productive work arrangements. We no longer have to force ourselves into that nine to five work schedule. And I talk a lot about and I've got a product that I'm more than happy to share and give your listeners a discount to. If we work, and this is what I talk about working with our biology. If we work with something called our chronotype. Now chronotype is our biological predisposition to be alert and focused a particular hours of the day. That is when we should be doing our deep focused work and now that we're no longer bound to that nine to five schedule. If you're the early bird - so I'm a Lark - I fire on all cylinders early in the morning. I get up and get my deep work done before a lot of people have even woken up. I'm a 430 riser always have been not everyone's an extreme life like that. But that's the benefit, that we now have more flexibility around when we work. So if we work and get that deep focused work done when our Chronotypes peak performance window is, we get more done in less time. That is when we have to be really strict. And we have to build a fortress around our focus. Those peak performance windows are critical. So whether you're the early bird, whether you're what we call a middle bird, or an owl, we really have to structure our workdays accordingly. managing our notifications, you know, disabling any non essential ones, turning on your essential ones, but batching, or bundling them to come through at a convenient time, creating VIP notification lists. So everyone else gets blocked during that peak performance window. But that client or the colleague who you do know will need to get to you can still get through that sort of digital barrier. So I think there's some of the things that we can start to do. I think creating Power Up and Power Down rituals is really important, again, to set those consistent cognitive associations to our brain that it's either time to work, or time to switch off. Exposure to light trying to make sure especially in the early parts of the day that we're being exposed to enough sunlight in our environment, or sunlight is not available artificial lights. Again, it will send a message to your brain that you need to be in that focused and alert stage.
Pete Clark
Kristy Wow. I'm conscious of time, and I'm conscious of my own indulgence of 'Tell me more, tell me more'. So I'm going to pause there if I may, but perhaps you can share with the listeners - how do people find out about what you do? How do they get in touch? How do they understand some of the research that you're doing? And we'll put it in the show notes as well, but how to how do people do that?
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Yes, so the irony isn't lost on me that I'm encouraging you to curb your digital behaviours. But I do try and share practical information. So I'm at www.drkristygoodwin.com. That's my website. And I also try to share relevant up to date information particularly On LinkedIn, and also on Instagram and for parents, a lot of parents tend to still prefer Facebook so they're the sort of digital avenues where I try and share bite sized bits of information. So I will share those and I'll send the link I've just released this chronotype assessment. So I'll send a link to put in the show notes and a discount so people can access it at a discounted rate. That would be my pleasure.
Pete Clark
Kristy, thank you again. This has proven to me selfishly, why I like doing this, because I found that information and conversation fascinating and I could go all sorts of left, right north, south ways - but for the moment I'm going say pause. And say thank you so much for sharing your insights, sharing your authenticity. I've got a page full of scribbles and notes already just a tonne of tips that I look at them and go nope not doing that. I'm not doing that, not doing that yet. There's there's definitely room for improvement. So thank you for nudging me to be a little bit more free from my digital handcuffs.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Well, great to chat and you watch we'll bump into each other in person, in the not too distant future.
Pete Clark
Yes, we will. Thanks again. Kristy.
Dr Kristy Goodwin
Pleasure.
