00;00;00;26 - 00;00;33;25
Speaker 1
Hello? It's Filly here on the ending body Burnout show. I am so excited to have our guest, Dr. Kristy Goodwin, come on our podcast today. We're going to be talking all about technology and how to tame your tech habits. And the reason why I want to talk to Kristy on our show today is because our techni techni techno habits have a huge impact on our physiology, on our brain, on our adrenals, and hence all our other body systems.
00;00;33;25 - 00;01;10;28
Speaker 1
And it is a huge part of body burnout. So I would jump into the conversation in a sec, but I just want to read Dr. Kristy's official bio. She is super impressive and you're going to love her. So having personally experienced how our always on digital culture is compromising people's wellbeing and is counter to optimal and sustainable performance award winning researcher and speaker Dr. Kristy Goodwin is on a mission to promote employee wellbeing and bolster workplace productivity in an always on digital world.
00;01;11;01 - 00;01;38;20
Speaker 1
As one of Australia's digital wellbeing and productivity experts, she shares practical brain based hacks to tame tech habits and the latest evidence based strategies to decode the neurobiology of peak performance in the technological era. Reverting the phone ban, phone bans or constant digital detoxes that she claims don't work. In Dr. Kristy's latest book, Digital We need to talk.
00;01;38;22 - 00;02;15;08
Speaker 1
She shares how to use technology in ways that are aligned to our neurobiology. How your brain and body are designed to work. Senior business leaders and H.R. executives from the country's top organisations engage Dr. Kristy to help them promote employee digital wellbeing and performance. Her roster of clients includes Apple, Bank of Queensland Challenger, Westpac, DLA Piper, Westpac, McDonalds, Westfield, Rand and the Reserve Bank of Australia, Costco, State Street, National Broadband Network and Foxtel.
00;02;15;08 - 00;02;31;19
Speaker 1
So she is the woman to talk to when we need to talk about our digital habits and burnout. All right, sorry. Let's jump in.
00;02;31;21 - 00;02;44;15
Speaker 2
Hello and welcome to the ending Body Burn Out Show, where your hosts Chris and Filly co-founders of multi award winning Functional Medicine Practice, serving busy people with energy, mood and gut issues.
00;02;44;16 - 00;02;52;20
Speaker 1
Well, busyness, overworking, addictive doing and perfectionism might be the norm. It's not normal and it's a major contributor to health issues.
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Speaker 2
Our goal with this show is to give you a holistic root route course approach to healing your body so that you don't have to continue doctor or diet hopping or popping a gazillion supplements hoping something might stick.
00;03;05;20 - 00;03;19;18
Speaker 1
So get ready to heal your body, get your spark back deeply, connect with yourself, and step into the light of your dreams. Let's dive in.
00;03;19;21 - 00;03;23;18
Speaker 1
Okay. Hi, Dr. Kristy. How are you going?
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Speaker 3
I am really well. Thank you for having me.
00;03;25;27 - 00;03;47;08
Speaker 1
Also, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We're so excited. So let's just dive right in. So I wanted to talk a bit about like if you're happy to share and whatever you are comfortable in sharing in terms of your own burnout story. And because I feel like that was a big part as to why you got into the work that you do now.
00;03;47;10 - 00;03;48;02
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00;03;48;05 - 00;04;07;19
Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, I often say you teach what you most need to learn, and that was certainly the case for me. I have experienced two bouts of burnout, so I didn't learn my lesson the first time around and went back for round two just to make sure that I cemented any learnings and actually took the lessons that were presented to me.
00;04;07;26 - 00;04;34;10
Speaker 3
And I really do believe, and it may be my optimistic nature, that burnout has been a real blessing in disguise. I will point out it is a blessing in disguise because at the time it is hideous. It is life changing. But it really was a forced moment in time for me to examine some of my behaviours. Some of my entrenched thoughts most certainly got me to focus on my physical health, which I had tended to disregard and ignore.
00;04;34;12 - 00;04;40;06
Speaker 3
You know those whispers that your body is often giving you, that we disregard, you know, we push on so it.
00;04;40;06 - 00;04;43;05
Speaker 1
Screams and it's like, yes, you're not listening.
00;04;43;08 - 00;05;13;15
Speaker 3
Yeah. So for me, you know, and I know that's not always the case. Sometimes people ignore those whispers and then perhaps even bypass burnout and are faced with life changing, catastrophic events. So for me, I have seen and I guess my reframe around burnout is that they have the two experiences with burnout have been blessings in disguise and have really almost been a forced opportunity to pause and then to re-examine what I'm doing and how I'm going about things.
00;05;13;17 - 00;05;36;20
Speaker 3
So yeah, my first experience with burnout was in the final stages of my PhD. I was married but had no children at the time and I just ignored all the whispers. I was experiencing insomnia and I just put it down to a busy brain, you know, doing data processing in my sleep and coming up with new intellectual frameworks.
00;05;36;23 - 00;06;07;05
Speaker 3
But there are a whole host of other in hindsight, I can now see symptoms manifesting digestive issues, skin related issues, huge fluctuations in my mood. And so they were some of the symptoms that I saw then and the culminated that burnout in me having seizures and I guess a really physical manifestation of just how stressed, exhausted and depleted my body was.
00;06;07;07 - 00;06;31;20
Speaker 3
So I put it down to a busy period. You know, I tried to go I did complete my PhD in two and a half years whilst working part time. So on reflection, even articulating that just sounds ridiculous. And I say that to myself from a compassionate place, but I ignored, as I said, the whispers. And the problem with burnout is, as the name often suggests, that it is a slow burn.
00;06;31;20 - 00;06;51;11
Speaker 3
So it sort of creeps up on you. And the other problem is that often when you're experiencing burnout, you're and you would be able to speak to this in a much better place than I can, but often a body at the final stages of burnout isn't actually producing cortisol anymore, so that stress hormone production is annihilated. So we're not even getting tangible.
00;06;51;14 - 00;07;10;24
Speaker 3
ST signals that we are perhaps burnt out so often it's really hard. It's like being trapped inside the jar and not being able to see the label. With burnout, we often feel that way. We don't even see what is happening. Our friends and family and colleagues probably do. They see the of the changes in our behaviour, in our mood, in our focus.
00;07;10;24 - 00;07;38;09
Speaker 3
But when you are in burnout, it's really hard to see. And so that is probably why not justifying. But why about it was 11. No, I don't do them at see I think was about 11 years later I experienced my next encounter with burnout. So as a speaker and a consultant, predominantly my business came to a grinding halt during the pandemic.
00;07;38;12 - 00;08;07;13
Speaker 3
And not only was I trying, I don't like the word pirouette. I did a sorry pivot, I did a digital pirouette. It helped me make it sound a little bit more graceful. It wasn't my tutor was upside down and I was pirouetting on my head most of the time. But during the pandemic, I'm based in Sydney. I was trying to resurrect a speaking business and also at the same time I had conveniently been deemed the Essential Azari, the stay at home parent, as my husband had conveniently been deemed an essential worker.
00;08;07;15 - 00;08;34;17
Speaker 3
So I was trying to do remote learning with two children We had at the time he was just a toddler, so trying to entertain a toddler deliver keynotes to really big corporate teams whilst kids were in the background pretending that nothing was happening. And again, the accumulation of physiological and psychological stress over a pronounced period of time and again there were in reflection, some signs that burnout was sort of creeping in.
00;08;34;17 - 00;09;01;14
Speaker 3
I chose to ignore them and I kept pushing and pushing through until I contracted COVID. And as a very fit woman in her forties, I wasn't expecting to be so badly affected. And again, I was I was hospitalised and put into a code red ward, really suffering adverse consequences and again, having repeated uncontrollable seizures. So my body's way again, getting me by the shoulders and shaking me and saying this is a problem.
00;09;01;15 - 00;09;25;14
Speaker 1
Yeah, I remember when we first met and we were sharing our stories and like, Oh my goodness, Parallels. Yeah. Oh my goodness. That would be the best of episodes. So that's the fainting and the seizure thing, the sleep issues. It was just like, Yes. And I think too, if we kind of look a bit deeper as well. So that was, you know, the work life balance was probably a bit crazy.
00;09;25;14 - 00;09;40;05
Speaker 1
But also I feel like similar patterns of perfectionism, high achieving feeling like what we put out actually reflected our wealth. And then that can cause that burnout cycle as well.
00;09;40;07 - 00;10;13;22
Speaker 3
Yeah, and I think a little deeper and I realised and again, happy to talk about this because I think in sharing we almost give permission for other people to look as well. One of the root causes that was driving my behaviour was in all honesty, being so tightly attached and contingent upon external validation. And I look back, you know, I can see the inception of those beliefs in, in childhood where I was that a type, high achieving student that came home with 100% on her test, that spent hours and hours in grade three doing a project on girls.
00;10;13;22 - 00;10;35;15
Speaker 3
I still remember the project, you know, like really getting hooked on that external praise and validation and also buying into the notion that your work is is correlated or determined by your output and your performance and your productivity. So I guess it was a whole lot of culminating factors that really led to that sort of way of operating.
00;10;35;22 - 00;11;00;25
Speaker 1
MM Yeah, I Okay, so you have this will be on our podcast, but we also put this on YouTube. So I'm holding up the beautiful book Digital, which I love. Oh my goodness, we, we dive into that. Actually, before I do, I want to share a funny story. I think it was Facebook or maybe you shared it in a webinar during the COVID craziness time where your toddler got up on the table.
00;11;00;25 - 00;11;04;07
Speaker 1
Ended up who? Yeah, right.
00;11;04;09 - 00;11;27;21
Speaker 3
So this is why I was very stressed and the chat is limited. So I was delivering a keynote to about, let's just say, a big bank and it was a 20 minute presentation. And so I had the three children at home that day and my husband couldn't get home to alleviate them. And this is leaving me sorry, this was in one of the very strict lockdowns, so I couldn't even call my mum or dad, who normally come to help me.
00;11;27;21 - 00;11;46;10
Speaker 3
It was literally me on my own. So I thought, I'm going to nail this, set the laptop up. And this was before we built a studio. So this was at the kitchen table, a very big bank, two older children. I'd set them up on their homeschooling or remote learning and said, You cannot interrupt me unless it's one of the three B's.
00;11;46;10 - 00;12;06;27
Speaker 3
If somebody isn't breathing, if somebody is bleeding or if somebody has a broken bone, they're the only three reasons you can interrupt Mum. And they're like, Got it, Mum. The toddler I set up with some blocks and activities on the floor thinking that will keep him busy. About 15 minutes into the presentation I made the fatal mistake of basically silently high fiving myself, thinking, I've done it.
00;12;06;27 - 00;12;28;11
Speaker 3
I've pulled off the impossible. Little did I know that it would all go pear shaped. So the toddler towards the last 5 minutes decided to come to the dining table and he climbed up on the dining table. Now I have three sons, so the older two boys were trying to, as best they could, silently wrestle him off the dining table because they knew he shouldn't be up there.
00;12;28;13 - 00;12;46;26
Speaker 3
So I'm still presenting with the laptop. This chaos was happening on the other side of the laptop, and I still had to pretend that none of this was going on. The toddler eventually pushed his two older brothers away and then proceeded to squash it in the middle of the dining table with his nappy off and do a poo on the other side of the laptop.
00;12;46;28 - 00;13;21;25
Speaker 1
Oh, okay. I'm just thinking back. So I did. I had three. If I kind of look at the patterns of burn out, I would say three. My third was definitely during COVID, but I didn't have toddlers at that time. So if I had that toddler as well, I also would have been hospitalised with COVID. Yeah. Now, okay, so let's chat about the book and some of the work you've been doing because like a lot of our listeners would be listening to our podcast because they're feeling signs, symptoms of burnout or they recovered from it and they want to learn how to never go back there again.
00;13;21;27 - 00;13;43;16
Speaker 1
And we talk a lot about root causes and one of those are the environment. And so I usually talk a lot about EMFs with our clients, like, Oh, the technology can cause inflammation in our body because of the dirty electricity coming from it and also just getting absorbed in technology and, you know, scrolling on screens at night and affecting your melatonin.
00;13;43;16 - 00;14;04;01
Speaker 1
But when I read your book, I kind of picked it off like, this is so pretty and I really want to read it. And I'm like, Oh, I might learn some things. I like every single page. I'm like, I didn't do that. Oh my goodness. And so you just explain it so well in terms of how our technological habits are like impacting our brain big time.
00;14;04;04 - 00;14;26;00
Speaker 1
Yes. Sorry. And we'll dive into that in a second because I really want to kind of go into like the hormones and the brain chemicals and all that sort of stuff. But to grab our listeners attention, what are some digital diagnostic signs to look out for? If you are in techno burnout or if you're on the verge to going there?
00;14;26;03 - 00;14;45;12
Speaker 3
Yes. So we know that burnout is a real phenomenon. And I think what we're experiencing at the moment, many people are experiencing is digital burnout. And as you suggested, it's our digital habits and behaviours. And I want to point out it's our professional and personal use of technology. I think in the last couple of use that become enmeshed.
00;14;45;14 - 00;15;17;06
Speaker 3
But I think that the reason that we're experiencing burnout and we can explore this in a minute is the collision of two factors. We've introduced a whole lot of micro stressors and we've annihilated some of the biological buffers. So what might I be experiencing physiologically, psychologically, if I'm experiencing digital burnout, extreme physical and psychological exhaustion know not just a busy period at work, not just the end of the financial year, but just physiologically and psychologically exhausted.
00;15;17;08 - 00;15;42;29
Speaker 3
Another characteristic of burnout is becoming more cynical or negative towards your work, and the third characteristic is often reduced efficacy. So just feeling like we're not doing a good job. And so what you might experience if you are experiencing digital burnout is that you find it hard to switch off. You very rarely get opportunities to psychologically detach from your work and all your devices.
00;15;43;02 - 00;16;07;06
Speaker 3
We start to see tech creeping into every single crevice of our lives. So we know there's there's a term for it. It's a bit of a funny term, but we know around 40% of people now toilet tweet, that is they using the devices in the bathroom. We suffer from a condition called noma phobia. That panicked feeling. When our phone isn't around, we can't find it.
00;16;07;08 - 00;16;19;15
Speaker 1
Remember, phobia? Yeah. Yes, I ticked that one. I didn't realise until I actually read that term. I'm like, Yeah, okay. If I'm being really honest, yeah. If I don't know where my phone is, it's like Mum. Yep.
00;16;19;18 - 00;16;51;09
Speaker 3
Another really common one is phantom vibration syndrome. So often we have our devices physiologically close to our body and so we get that tingling feeling that our phone is vibrating or our smartwatch if people with smartwatches is vibrating another term. Again, a bit of a funny one, but it's so true many of us are experiencing digital dementia. People say, I just can't remember like I used to, and a lot of people misdiagnosed that, saying, Oh, you know, it must be menopause or I must be perimenopausal or it's just old age.
00;16;51;11 - 00;17;32;09
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's not. We are we are struggling with just a constant onslaught of information. I call in obesity and our brain has not evolved, has not been upgraded upon to deal with this constant onslaught of digital information. So there's some of the tangible symptoms creeps, as I said, into every crevice. So when our sleep starts to get compromised and we know that our tick habits are really impacting not only the quantity of our sleep, but also the quality of sleep we become, and we're seeing it, we are far more sedentary than we've ever been, and that has huge impacts on our physical and psychological well-being.
00;17;32;09 - 00;17;41;18
Speaker 3
So often in very invisible ways. But our tech habits are filtering and impacting so many facets of our lives.
00;17;41;18 - 00;18;01;14
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think you said one of them was Techno Tantrum, which I'm like, Yeah, my kids definitely. Well, actually my older child does my younger one. He's happy to sort of switch off, but even like adults can do it subtly as well. They might not like slammed thing down, but it's almost like if you want to drag them away because you know, it's like, hey, it's dinner time.
00;18;01;14 - 00;18;17;03
Speaker 1
And talking to you, Chris And then and then it's not necessarily a tantrum, but it can be a bit heavier sometimes just to like switch off and move on to something else. It's just, yeah, it can really suck our souls. Yeah.
00;18;17;10 - 00;18;43;24
Speaker 3
And the reason that is the case, there's a whole lot of reasons, but one of the chief reasons is because when we are online for work or pleasure, we our brains usually getting little hits of dopamine, the pleasure neurotransmitter. Now, dopamine not only makes us want to do more and more, whether that's scrolling social media, checking a sports site, checking the weather, reading your inboxes, you know, at some point in time, we will have received some really positive news.
00;18;43;24 - 00;19;07;21
Speaker 3
Maybe it's praise for a project well done news of a promotion, an unexpected day off. And so we crave that dopamine. The other problem is that when our brain is getting will giving us this, these hits of dopamine, dopamine overrides our prefrontal cortex. So the part of our brain that helps us manage our impulses, that says, you know, to Alice, scrolling tick tock is enough, put it down and go and cook the family meal.
00;19;07;23 - 00;19;28;17
Speaker 3
You know, shut the lid on your laptop when you're on holidays. You don't need to be checking your emails when you're doing something pleasurable. The prefrontal cortex turns off because dopamine floods our prefrontal cortex. So the tech has actually been engineered to work against the way we are designed. I call let out a human operating system around neurobiology.
00;19;28;19 - 00;19;55;10
Speaker 1
Now, in your book, you have different micro habits and I guess different topics in the book. The first one is around establishing digital borders and boundaries to help tame your tech habits. So what would you say? And again, like one of our principles when we're working with people to heal your environment first, and I feel like borders and boundaries are really important, especially when it comes to technology.
00;19;55;12 - 00;20;10;28
Speaker 1
So what would you like? What are some micro habits that you that listeners could do today to establish better tech boundaries? Because a lot of these things are quite simple. They're free. It's just having the knowledge around it and then the consistency to stick them in, put them in place.
00;20;10;29 - 00;20;22;06
Speaker 3
Totally, totally. So the message of the book is not an anti tech, it's not do a digital detox, it's not cancel your Netflix subscription or give up social media because they're outdated, antiquated approaches.
00;20;22;08 - 00;20;30;12
Speaker 1
So why do you feel that? Because I have heard you say that quite a lot. Why do you think like a digital detox? Not. Yes.
00;20;30;15 - 00;20;50;01
Speaker 3
So the research on digital detoxes tells us that they don't create long term sustainable changes. What happens is it creates a binge and purge cycle. So we go offline for three days and we go off on a family weekend and then we come back Monday, Monday morning, and we're dealing with the avalanche of emails and the DMS and the WhatsApp messages.
00;20;50;04 - 00;21;14;17
Speaker 3
If we want to create long term sustainable changes, we have to look at creating sustainable digital habits and behaviours. Now, I'm not suggesting that we don't need time off because as I'm sure we'll get to today, the fourth pillar in the book is about digitally disconnecting. We have to unplug for rest and recovery, so but it's saying that doing or aiming for a hardcore digital detox isn't an appropriate strategy.
00;21;14;17 - 00;21;36;06
Speaker 3
I don't believe in the 21st century. A study was done a couple of years ago where they had a group of people who cut their social media use back by an hour a day and they had another group that removed it completely at the end of the study, they examined their mental health and some of other psychological markers, and they found fairly consistent results in terms of their usage and their wellbeing.
00;21;36;09 - 00;22;09;29
Speaker 3
Four months after the study had been completed, when people reverted back to their traditional or whatever new habits they had. What this study found was that the group that cut this, their social media use by an hour, had implemented far more sustainable tech habits than the group that went cold turkey and removed it altogether. So it's that old idea of just creating sustainable long term habits that will serve us rather than doing something radical and to be honest, a full digital detox is a privilege that not everybody has access to.
00;22;10;00 - 00;22;21;20
Speaker 3
Like if you don't have a team of people who are checking your inbox, you know, if you are going to miss Vital parenting information, then really doing a detox isn't an attainable strategy for most of us.
00;22;21;20 - 00;22;47;06
Speaker 1
Yeah, it sounds a lot like, I guess yo yo dieting as well or doing like this really intense juice fast for, you know, a week and you might lose ten kilos but then go back to eating normally and you haven't learnt like you haven't learned and put into practice how to actually eat for sustainable weight losses. Yeah. The little is similarity that I was thinking about when you were talking about that.
00;22;47;09 - 00;22;48;24
Speaker 3
Totally Great.
00;22;48;26 - 00;22;50;25
Speaker 1
Okay, so what are some of these boundaries?
00;22;50;25 - 00;23;11;12
Speaker 3
Okay, so in the book I share what I call a menu of micro habits. And the idea is that you cherry pick the micro habits that will work for you, your career, your stage of life, your caring responsibilities. So not everything works for everybody. But the idea is that if you can implement a couple of these micro habits, it will have some tangible long term benefits.
00;23;11;14 - 00;23;31;04
Speaker 3
So the big one, I think in terms of boundaries, we have to create our digital guardrails. We have to come up with the places and spaces and times where we do and don't want to use technology because it is seeping in every way. So a really important thing is around our sleep, ideally not bookending our day with our devices.
00;23;31;04 - 00;23;53;07
Speaker 3
So first thing in the morning and the research actually tells us about the first 8 minutes, I tell people 10 minutes because ten easy to remember and you get bonus, 2 minutes. But first thing in the morning and last thing at night. And that night we're talking usually around 60 minutes before we go to sleep. Now, before we go to sleep, it has huge impacts, as you identified on our production of melatonin, our sleep hormone.
00;23;53;10 - 00;24;13;22
Speaker 3
And not only does it impact the amount of melatonin we produce and the timing of that melatonin, we know that that in turn can delay the onset of sleep. So we get into bed and many of us feel this. We're tired, but what we lay down to go to sleep, but our brain is still pinging and dinging so it can delay the onset of sleep.
00;24;13;22 - 00;24;33;29
Speaker 3
We also know that if our body hasn't made sufficient amounts of melatonin, it can significantly shorten the deep and REM sleep stages of our sleep cycle. So many of us are not only not getting enough sleep, I think that's a clear trend that the research is telling us. But many of us are getting really crappy sleep. We don't get enough of that, that deep restorative sleep.
00;24;34;02 - 00;25;00;11
Speaker 3
So some micro habits can be having a digital curfew, having a switch off time, ideally 60 minutes before you go to sleep, keeping devices out of bedrooms. Now, I know people roll their eyes and say, you know, I can't buy a $10 alarm clock because keeping your phone out of your room, even just seeing your phone, if you don't pick it up, if you wake up in the night to get a glass of water or go to the bathroom, just seeing it can be a psychological trigger for you to think, you know, did my friend reply to that message?
00;25;00;11 - 00;25;33;04
Speaker 3
Did that tricky client answer that that email. So keeping devices out of bedrooms, if you legitimately have to for work purposes have to be online. There's a critical deadline. Consider investing in blue light blocking glasses. Consider dimming the brightness of your st of your screen as a family, establishing your what I call a landing zone so designated spot in your house with 15 iPads, 12 laptops and seven smart phones all go so we can start to create some of those parameters.
00;25;33;04 - 00;25;38;04
Speaker 3
I think micro habits around sleep can have huge impacts for all of us.
00;25;38;06 - 00;26;04;04
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it was in that that part of the book, but also hiding or putting your phone in a box even when you're working as well. So what I, I actually started practising that one because especially when I was having team meetings with my husband Chris, he'd be like, Oh, stop, he help you firing? And sometimes I didn't even know I was consciously doing is just kind of like, Oh, has our a message dos or do I need to check something?
00;26;04;07 - 00;26;19;16
Speaker 1
And so anyway, this had been going on for a long time and he was getting really frustrated. And so when I read your book, I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna like practice it. I'm going to see if it works. Even if I had it in the same room with us, I would just hide it underneath the book and out of sight, out of mind, like it is.
00;26;19;17 - 00;26;25;20
Speaker 1
Your brain just is like, Oh, I don't have to think or worry or I'm not even thinking about that consciously.
00;26;25;22 - 00;26;53;07
Speaker 3
Yeah. So that was based on a study from the University of Austin, Texas, and they found that even if the phone was on silent and facedown, if our phones in our line of sight, it impairs our cognitive performance by around 10%. So put bluntly saying your phone literally makes you 10% dumber. It is a brain drain. So as you said, popping it in a drawer, popping it in a bag, popping it in another room, because the mere presence of your phone is really, really taxing.
00;26;53;07 - 00;27;13;01
Speaker 3
And it may not be just your work time if it's when you want to be present with your partner. And when you go on a date night, when you want to listen to one of your kids are dealing with a really big drama in school, literally putting the phone somewhere will make you so much more present. A study was done with restaurant goers and they split them, so they all went into the same restaurant.
00;27;13;01 - 00;27;38;17
Speaker 3
Half of the group had to put their phone in a box outside where they were eating. The other half could have it in and have it on the table. Unequivocally. The group that didn't have their phone reported increased levels of taste, so they enjoyed the meal far more than the group that had access to their phone. And interestingly, they had much richer, in-depth conversations than the group that had access to a device.
00;27;38;17 - 00;27;42;22
Speaker 3
So they say there are digital intruders. They really are.
00;27;42;25 - 00;28;03;19
Speaker 1
I did a little experiment with my seven year old, too, so she likes to look at the weather app on my phone like she's obsessed with, Oh, what's the weather going to be like today? What's the weather going to be like tomorrow? Granted, I also love to know if it's going to be sunny or not. Yeah. Yeah. But I was finding that she was starting to do it like quite addictively.
00;28;03;19 - 00;28;15;03
Speaker 1
And so I'm like, Alright, let's just put my phone at a site. And she just stopped asking for the weather and it was just like, Oh my goodness, Dr. Kristy is right. Yeah.
00;28;15;05 - 00;28;37;11
Speaker 3
It's such a simple thing to do like that. Out of sight, out of mind. And that's without technologies, you know, the laptop. At the end of the night, I put it somewhere where you can see it, pop it back in your laptop case, pop it in a cupboard. Not with all technologies. I understand it's hard to hide the TV or the gaming console that might be permanently up, but where we can, putting things away really does make a big difference.
00;28;37;11 - 00;28;55;03
Speaker 1
Yes. Okay. So the second pillar is adopt new, very productive productivity principles. And I found in this part of the book the research around the increase of Zoom meetings and how it's affected our brain and behaviour. So fascinating. So can you tell us a bit about that?
00;28;55;05 - 00;29;22;01
Speaker 3
Yes. So we are experiencing video fatigue. Microsoft and Stanford University have done a lot of research in this space and we know we experience video fatigue and it doesn't matter if you're on Zoom or teams or WebEx, whatever the platform is, the experiences seem to be common amongst all platforms. So there's a whole lot of reasons. A couple of the reasons that your listeners might find interesting is that we call the first one the Self-presentation Effect.
00;29;22;03 - 00;29;46;01
Speaker 3
So when we're on a video call is the very first time in history where we see what we look like in a social context, normal in a meeting or we're chatting with friends, our focus is on what the other people are doing. But all of a sudden we see on video, you know, that we tilt our heads a funny way or eyebrows need plucking or our hair hasn't been done the right way, or we are going bald like our kids unkindly tell us.
00;29;46;03 - 00;30;08;11
Speaker 3
So we start to focus on ourselves. It would be akin to walking into a boardroom and putting a mirror in front of ourselves. We'd never do it. A couple of other reasons. We know that for most video calls, unless we're in a meeting room, but if we're on a laptop or a desktop computer, we usually sit roughly 60 centimetres away from the screen.
00;30;08;13 - 00;30;21;16
Speaker 3
60 centimetres is what social anthropologists call the intimate social distance 60 centimetres, yeah. Is reserved for lovemaking, cuddling, comforting, tackling, wrestling.
00;30;21;19 - 00;30;22;01
Speaker 1
And all of.
00;30;22;01 - 00;30;45;04
Speaker 3
A sudden we're 60 centimetres away from a colleague from a potential client. So our brain is getting really stressed. Another reason when we have agreed, especially if there's multiple people on the call, we get the Brady Bunch. So great view. Our brain is not used to seeing so many human heads in a very small proximity. In a meeting room at a cafe.
00;30;45;04 - 00;31;09;14
Speaker 3
We would, you know, dart across. We could hold glance with one person the other. I mean, there's so many different reasons we have to sit very still on a video call because we can't, you know, prop ourselves up or reposition ourselves because we'd be very evident that we're doing that on a video call. But again, in a meeting room, we might move around, we might stand up and stretch on a video call.
00;31;09;14 - 00;31;35;09
Speaker 3
It looks really rude if I move my eyes to the side, even if it's just to check on one of my kids who's about to zoombombing or check another monitor. We send really powerful messages. So the other the final reason is we also get a postage stamp view. So we get a very truncated view of the person. So our brain is trying to overcompensate because we're not getting the full body language or the mannerism aims.
00;31;35;12 - 00;31;50;03
Speaker 3
We also tend to overexaggerate how we respond. So we nod with more emphasis and we smile and we're much more gregarious. So we're literally just exhausting our brains on video calls.
00;31;50;06 - 00;32;04;12
Speaker 1
And then the wave at the end, it's like eBay. You probably say to someone like that, donating or it cut. So how, how do you feel like So how do you think all of that's directly impacting our health.
00;32;04;15 - 00;32;22;14
Speaker 3
All it's having huge impact. So a couple of things I really want to draw people's attention to because this is often not even considered. And I have to admit, it wasn't till I was doing some research for the book that I started to look at this. So two really key things that we know how tech is impacting us physically.
00;32;22;14 - 00;32;43;06
Speaker 3
And I also think psychologically is that when we're on a screen, be that a phone, a laptop, a tablet, we have a very narrow gaze. Now, biologically, when we have a very narrow gaze, we send a signal to our brain and body that we're in a stressed state. As humans, we are biologically designed to do all that. I guess we're designed to look off in the distance.
00;32;43;06 - 00;33;04;00
Speaker 3
We're designed to see things. But today we are literally spending our upon hour of our day in a very narrow gaze. So we are subliminally, often unconsciously, activating our sympathetic nervous system. We are in an elevated state of stress, and we don't even realise that just because we're having that that narrow gaze.
00;33;04;03 - 00;33;28;07
Speaker 1
Oh, the second okay, let's break that down as well, because I do talk a lot about stress hormones. Like your adrenal glands then would be secreting cortisol unless you're in later stages of it, you know, fatigue and adrenaline. And even that alone two impacts the way that your gut functions, because you can't then break down foods properly because you're in that stressed state affects detoxification as well.
00;33;28;07 - 00;33;39;01
Speaker 1
So yes. Okay. Yeah, definitely would impact. Yeah. Even just like psychologically it still is producing the same sort of chemicals as if a tiger was chasing you.
00;33;39;03 - 00;34;03;28
Speaker 3
Yeah. And our brain can't differentiate between a team's notification and a tiger chasing us because they are both coming to us. Why? We have, I call them ancient Palaeolithic brains. We have brains that are biologically designed to go and forage, hunt and seek information. But today information is constantly coming at us. It's being thrust at us and at rapid rates and rapid volumes.
00;34;04;00 - 00;34;08;21
Speaker 3
And our brain has not evolved to cope with that constant onslaught of information.
00;34;08;24 - 00;34;09;29
Speaker 1
So yeah.
00;34;10;02 - 00;34;12;18
Speaker 3
Yeah, our brain perceives it as a stress can.
00;34;12;18 - 00;34;31;03
Speaker 1
I don't think, Oh, sorry, I wasn't going have to just going back up to the way that we would never look at ourselves like it's not like we would have a mirror in front of us if we're in person with someone, but I could imagine two that would. So I actually then started just hiding my view. And I had controls as well.
00;34;31;03 - 00;34;55;26
Speaker 1
After your book and it just one, I was able to just concentrate and be in the moment and present and be fully there for a client, but also to I could see that for some people it would be like, Oh, I've got that pimple today. Oh my gosh, I'm getting more wrinkles. And so again, it's like psychologically still producing all the same chemicals as if a tiger were chasing you utterly.
00;34;55;28 - 00;35;16;27
Speaker 3
So if you can't remember how to hide. So if you are really low tech solution is to get a Post-it note and put the Post-it note not over your camera, because that will obscure everyone, but just put a post-it note over your little video video feed if you can't remember or you don't have a post-it note, maybe even just shrinking the size so you don't maximise your zoom or your team's window.
00;35;16;27 - 00;35;36;24
Speaker 3
So it takes up a whole screen because sometimes, depending on the size of your monitor and the number of participants, you could have a giant head on your screen. If you've got a really large desktop and one participant, their head is abnormally large. And again, it's sending Gary, it is our brains going, What on earth is happening here?
00;35;36;26 - 00;35;42;25
Speaker 1
Like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh so they can. I actually said yeah, go for it.
00;35;42;27 - 00;36;05;27
Speaker 3
We'll forget the second really key way that we often don't even realise that our tech habits are impacting us physiologically and psychologically is that when we're on a screen we don't see anywhere near as much as we regularly do or should. So as humans we should ideally see roughly every 5 minutes we do it. We don't even recognise that we're doing it.
00;36;05;27 - 00;36;36;29
Speaker 3
I'm not talking about the melodramatic teenage side where we don't with very overt that the sign, but it's two inhalations, sopranos and an exhalation through our mouth and it's usually our body's natural biological buffer to regulate our stress response. So we saw it to regulate our oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. However, when we are on our screens, we do not see anywhere near as much why we're often breathing in a really shallow way or where we're barely breathing.
00;36;36;29 - 00;37;06;19
Speaker 3
There is a condition called email apnoea where they have literally studied what people have, what happens physiologically when they go into their inboxes, they hold their breath, they dump a whole lot of cortisol, their heart rate accelerates, the pupils dilate. We are literally breathing in totally different ways. So again, this triggers that stress response and we're not even realising that we are in this elevated stress response because it's become almost habitual as a way of working now and living.
00;37;06;21 - 00;37;39;20
Speaker 1
Yeah, I remember when I think it was after my second child, so this is my second burnout experience, but I started developing some chemical sensitivities and getting like the we may, may, maybe it actually wasn't EMF sensitivity, maybe it was literally just digital stuff. So I remember getting like the pins and needles kind of like up my arms and then also pretty much having panic attacks when I was watching a movie and the technology was on my lap really close to my face.
00;37;39;22 - 00;38;14;10
Speaker 1
So I mean, it might have been a bit of like the EMF radiation and probably highly likely the nut breathing because, yeah, this screen was really close and really dangerous. Like it? Yeah. My physiology was perceiving that as dangerous when my feasibility was already burnt out. So yeah. Connecting dots and. Christine Yeah, you talked about coronary types as well, which was really interesting too because I don't feel like a lot of people and most people I would say don't really think about like the owl and the lark.
00;38;14;13 - 00;38;25;08
Speaker 1
Yeah, but in your book you've broken down four different chronotype sleep cycles or schedules. Yes. Can you tell us a bit about those kind of types?
00;38;25;10 - 00;38;55;27
Speaker 3
Yeah. So your chronotype is biologically determined and it determines when you are most focussed and alert and also when you most naturally would like to fall asleep. And most of us fall into three categories. We are either the lions with the early birds, with the early risers. We are the people that love going out for breakfast. We are the people that loathe your friend that invites you to a dinner party at 8:00 night and your secretly thinking I'm normally in my pyjamas at 8:00.
00;38;56;00 - 00;39;17;14
Speaker 3
So we all know who our lines are. Our colleagues at work who are firing off emails early in the morning. Then we have owl bears and they the middle birds, the people whose energy sort of peaks between usually 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. and they're still the majority. It's estimated at around 50, perhaps even 60% of the population are middle birds.
00;39;17;16 - 00;39;43;25
Speaker 3
Now the traditional workday worked quite well for bears. Those people who are the middle bird type of person, that's the third type of the owls. So they're the the people firing on all cylinders late in the evenings. These are your work colleagues who are firing off emails at 11 p.m. midnight and then smaller proportion of people are what we call dolphins.
00;39;43;25 - 00;40;14;20
Speaker 3
And dolphins tend to be insomniacs that have a low drive for sleep. Now, statistically, very few people of dolphins, a lot of people have tricked themselves into thinking that they are dolphins, when often it's their tech habits that are making them behave like dolphins. Now the trick, I believe, and I think the biggest lining of the pandemic particularly, and I recognise it's a privileged position for knowledge workers, but now knowledge workers often, depending on their role in their organisation, are no longer really bound to a 9 to 5 workday.
00;40;14;22 - 00;40;40;16
Speaker 3
We have the opportunity for flexibility around our schedules to some extent. So the trick is that we should be reserving our Chrono Type's peak performance window so the Lions, it would be early in the morning for our deep work and whatever our chronotype peak performance window is, that is the time of the day where we should be doing our date focussed work and that is when we have to build a fortress around our focus.
00;40;40;19 - 00;40;54;24
Speaker 3
That's when we have to be turning off notifications, putting our phone in another drawer saying no to meetings during that time and trying to structure, I guess, the contours of our day so that they line up with our chronotype preferences where possible.
00;40;54;27 - 00;41;07;17
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. I think I'm a bear, which I feel like makes sense. I don't wake up to an alarm most mornings that it's like seven and then 10:00. I feel really good if I go to sleep. And then the work schedule too, I think was.
00;41;07;17 - 00;41;08;05
Speaker 3
For me.
00;41;08;07 - 00;41;26;13
Speaker 1
1003 or something. Yeah. Okay. So let's chat about the third pillar. Disable digital distractions. Yeah, it's just the, the blinking and the notifications and do, do do do they. Everything bombarding you. Yeah.
00;41;26;15 - 00;41;50;17
Speaker 3
Our brain just designed to split our attention. We are not designed to multitask. And women, I hate to say it, we were wrong. Menu or right public apology. Our brains aren't engineered to be distracted and we know this intuitively. I don't know about you, but when I'm driving to a new destination and I've got the music on in the car, I instinctively turn the volume down so I can focus.
00;41;50;19 - 00;42;26;07
Speaker 3
I don't know if anybody else does that. We intuitively know that when we need to really focus, we have to eliminate as many distractions as possible. It's why we snap at our kids when we're trying to get something done and they interrupt us for the 700th time. So when we are distracted, it stresses our brains. So a couple of years ago, in 2006, in fact, the UCSF Medical Centre wanted to investigate why at their particular institution and across America, the third leading cause of death behind cancer and heart disease was medical administration errors.
00;42;26;09 - 00;42;31;28
Speaker 3
Doctors and nurses prescribing and or administering wrong medications or dosages. Third leading cause of death.
00;42;32;01 - 00;42;33;08
Speaker 1
That's crazy.
00;42;33;11 - 00;42;56;20
Speaker 3
And what they found through this study was that it was doctors and nurses who were being distracted, distracted by patients, distracted by colleagues, distracted by machines and technology. So staff at this hospital came up with a low tech intervention. They had their staff wear a fluorescent do not interrupt vest. So a bit like a road safety worker with a brightly coloured fluorescent vest on.
00;42;56;22 - 00;43;21;13
Speaker 3
And they wore these on their medication rounds. What resulted in a 36 month period was a whopping 88% reduction in errors. We just aren't designed to be distracted. But if you think about the average person's day and from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep their day is permeated with pings and dings and alerts and vibrations and reminders.
00;43;21;16 - 00;43;47;04
Speaker 3
And it is really exhausting for our brain. So I've got a micro habit around notifications. The first one is to turn off all non-essential notifications. You know, you don't need to be getting constant. I most certainly don't need email notifications. We don't need social media notifications. I don't believe the second rule is to bundle or batch notifications so you can now nominate what time or times of the day you want.
00;43;47;04 - 00;44;13;12
Speaker 3
The 58 WhatsApp notifications coming through. When do you want your teams notifications? When do you want all the various notifications that come out our way? And then related to that one is to create VIP list. So when you put your device maybe on Slack or teams or your phone on focus mode or do not disturb, everybody gets blocked apart from those few people that might be on your VIP list.
00;44;13;14 - 00;44;25;19
Speaker 3
So if you've got children in child care or school ageing parents, you're working on a colleague on a with a really important time deadline and they need some responsive information they can get through, but everybody else gets blocked.
00;44;25;21 - 00;44;42;12
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's so simple too. So simple. Just like any notifications of the bundle, I don't bundle because I don't have a lot of notifications. Like I just have ten notifications off. But with the bundle, do you do that in your phone settings or do you have to be able to opt to.
00;44;42;14 - 00;44;50;18
Speaker 3
Go going to your phone settings or your laptop if it's on your laptop and you just nominate what time, the notification time or times of the day the notifications come to you?
00;44;50;20 - 00;45;05;16
Speaker 1
MM Yeah. Okay, awesome. So you also talked about the bright coloured icons on our devices, which I thought was really interesting for me, like a fight or flight point of view as well. And they've been cleverly designed to get our attention. Is that right?
00;45;05;19 - 00;45;25;18
Speaker 3
Yes. So another micro habit that I share in the book is to turn when you don't want to be distracted. I'm not saying you do this for the whole day, but turning your phone in particular to greyscale because our eyes are drawn to bright, warm colours. That's why a lot of tech companies, I don't know if you've ever noticed in recent years, a lot of tech companies have changed the style of their icons.
00;45;25;18 - 00;45;50;21
Speaker 3
So Google, Instagram, Facebook of all involved, they colour choices because we know when Steve Jobs, when he released the first iPod Touch, said that he had developers and designers make the icons on the screen so appealing that users would want to lick their screens. So it tells you about the persuasive. So another micro habit here is when you want to get your deep focussed work done.
00;45;50;21 - 00;46;10;17
Speaker 3
And you know, when you hit a stuck point, you can't write the last sentence to paragraph or the formula in your spreadsheet isn't working. What do we do? Pick up our phones or open another tab? So if you can go full screen on your laptop or desktop because those colourful icons won't sort of tempt you to go down the digital rabbit hole.
00;46;10;19 - 00;46;34;15
Speaker 1
Yes, that is something I have also been practising. Oh, well done. I think Chris, my husband even said like ages ago, he's like, Oh, you have so many bright things. It's like, why do you maximise, You've got like so many things, are you open? And I was just like, Yeah, whatever. I don't take advice from him, obviously time by lying.
00;46;34;21 - 00;46;44;11
Speaker 1
But then when I read your book and I'm like, okay, I feel like I'm a lot like you. I want to understand the science and I want to understand like that There's research to back it up, and then I'm like, Okay, cool.
00;46;44;13 - 00;46;44;29
Speaker 3
I'll do that.
00;46;44;29 - 00;47;05;07
Speaker 1
I'll try it, I'll see how it feels. But yeah, definitely like maximising. Sorry, I was finishing writing my book and if I maximise that write off as like, Oh my goodness, I am so much more focussed and just like more energised as well. So all those little distractions down the bottom were just, you know, I was just constantly going to them.
00;47;05;07 - 00;47;07;21
Speaker 1
And so yeah, again, simple, simple things.
00;47;07;21 - 00;47;10;10
Speaker 3
People are like.
00;47;10;12 - 00;47;29;20
Speaker 1
Okay, the final pillar is unplug for rest and recovery, which, you know, I believe you now practice too. You are constantly practising. So burnout often occurs because you go and hide for too long and eventually your body conks out. But how can we think about that in terms of our techno habits?
00;47;29;23 - 00;47;53;14
Speaker 3
Yeah, so we're not machines, we're not designed to be plugged in, switched on around the clock. And so we need to take what I call peak performance pit stops. We need to rest. And the science actually tells us the most effective type of rest that will be out is an annual leave. A lot of people think I'll beat burnout by taking two weeks off work or I'm going to switch off over summer and come back in January and all is going to be good.
00;47;53;17 - 00;48;19;01
Speaker 3
That's not actually the case. Doctor Adam Fraser has done some research in this space and he has found that yes, certainly taking consecutive days off or weeks off can have a restorative effect. However, our mental health and physical health benefits are only extended for about three weeks. Once we come back from our annual leave, three weeks where we reap the rewards of our rest.
00;48;19;03 - 00;48;24;14
Speaker 1
And some people don't even feel better when they go on holidays and often not. And Adam's like, Well.
00;48;24;17 - 00;48;32;27
Speaker 3
Yeah, Adam's research actually said that, and that was particularly amplified for parents because any parent knows a holiday is just parenting in a different location.
00;48;32;29 - 00;48;34;03
Speaker 1
Sometimes harder.
00;48;34;05 - 00;48;55;24
Speaker 3
Yes. Especially if you've been on a flight or a missed flight. So we know unequivocally the best type of break that will beat burnout is what I in my book I call them Piccolo breaks so short, 2 to 10 minutes breaks interspersed throughout your day. These are not complicated things. It can be as simple as closing your eyes.
00;48;55;26 - 00;49;12;24
Speaker 3
One of the reasons we're experiencing so much digital fatigue is that part of our brain called the occipital lobe, which processes what we see. It's really active when we're spending our whole day on video calls and on our screens. It gets tired closing your eyes for 30 seconds and you can do it on a video call like I'm doing now.
00;49;12;24 - 00;49;40;05
Speaker 3
Just pretend that your internet is frozen or you're in dry white. Yet ruminating on a really powerful response, closing your eyes, getting out in nature green time. We know that just 40 seconds in nature will drop our cortisol levels going for a quick walk. You know, my Irish friend calls it a ticking away break, doing something that is restorative for 2 to 10 minutes.
00;49;40;05 - 00;50;01;24
Speaker 3
Now, I know people are busy, but the reality is that if we don't take regular breaks, it will lead to burnout. We also know that we have something called an oil trade in rhythm, meaning that biologically we will and our bodies go through peaks and troughs roughly every 90 minutes. We have about a 90 minute peak and then we have roughly a 20 minute trough, give or take.
00;50;01;24 - 00;50;15;25
Speaker 3
It's not exactly 1920. We're not designed to keep going and going and going without a break. So we have to again adhere to that cadence of working in sprints and then having a break, working in a sprint and then having a break.
00;50;15;27 - 00;50;29;21
Speaker 1
Yeah, I love the sun on just like sun time. Sun time is my break time. Well, yeah, like a quick walk around the block that would take no longer than five or 10 minutes. So it's like come back energised, feel good. Yeah.
00;50;29;22 - 00;50;54;14
Speaker 3
And this the sun one is really interesting. So we know that many Australians, children, teenagers and adults are not getting the recommendations. A roughly 90 minutes of sun exposure a day depending on the season and where you live. And we know that 90 minutes of sun exposure is absolutely critical for preventing the development of myopia or myopic progression, which is nearsightedness.
00;50;54;17 - 00;51;18;22
Speaker 3
And so many people are not getting that 90 minutes since 90 minutes interspersed throughout your day. So 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there. But that sunlight exposure and also getting sunlight within the first hour of waking up our body magically, I find this phenomenal. Our body, if we get sunlight exposure within that first hour of waking, will naturally start to produce melatonin.
00;51;18;22 - 00;51;32;23
Speaker 3
So long as we don't mess with it With our blue light roughly 16 hours later. I think it's a really simple things to like get outside when you wake up. But we're not really asking people to do anything really cumbersome and complex.
00;51;32;23 - 00;52;04;21
Speaker 1
Yeah, okay. If someone's been listening to this and they're like, I got a lot to change. Also, if they're feeling really burnt out and they are a knowledge worker who, you know, a lot of their work life is using technology, what would you. I don't know. I have you have you found something? I know that this is like, well, it's all holistic and it all intertwines with each other, but is there anything that you've found first or with the work with that you've done with people that have just kind of been like the micro habit that makes a huge hit?
00;52;04;23 - 00;52;33;10
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's probably two or three grocery. Yeah, let's do three. The biggest lever we can pull. And as somebody who has struggled with this for many years is nailing our sleep. Blake Huge impacts on our physical, psychological health. And I think many of us aren't even aware of how our tech habits are impacting that. So, you know, setting your digital bedtime, switching off 60 minutes beforehand, keeping it out of your room, buying blue light, blocking glasses if you do have to be online.
00;52;33;10 - 00;52;56;12
Speaker 3
So really nailing our sleep. I think that's really a huge difference. The other one, as you alluded to, and I'm so pleased to hear you're doing this, Phillip is putting our phone somewhere. We can't see it being present. And my mum talks about it all the time. Be where your feet are and it's so easy for us to get sucked into the digital vortex when we're at swimming lessons or when we're on a date with our partner.
00;52;56;15 - 00;53;24;17
Speaker 3
But putting the device somewhere where we can't see it again, not for the whole day, but makes such a huge, huge difference. And the third one that I get a lot of feedback from clients on is around taking those piccolo breaks, taking micro breaks because again, not complicated. And something as simple as you said is just lying out in the sun, standing in the sun, closing your eyes, doing a five minute lap around the block, really achievable things that yield such huge benefits for us.
00;53;24;17 - 00;53;26;19
Speaker 3
So they'd be my top three.
00;53;26;20 - 00;53;32;17
Speaker 1
I love it. So sleep. Yep. Put your phone away. Little breaks.
00;53;32;19 - 00;53;53;29
Speaker 3
Yeah. And where possible those little breaks if you can incorporate some physical movement. A really scary statistic that I discovered when I was doing research for the book was that even if we are adhering to the recommended patterns and they vary from country to country, but most countries throughout the globe recommend around 180 minutes per week of what they call zone to cardio.
00;53;53;29 - 00;54;08;08
Speaker 3
So any sort of physical activity where you're a little bit breathless now, even if you adhere to that 180 minute recommendation, if you are sedentary for more than 5 hours a day, those benefits are completely nullified.
00;54;08;15 - 00;54;09;04
Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay.
00;54;09;06 - 00;54;31;00
Speaker 3
Now the good news is it doesn't mean you have to do 245 classes a day or run a marathon after work. The good news is you can counter those ill effects just by including 3 to 410 minute walks throughout the day. So walk to the coffee shop further than you normally do, often to pick your neighbours kids up and your children from school and walk them home.
00;54;31;00 - 00;54;51;21
Speaker 3
Get those just incidental bits of movement because you know, we used to engage in so much more incidental movement, you know, before online delivery, we'd walk to the grocery store and carry the bags of groceries back to our cars. And, you know, we didn't have bus stops at every corner and the whole myriad of transport, we would walk the extra distance.
00;54;51;23 - 00;55;01;06
Speaker 3
So I think it's just about being more intentional about how we can incorporate more physical movement because we all feel so much better after we've moved.
00;55;01;08 - 00;55;11;20
Speaker 1
It's interesting to all those things that you talked about. I just the word prime all came back to it as well. It's like, Oh, let's just live the way that we were evolved to live in a modern world.
00;55;11;22 - 00;55;33;29
Speaker 3
And that that's the whole crux of the book about living with technology in a way that is congruent with our human operating system, our neurobiology. We we can't outperform it like we are not machines, We cannot outperform. We have I think fortunately, some people might say, unfortunately, I think we have some biological constraints and we have to adhere to them.
00;55;33;29 - 00;55;40;00
Speaker 3
And at the moment many of us are not. And this is why I think so many of us are experiencing digital burnout.
00;55;40;02 - 00;55;44;02
Speaker 1
Yeah, Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
00;55;44;04 - 00;55;44;24
Speaker 3
Thank you.
00;55;44;24 - 00;55;50;29
Speaker 1
Everyone listening would have laughed so much. I actually feel like you're one of the smartest women that I know. Oh, that's lovely.
00;55;50;29 - 00;55;53;24
Speaker 3
Thank you. But I don't need external validation.
00;55;53;24 - 00;56;01;11
Speaker 1
If you don't, are you already to validate that? It's just nice to have a reciprocation of what you already know.
00;56;01;13 - 00;56;03;03
Speaker 3
I think that's really kind.
00;56;03;07 - 00;56;18;11
Speaker 1
Okay, so I'm going to put up in the show notes a link to the book. So if anyone wants to read the book, they can head to your website to purchase the book. But it's in other places as well, like bookstores, Airport. Yes. Yep. Okay, cool. Awesome.
00;56;18;13 - 00;56;30;24
Speaker 3
And we've got a special discount code for your listeners. So if they order it's just through my website. I can't gift this via Amazon, but if you order by my website, we will give your listeners free Australia wide shipping.
00;56;30;26 - 00;56;55;02
Speaker 1
Thank you. Well, I'll make sure that I get that info off you and fabulous everyone and also on your website too. So I talked about the currency, so you've got a quiz on that. If someone was like, Oh, what Chronotype I can say that they actually start sleeping for their biology, not against it. You've got some cool digital well wellbeing boxes, including the fancy boxes that you can hide your phones in and, charge them at the same time.
00;56;55;02 - 00;57;08;28
Speaker 1
So that's like let's just get rid of some excuses as to why something I buy, so I'll make sure all of that's in the show notes for our listeners and on the phone. Anything else you would like to add?
00;57;09;01 - 00;57;35;10
Speaker 3
I would just like to encourage people to take back control of technology. I think for so many of us, we are spending more time than ever on our devices and we'll never get this time back. In the book, I share a statistic that I still find sobering, and that is the estimated Australian adult will spend 17 years of their life on their phone when not even considering desktops and laptops.
00;57;35;10 - 00;57;57;14
Speaker 3
We haven't even thought about virtual reality. The metaverse, an air and air that's on our doorstep 17 years of our life on our phone. I don't want to get to the end of my life and regret that the literal years and days and months lost to my device. So we have to take back control and I think not be a slave to our screen.
00;57;57;16 - 00;58;01;15
Speaker 1
I love it. All right. We will leave it there. Thank you so much.
00;58;01;17 - 00;58;07;01
Speaker 3
Thank you.
00;58;07;03 - 00;58;16;12
Speaker 1
Thank you so much for listening. We so appreciate you. If you'd like to give us an extra drop us a review and spread the love by sharing this episode, you.
00;58;16;12 - 00;58;34;08
Speaker 2
Can also write your own state of burnout and the root Cause contributors by taking our ending body burnout assessment on our website. And if you're interested in learning about a group of one on one ending body burnout programs, should us a DM via Instagram or Facebook. Have the best day ever.