Speaker 1: Welcome to the Mindset Coach Academy podcast. I'm Lindsay Wilson and I am a high performance mindset coach, a mom, a former professional athlete and an entrepreneur. I help coaches and high performers optimize their mindset to improve their coaching, their performance and those of their athletes and their lives. Here you'll learn all about mindset, how to live it, how to teach it and how to sell it. Hi all and welcome back to the Mindset Coach Academy podcast.
My name is Lindsey Wilson. We're talking about smartphones today. Let me just preface this by saying I don't think you're going to like learn anything new. I mean the research is out there. We've all had the experience of you know big or little phone addictions. It's you know we all know the deal but what I've also found is that sometimes there's a someone says something a different way or there's one little nudge or there's one little thing that we can do that really makes a huge difference. We're talking about this in both the MCA this week and the insider program.
I'll tell you both sort of similar but different. In the MCA the Mindset Coach Academy certification program we always have a week where we give something up and for some people that's alcohol or sugar or swearing or anything. For a lot of people it's social media maybe not all the way but like doom scrolling at night or they put a limit on it or what have you. That's coming up more and more so I know that a lot of people are using their phones in ways that they really just don't want to be.
I mean that's really what it comes down to. Smartphones are so great in so many ways and then there's this other side of it that really eats away at our not only our productivity but our confidence in our belief about our ability to be disciplined and willpower and that's really what I'm talking about because I get that feeling too and I hate it. It makes me want to throw my phone away and yet you know smartphones have a real benefit. They have a real benefit to my business. They have a real benefit to my life. And so I'm constantly trying to figure out how to use it in a way that works for me. I mean every time I read anything about it or you know read a lot of the research too but just the sort of conversation around it is like no one asked us if we want you know endless scrolling for example. No one asked us if we want you know neuroscience to be choosing the buttons that make them more appealing and so we get a dopamine hit and so it makes it harder for us to put it down and essentially become addicted. Nobody asked us if that's how we wanted it to be done right. And instead we just sort of take it and then we blame ourselves right and that's a really icky feeling and so in the insider program this week which is our mastermind for certified coaches we were talking a lot about time and productivity and you know not all of it has to do with smartphone distraction but you know some of it does and some of it has to do with just general distraction right.
And so we were talking about you know I would call it like the low hanging fruit. What are the things that we can do that don't involve canceling your smartphone and don't involve even a lot of discipline or willpower because you know when we're really talking about discipline and willpower against a phone which is again designed. It is absolutely designed the same way casinos are designed to get you to keep doing so your willpower and your discipline can be extreme and we really need to set up systems in our own life that don't allow us to have to rely on discipline and willpower when it comes to our phones. That's what I've experienced at least because there can be a lot of blame and shame and say well you know why can't I just stop. Well you can but also make it easy on yourself by setting up some systems and I have some I have five things that I want to talk about that I think are kind of low hanging fruit.
Like these are the things that I'm doing or my students are doing that I think anybody can do. And I would say the first one is having especially when you're working having a physical location for your device that's not right next to you. This is going to sound like captain obvious is because I like the simplest thing in the world but like my phone right now is over on this chair. Okay so when I finish this podcast and think about which one which podcast to do if I want to check my phone I literally have to walk over and get it. I can do that but I'm less likely to do it than if my phone was right here and I can literally just pick it up. So a physical location for your device that's not right next to you especially if you want to get anything done.
Again low hanging fruit super simple just don't have it at your desk that's a really easy way to do it. Okay second thing is for me at least it's the do not disturb at night. I know some people do it sometimes during the day and I've definitely done that but I would say definitely at night you know when you're talking about sleep hygiene or anything it just makes sense. You know my kids are all in the house they're all safe daycare is not calling me and also people can call but I'm not getting text messages and people know that it's kind of like my downtime. Sometimes I'm texting at night sometimes I'm calling at night but it's not right in my face and so it really helps me like and I think just for myself it's like no after this time it's like it's wind down time you know you're not going to be doing any work there's nothing that has to be done on your phone and so it just really helps to have that and everybody else gets the message as well.
The third thing, I've been doing this for years. I literally can't even imagine having my phone get notifications like getting a ping every time. I don't know ESPN has a score update. Like no, I don't even want, I don't even have notifications on for text messages, to be honest. So if someone has to get a hold of me, they know to call. And I do check my text messages, but it's not pinging me throughout the day, taking my focus away. So it's a notifications off as much as possible. And of course you can customize that to the notifications you want to get, the notifications you don't want to get. I would say just turning off as many as possible is really helpful. Those little things are just little distractions. They're just pulling us away from what we intended to do, what we are doing to our device, to our phone.
So again, putting it in a different location, putting on do not disturb and turning off notifications. So there's the top three. And I think those are like, for easy you could do them really like right now. The third thing is, again, in the MCA this week, we're giving up something. And so for me, what I gave up was unlimited social media. And basically what I did is I put a 20 minute limit on Facebook and Instagram. And this really helps slow the scroll, if you will. Is that the term, right?
I don't know. So if I need to get on there, and I will override that on the days when I have specific work to do, like I'm creating reels and I'm batching them, but it's really keeping me from, even like the three to five minutes that I might spend checking out videos. If I'm getting on there, maybe I'm checking how my reel did, and then I'm getting right off. If I'm getting on Facebook, I'm checking my groups to see if anybody had a question, and then I'm getting off, because I only got 20 minutes.
So there's like a built in timer that's once it, and I'm not going over it. So that's what we're doing. We are only doing it for a week, but I think I'll probably end up doing it for longer. Actually, I already have been doing it for longer because we had our seven days is over. So putting a focus timer on iPhone, this is pretty easy.
You can just put a time limit. And for me, it's all social media. And that's been really helpful because I've just motivated to get off it instead of stay on it.
I mean, that's really what it comes down to. I'm motivated to get off it because really I want to check it later maybe, or there is a video I want to watch, but I'm more conscious of like, I might only get to watch one video, right? I'm not just going to be endlessly scrolling with no shot clock.
Let's call that. There's no, when I have no shot clock, and there's no limit, I can just do it all day, right? And so having that limit can be really helpful. So a focus timer. And you can do that with a lot of different things.
iPhone, you can do it pretty easily, but I know you can also install a third party app and do all that. I'm not doing that. I'm just doing 20 minutes for social media. Fifth thing, which may be the hardest, I don't know, I found it kind of easy, which is to grayscale your phone. So if you know anything about, you know how smartphones are designed, or really design in general, is they use colors to catch your eye to get you to take action. When you have the grayscale, it sucks in certain ways, like pictures aren't as much fun, but that's kind of the point, right? It's not as much fun to use your phone when it's on grayscale. And by grayscale, I mean, basically when you look at your phone, there's no color, it's all black and white. And so if you're watching a lot of videos on your phone, it kind of sucks, I'm not gonna lie, but again, that's kind of the point. I think I use my phone less when it's on grayscale because it's just not as appealing. My eye candy's not there, my brain isn't as motivated. I'm not getting that dopamine hit by looking at colors and clicking on them and all the different things. It's just, what I would say is it's muted.
That's what I would say. I would say use of the smartphone is muted when it's on grayscale. And I can't tell you how to get on grayscale on your, I have an iPhone on your iPhone because I purposely don't know how to do it. I did it once, I Googled it, and then I left it so that I don't turn it off and on. I know you could do that, like if you were on a plane and you wanted to watch Netflix, you might wanna turn it on color.
I don't know how to do it on my phone. Maybe I'll learn eventually because I wanna watch something, but I don't have the capability really right now to switch back and forth because I don't wanna give that to myself. So again, grayscale is just a more muted experience of using your smartphone.
Okay, so I'm gonna go through the five things, okay? So the first one is having a location for your phone that is away from you, especially if you're doing work. Putting on the do not disturb, for me, I do it at night. So I know that after a certain time at night that I'm not getting text messages or calls.
I think I can get calls, but they might have to call twice. Anyway, having some focus time, or I should say some limits, I think they call it focus time on iPhone, that's why I'm saying it. Having some limits, a certain amount of minutes that you can do like social media, for example, or I don't know, if you have a shop or something, like limits to the apps that you're using a lot. And then once it's done for the day, you don't override it. Turning your notifications off, at least for the things that aren't necessary. So you're not getting pinged all day long for all different things. And then the final thing is grayscale your phone.
You can grayscale your phone, it's just not as much fun to use. That's it. All right, guys, I hope this was helpful. Hey, come on over, speaking of social media, come on over to Instagram and tell me which one of these you implemented, which one was the most helpful. I think these are simple. I think they really, really help. And again, the whole goal is to use the smartphone in the way that we want to use it, but not feel like it's taking over our life in a way that's making us feel like we don't have control and we don't have discipline and we don't have willpower.
That's not true. These things are designed to grab your attention. And so we have to set up the guardrails to make it less easy for it to take over. Set up the systems that make it easier for us to not have it in all aspects of our life all the time. And then we can use it in a healthy way and not in an unhealthy way.
So those are my thoughts on smartphones. Again, come on over to Instagram @LindseyPositivePerform and let me know which one of these was the most helpful. All right, guys, hope this helped. I'll see you next week on Mental Monday.
