How To Stop Scrolling (Part 2)

Welcome to Readers, the podcast for the lifelong learner. Join us on our weekly dose of wisdom where we talk about the real life lessons and applications of books. Enjoy. Welcome back to Readers, everyone. Today we are once again joined by Ruby Ribah, screen time strategist and author of How to Stop Scrolling. Welcome back to the podcast, Ruby.

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, looking forward to this. You know, in part 1, we really built the foundation, right? We changed the space around the phone. Now, it seems like we're almost moving from environment to inputs, right? We're talking about the constant pings, the colors, and the cues that make our phones almost feel like slot machines in our pockets. So, you know, these next 7 chapters are all about quieting that noise and kind of rediscovering what focus really feels like, right? So without further ado, let's dive right in. So, you know, you start this chapter, chapter 8 here, Notifications and Boundaries. You start off with the story about this guy named Lucas. Right? Someone who never really gets a break because his phone never dies, right? And I think we all kind of resonate with that feeling, right? The buzz that, you know, either wakes us up or, you know, takes our attention from what our work was or a book or whatever that is, right? And every quiet moment seems like it's filled with some sort of stimulation. You know, I kind of want to ask, right, because we've all heard that it takes our attention, right? But we hear so many sounds through the day. Why is it that that specific ping or, you You know, the, the phone sounds seem to get our attention so much more. And why do so many people end up falling into that trap?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's almost a Pavlovian response because when we hear a ping or ding or ring, there is a possibility of something exciting, you know? So this sort of programming where you get a variable response, sometimes some you get a reward and sometimes you don't, has been proven in studies to make things more addictive than not. So I think one of the first studies on this was with rats where they push a lever and food comes out and they push a lever and then food comes out. And then after they train the rats to learn that when you push the lever and food comes out, they move the rats into a new stage of the experiment where when they push the lever, sometimes food comes out and sometimes food does. And the rats got a lot more intense about pushing the lever because It's more exciting and interesting. This is, this is the same reason why gambling is exciting and addictive when you don't know what the outcome is going to be. So when you get a notification, most of the time it's nothing important or exciting, but once in a while you get a really funny reel or you get an important call. And that makes this a lot more compelling than a lot of other noises that we interact with on the daily.

Yeah, I think it's really cool how, you know, later in this chapter and in the next chapter, you know, you talk a lot about how visual triggers is a big role that plays into kind of how we view screens and how they're able to also pull us in, right? Because, you know, the real world may be, you know, as engaging as it is, but, you know, somehow we always end up getting pulled back to this whatever 6-inch phone that always has our attention, right? And here you kind of talk about a few fixes or you know, some solutions to these issues, right? Everything from digitally decluttering, right, as you put it, to, you know, turning off badges or trimming alerts, kind of reducing your notifications, things like that. Even grayscale displays, other things. Can you talk a little bit more about the certain strategies that have helped you or other people kind of declutter their own lives or, you know, help reduce the amount of visual triggers or, you know, audio triggers that we receive on a daily basis? 'Cause I guess I'm thinking back to my own life and my own phone usage, right? And the last time I really remember reducing my notifications is when, you know, I'm about to watch a recorded football game of my team and I didn't want ESPN to show me the score or something, right? And so I guess I'm kind of thinking like, what are these strategies that you've kind of developed or discovered that have helped, you know, reduce this clutter?

Yeah, so our phones are a lot more personalizable than we realize. You know, I think we sort of accept the status quo. We download an app and then, It's, you know, even like a rideshare app can give you notifications all the time. And so we pick up our phone every time we get a notification instead of thinking, wait a second, I don't want these notifications, you know? So notifications are definitely a great place to start. It takes less than 5 minutes to go through your settings and just go through the list of your apps and say, turn off, turn off, turn off any notifications that don't serve you. You can also delete apps that you don't need. Um, aside from notifications, I also highly recommend focus modes. So when I have a lot of different focus modes, I have a work mode where I only get phone calls. So just in case I get a phone call from like a school or whatever. Um, I have a nanny mode, so that's if I'm out away from my kids, no one can get through to me except for my nanny because if she has something important to tell me, then I, I wanna be able to react to that. Um, so focus modes are great. They take a little bit of time to set up and I myself am guilty of You know, if I switch nannies, I might not use nanny mode for a while because even though it will take me 30 seconds, I have to switch the person that's allowed through, you know? So I definitely acknowledge that sometimes there's some inertia to getting these things in place, but once you do, it's so rewarding. Once you set up the focus modes, I highly recommend automating them. So if you're usually working the same hours every day or in the same location, you can set the focus modes to certain times or locations because then you won't forget to turn them on. Aside from focus modes, there's also distraction blockers for your most addictive apps. There are a lot of different free apps out there. I really like ClearSpace. There's Opal. There's, there's so many. There's Forest. So with a lot of these, they basically just create more latency, which is the time between a trigger and your reaction to the trigger. You know, a lot of us, our thumb just automatically taps the social media account or, or app that we are most familiar with. And, and I've heard of, and I've done myself, people moving the app once in a while to a different page or something so that you don't open it so automatically. Um, but using an actual distraction blocking app can be really helpful here because when you try to tap into it, there are some, there are some hurdles that you need to pass first. And while you're passing those hurdles, you might say, you know what, like, I actually didn't really need to check this. This was just an impulse. Um, then when you're looking at triggers within your home screen, um, I would think about your lock screen configuration. So, you know, something that people love to do is to put really personal images on their phone. And it's fun, but I think that it also is going to make us want— think that our phone is like our friend. You know, our friend— our phone is not a villain, but it's also not a friend. It's just a tool. And so if we personalize we use it too much and we get too emotionally attached to it, we give it more power. Mm-hmm. Um, so having just default back, um, backdrops, wallpapers can be helpful. Um, and then a couple last things I'll throw in are widgets, you know, using the widgets that serve you. So some widgets can actually help you decrease your screen time because if you have the weather widget on your lock screen, then you don't have to unlock your phone to check the temperature. Because checking the weather is one of those things that a lot of people, um, report to be an on-ramp, is what I call it in my book, something that gets you onto your phone. Um, and then, but there are also widgets that lure you in. So just make sure, are you using widgets that are helpful or that are going to get you on your phone when you don't want to? Um, and then there's badges, the little red numbers on the little, on the apps. So think about what badges you actually need You're— you don't need most of them because badges, um, make us open the app. They've done studies on this, and when you have a badge on every app, even including the Settings app, which is kind of silly, you're more inclined to open it because we as humans have this urgency to want to resolve the badge. Um, but if you're gonna have unread emails and you're not actually gonna read them all, then don't have the badge on. I don't have badges on even for my text messages. I have notifications. I have notifications come in on my home screen. For my lock screen for text messages, but I don't have the badges because a lot of times I leave messages unread so that I can respond to them later and I don't want the badge on. So, um, and then we talked a little bit about Grayscale in the last episode, but Grayscale has been shown, um, to reduce phone use by 50 minutes a day. And just, it goes along with the not making your lock screen so visually appealing, you know, the uglier and more utilitarian and more practical we make our phone, the less likely we're just going to be on it for no reason.

Yeah, I think that's so cool. Thank you so much for sharing all these kind of tools. That's, I think that's really cool. I guess, I think one thing that really resonated with me was when you were talking about how the app, like when you move it and so you're not as used to opening it. And I think I really noticed this last year 'cause in, you know, my second semester I picked up a lot of credit hours. So I was, I was really swamped and I decided to kind of delete Instagram for that, whatever, half a school year or whatnot, just to reduce distraction, right? And I think I really realized how many times I just, instinctively open the app right after opening my phone just for no reason, you know?

Yeah, totally.

Even if I close it again in like 5 minutes, but like I'd open, I think it was like, I don't know what, when it was like WhatsApp or something that replaced it. And I opened WhatsApp like so many times throughout the first few weeks because it's just so like automatic for me. And I think, you know, through that I did definitely realize how, how almost just automatic it is for us to open these kinds of things.

Definitely.

Yeah. And I think one thing that you really, you know, discuss in these later chapters here is replacing scrolling, right? And I think this is really important because, you know, we can always sit here and talk about how bad scrolling is or screen time or limiting it and whatnot, right? But at the end of the day, if you're sitting on your couch and all you have next to you is your phone, most of the time you are likely to probably pick that up, right? So, How do you replace scrolling with something of meaning? How do you— it's not just subtraction, it's substitution, right? So I'd love to hear a little bit more about some of these habits that you've seen people rediscover once they've stopped scrolling, or what people can actually look forward to, you know, when they implement these changes. Because as much as everyone can be like, oh, I want to be on my phone less, they don't know what they would do without it, you know? And that sounds maybe a little dramatic, but it is the reality, you know, because I think I noticed this myself last year when I didn't have the phone. It's not like I'm addicted or I needed it or, you know, I started like twitching or something. But, you know, the fact is that when I had a moment of free time, right, that was the first place my mind went. And then I had to think, okay, what else do I want to do? So what have you kind of seen people do instead? Or how can we be more intentional about our habit creation so that, you know, our replaced time can feel meaningful?

Great question. I mean, I think what you were doing is a great first step. When you don't have your phone, literally even saying, wait, I don't know what to do. Acknowledging that and saying, what do I want to do? That is really helpful. I think because we, so many people have their phones in their faces all the time, we don't even have time to have that inner dialogue of what do I want to do? And instead we're sort of getting broadcast content, which we then mimic instead of actually thinking for ourselves in terms of what we want to do. So, um, this, this is where it gets a little bit more challenging. This is where the real work begins. You know, you can turn off all your notifications, you can put your phone in another room, and now you have to decide, what do I wanna do with my life, basically? You know, which is much harder question to tackle than to just pull out your phone. And I think pulling out your phone is the path of least resistance, and that's why so many people are compelled to just do that. Um, so if you're in a situation where you don't really know where to start, First, I wanna say that you're not alone. Um, this is really normal, but I do have some prompts that can help you to brainstorm. And I wanna emphasize, just like with everything else, it's, um, trial and error, you know? So when you have— I, I always say, you know, action first, you know, I, I, I, it's one of my biggest pet peeves when people are deliberating over decisions. Should I, shouldn't I, whatever, you know? And so, For example, um, shortly before I started working on this book, I had two ideas. I had the idea of working on this book and I had the idea of starting a pickleball place because I knew that pickleball was taking off and I knew it would be a good investment. And for a week or so, I thought like, which should, which project should I tackle? But thinking about it wasn't helping me get anywhere. And so I said, okay, let's, let's just pick one and I'm gonna do a mini prototype. So I said, okay, let's say I start the pickleball place. I scoped out a location. I looked into competitors. I looked into what the local parks department was doing in terms of next year and how many public pickleball courts were going to be available, which would compete with my private pickleball court. I looked at other companies that were doing this to try to understand the business model. And after I did this for a few days, I didn't like it. It was boring. And so that gave me enough information. And I said, okay, I'm not going to pursue this project because I don't want to. Um, so then I started working on the book instead, and then I really liked the project. And so that's just one example of you're not going to just sit on the couch for hours, think of a wonderful idea, and then start it, and then you have your purpose and calling in life, you know? And your calling might change. You might be really interested in something, work on it for a little bit, and then change your mind, and that's all okay. So I just wanted to put that out there first. Um, so So if you have big goals, um, you can start there, start from the big picture and then get practical. Um, so think about what are your huge goals, so big that you don't even wanna tell people because you feel embarrassed. And then think about what are the small steps that would get you there. That's one thing that you could do. Another prompt, um, that I like to ask is if you had 10 extra hours in a week, what would you do? So that's a really fun question because I think a lot of times we think in order to get time, we need to save it somehow. But just for the purpose of the exercise, you think like free 10 hours, what would you do? No consequences. And, and that can get the ball rolling. Um, and then lastly, um, I like to think about the 3 categories if you're still stumped of joy, rest, and goals. So goals we already covered a little bit. Um, but it can be big or small. And then joy, what brings you joy? What did you used to like doing when you were a kid? When are you like so totally present with your friends that you forget about what's going on around you? And then what do you find restful, restorative? Do you like reading? Do you like knitting? Do you not? Do you like to meditate? Do you like to just take long showers? Like, there's so many things that can sort of restore us that we don't pay attention to. So starting to pay attention to these sorts of prompts, um, can really help you to think about what you want to fill your newfound time with.

Yeah, I think, I think something that's really cool that you bring up a little bit later, and also just something I was thinking about, right, is transitions. Now I think, you know, it's, it's cool because, you know, when, when you're in that scrolling mood, right, or on your phone or, you know, whatever you want to call it, I think it's almost like this kind of latent situation of you're just sitting, you don't have much else to do, you just do it right now. You know, all these goals and these actions that you can take, obviously, you know, it's productive, it's great. And I think a lot of people when they look at their lives, they maybe wish they could do that or hope that they would. But a lot of times it just doesn't happen. Right. And I think this is where you introduce the concept of habit stacking, which I thought was really cool because, you know, like giving an example for my own life, right. Obviously I'll sit down and I'll scroll every now and then and it wastes a ton of time. Right. But another thing I really enjoy is basketball. Right. And you can wake me up in the middle of the night and I'll probably play a game. But realistically, like when I'm sitting down and I'm on Instagram or something and I have a couple minutes or whatnot, my first thought isn't to go play basketball, right?

Of course, 2 minutes isn't a big enough window. Yeah, exactly.

So, so I think those transitions are so important because of the fact that if you have, you know, sort of a habit stacking, you know, transition that you've built for yourself, it can help you go smoothly from this act of mindlessly scrolling to something else that may be more productive. Whereas, you know, if you gave someone a choice of, do you want to just scroll after you're done with your work? Or do you want to, you know, go do this productive thing, you know, obviously idealistically they may say one, but realistically they'd probably do another. Um, so I'd love to hear a little bit more about this act of habit stacking, how you've seen, you know, how it's been so effective, um, and how, you know, in practice it can actually happen so that when people are, you know, just see themselves wasting time or, you know, wasting away scrolling, how they can kind of transition to doing something more productive. Through habit stacking?

Yeah, so with habit stacking, you take something that you're already doing and then you add something new. So, you know, if there's something that you wanna do, like let's say you've decided you wanna journal at night, um, it's not— it's— it wouldn't be uncommon to keep forgetting to journal, right? Because you're just in the habit already of scrolling on your phone before bed. So one way that you could habit stack there is maybe you put your journal next to your toothbrush or on your pillow so that when you go brush your teeth, which is something that you do do every evening, or when you go to bed, which is something that you do do every evening, you see the journal and you're like, oh right, I'm supposed to do this. Um, so it's sort of a way to reduce friction to almost zero. Um, and then in terms of transitions, when you're transitioning from one thing to another, I definitely think that's a, a key scrolling time when people are waiting for coffee or getting on the elevator. And I think It's sort of a personal choice. Um, but for me personally, I try not to use that time to scroll because I think there is an opportunity cost to that. Um, and, um, Brendon Burchard, he wrote a book called High Performance Habits. And in that book, he talks about the importance of transitions. And he says that when he goes between different things in his life, anything, you know, getting on this podcast and then getting off this podcast, starting your meal, meeting a person. He takes time to first take deep breaths and release from where he just was. And then he visualizes how he wants to be going into the next thing. And I've tried this before and it can be really effective. You know, sometimes you just walk into a meeting or a conversation and you're like, oh wait, who am I talking to? What sort of energy do I want to bring here? But if you take a couple of seconds or even just a minute to, um, to think about how you want to be present in a moment. I find that to be really helpful. And then also just, again, I recently have just been loving having time for inner dialogue. So I think of these small moments as opportunities to think. I think so often we don't give ourselves any time to think because we're cramming every little second with scrolling. And then all of a sudden we're like, oh my God, I'm so overwhelmed because I have all this stuff to do and I don't know when to do it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's because we've been filling these little gaps of time where we could have actually been sort of organically processing a lot of information in terms of what's going on in our own lives. So filling every moment with screen time is almost a way of avoiding your life, even though it might not feel that way. Um, and then all of a sudden you have a whole day to process because you haven't been processing anything that's been going on that day.

Yeah, I think both those points really resonate with me. I think the second one that you mentioned, right, about just taking a moment to think. I recently watched, I watched this Harvard Business Review video, right, on something called the default mode network, you know, and I'm sure a lot of people who are neuro majors or, you know, doctors or whatever can probably hear this and know what I'm talking about. But essentially this idea that, you know, all of the time now in our day we are constantly occupied, which means our brain doesn't actually get time to just think, right? Like, think the hard things. Think the things that you can't figure out in just 2 to 5 minutes. Oh, what am I going to eat for dinner today? Or, you know, who's going to pick the kids up? Or whatever, right? But really deep thoughts about, you know, a certain level of purpose or meaning, or, you know, why am I doing what I'm doing every day? And I think we get caught almost in this rat trap because of that. And I think the fact that you mentioned that you've really been enjoying having time to just think like that is a clear indicator that, you know, cutting this time out for us to actually activate our default mode network is so crucial to our being, you know, happy, satisfied, you know, I don't know, getting good sleep at night, whatever it may, you know, reflect back to. And I think that's so cool. And then, and then the first point you also made was really interesting, right? And taking a couple seconds before you actually hop on that, right? Just pausing for a moment. And I think this is a perfect segue into that last chapter. And, you know, here we'll kind of— I'll ask this question, we'll wrap it up. But I think here you really introduced the concept of slowing everything down right now. This is really simple. It's very easy for us to say, but I think it's really cool because so often, like, you know, we already talked about this, but we just open apps or we just, you know, start doing things without thinking about it. And I think More often than not, that's probably the biggest issue when it comes to scrolling or just mindlessly getting on your phone or whatever you're doing, right? And here you kind of talk about introducing friction on purpose, you know, taking a few extra steps that remind the brain to, you know, is this a choice I want to actually make? And I'd love to hear a little bit more, you know, as kind of a wrap up here about some creative speed bumps, you know, that you've seen people add to make scrolling scrolling less automatic and why that waiting 5 to 10 seconds actually, you know, does change that urge. You know, why does it make you not wanna scroll anymore or maybe think twice about that decision?

Yeah, so we basically want to increase latency, which is that time between the feeling of I wanna check my phone and actually checking your phone because that gives you time, as we were just talking about, to think, do I actually want to do this? And then you also want to decrease latency for things that you want to do. So, you know, Mel Robbins, her famous book, um, The 5 Second Rule. It's funny, I'm blanking on it. The 5 Second Rule. She says, you know, when you know you wanna do something, just count down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and do it. And that's a way of decreasing latency because you are not giving yourself time to think yourself, to talk yourself out of it. In terms of unwanted behaviors, you actually do want time to talk yourself out of it. So that's, that's kind of the, the, um, the foundation here in terms of how you create latency. Um, It really is kind of specific to you. A really easy and common one is just to put your phone in another room, because if you're comfortably sitting on the couch watching TV and you feel like picking up your phone, you probably are not going to want to get up from your comfortable spot on the couch and go get it, you know. So it can be something really simple and really physical, or you can do things like turn off your Your Face ID, um, is something that people like to do because then you actually have to put in the password. And while you're putting in the password, and you can make your password a really long one, you can ask yourself, is this something that I wanna do? The distraction blockers also, um, bump into that. Um, there's really just so many creative ways that I've seen people increase latency. Yeah. So you can find something that suits you. Think about when, when do you respond to the trigger really quickly? And then how can you eliminate that or, or, um, lengthen that amount of time?

Yeah, that's so cool. That's so cool. And you know, with that, we'll wrap up part 2 of how to stop scrolling. I think today was jam-packed, right? We talked about everything from reducing visual triggers, the notifications, to actually incorporating new habits so our time doesn't feel empty, right? And then we wrapped up with the importance of taking a moment of pausing, of stillness when it comes to our devices or when it comes to certain habits that almost just feel automatic to us. So next time we'll explore part 3, identity and attention, right? Where, you know, you talk a lot more about scrolling, not just as a habit, but almost as a mirror of who we are and what we value. And I think that's the time we'll have some, you know, maybe borderline difficult conversations about what this really reflects about our own habits, our own personality, and who we are. But, um, as for right now, Ruby, thank you once again for joining us today. This was fantastic.

Thanks so much for having me, and I'll see you next time.

Yes, absolutely. And a big thank you to our listeners. Always appreciate your support. We'll see you next time, and until then, keep on learning, keep on changing, and keep on growing.