Transcript…

In this episode, you will learn:

Social media sets off a chemical in our bodies called Dopamine, a short term “feel good” feeling due to those “Likes” and “Loves” we receive on our posts.
About 99% of the news we listen to or read we cannot control. So by listening to and/or reading the news, especially in massive quantities, it can bring us anxiety due to the negative nature of most of it and knowing the fact that we cannot control it.
You can already save yourself some time and get less sucked in by your phone by following these next couple tips:

Scheduled Summaries

On iOS, go into notifications and then search for scheduled summaries to set a schedule for what time and how often you’d like to receive texts and/or app notifications

Disable the Raise to wake for iOS, Always on Display for Android
Disable notifications for each app: Go to settings and then notifications, go down the list of each app, and then decide if you want the notifications enabled or not.

Episode 37: The 4 Day Workweek

Katie Wrigley 0:03

Welcome back to the Pain Changer Podcast. This is episode 37. Does technology thrill you or stress you out? Do you love it or hate it? Regardless of your stance on tech, it is actually stressing you out and hurting your mental state, your relationships and even your productivity at work. The expert joining us today is going to talk to you about exactly that. There is good news, of course, in what he has to share with you. He can also tell you how to turn your five day workweek into a four day workweek and not hurt your productivity or your profits while you also lower your stress. Personally, I have been so excited to do this episode ever since he approached me to be a guest on my show. This is coming right up so please stay with me. Founder Rob Krecak is a thrill seeker, self professed nerd, question asker, voracious reader, competitor keynote speaker, and Business Builder. When he got his first Wall Street job as a sell side equity analyst out of college, he thought he’d made it. After buying everything he wanted on his wish list. He realized he still wasn’t happy. He listened to his deep down desire to help more people by leaving finance to eventually own three Anytime Fitness health clubs, four UbreakIfix cell phone repair centers, and a tech startup. As someone vulnerable to technology’s addictive hold from a young age, video games and Facebook in particular, Rob is on a mission to help individuals and companies reduce stress and get back time to master their careers and lives. He founded Humans First to provide a one of a kind consulting experience that analyzes people’s efficiency and energy by paying attention to their technology, mindfulness. Rob thinks there’s always something to be learned from everyone. And he lets his curiosity guide his conversations. In his spare time, he likes to do CrossFit better himself through reading, travel, and spend time with his wife Nikki. That is an amazing background. Welcome to the Pain Changer Podcast, Rob. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Rob Krecak 2:21

Yeah, well, thank you, Katie, for having me. Really appreciate it and appreciate the opportunity. I’m grateful to chat with you and the listeners today.

Katie Wrigley 2:28

Awesome. And I can say that actually, as Rob and I were chatting before we started to hit record, he is a natural question seeker. And he comes up with really great questions. I can already validate what he said his bio is so far true from the little bit that I have seen of him so far. And I love his website. And let’s go ahead and dive in. So you gave us a little bit of your background. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you got into this work to help people figure out what tech is actually doing to them?

Rob Krecak 3:00

Yeah, so I kind of describe myself as having career ADD. And you know, as you as you read in my bio, I had a career in finance, doing sales, equity analysis, I research medical device and pharmaceutical companies. I also own the three health clubs, and then four cell phone repair stores. And so if you look at my different careers, I had a finance career, I had a health and fitness career, and then a technology career. And you know, none of those are really related whatsoever. But why I’m really excited about Humans First and sharing this information with people is that I’m actually taking all three of those careers and smashing them into one to be able to help people and companies. And I can tell a quick story about myself. And you know, how I started to get I guess, interested in this that might be helpful to listeners. So when I was in high school, I had very, very bad acne and it was a very difficult time for me. And, you know, my acne was so bad that I had to take the most strong medication on the market, which is Accutane. I had to take it twice in order to get rid of it. And so my entire high school career, it was very difficult because I had low self esteem and self worth. And I didn’t want people to look at me in the face. And I was just very embarrassed. And one of the kind of inadvertent consequences of that was that I became addicted to video games. But this was in the mid 90s before most people even had a cell phone or there were internet connected computers at home. Most people didn’t have that. And so I kind of say that I was addicted to technology before it was cool to be addicted to technology. But, you know, that showed me pretty early on in my life before most people were using technology, how technology can be a negative influence on life. It’s not all good. Right? And so and then at other points in my life, I was also addicted to Facebook and addicted to email. And so you know, my goal with Humans First is to educate people and bring awareness about some of the ways that they might be using technology that doesn’t serve them well, so that they can avoid going through what I went through, you know, several times in my life.

Katie Wrigley 5:12

That’s such a beautiful mission. And what a great place to get started from is to change something from your own experience. And you said something there that I want to go back to, because I think this is something that a lot of people have felt, is that you had felt self conscious as a teen because you were self conscious of the acne on your face. So face to face contact wasn’t appealing to you. That is one of the things that people tend to get from technology is it’s safer. And for those introverts, who really struggle to be in front of people, and I know them, they’re some of the most amazingly brilliant people I know, but having a face to face conversation with someone is exhausting for them.

Rob Krecak 5:55

Mhmm. Yeah, so technology can certainly enable, you know, more introverted people to become more comfortable in a conversation, I absolutely believe that. But what I also think is happening is, you know, we are replacing much more in person communication with much more digital communication. And there are certain implications, there are physiological and neurological implications of that, that people don’t even realize. So here, let me just give you an example. So let’s say that we were talking in person, Katie, and Igave you a hug, right? So when I give you a hug, there’s two main chemicals that are released in your body, there’s serotonin, and oxytocin. These are chemicals that make you feel loved and cared for and supported. And they’re released in the greatest quantity, when humans have warm human touch with other humans. Well, as we go toward more digital communication, like email, or texting, or whatever, even phone calls, less oxytocin and serotonin are released when we communicate. And you know, when some types of communication there can be virtually none released. And so, as we go away from in person communication, the amount of serotonin and oxytocin released gets lower and lower. And then we feel less supported and loved and cared for. And this, I believe, is the root cause of why we have a loneliness epidemic today, think about it, how could the world be… so we’re more connected than we’ve ever been in the history of humanity, yet we have more loneliness than ever. I believe it’s because of what I just described. And so part of what I’m trying to do with Humans First is to get people to, you know, think about how they’re using technology, and maybe use it a little bit differently so that they could spend more time in person with the people that they care about most.

Katie Wrigley 7:48

I love that. And I think you just touched on this as well. But I think I remember hearing at one point like Facebook, in particular, when someone likes or loves something of yours that sets off and oxytocin response, right.

Rob Krecak 8:02

Yeah, so with Facebook, and all those things, it’s generally a different chemical, it’s dopamine. And Dopamine is basically like a short term reward chemical that we use to seek out more advantageous behaviors or opportunities. Right. So for instance, when 50,000 years ago, when we were cavemen and cave woman, one of the main things, and it does a lot of things, just to be clear, it’s not just this, but one of the main things it does is it entices us to hunt and gather, hunt animals and gather food, right? Because we need that to survive. So this dopamine response is a very hardwired, innate, very primitive biological thing that all of us have, because it’s required for survival, or was 50,000 years ago. But in today’s world, we don’t, you know, the vast majority of people don’t need to hunt for food, or, you know, we’re not worried about food. But we still have this response. And almost all tech products, technology products are engineered to essentially exploit this dopamine response and make us addicted to things. And so, you know, whether you realize it or not, you’re very hardwired innate biology is being exploited by a lot of these tech companies. And you know, so again, I want to generate some awareness of that so that you can decide if, you know, you want to behave differently or not. And one other thing, I guess, that I just want to make clear, before we continue the conversation is, you know, I’m a nerd, like you said in my bio, like, I love technology, it does amazing things that really can make humanity better. But the way I describe my stance is I’m not anti technology, I’m pro humanity.

Katie Wrigley 9:38

I love that pro humanity, the focus on the outcome we want, right instead of the focus on what we don’t want. And so you’d said that it’s designed that way, the technology, and did you ever watch the Social Dilemma on Netflix?

Rob Krecak 9:57

So when I watched that I was so like, ecstatic isn’t even the best word. I was like, so just blown away. I was jumping up and down on the couch and my wife was like, “Rob, you need to settle down.” But I’m like, “Oh my God, I’ve been saying this for years!” And finally, someone actually believes that this is true, or like someone else gets it right. And that documentary ended up being the most successful Netflix documentary to date, and over 100 million people have seen it. I truly believe that that movie actually started a shift in society in terms of people being aware, more much more aware of technology’s impact on humanity.

Katie Wrigley 10:44

And what an amazing outcome from that documentary to be able to start to shift. There were there three things that they said that stuck out in particular, I’m curious what you think about these. The first one was that the people who write the persuasive software despite knowing that they’re writing it in a way that it’s exploiting our vulnerabilities as human beings, they fall into it, too. That was the first thing that blew my mind. That speaks to the level of addiction that’s like the cigarette manufacturer, smoking the cigarette themselves, when they know all the stuff they put in there, it is not logical, which anytime you lose logic, at that level, you are talking about addiction. It is the most irrational thing we ever do. That’s what makes it addiction. Then the next thing that really blew my mind on that one was the timing of it, and how they alluded to the fact that tech was really starting to get under fire the edge of 2019, which was right before this massive, whatever you want to call it that’s been prevalent in our universe for the last almost three years now, took off and wow, what a distraction from tech to start to focus on this giant pandemic that’s going all over the world. And then total honesty, I’m forgetting my third point, but I’m curious what you thought about those pieces, in particular, the timing of it, and more specifically, people who write the persuasive software being victim to their own code.

Rob Krecak 12:20

Oh, yeah. So I try to speak about this topic and not sound too negative. Because it’s very easy for me to sound very negative on it. But here’s the way that I view a lot of technologies, and social media is included in this right? I think that technology as a whole and social media is a tool, right? And just like any tool can be used for good things, it can also be used for bad. And so it’s not the tool itself. That’s bad. It’s how you use it. But What’s unfair, almost unfair, in my opinion, is that most of 99% of people don’t realize that the way they’re using social media as a tool is harming them. Right. And so for instance, I wrote a blog post about this, and it was my own research. It was my own thoughts. And the blog post of the title is “Eight reasons why social media is the secret of the 21st century”. And, and again, like I get, and I do believe that social media can be used for positive things like to promote your business and to connect with friends and family. But the vast majority of people are not using it only for that they’re using it in ways that are not helpful to them. And the reason why they’re doing that is this. So let’s just take Facebook as an example. Facebook has about well, at any given time, roughly 80,000 employees, right, so 10s and 10s of 1000s of employees. And basically Mark Zuckerberg has incentivized virtually all those people to do one thing, the number one goal of all those employees is to get you to spend as much time as possible on Facebook. So you have 80,000 people trying to get you to be addicted to this platform. Plus, they’re using supercomputers to do that, right. They’re literally using more computing power than you know, the human race has many times over. And so how is it possible that the average small human brain can resist the efforts of 80,000 people plus supercomputers to make something addictive? The answer is you can’t. And so, you know, I don’t think that people are thinking about that, that platform in that way. Right? And, and so it’s sort of like saying to someone who’s addicted to cocaine, “Hey, I’m going to follow you around with this unlimited bag of cocaine and give it to you every five seconds. And every single time you have to turn it down. And I’m just going to do this forever and have this and have this available to you.” Is that person going to be able to resist? You eventually know they’re gonna give in right? And so I think some version of that kind of happens with social media because it’s always available. It’s super convenient. It’s free. It’s really not free, but that you’re paying with your time and attention when you’re on it.

Katie Wrigley 15:04

Yeah, nothing is free. And I like how there’s another coach out there and a space and forgetting who it was. But they were saying, you know, “If I don’t pay for it, I’m the product”.

Rob Krecak 15:15

Yes, exactly. I was just gonna say that, yep!

Katie Wrigley 15:18

And when you think about that, like, Wait, you’re the product. Okay then I’m getting sold to someone somewhere. How is that happening?

Rob Krecak 15:26

Yeah, human time and attention is now the most valuable commodity on Earth. It’s more valuable than oil. Human time, and attention is the most valuable commodity.

Katie Wrigley 15:35

Wow. And because of this, our attention span has gone down to seven seconds, which is less than a goldfish.

Rob Krecak 15:43

Yes, exactly. You know, because I talked to so many people about this, I was in line waiting at a concert the other day, and I was talking to, you know, I think they’re, like 20 or 21 years old, and they were in college. And one of them said, “You know what, if there’s a video longer than about 60 seconds, I can’t even watch it anymore”. And I was like, “What?”. I mean, that’s kind of what we’re coming to as a society is we can’t pay attention for more than 60 seconds. I mean, that is, you know, to me a little alarming, I guess. But you know, that’s why I’m here to help people bring awareness to this kind of stuff.

Katie Wrigley 16:18

And that’s, yeah, that’s scary. And thinking that we have a shorter attention span than a goldfish now, like, “Really, we can do better than that as a species”, we really can. And the way that we’re capturing each other’s attention and getting further polarized with all this too, it’s forcing us to go to these devices more, because we don’t want to talk to the people we used to love because now we’ve been programmed against them.

Rob Krecak 16:50

Well, and I’m happy to actually share a little bit more about that, if you think it would be helpful, because I can explain why that’s happening. Yes. So basically, with all media companies, right, so social media included, but also like traditional news companies in it. And again, like this is, this is a political party agnostic. It doesn’t matter what political party you’re affiliated with. This is true for either side, right? The way that the so here is the business model for media companies. Humans have a very, we have what’s called a negativity bias, we pay especially close attention to negative information, because it’s a survival mechanism. So 50,000 years ago, when we were cavemen and cavewoman, we needed to pay attention to negative information, because that would keep us alive. So for instance, I would be listening and hear another tribe next to us say, oh, there’s a saber-toothed Tiger that’s going to attack our tribe. If I pay attention to that information and hear that I can prepare for the saber-toothed tiger to attack and I have a greater chance of being alive, which is, you know, we need that. So these news companies know that we pay more attention to negative headlines and news than positive. And so if you look at all the news, it’s very heavily negatively slanted, right. And the same thing is true for political news, right? The more that you can say something that angers you, the more you pay attention to it, and then the more time you spend on that platform. And so the more time you spend on a platform, the more money that the news companies make through advertising, and the more profit they make. And so the business model of all the media companies, including social media, is to essentially make you angry and outrageous and outraged and show you negative information. And exploit that vulnerability of yours so that they make more money.

Katie Wrigley 18:50

So that oh, man, as you’re saying that so many thoughts are going through my head. So we’re disconnecting from people that we used to entrust and have some sort of innate connection to, we’re getting more and more triggered by anger, and we have less focus. So any kind of important messaging to us, we are less likely to hear.

Rob Krecak 19:11

Right? Because you’re now just the average person just bombarded with a ton of negative news or negative headlines or negative anything, because that’s what makes those companies more money. And so then it becomes even more difficult to sift through all the negativity and find the true helpful or positive or useful information.

Katie Wrigley 19:32

Yep. And how do you differentiate fake news from real news because real news is just as triggering, as fake news. Real News looks just as crazy as fake news. So sometimes fake news actually looks more realistic than what’s going on in the world. Like, there were actually sharks in volcanoes a couple years ago, that was a thing like how?? Like, I still don’t know if it was… I just decided I don’t care, but because I can’t differentiate fake and real news, so I just don’t watch the news because that was my answer. But that doesn’t work for everybody.

Rob Krecak 20:10

I love so Katie, that is actually the what I was gonna say is that’s the solution that I’ve settled on for myself, is I basically don’t go on social media and I don’t even watch the real like the actual other news and a lot of people like, “Well, how do you know what’s going on?” And my answer is, “I don’t, but guess what, I don’t really care”. Or I shouldn’t say I don’t care but if something is super important, right? Like, if it’s really going to affect me, guess what, some other human that I talked to is going to tell me about it. For instance, my wife told me about BLM. I didn’t even know it was going on until she talked to me about it. And you know, then I obviously became more educated. But like I don’t, I’m not saying that ignorance is totally bliss. But we don’t really need this massive quantity of news that we have. We don’t need it, you really don’t. But it’s easy for you to convince yourself that you need it, because then you’re justifying looking at it, but you really don’t need it. For the average person really doesn’t need it.

Katie Wrigley 21:13

And you get judged, because you’re not doing X people like “Don’t you know, what’s going on in the world?” And I’m like, No, I don’t, actually I’m blissfully ignorant and ignorance, I do actually think ignorance is bliss. That’s different than being an ostrich sticking my head in the sand. I know that there’s all this crazy, scary stuff going on in the world. I know that there are nukes pointed at us, I know that we’re pissing off people who have nukes in multiple countries. What does it give me to actively fear that every day nothing? Can I change their minds? Is there anything I can do in my tiny little world, at all? No.

Rob Krecak 21:50

And that’s that you know, to me, that is the number one thing that I think about is what can I control if I can control something that I think it’s worth knowing about and worrying about. But if I can’t directly control something, which 99% of the things that you read about in the news, you definitely can’t control. So what does that do? If you know about that stuff, but can’t control it? What does it do, it actually creates anxiety, it actually makes you more anxious by knowing about other stuff that you can’t control, you become overwhelmed. And what’s interesting is if you look at all this data, right? So there’s something called the world uncertainty index. And it’s basically a measure of how uncertain people view the world. And from like, 1970 to the year 2000, it was relatively stable, but from the year 2000, to the present, it has skyrocketed up. And what happened around the year 2000. Well, that was when most, you know, internet connection, internet connected, computers came online. And so what people don’t get is, yes, of course, there’s a ton of value in being connected and knowing things and being able to talk to people. But there is also a downside of this constant connection. And it is being more anxious, being more uncertain, feeling less secure about yourself in the world. And that is generally not a good thing for humanity. And people aren’t like internalizing though that this is happening. It is happening to them, they just don’t realize it.

Katie Wrigley 23:19

That was the third point. Thank you for bringing it up. That was the third point I want to bring is, they mentioned that persuasive software happens so slowly you don’t even notice it. That was the third thing from Social Dilemma that gave me the chills big time. Like, we aren’t noticing it like oh, man, because it happens so slowly.

Rob Krecak 23:40

Right? I mean, yeah, you know, think about it, you. You didn’t go from, you know, the average person in America uses their smartphone about four hours a day, you didn’t go from getting a smartphone, the first time you ever had one to four hours a day in like a couple of years. You know, you probably did that in a decade or so. At least if you’re an adult, maybe if you’re a kid, it’s a little bit different. But you know, and so like, to your point, I mean that that all happened over a pretty long period of time. And so over that decade, it’s not like you, you checked in and were like, “oh, like I’ve been using it 15 minutes more than last year. That’s weird.” But most people don’t notice that small of a difference.

Katie Wrigley 24:18

Right? Yeah. And that creeps up on you. And you have four years of 15 more minutes. Guess what? That’s another hour of your day, every day, when you’re already wondering how am I so crunched for time? Okay, well, how much time are you spending on your phone and of that time on your phone, how much of it is productive versus not productive?

Rob Krecak 24:41

Yeah, well, that’s one of the things that I want to bring awareness to people of is this is a statistic from before COVID. So you can’t say like, “Oh, COVID affected this”, right? So in America, the average person spends 12 hours and 21 minutes a day in front of screens and media. In other words, that’s three quarters of our waking lives in front of screens and media. And that statistic is up 11% compared to two years ago, right? So what that’s only increasing actually. And so you know, if we look at how we spend our time, then unfortunately, humans aren’t first in our world anymore. Technology is. And so that’s why the name of my company is Humans First is it’s a reminder to, you know, that the most love and joy and meaning and happiness in our lives comes from being with and connecting with other people, not technology.

Katie Wrigley 25:33

And so is part of the problem, and I really want to dive deeper into how this is affecting us, but I’m curious is part of the problem that we are hardwired for this connection, and it’s not connection, like, you and I are having this chat on video. Awesome. You know, even though the video doesn’t get aired, it’s just audio for the podcast, you know, this is a way to connect, but it does not substitute a hug. It doesn’t substitute sitting next to someone and having a real conversation, being able to hear an opposing viewpoint and still love that person. Like we have lost that ability just so much. And I’m curious how much danger is putting us in? Now we’re looking to social media for that validation crack pipe, as one of my coaches likes to say, the validation crack pipe, the dopamine hit of those loves, those likes, to get those happy hormones going in the head because we’re not getting them from in person contact anymore.

Rob Krecak 26:31

Yeah, so I read an entire book on how humans transfer emotion from one person to another, right? And so here’s what’s interesting to think about, you know, humans are the product of millions of years of evolution, we’ve only had language for 40,000 years. So as a percentage of how long humans have been on Earth, like, it’s a couple percent of our existence that we’ve actually had language. The vast majority of the time, we communicated non verbally, we communicated through body language and through visual, you know, through seeing each other, right. And so the main way that we transfer emotion from one person to another is our face, and specifically this area around the eyes, right. And so, it’s interesting that even when we are on a computer screen, and we’re on zoom right now, and we can see each other, the way that my brain interprets your facial movements on a flat screen is not the same as if we were in person. It’s not, it’s not a substitute. Because it is a flat screen. But the other thing is, there’s actually a slight delay as well, right? Even a 20 millisecond delay from you saying something and me interpreting it is very different than in person. And so this delay plus the fact that it’s 2D instead of 3D, really, it doesn’t allow us to transfer emotion in the same way, and it’s not the same as in person. And so, I know it just nerded out a little bit about that, but imagine then, how differently we are reading information from each other today? You know, because first of all, most people aren’t even using zoom, right? They’re using a phone call or text. And what’s interesting is, this is, you know, the reason that so many people are saying really negative things to other people online is if you think about it, there’s no empathy online. If I go on your Facebook status update, and I leave a negative comment. What happens Katie is I don’t ever see the look on your face. When you read my negative comment and you look pained or you look sad, or you look angry. I don’t ever see that. But if I was in person, I absolutely would see that. And so the rule that I’ve kind of come up with for myself is I would not write something online regardless of where it is. If I wouldn’t say that same thing to the person’s face. And that way it really is like a good barometer or a litmus test for me to determine if I should really write it or not.

Katie Wrigley 29:11

That’s a great barometer to use too and I do the same. And a lot of times especially if I’m heated up and I need to respond to someone I will sleep on it. And if I still feel that mad the next day I’m like, “Okay maybe I need to sleep on it again”. Because if I don’t want to talk to them in person, if I’m not willing to do it in person, I probably shouldn’t hit send. Or and definitely not on Facebook. Like if I have any anxiety or any kind of adrenaline unrest when I hit post, that’s something I probably shouldn’t be posting because that tells me I’m not comfortable with it. You know, and for my own rules for that, like I go on social media for the business side. I honestly don’t know if I wasn’t in this entrepreneurial space right now. Like I don’t know how much I would be on social media. Yeah, but I don’t spend very much time on it. And I’ve had people get like mad at me like, Well, did you see that on Facebook? Like I missed 99.9% of what’s on Facebook. So if you’re relying on me knowing what’s on your life because of Facebook, reach out, give me a call, because I’m probably gonna have no awareness of what’s going on in your world, not because I don’t love you. But because I do not want to lose hours of my life, I can never get back again. It is something that is not going to yield me the results I want in my life, I am on there enough to try to reach people to help them get positive messaging. And I’m out again. Yep. That’s what works for me. That’s only me, everybody has to find what works for them.

Rob Krecak 30:42

Yeah, I mean, that’s what I really encourage people to do in general is to be your own experiment, right? And try a bunch of different things and see, you do have to see what works for you. And, you know, that’s why I’m excited to share this information. With Humans First, over the last four years, I’ve run hundreds and hundreds of experiments on myself to figure out the best ways for me to use technology that really makes my life better, instead of making it more difficult. And, you know, like this information that I’m sharing with people is a result of those hundreds of experiments.

Katie Wrigley 31:13

And so you have gathered enough information, those four years, and that’s a lot of time to be able to learn something, especially when you’re you’re focused on the level that you have, Rob, I’m not even sure the way to ask those whether I want to say like, are we really losing that much of our day in technology that we could have a four day work week instead of a five day and you have done through all these hundreds of experiences? This is one of the outcomes you’ve given yourself if I’m understanding things correctly.

Rob Krecak 31:47

Oh, yeah. So I mean, let me just give you another quick example of a client of mine. And so she’s an individual. She’s running for Governor of Colorado. She’s super busy, right? And so she came to me, she’s like, “Hey, I’m having a really tough time. You know, my campaign is super crazy. I’m overwhelmed. I can’t do all this stuff”. And so she took my initial client survey, and then worked with me for three hours. And we did a ton of interventions, for sure. But we measured her screen time a week later. And what we found is that she saved over 40 hours per week of screen time.

Katie Wrigley 32:30

Holy…! What?!

Rob Krecak 32:31

A whole week’s worth of time every week. Yeah. So I’m very confident that if I can save someone, 40 hours of time, I can save the average person eight hours.

Katie Wrigley 32:35

Okay. I just want to make sure I heard that correctly. So you spent three hours with her. You taught her in the space of three hours enough that she saved an entire work week for herself every week.

Rob Krecak 32:45

Yes. Yeah.

Katie Wrigley 32:46

Wow. That’s really impressive.

Rob Krecak 32:53

Yeah. And that’s the thing is, you know, a lot of people are using technology in a way that they just, for instance, one of the things that she was doing, and she was spending 15 to 20 hours per week texting, on text messages, and I’m like, this is totally, I mean, obviously, she can do whatever she wants, but like, think about it, that’s literally about half a work week, right there just in text messages alone. And so and when I do see that that’s happening to the average person, right? What’s happening is, email is such a commodity, we’re getting so many of them. It’s just insane. So instead of doing things via email, like we used to, we’re now just saying, screw it. I’m so overwhelmed with email, I’m just gonna do that stuff over text. And I get that that’s why people are doing it. I understand that. But if you think about text messages, it’s way slower. Right? You have a smaller screen, not a full size keyboard, you’re usually typing with your fingers. And that is, you know, that’s probably not serving you. Well, if you’re really spending a ton of time texting every week.

Katie Wrigley 33:55

Yep. And so as you’re doing that, I whipped out my own screen time to be accountable. Okay, I’m not proud of it. I’m gonna say that right now. My daily average is four hours and 23 minutes of total screen time.

Rob Krecak 34:10

Yeah, that’s okay. I mean, that’s about average for someone in America.

Katie Wrigley 34:15

Yeah. But I’d like to think of myself as being above average. So what’s great is, though, on Facebook, the average is only two hours total. And seeing as this is one of the vehicles for business, the biggest thing is audible, which is actually a very healthy way for me to be using my phone. So I’m actually not on the phone at all. I’m just listening to it that actually has the highest usage of all my apps, and then texting much the point you just made. And that’s actually one of the ways that I am in touch with my clients is through texting. So that is actually part of the way I consciously use my work week and I do voice to text so that I’m slowing down. I’m not slowing myself down with the thumb typing, and I have a lot of it on my computer too. So I can actually type a regular text with a full keyboard. But that’s doing the work to follow the clients who have paid for me to have that time to text. So I say all that to say I’m okay with the text time. But I also catch myself going, “Oh, as much as I don’t want to text this person right now, this is not in alignment with what I need to do for myself”. That can bleed over into friendship text time, which is not moving the needle.

Rob Krecak 35:27

Yeah. And, you know, one thing that I’ve done for myself with texting and, and again, like, there’s all these trade offs, right, this might not be appropriate for everyone. But one of the things that I’ve done is, you can schedule summaries on iOS, where it will group all your texts, and you will receive them all at a certain timeframe. So for instance, for me, I. So if you go into notifications, and then scheduled summaries for text messages, you can set hey, I want text messages to come in at whatever time, right? So for instance, for me, it’s like 8am 11am 2pm 5pm 8pm. So basically about every three hours. And so then I am not nearly this, by the way, also substantially changed how much I use my phone, because what was happening before is I would just, you know, see the text come in, and then I’d be like, Oh, okay, I’ll just answer it now. And, you know, it really wasn’t serving me well. And so now that I get the text every three hours, I’m way less likely to, again, be sucked into my phone. And, and, you know, you could choose it every other hour or every hour for you, right, if you need it more frequently. But I do think it is really helpful to do that, or has been for me.

Katie Wrigley 36:45

That is! And you said that’s under what summaries? I’m going to put this in the show notes too. I don’t want to take up time talking about that but we’ll make sure we have the instructions in there after we wrap up if you don’t mind staying on after we finish the recording so I can capture that. Because I’m like I started to look and I’m like, no, no, I want to stay focused on what you’re saying. I don’t want to get locked into my device, even though I’m trying to let go of the device goes against what I’m trying to do. Yeah. So what are, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to share everything, because obviously you’re you know, you’re you’re running a business, you are keeping a roof over your head that doesn’t come free, you need to earn money as well. But what are a couple tricks, something that someone can start with today to start to help move into this time savings?

Rob Krecak 37:31

Yeah, so I’ll give you one. Well, first of all, I do think that text message, the scheduled summary for text messages was a really big help for me. Another thing that you can do, and this will take 15 seconds, right is this. So in iOS, there’s a setting called raise to wake. And there’s a similar one on Android as well. It’s named something slightly differently. But you go into settings, and then search for raise to wake on iOS. And by default, that setting is enabled. And when it’s enabled, what it does is when you physically move your phone, it will turn on a display. And so this does two things. One, it wastes battery life, but two when it turns on your display, well what happens, your eyes automatically go to the display. And then you know, look at the display like “Oh, who texted me, what notifications do I have?” and you know, it makes it way more likely to get sucked in your phone. And so when you disable raise to wake, then what it does is it doesn’t turn on the display, and you have to either double tap the screen or you hit the power button to turn on this display. So then you’re way less likely to get sucked into your phone when you move it. And so when I disabled that raise to wake feature, it saved me almost two hours per week of screen time, what’s like, that’s a lot of time for one setting, right? That’s just one setting to save almost two hours a week, at least for me. So I highly recommend that people disable that. And, you know, that’s something you can do in 10 seconds. And it really is helpful.

Katie Wrigley 39:08

I’m loving this return on time, you spend three hours with you and you could potentially get 40 hours back or at least almost triple it if you’re confident on eight hours for a three hour time commitment. That’s almost triple your investment right there.

Rob Krecak 39:23

Well, that’s every week, not just in one week. That’s every week, eight hours every week, right? You’re saving hours of time every week.

Katie Wrigley 39:31

So you’re saving almost triple the time spent with you every week. So you’re compounding that over and over again.

Rob Krecak 39:36

Yes, in one year, that’s 400 hours.

Katie Wrigley 39:39

Holy cow. So three hours for 400 hours. 15 seconds to get two hours back. A one time 15 second to get two hours back every week. Really think, real quick. What could you do? What would you want to do with an extra two hours in your week?

Rob Krecak 39:57

Me personally?

Katie Wrigley 39:58

Yeah and to someone listening, ask that for yourself too. I would stop my excuses for not exercising enough, I would meditate more, I would stop telling myself I don’t have enough time.

Rob Krecak 40:12

Spend time with your family or do some pick up a hobby that you want or what yeah, whatever. Exactly. exercise more, you know, accumulate that time and travel, right, like, Yeah, I mean, there’s so many things that you could be doing, instead of being on your device that would probably bring you more joy.

Katie Wrigley 40:29

Oh, absolutely. And I actually already have, just in full disclosure, time with my family every week is an important staple of mine. So that’s already part of my busy schedule. So I’m 20 minutes away from my parents. So going over there a minimum of once a week, aim for three or more, that’s already part of my norm. And I carve that into my schedule. Well it comes from, you know, their aging, like all of us. And you know, I was gone for 20 years. And so I’m just, it’s still wonderful that my parents are only 20 minutes away. And I think it’s always going to be wonderful that my parents are 20 minutes away, completely different from growing up in the same house. But it’s great to know them as humans and people now. So the raise on wake and then the also the, what is it called the send on summary or scheduled summary.

Rob Krecak 41:26

Scheduled summary, yeah, raise to wake and then disable raise to wake and then the scheduled summary. And it doesn’t by the way, you can do a scheduled summary for all your notifications for every single app, right, I just have it done for text messages, because that was something that very commonly, you know, that was very common notification. The other thing, by the way, and this will take a couple minutes, maybe five minutes, right? You can disable the vast majority of notifications on your phone just period so that you don’t even have to have them come in at all. And by doing so you do that by going into settings and then notifications. And then you just go down the list of each app. And then you decide if you want the notifications enabled or not. And for me personally, what I’ve decided is I’ve disabled every notification except for text messages, phone call, and voicemail. And then travel apps, just you know, so that I know my flights delayed, for instance, but everything else is disabled, yet on purpose. But what’s interesting is 85% of people listening to this have not disabled their notifications like that. Almost nine in 10 people.

Katie Wrigley 42:32

I believe that because I have noticed when I’m around someone who hasn’t disabled it, and the phone is going off all the time. I’m like, what, like, my parents have notifications on for everything. And so and I’ve got multiple devices, but they like but they ignore it. Like there’ll be in a conversation and the phone is ringing like crazy. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, make it stop. Make the phone quiet”. Because every time it does it, it breaks my concentration and like my dad will still be laser focused on me. I’m like, “I don’t even know how your brain can do that?”

Rob Krecak 43:05

Well, exactly. Even if it’s not, you know, distracting for them. It’s distracting for the people that they’re with. Right? Yeah, and all this other data shows that, for instance, when students who are in a lecture at a university are taking notes on their laptop, you know, like they’re typing notes, it’s actually distracting to all the people behind them. And so even if you’re not actively using the laptop of people in front of you are, you’re being distracted, and so that some universities who are privy to this information actually have created separate sections of students, one for the students who take notes with a notebook or excuse me, and then the other one who take notes with a laptop, and they separated them out. So there’s not distraction.

Katie Wrigley 43:47

That’s a great idea. Personally, I like to write them by hand. I may go back and put them on my laptop, but I learn it better when I write it versus typing it.

Rob Krecak 43:56

Absolutely. That’s why I keep all handwritten notes. And what the research shows is that you retain about a third more information when you handwrite stuff because it forces your brain to slow down and better encode the information.

Katie Wrigley 44:13

That makes sense. And I think I remember hearing that along the way. And I’ve adopted it to a point where now as an entrepreneur, I bought more notebooks than I think I have my entire life and I’m 48 next week.

Rob Krecak 44:26

Happy Birthday early.

Katie Wrigley 44:28

Thank you and the last two in the last two years than I have in the previous 46 before that, and I am using them more too like I actually went back to like some old notebooks from corporate because I got really nice ones as gift with like leather bound and everything and I’m like how many pages are still knows and like, I will have used like two or three pages of stuff from 2005, technology that doesn’t even exist anymore. I’m like, I’ll just rip those out and use this nice notebook now for humans. Much to the point of your company Humans First. Yeah, exactly. Oh, this has been awesome, Rob, I’m learning a ton. I’ve been taking notes with my notepad, just like you said. And I want to make sure we’re capturing some of this in the show notes as well. Is there? Is there anything else you want to share as far as helping people shift from the five day work week to the four day and on a deeper level understanding how technology is impacting you?

Rob Krecak 45:28

Yeah, I mean, what I would say is, what a lot of people don’t realize is that if you’re using your phone for something work related right now, like productivity related, generally, if you can do something on a computer, but you’re doing it on your phone, you’re spending twice as long as you need to. As an example, let’s say you’re using your phone, and you’re checking your email for 10 hours a week on your phone. Well, if you’re checking it for 10 hours a week on your phone, and you move all that email, checking to your desktop computer, you could save about five hours per week, by checking it on your desktop. And the reason is, on a desktop, you have a much bigger monitor, a much bigger screen size, and you have this physical keyboard. And so everything is way more productive on a computer, right on a desktop generally. And so the thing, though, that then people have to ask themselves is, when I’m using a phone, am I willing to take the trade off of convenience for portability, because what’s really happening is when you’re using your phone for all this work related stuff, you’re saying yourself, I know that this is less productive, but it’s more convenient and I’m willing to make that trade off. I think most people don’t realize that they’re making that trade off when they’re doing all this business related stuff from their phone. Because it generally takes them twice as long on a phone compared to a computer.

Katie Wrigley 46:50

And every entrepreneur I know is very aware of how every hour of the day matters. Thank you for sharing that stat. I’m like I’m going to be doing a lot more on my desktop now. If I’m going to ask myself like, is this going to take longer than a minute to respond? If yes, I’m going on my desktop? Thank you for that.

Rob Krecak 47:21

Yeah, absolutely.

Katie Wrigley 47:23

Where can people find you, Rob to schedule time with you? And can you explain a little bit how you work with people that one on one is a group? What are you offering out there for people to get help so that they can get more time back? Spend time doing the things that you actually want to do instead of wondering where the day went every day?

Rob Krecak 47:32

Yeah, for sure. Katie, so I do work with people on an individual basis with teams or groups and full companies. So any part, any number of people and people can take a look at my work, it’s at HumansFirst.us. And then one other thing that I wanted to offer the listeners of the podcast, Katie, is a free 30 minute technology mindfulness Zoom call with me. All people have to do to redeem that is just email me, my email address is rob@HumansFirst.us. And if you just mention this podcast in the subject line, I will be happy to set up a free 30 minute call with you. I can help you out.

Katie Wrigley 48:13

Wow, thank you, that is such a generous offer. I may even take you up on that as well. Even though I feel like I just kind of got a consult here. Like, deeper into it. I think I will. And I know some people I’m gonna refer to you too like, I think this is gonna blow your mind. Just see what happens.

Rob Krecak 48:29

Yeah, I’m happy to help you.

Katie Wrigley 48:33

Yes, please. And I will make sure that your email and your website are in the show notes as well. So is that also the call to action that you want everybody to take today is to reach out to schedule this complimentary call with you?

Rob Krecak 48:47

Yeah, absolutely. Do that. Or just check out my website. And you can take a look at you know, my work and kind of how, how things, you know what the process is like, and stuff like that. So yeah, I think either taking a look at the website, or scheduling a call with me is the best way to get in touch.

Katie Wrigley 49:04

Awesome. Absolutely. So for those of you listening, who are more introverted, go to the website, because the Zoom call may feel like a little bit too much. And I am not saying that with any teasing nature whatsoever. I identify as an introvert, there are plenty of people where I’m like, “Let me check out the site first before I talk”, and people are surprised like “you’re so talkative you are an introvert?”. Yeah. I’m a talkative introvert.

Rob Krecak 49:27

I’m surprised you say that too Katie. You seem extroverted to me.

Katie Wrigley 49:30

I’m actually on the ENFP on the Myers Briggs test. I am 50/50 down the line, even multiple layers from someone who actually has been trained to do the Myers Briggs assessment. There’s like four or five layers down they can go in at the end. He’s like, “I’ve never done this before, but you actually get to pick. You are 50/50 introvert, extrovert down the line on every level” and I’m like, I need my alone time though. That’s where I recharge my batteries the best And so that’s why I identify as an introvert. It’s a lot to say. But I am an introvert. Yeah, this is thank you again for joining today. This has been super informative. I’ve learned a ton. I learned more than I even thought I was going to learn. So thank you. I’m always excited when that happens, because I love knowing that I had no clue what I didn’t know. That’s just such a cool thing.

Rob Krecak 50:24

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s been my pleasure, Katie. I really enjoyed the conversation, grateful that I could, you know, chat with you and the listeners today.

Katie Wrigley 50:32

Yes, thank you. So reach out to Rob. He is at HumansFirst.us. And give us your email address one more time, Rob.

Rob Krecak 50:40

And my email address is rob@humansfirst.us.

Katie Wrigley 50:46

Beautiful, nice and easy to remember. Thank you again for joining me today. And thank you, too, my cherished listener as always for joining me as well. I appreciate you so much. I hope you’re going to come back and join me again next week when I do my first solo episode that I have done in a minute here. I have gotten so much out of these last few months. And I want to start to talk to you guys about things on a little deeper level. So as we mentioned earlier in this episode about judgment, we’re gonna take a deeper dive in that next week and understand how that is impacting your mental health and your physical body. Until then, please never forget that chronic doesn’t have to mean permanent