Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
The Durable Dad podcast gives men the skills and tools they need to be rock solid for their family, their work and their community.
Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
060: Get Off Your Phone
Are you the master of your phone or vice versa?
It’s an incredible tool, but it distracts us from our kids and interrupts our productivity.
And it takes some vigilance to rise above the masses, rise above the marketing and media, so that our phones serve us rather than the other way around.
Today's episode of the Durable Dad podcast will help you to manage your urges around your phone.
You’ll learn to sit with that tension of hearing a text message come in without allowing it to pull you from your family.
And you’ll set a better example for your kids… because if they don’t already have a phone, they will…
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? Episode six zero. Durable Dad Podcast.
Speaker 1:Just kind of settling into my chair, settling into the mic to talk to you, and what I want to talk about is our relationship with our phone. Last week it came up a few times. I was talking to one guy and his son was in this school event and he was there and afterwards his son came up to him and was like, dad, you were on your phone half the time. His son watched him be head down in his phone while he was at this school event and, in the words of the guy I was talking to, he was like that stung and I know that stinging feeling when your kid calls you out on something that you're ashamed of. And later in the day another guy brought up his phone use and being on his phone too much and not being present with his family. So this is something I work on and I struggle with. So it's probably applicable to you and a lot of dads out there. These phones are amazing tools and they're a pain in the ass and they can suck us in. So my goal is to not be reactionary to my phone, to not reach for it when I'm bored and to use it as a tool for productivity, for connecting to other people and not for mindlessly scrolling. And the times that were really important to these guys or really important to me are the mornings and the evenings family time, wanting to be present there instead of checked out on the phone.
Speaker 1:So when I was talking to these guys, the first thing I noticed in both of them was the pressure they were putting on themselves. Like I need to figure this out. I have to be able to do it, and we do this with a lot of our goals, right, the have to, the need to. I did an episode on this how to motivate yourself. It's episode number six. When we should ourselves, when we say we have to, when we say we need to, it creates pressure and pressure weight is not a good motivator. We want to get to. I want to do this and to get there, what you want to do is dial in your why, and that's what we did in these sessions Like why do you want to change your phone habits. And for one of these guys, his son recently got a Nintendo Switch and he wanted to be a good role model how to model a healthy use of technology, and I think that's a big why for us as dads. We want to teach them good habits and our phone is such an awesome opportunity.
Speaker 1:Like the number one struggle with teens is their phone use and being on their phone too much, and it's tough to expect them to master their screen if we aren't doing it, if we aren't setting that example. If we can manage our screen time, it will impact how our kids relate to their screens. So that's one why that I think we all share. Another why is that?
Speaker 1:Both of the guys wanted to be more productive, and this totally lands with me. One of my first procrastinations when I'm working on a house project or I want to go work out is to go to my phone. If we can be better at managing our screen time, we'll be more productive. We'll be more creative. One of the guys says my phone just sucks my creativity. Yeah, those two whys. I want to, because I want to be a good example. I want to because I want to be more productive and healthy. It's going to be more motivating, it's going to feel true and it's going to feel more exciting.
Speaker 1:Now, your phone isn't all bad. It's not all nasty. It builds and maintains relationships. It's really easy to connect with friends and family. It's really easy to network for work. It also can be inspiring, it can be entertaining. There's funny shit out there.
Speaker 1:My energy and the goal here is that we're becoming aware of how tech serves us and how we can use it as a tool and not let it control us, not become a slave to whatever the corporations and the apps are pushing to us. So for me, I started with taking inventory of just all the apps I used, and mainly these were the ones that I communicate through, because that's the big thing that I get stuck at communicating to family, friends, colleagues, clients, like all these different people and looking at messages, slack, group me email, probably more. And who do I communicate with in each of these apps? And then, which ones do I want to prioritize? Like part of me wishes, I could prioritize them all and I could get back to all of them right away, but that's getting in the way of my goal to be a good model for my kids, to be more productive.
Speaker 1:Group text chain and talking about frozen pizza and sending pictures of the best frozen pizzas they've cooked because I do have a text chain called Pizza Party with some buddies. That's not something I want to prioritize, even though it's hilarious and I get a kick out of it. That's one that I can wait and check before I go to bed or before I dive into work for the day, and that's kind of the next thing that I did. I dialed in when I don't want to be on my phone and when I want to hop on these other channels to communicate with everybody. So at five o'clock I'm done with my phone until 8 pm when the girls go to bed, and 8 pm is not when the girls go to bed. Bedtime at our house is a beautiful chaos, but that's what we want to get clear on. We want to get clear on when you're doing what.
Speaker 1:Because if it's six o'clock and I'm coloring with my daughter, I might get the urge to check my phone, and an urge is kind of like an itch. If you think about an itch on your arm, there's an urge there to scratch that itch and usually we can just scratch our itch and that's fine. But what we're trying to do here with our phone is have the urge to check our phone and not scratch the itch, and this is sort of a meditation. It's being aware of your brain really wanting something and not mindlessly following our brain. When you want to go check your phone, your brain's going to be like check your phone, check your phone. It's just going to be for a second. I just need to check that one message. I just need to check the weather weather and then I'll be done. It's going to feel very urgent and being able to allow that urge to be there and not respond is a pretty badass skill.
Speaker 1:When Brendan and I were talking about this podcast, she gets so excited about this skill that she's like this is the skill of the century that will empower everybody. And I get behind that Like I believe it's true too, and one of the guys when we were coaching on this, he was like I just feel kind of sad that I have to do this, that I have to put so much time into planning how I'm going to use my phone, and I get it Like it's tough to swallow that our human programming, how our brain works, has been taken advantage of that. All these companies know how we operate internally so well that they're able to capitalize on it, and you don't want to let that happen, right? It's the people that let social media that let mass marketing influence them, that let social media that let mass marketing influence them. And I'm not above this. But I also really want to be aware of where I'm putting my attention and where I'm putting my time and energy and to not just follow the masses. You have to be really vigilant, especially about phone use. So it might seem like a lot of effort to plan and put in and learn how to manage your urges around your phone usage, but you do it and the payoff is huge.
Speaker 1:Being able to manage these urges wanting to check our phone, wanting to scratch that itch and not doing it, not answering that and putting our attention to what our priority is is the biggest part of having a different relationship with our phone, and there's a lot of things that you can do to set up your environment. One of our friends is thinking about getting a house phone. I want to prioritize when Brenda calls, but when I put my phone upstairs in a drawer, I miss her calls a lot. I think a house phone is a pretty cool way to set up your environment, and now it's something that we're thinking about too. One guy sets out a notepad for reminders because a lot of the times he'll go to his phone whenever he thinks of something he has to do the next day. I kind of do the same thing with the whiteboard that's on our fridge and get an alarm clock. Don't use your phone as an alarm clock. Put your phone somewhere else, so when you wake up in the morning it's not the first thing that you look at.
Speaker 1:So the biggest thing is managing the urges, because you can set up your environment all you want, but you're going to have the urge to check your phone and start to breathe into those urges, acknowledge them and then maybe do something else. Like one of the guys, he's going to do five pushups every time he feels the urge to go on his phone. Right, it aligns with the getting healthier. It keeps him aware that he's not checking his phone. All right, that's what I got for you guys today. When we change the relationship with our phone, we're going to get to reap the benefits of this domino effect on our relationships, on our health, on our productivity. We knock out this bad habit and good habits will come from it. So you're not alone in the phone struggle. There's good things about it and there's also things we want to change and hopefully this podcast gives you some tips, gives you some direction on how to change your relationship with your phone. That's what I got. Hope you guys have an awesome week and I'll catch you next time.
