How Tech Is Ruining Your Happiness (And How to Fix It)

Jeremy Grater: ⁓ all right, here we go. ⁓ Welcome to Robots. This is the podcast that tries to help you be a better human by being smarter about the way you use technology. And as it turns out, using the technology may be one of the things that's hurting our ability to be happy and and to be a fully functioning member of society. It was in psychology today. I have not been happy lately. I've I've been struggling for, as it turns out, months. ⁓ in ways that I have not for a long time. And ⁓ ⁓ it turns out the a lot of the things that I'm doing are related to to to technology that are ⁓ causing that to continue. So ⁓ we'll dive into this, but ⁓ that's kind of where I'm coming from is that, you know, I'm I've been down, I've been struggling. ⁓ a lot of the things that I've been doing in recent years to take care of myself I have not been doing, and that is leading to more escapism, which largely turns out to be, you know, technology stuff, staring at screens, escaping the real world for the for the artificial one. And this article is reinforcing it. It turns out that I believe it is let me pull up the numbers here. The medic lance. Turns out that a study done in 2010 found that ⁓ people's minds wander away from the present moment nearly half of the time. They they did the study using an app, basically checking in with people multiple times a day to find out what are you doing right now, what are you thinking about, and how happy are you. And it turned out the more often that people were engaged in focusing on the present moment, the happier they were. And it's the it's the wandering mind and the comparison of where should I be? What would I rather be doing? All these things were leading to more unhappiness. And we're surrounded by devices and things that pull our attention away from the present, making us miserable. So

Jason Haworth: Not ⁓ and not only that, the beep boops make money by exploiting our unhappiness and our dissatisfaction. Like

Jeremy Grater: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not only an at an attention economy, but it's an attention mental health destroyer. Like it it and you know, I don't want to just blame the phone. There's plenty of terrible things to be upset about in the world, and most of them we're reading about on our phones. But it it's just so interesting because, you know, prior to this version of this show, when this was a a health and wellness show and we were talking primarily about things like this, like, you know, taking better care of yourself in general. So often it came back to mindfulness and meditation and all these things. And this in this article, these researchers weren't even trying to get to a point of like, hey, meditate. They were just trying to say, hey, pay attention to what you're doing right now, because odds are, right now, whatever you're doing, you're probably good. Like things are probably fine. You probably are in a home, in an office, in an air conditioned or heated place with food to eat, a bed to sleep in. Things are probably pretty good. And and in general, they also found that people that lived sort of simple lives, that ⁓ are are able to pay attention to the task at hand and and be present are actually happier than people living the wildly extravagant, constantly traveling, seeing all the things, ⁓ having the big moments, actually happier than those people. So while we're all sitting here feeling like shit about ourselves because we haven't been to the Bahamas this week, ⁓ it turns out if if we're able to pay attention to just, you know. Doing the laundry? Overall we're probably happier.

Jason Haworth: Yeah. Like the Buddhists might have this right. ⁓ the idea of mindfulness and actually paying attention and enjoying the task. Like, don't just blindly wash dishes. Actually pay attention to the washing of the dishes. Watch the cool part about water moving over a dish. Watch about how you make this thing sparkle and shine. You know. All these things to try to understand things and try to understand the beauty of the world. The problem that we run into is that ⁓ We set ourselves up with these artificial tool sets out there that go Bing to raise a dopamine fix, which breaks us out of our state of concentration. So, you know, I'm I'm sitting here talking to you with a mic in front of me and a camera, and four screen sorry, five screens. And actually seven screens, because I have two more that are closed and plugged into docking stations as laptops. So I mean, I surround myself. With things that will distract me from the and and they're all beep boop related, right? Like it's all like, Hey, look at me, look at what's going on. And I set shit up to tell me when things are going wrong, to alert me. Like I am part of the problem. I tell

Jeremy Grater: Yeah. I wanna know when I can stop paying attention to now and pay attention to then because then is way more interesting than now.

Jason Haworth: Well well, and I yeah, I mean, this is space balls, man. Like, when did we pass this? Just now. Like, I I feel like we put our lives on ludicrous speed and we're all kind of shocked when we go to plaid. And that that's the reality, is that like we have so many things around us trying to capture our attention and they are all tuned by psychologists, like people that are go to school and study and actually learn. how to get people to look at things. And eyeballs are how these companies make their monies and ⁓ are how they make their money. And ⁓ you know, you just need to assume that they're not afraid to kick you in the eyeballs.

Jeremy Grater: The thing that ⁓ that d strikes me about this, we we s half jokingly, I guess we're serious, but we often end shows where we're talking about the misery of the world and the distractions that are out there by saying go outside. And it's crazy how like it really is as simple as that. Like and you know, and and part of it too is we're often d escaping not from the doldrums of life and the laundry and the dishes and you know, driving to soccer practice and all the things. We're escaping from like childhood trauma shit that's not resolved and like this ⁓ these uncomfortable feelings that we live with. So sitting on the couch quietly for five two one minute without having to distract yourself with something else, all of a sudden this like eerie feeling starts to bubble up of like I'm I'm unhappy in this moment. I'm I'm uncomfortable in this moment. This is something's not right. And you know if you sit in it long enough, suddenly it's, you know, drunk dad yelling at you when you're five years old and it's ⁓ rearing, you know, roaring in your head out of nowhere because you never dealt with that shit. And so it's it it's no wonder that we're hungry for how do I escape this pain that I've never dealt with? Because we're we're wired to not want to experience pain. So now we have these amazing tools to go, ⁓ don't feel that

Jason Haworth: Yeah.

Jeremy Grater: Come over here and feel this instead. It'll feel really good for a minute. And then not.

Jason Haworth: Yeah. Those are called drugs. Like, the reason why a lot of us had alcoholic fathers and mothers was because they were using that to escape from their own shit. And we grew up as part of this whole Gen X thing where like it was fuck you, counterculture all the time. I'm not buying into this. And we've bought into it, like fully. Like we fucking elected Trump.

Jeremy Grater: Yeah, man. Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Jason Haworth: We've become the thing we said we weren't gonna be. ⁓ 'cause that's what happens over time. ⁓ maybe less so than others. But I look at my kids and the way that they handle these situations. They are so much more emotionally mature than I am. Like way more. As I'm sitting here stuffing peanuts into my mouth because I did not take the time to be mindful enough to eat something before I came on this show. Because I was too busy at the gym and before then I was too busy at work. Like, this is the thing. Like, I have I have seven email addresses. I have s eight email accounts or sorry, eight calendars that I look at every day. They're constantly shifting, they're constantly rotating. My entire life is wrapped around the beep boops most days.

Jeremy Grater: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason Haworth: Because that's how I have to organize things, because I have too many things going on at once. So I don't have time for mindfulness in the sense that I need to stop and focus on this thing because the thing is going beep, beep, you have to take care of this before the next beep, beep goes off. So I have turned my mindfulness or I I have turned my technology into forcing me to be mindfully present to do certain tasks. The problem is that It's massive overload. And it's not ever dealing with the real things that mindfulness is meant to actually help you deal with. And the point of mindfulness is that you're present in the moment completely. You're not present in the task. You're present completely. And this is the difference. Like you show up with a calendar invite, you're present in the task, you're focused on it, you're doing that thing. It's quite possible that you're doing a thing that is a distraction. From what your c subconscious probably wants to do.

Jeremy Grater: Sure, but I would argue that the the present is whatever that task is or or lack of task, right? Like at the point, and I I think what these researcher tr researchers are trying to get to, and I'm I'm even trying to like, you know, since reading this, think about my own life and the things that bother me, right? Like the tasks at work that I don't want to do, the disgustingly filthy house right now that I'm surrounded by and I've been putting off dealing with for days, right? Like all these things I don't want to do.

Jason Haworth: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Grater: And if I can just shift the perspective to what you're talking about. Like I get I I get to beautify my home. I get to make it sparkle and make it nice. And you know, the problem is I'll maybe approach the task with that mindset, but in the middle of it, I'll be going, Fucking kids, why can't they put their why is there a sock? What how how does that get the what's g right? And so it shifts from I get to I get this opportunity. This is so great. I I I get to take care of all these things that I that I I'm so lucky to have so many things to have to take care of to fuck what a pain in the ass. And I think part of that is the redundancy of it. Like we we get bored easily. So the fact that I've got to pick my kids' socks up again. Gotta make school lunches again. Gotta drive 40 minutes to the thing again. Like We we crave new and different and exciting. And so when our lives are redundant and and repetitive, it gets painful. And so our brain starts trying to find ways to deal with that pain and and thinking is a great stress relief. So we start thinking about how pissed off this makes us to get that stress out rather than just throwing the socks against the wall as hard as you possibly can. I've heard.

Jason Haworth: Yeah, I'm not I'm not sure that it's that thinking is a great stress reliever.

Jeremy Grater: I wouldn't say great, it just but it is. Like our body as as a stress response will think.

Jason Haworth: Yeah. So that that that's a reaction, right? So like we're reacting to something something by thinking 'cause we're gonna try to think our way out of a problem. And that's part of the human experience. But a big part of the stress in your life is from overthinking, rumination, running back to the past all the time, feeling like you're a piece of shit, being stuck in ch shame spirals, correlating and cross-correlating events that have happened to try to create a narrative that, you know, makes you feel a certain way. This is the human experience. And human experience, ⁓ once you've taken care of your basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, water, you know, companionship, becomes much more difficult to just sit in. Because yeah, it's boring. Like we seek novelty. We don't want routine. Routine makes us sleepy and we fall asleep and we forget about doing things because our systems are meant to look For predatory animals that might be running towards us, they're to hunt bears to spears or to, you know, go out there and find food that people can eat. Like, if we don't have that type of response, then our our lizard brains start looking for ways to to to put pressure in place to make that kind of response happen. And technology is a great example of that. And they're using it at scale. So I w when you're talking about, you know

Jeremy Grater: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Jason Haworth: Being present in the moment. Being present in the moment means being present fully in the moment, not just running through the process. So I mean, the Stoics go through and they break this down really, really well. So I mean, and you can read Ryan Holliday's books about the obstacle as the way and all those pieces. And they go, Here's these really hard things. And if you turn them into small discrete tasks that run through this and just focus on the one task, you'll get there, which is great for people that aren't good at being mindful.

Jeremy Grater: Right. ⁓ yeah. Yeah.

Jason Haworth: Because if you're not good at being mindful and staying present in that moment, you need to break those things down into a bunch of small little tiny tasks so you don't wind up spiraling out of control thinking about all the other shit that you have to do. Like, how many projects have you started halfway and gotten into it and been overwhelmed by all the other shit that's shown up as a result of the prod of the of the project? And you're just like, fuck this. And it gets abandoned or it gets back shelved and it takes like

Jeremy Grater: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Haworth: ten times as long as it should have because a bunch of other variables showed up and made it hard. I mean that's just I mean there's piles of stuff around the house around my house that fall into that category. I got a whole garage full of that, you know?

Jeremy Grater: I think every closet in my house falls into that category.

Jason Haworth: Right. And my my wife's mother's day gift to herself is that she has me and the kids clean the garage. Yeah. So I mean that that at least kinda helps get some of that stuff wrangled back up. But like I I recently just cleaned out my side of our shared closet and I threw away half of my stuff. And I still have too much stuff. I still have like a hundred pairs of shoes. Like who the fuck needs a hundred pairs of shoes? It's probably not a hundred pairs, it's probably like forty, but it's a lot of pairs of shoes. Yeah.

Jeremy Grater: That's the best. It's such a great idea. Yep. Wow. Wow! That's still wow.

Jason Haworth: Well, different exercise shoes, different kinds of dress shoes, different kinds of casual shoes, riding shoes. Like I have all these different shoes. They're doing all this different stuff. One would think I would do a lot of stuff, but most of what I do, you're looking at right now. I'm sitting at a desk, not doing shit with my actual body, just going clickity clickity clack clack. And that's not really, you know that's not really shoe activity. I should say that five pairs of those are slippers. Which those get worn a lot.

Jeremy Grater: Damn. Ha ha ha. ⁓ Mm-hmm. Wow. You have as many pairs of slippers as I have shoes.

Jason Haworth: I have I have five pairs of running shoes. I have four pairs of CrossFit shoes. I have to rotate stuff through. I might even have more than five pairs. Actually I take that back. I have cross trail running shoes also. I have three pairs of those. That's

Jeremy Grater: Good lord. That's a lot of stuff. Mm.

Jason Haworth: Yeah. Like footwear is important to me because I have delicate little tiny baby ankles that might break. This is one of those things. Like right now we are getting off topic and dropping into something else.

Jeremy Grater: Right. Well I was gonna say, if it brings you joy, if it makes you happy to have forty to fifty pairs of shoes, well then that's that's being in the moment, I guess. I don't know.

Jason Haworth: But does it bring me joy? I mean, is that is that the purpose of being in the moment? Is the purpose of being in the moment to bring you joy?

Jeremy Grater: I would not I would not say to bring you joy. I would say the purpose of being in the moment is to ⁓ bring ease or peace or something of that sort to your life. Because it because the moment right now, you and me doing this, or you listener listening to this next Thursday or whatever it is, this is all there is. Your your memories of the past are wrong. They're in they're artificial, like they they are not what actually happened. Your worries about the future are not what are going to happen. Your ideas about that trip or tomorrow at work or what you're gonna do this weekend, not gonna go that way. It's all fake. So you can live then or you can go back and live then. But what I think this study and and people who've been trying to you know push this idea for for thousands of years is that if you can live fully now, even in the I don't want to be doing this. I don't want to be doing these dishes again. I don't want to be throwing this sock in the laundry bin again. If you can just live in this moment, the pains become smaller, the frustrations become smaller, and the the ease with which you can move through life is supposed to get better. I think that's the what what they're trying to say is that like if you can really focus on what is actually happening right now, all of that other shit doesn't matter. And and it just takes up less space in your life.

Jason Haworth: Yeah, which means you have to learn how to compartmentalize, train, and redirect your brain when your old patterns start to loop back in. And that's

Jeremy Grater: And it's also going against that primitive brain that you're talking about that is designed and evolved for thousands of years from how do I avoid getting eaten by that tiger?

Jason Haworth: Or and how do I avoid pain again? So and that and that's a thing. Like, you know, if if somebody as a small child burns their hand on a stove, they might wind up being afraid of stoves for the rest of their life. So how do you get past that? How do you move on? Like you gotta eat still. Like what? Am I gonna microwave shit all the time and eat fresh food? Not really the American diet. ⁓ so you you have to figure out as an individual

Jeremy Grater: Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha.

Jason Haworth: How is it that I can ⁓ put my trauma responses, my fear, my anxiety, all those things into some kind of bucket and be able to kind of stay in the moment? And like I bought one of those ⁓ Muse brain reader things like when they first came out. And I I think I've still got it somewhere around here, but like the battery is dead on it, ⁓ which is a bummer because it's it's pretty fun. Like you put it on, you close your eyes.

Jeremy Grater: ⁓ yeah yeah yeah.

Jason Haworth: And they start playing these sounds. Like the one that I used to use all the time was being in a forest. And the more relaxed you were, the more the louder the birds would chirp. You hear more and more birds chirping when it would go through and it would actually see your your brain waves making alterations. So I could get to the point where I could sit there for 20 minutes and have the birds screaming and squawking at me the whole time and stay in that state. And I'd come out of it and be like, ⁓ I feel better. And then ten minutes later I'm back on my fucking computer screen, typing on shit. Like it I I we never give our nervous systems a chance to relax. We never give our trauma centers time to calm down. We we're constantly inundated with things and pressure and pushing things and they're all our o artificial. And we're all chasing something that We don't even know why we're fucking chasing it. I mean that that's the reality. I mean we're all we're all chasing things that have to do with money and positions and time and and and things that are are not not I mean, they're definitely real, but they're not they're not gonna make you happy. And yeah.

Jeremy Grater: That's literally the result of this study. I mean, they literally say the the primary source of your happiness is where your attention is. It's not money, it's not comfort, it's not the size of your house, it's not how many vacations you take a year, it's how often you're able to be here now. ⁓ they said ⁓ in the article ⁓ da da da da da da da the people who seem genuinely quiet, sorry, seem genuinely quietly I can't read the sentence.

Jason Haworth: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Grater: The people who seem genuinely quietly content aren't people with extraordinary lives. They're people with ordinary lives and an extraordinary capacity to be in them. And that is not chasing money and promotions and a bigger house and a better car. It is just paying attention to where you are right now more often. And and so that like they don't even are they're not even arguing for like build in a meditation practice by the muse thing. They're going like pick one thing every day. Like one moment every day. And just be in that moment, whatever it is. Like cup of coffee in the morning, book at night, writing in your journal, driving to work. What just be fully present in what you're doing one time every day to start. And then of course, if if you if you like it, do it more. But that's where you start. It's just trying to find that. Because I know in my in my experience, when I was first introduced to meditation by my Buddhist therapist, ⁓ I was resistant but did it 'cause he was a smart guy that knew a thing or two and had been through a similar things that I did. And man, the person I am today versus who I was prior to meeting him, I am a different person because of that experience, because of being able to slow things down and just focus on right now. He he made this great analogy about like a you know, a a glass of water with a bunch of stuff in it and like the more you're shaking it and moving it around, the harder it's gonna be to see through it. Set it down. Let all that shit settle and all of a sudden you can see very clearly right through it. That analogy was everything to me. I was like, that's my life. Like I'm constantly just this vine to this vine to this vine, trying to not get getting eaten by the alligators in the pit below. And the minute I stop swinging and realize like, ⁓ I don't I don't have to do that. I don't have to grab the next vine. Then I'm I'm better.

Jason Haworth: So yeah, so s so the shift you felt internally, right? Like you felt this. Did other people recognize it?

Jeremy Grater: ⁓ if you had stopped at ⁓ without saying right away, ⁓ I would say no. But I think I think over time, yes. I don't know that there was like an overnight shift. ⁓ but definitely people have said that that I they can see the difference in who I was from who I am now.

Jason Haworth: Yeah. So it takes time. It's slow. People have to seek people will see you differently over time if you have consistent pattern changes and you you look lighter and you feel more relaxed and more loose. Like these are all things that will happen eventually. But the problem is that we keep finding new ways to distract us and we keep finding new ways to chase things that we don't fucking need. And it doesn't help that we're surrounded by things

Jeremy Grater: Mm-hmm.

Jason Haworth: Going, look at me, see how terrible this is. Look at how awful this is. Hey. We're all gonna die painfully. Like that this is the shit that that gets me. Like

Jeremy Grater: Yeah.

Jason Haworth: I still look at the news every fucking day. Why? Why am I bothering to look at the news every day? Well, I probably should.

Jeremy Grater: Yeah, stop doing that. Stop doing that. H here's tomorrow's headlines. Bad shit everywhere. Okay, there, I just saved you the entire newspaper.

Jason Haworth: Yeah, exactly. You're fucked, you're all gonna die. You're all gonna die tomorrow, so just just be okay with it. Okay, fine, whatever. Like I'm already okay with it.

Jeremy Grater: Well that's mean, you know, ⁓ not not to zero in too deeply on that, but like I love Tim Ferris's take on that. Like, don't read the news, talk to people. Other let other people read the news and ask them what's going on in the world, what are you paying attention to? And they'll tell you, ⁓ y did you know we're at war? What? ⁓ my god, with who, Iran. What? Why? I don't know. Trump's an asshole. Like that's you you can sort of get the news that you're you're still getting it filtered through a reporter. Why not get it filtered through somebody you know, like and trust? Like you know. I I look, I worked on the news. There's th the whole thing is to try to get you upset and worried so that you'll come back tomorrow and make sure you're safe again from the tiger outside the cave. It it doesn't it doesn't help you. So just check in once a week. Ask your friends what's going on in the world. You don't have to pollute your head with that shit.

Jason Haworth: Of The problem if ask my friend what's going on in the world and I don't know, then they'll be like, really? I'm like, yeah, then I feel dumb. Then I feel like I have to go look it up. Ugh, nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to nobody wants me asking them questions.

Jeremy Grater: No, but then you just ask you just keep asking questions. No, are you kidding me? People love nothing more than being asked questions, especi especially about themselves. Like give someone else an opportunity to to like show off how much they know. People love that shit. And then they'll walk away feeling like, man, that was the best conversation I've had in a week.

Jason Haworth: I might have to give this a shot.

Jeremy Grater: You should give it a try. I'm tell the psychologists tell you this. People love talking about themselves and showing off how great they are. So the more you can just ask them, tell me more, genius, then they just go and they feel awesome.

Jason Haworth: Yeah, I can certainly say that I I do that in my work life quite often. Yeah, the personal life not so much. ⁓ Yeah. But there there's definitely something to this notion that if you just disconnect and put things down and step away, like you will probably be happier because you're not gonna create massive cortisol responses, you're not gonna create external stressors, and you're not gonna try to run after something when you're already tired and fatigued. And that's just energy conservation. I mean

Jeremy Grater: Yeah. I would I so I would say as someone who largely did that in a lot of ways. Like when I when I moved, I left a stressful news job and went to a quieter, slower lifestyle. Your brain still looks for like, ⁓ where how can I get that fixed? How can I feel that fear? How can I be prepared? How like you still but you have a little bit more control and you can make a make some more decisions about how do I want that introduced into my life? Like, do I have to watch the news every day? Not anymore. So that feels better. So now I can decide.

Jason Haworth: Sure. Yeah.

Jeremy Grater: Do I want to at dusk go walk where the cougar was seen yesterday? Yeah, why not? I want to see it. Right? Like, let's go where the bear was yesterday morning. Maybe he'll be out again. Right. I mean that's not a bad way to go. That's you know, that's that's just nature being nature. Is the the living after, yeah.

Jason Haworth: What's the worst what's the worst that can happen? ⁓ going going's not the worst part. The worst w the worst thing that can happen. The living after having your spinal cord separated where you get a l live out of a tube. That seems like the worst.

Jeremy Grater: Yeah, I mean I guess I wouldn't sign up for that. But if I were able to survive it and somehow be in the moment, supposedly I'd be happier.

Jason Haworth: I mean, I guess you'd have fewer distractions if you're a quadriplegic and that's true. I'm not signing up for that. Zero stars. Yeah. Yeah, but how does this all relate back to AI? So when when you look at it, we've got all these tools out there that are actually basically designed to go through and capitalize on these pieces. And some of the cool things that you can do with AI is like Jeremy said, use it.

Jeremy Grater: Yeah, I'd have less to do. No, no it's not for me.

Jason Haworth: To go through and be a smart aggregator of information. Don't look at the news all the time, have AI tell you once a week, okay, what's important, what's going on. Have it actually be that news filter. You can have AI go through and start filtering your email messages. Like if you've got Outlook copilots built in, and you can actually tell copilot, hey, tell me what's going on in my email, they're my inbox. It'll go through and start doing some of these smart things for you to make things more effective and more efficient so you can have time to focus on things and be more present in those other tasks. And this is the cool part about what the technology enables. What the technology enables is it gives you time back to do other things. What you do at that time is up to you. And most people use that time to look at shitty memes and and reels and and they they're

Jeremy Grater: And escape from now.

Jason Haworth: An escape, right, an escape, as opposed to actually trying to figure out a way to lock something into do something different.

Jeremy Grater: Yeah. That was w so when I when I read this an article initially, these these researchers ⁓ part of their study was they had ⁓ twenty two hundred and fifty people use an app that just asked them three tim you know, three questions a day. Again, ⁓ what are you doing? What are you thinking about? How happy are you? I want this app. And and if I if I can't find it, I wanna build it because the it ⁓ it does? Okay. So

Jason Haworth: Yeah. It's the it's the Live the The Live the Live app does this. The Live and app actually has you check in multiple times a day. And it's got three questions. ⁓ the three questions are what are your feelings? And you it's got like 50 different things you can choose from. ⁓ and then it says, ⁓ who are you with? And then it says where are you at? Or where you at or what are doing? and you rank it like I'm feeling ⁓ great, good, neutral, bad, terrible. And you choose your spot inside of it and then you start kind of understanding how you feel about yourself in relationship to those feelings. ⁓ and is it any good? I've been using it for like the last month and I don't know. I guess it's fine. ⁓ I think I paid a hundred bucks for the I think I paid a hundred bucks the life I think I paid a hundred bucks the lifetime membership and I'm using it and but I'm I'm seeing it. Like I'm I'm reading their little guides and all these pieces that go through and they're they're actually doing something interesting.

Jeremy Grater: A raving endorsement. Get get your live in now. Okay.

Jason Haworth: What it doesn't do is it doesn't give you like a full round set of feedback. It doesn't give you all the information that goes into these pieces and the trauma processing. Like there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into this these things. And the questions are really simple. And they need to be structured in a way like the way that you're talking about. What are you doing? Maybe the question should be what are you focusing on? Are you distracted? Like you could probably create a 15 to 20. question thing in it as opposed to like the three that are in this or four or whatever it is and probably get much better more granular information. So you can actually see your trends like and you have to do them as regular check-ins and you have to have schedule time to do them because time series data sets in order for you to make real changes. Fuck I'm building an app right now in my head.

Jeremy Grater: This is what I'm saying. We we need to build this app.

Jason Haworth: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ that was weird. The camera just died.

Jeremy Grater: Yeah, your camera cut out.

Jason Haworth: ⁓ Okay. Well maybe that's a good to stop.

Jeremy Grater: We can stop. But yeah, that that that was one of the things that I took away from this is that I I really want to build this app. I think something like this would be really helpful, especially if it's something that, you know, at the end of the week, at the end of the month. Sends you a little rundown of like, here's here's your trend. Here's what happened. Here were the high points. These were the things that were working well for you. These were the things that were dragging you down. So that you can then start to make those adjustments and go, well, if those are the things that are dragging me down, I want less of that in my life. How can I make that happen? Or the things that are great. I want more of that in my life. But we're all so goddamn busy. That you know, even even the task of writing a one-sentence journal every day is too much. But if if we're already living in a life of beep boop, must respond, well, why not this? Why not beep boop, how am I right now? And in a month, how was this month? Cool, let's make some changes and try to make it better. So you're a smart guy. ⁓ I sort of know how to use Claude. Maybe we can build something like this. We'll we'll put our heads together and see what we can come up with. But

Jason Haworth: Yeah. Ooh, a little vibe coding session.

Jeremy Grater: That's right. But ⁓ my god, it's been a long episode, so we're gonna stop talking. Eve and this is the thing, like I have fun doing this. I feel good when I'm doing this. I'm in this moment. That's why I enjoy doing this so much every week. ⁓ I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoy doing it. If you do think somebody else would be happier by listening to this episode, share it with them. There's links to do that at our website, brobots.me, and that's where you'll find us next Monday morning. Thanks so much for listening.

Jason Haworth: Thanks everyone, bye bye.