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Robert Plotkin, Mindfully Managing Technology (Pt. 2)
104 Plays4 years ago
As a computer scientist, MIT alumnus, and patent attorney specializing in computer technology, Robert Plotkin has been immersed in the tech landscape for decades.
He’s written seven books on the social impact of technology, co-founded the Hack Your Mind series at MIT, and trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. In 2015, he launched Technology for Mindfulness based on his unique O.R.D.E.R. methodology and his passion for helping people to break free of the grip of digital distraction.
Today, in addition to leading Technology for Mindfulness, he’s the creator of Tap Into Mindfulness, a course that teaches people to take control of their smartphone use, and a sought after speaker and expert on using technology mindfully.
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Transcript
Understanding Fear in Decision-Making
00:00:03
Speaker
The fear is real in the sense that you are actually experiencing it, but what it's trying to tell you may not be true. Those things about what's gonna happen to your finances or your marriage, they can feel like they're really true.
Mindfulness in Technology Use
00:00:21
Speaker
You know, back to the pause you've said, I'm quoting you, maybe not exactly, you can correct me, is that by building in a pause through mindfulness, you're helping yourself make wiser decisions, period. In particular, wiser decisions about whether, when, and how to use technology.
00:00:39
Speaker
Correct. Yes. So the pause way you can think about it, the pause doesn't guarantee that you'll make a wiser decision, but it at least creates an opportunity for you to make a wiser decision. Right. And not pausing means that you will act out of habit. That's right.
00:00:56
Speaker
No, sometimes a good habit can be good. And there's no one solution to this. Part of the solution is building up good habits through practice so that even when you don't have time to pause and you act so-called automatically, you're acting automatically out of habits that you've trained in your own best interest.
Building Habits to Control Smartphone Usage
00:01:15
Speaker
And let me go back to this exercise I did before. There's another version of it, which is actually, I think it was the first one I came up with for myself, which was I realized the earliest
00:01:26
Speaker
point at which I could start that loop of getting sucked down a rabbit hole with my smartphone was when I reach for the phone. So what I practiced was an exercise where I put the phone wherever it normally was. It was on a charger on my desk. And I practiced reaching for the phone and stopping right before I touch it and then pulling my hand back.
00:01:46
Speaker
And then do that like 20 times in a row. Reach, pause, pull my hand back. Reach, pause, pull my hand back, just like you're doing reps in a gym. And I think I found for myself that drilled in a habit of pausing before I grabbed the phone after I started reaching. And I found that if I then later in the day when I wasn't practicing mindfulness, I just caught up in the middle of my day, if I reflexively reached for my phone,
00:02:12
Speaker
I would be more likely to pause cuz i had actually drilled that in as a mental and physical habit that would kick in automatically and so you have to expect that you will often be acting automatically if you can train your automatic habits to be ones that are in your best interest you'll do better.
The Role of Accountability Partners
00:02:32
Speaker
When you do these exercises for yourself or help other lawyers, have you ever had an accountability partner? Someone who you would commit to and say, this is what I'm going to do differently, or maybe ask them to check in with you on how you're doing.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, I've done that with this and I mean, I use that in many different aspects of my life generally. I think it's extremely valuable. I think in our culture, unfortunately, we're such a rugged individualist culture and that's probably doubly so for lawyers that we somehow have this belief that we need to learn and improve ourselves somehow entirely on our own. And if we don't, there's something wrong with us. And for a problem like
Emotional Manipulation by Technology
00:03:14
Speaker
this,
00:03:14
Speaker
where the technological forces and the market forces are so strongly driving us to use the technology all the time, I think it's too much for any individual person to fight against that on their own. Well, yeah. I mean, and they're doing things to manipulate us, to get us hooked, to give us that surge of endorphins.
00:03:34
Speaker
I know for me, before I check my email, there's this sense of sometimes dread, but sometimes excitement like, oh, what new? Especially when I've got a program that I'm about to do and I'm looking to see how many folks have registered, got this excitement, I'm going to see how many more folks are coming. And that can be pretty seductive, right?
00:03:57
Speaker
Absolutely can be seductive and we've learned from social media is that sometimes even being drawn to and experiencing a negative emotion can be a draw and something that keeps us coming back just because it's something new and a new stimulus is exciting to our brain and that's particularly true if you're bored. Going and experiencing something strangely enough that creates fear might at least give your brain some novelty and a stimulus that's exciting in a way and keep you coming back.
00:04:27
Speaker
So, but I think going back to the accountability partners, I think it's whether it's that you find a friend or a family member who wants to work on the same types of habits that can be really good to say to them, Hey, I'm working on this. They say they are and you say, Look, it's tough with tech, right? I did this. I remember a couple years ago, I was trying to cut down on sugar. And I had a friend who was in the same boat. And we said, Okay, every time one of us is about to pick up a piece of chocolate or grab a cookie, I'm going to text you. It's like having a sponsor.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah. And what I found interestingly was 90% of the time I didn't even really need to text him. Just the thought of doing it was enough to cause me to pause and remember. And the same thing with him. But as long as it's, whether it's someone who's in the same boat as you, or they're just open to supporting you, it just had law. It has to be someone who's going to be nonjudgmentally supportive, not someone who's ever going to say or imply you're, you're being bad or you're a bad person. If you slip.
00:05:25
Speaker
But I think it's great. It could be a coach as well. It could actually hire a coach to help them with something like this if they think that that would be more helpful than to have someone they know.
Setting and Achieving Realistic Goals
00:05:35
Speaker
Yeah, it can absolutely be a coach. I mean, my business, I've had a business coach for many years and there's been times we haven't had to do it much in recent years, but there's been times when I've set some goal for myself related to the business and I keep slipping on it. And then either he or I will say, you know, do we need to do something more significant? Do I need to start checking in with him daily or more regularly? And every once in a while, I would say the nuclear option. Now you can set a reward, but we've set a penalty.
00:06:06
Speaker
You know, and I've always set the penalty and I forget who I first heard about doing this, but I didn't come up with this idea. The penalty would be if I failed to meet whatever standard we set, I was going to have to donate money to a charity I strongly dislike.
00:06:22
Speaker
And I'll say that I've never actually had to make that donation. But, you know, you can make it fun. It's a very personal, individualized thing, and accountability is so helpful. So, and it's important to put out there not to set unrealistic goals for yourself also. If you're starting something new to set goals that are achievable and to be tangible about those goals so you can easily measure them.
00:06:48
Speaker
For example, if the goal is not to have the phone in my room when I go to sleep, maybe do it two nights or three to start out and see how that goes. And if you have to tweak it, then you tweak it. But to not expect full on 100% success from day one.
00:07:04
Speaker
I often encourage people and I myself set at the very beginning of any new habit, almost absurdly small goals. You know, if I've been out of exercising for a while, it's like, okay, I'm going to exercise for three minutes on the first day. One, you're less likely to fail. Two, I've often found it's almost like a trick for my brain. If I set that three minutes, I'm probably going to end up exercising for 10 minutes. The problem is getting started. Absolutely.
00:07:34
Speaker
That is the key to procrastination is getting started. I've worked with many clients around procrastination and it's just doing the first thing. Like for me, it's doing my taxes. I'm old school so I still have receipts that I go through. We're taking the envelope with my receipts out and putting them on the table. That might be it for the day but it gets okay and I know how I am. Once I start something, I want to finish it. It gets me motivated to do that.
Managing Email Stress
00:08:03
Speaker
Robert, let me before, I know we only have a few minutes left and this has been great, talk a little bit about the taming your email inbox. There are a couple of things that you, in looking at your program, that jumped out at me, but why don't you just talk a little bit about it and then I'll point out a couple of things that I want to follow up on.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, there's way more that I can cover. So at the most important things, I'd say that at the highest level is that it is so easy to let your inbox be your boss basically. And so that you're spending your day reactively responding to whatever is coming into your inbox.
00:08:42
Speaker
And that is really the reverse of, for the most part, what is the most productive way to be. It's letting the tail wag the dog. You know, the inbox is driving you dictating what you do and when. I hate to use should, the word should.
00:08:59
Speaker
And most people, and I find that when I am directing my own time as much as possible and using email within tasks that I'm directing myself in, that's a much more stressful, much more productive, satisfying way to spend my day. It's not easy because path of least resistance with email, the way the software is set up, the way it works,
00:09:23
Speaker
is to just let the new messages that come in drive you. So again, it's another situation which you need to take some intentional affirmative steps to not let it be that way for yourself. That's the high level. Right. So it reduces the stress and you're more efficient. And you said this is a social, not a technological shift and that the basic idea is to let others know and to let others expect your new slower pace
00:09:52
Speaker
of responding, right? This is a tough one for lawyers, right? Because we both are trained to, it's in our constitution to be extremely responsive to people. And beyond that, if you're in private practice, you know, the market forces are driving you to be very responsive. Everyone has the fear that if they don't respond to a new prospective client quickly enough, they'll go to some other lawyer.
00:10:16
Speaker
It's not only a client, right? It could be your boss. Could be your boss. You're a young lawyer, for example. And one of the partners is expecting you to respond immediately, every day of the week, no matter what hour. That's right. And these are not just fear. There is some real basis for these fears. So I don't want to dismiss them as just a feeling. At the same time, I can tell you that when I started working on this for myself, and I pushed myself to challenge
00:10:45
Speaker
the contours of the reality behind this fear, I found that not all of my fears were justified. So there's truth, this is a complex truth we're living in. So for example, you know, my fear was if I didn't respond to every client immediately, you know, they'd all leave and go somewhere else. And I found that, you know what, I can actually
00:11:06
Speaker
go a couple of hours without responding to clients. It's training your clients too, right? Training the clients. So here's a tough one, but I would challenge lawyers to do this. When a client emails you and says, this is urgent, one thing you can do is not respond to them for a while. That's the thing that may trigger fear in you. Another, and I did this recently with a longstanding client.
00:11:30
Speaker
They emailed me, and then what did they do? They called me. They hadn't responded to the email quickly enough. And really important, this is something I need to attend to. And I said, no, I do have a long relationship with this client. But I said, oh, what really is the need for getting this done today? And I want to understand, is this something we could attend to tomorrow or later in the winter? Your tone of voice is going to be important, knowing who the client is, the situation. So I asked it respectfully.
00:11:57
Speaker
And honestly, and we had a very short conversation in which he acknowledged it was not really urgent.
00:12:05
Speaker
And it was fine to attend to it the next day or whatever it happened to be. Maybe it was two days later. So that kind of, I wouldn't even call it pushing back, but maybe digging beneath the surface with the client can often have unexpected results. Your fear that the only possible outcome is that they're going to be upset with you or go somewhere else may not be true. And you know what? In that case, I don't want to toot my own horn too much. Maybe I even helped the client address his own anxiety.
00:12:35
Speaker
by helping him to realize this thing that he felt was urgent really wasn't. And mindfulness will work here too when you're, let's say you are feeling fear. Fear is an emotion and fear and emotions are transitory. If you can just pause and recognize, okay, I'm feeling fearful, identify the emotion and just be with it and know it's not going to destroy you.
00:12:56
Speaker
it will dissipate. And you can also push back on some of those automatic thoughts you have. Oh my gosh, I'm going to lose this client. If I lose this client, I'm not going to bring in enough money. If I don't bring enough money, my practice is going to fail. If my practice fails, my marriage failed, you can take it all the way down. Fortune telling down the road without any data. And so part of the intervention could be also challenging the negative talk that we have.
00:13:24
Speaker
We don't have much time, but as you said, and anyone who's had mindfulness practice will know, the fear is real in the sense that you are actually experiencing it. But what it's trying to tell you may not be true. Those things about what's going to happen to your finances or your marriage, they can feel like they're really true.
00:13:44
Speaker
Like those future things you're imagining are certain to occur through what you as what you explain as the mindful pausing you can get in touch with the feeling acknowledge that the feeling is real. Gain some distance from the story.
00:14:00
Speaker
that the feeling is causing your mind to spin out. Yeah, we could. Boy, this time went so fast, Robert. And I know you
Resources for Mindful Technology Use
00:14:08
Speaker
have some work to do. I want to respect your time, but I could talk another hour with you. And we may do another one of these. I'm glad to do another one. Absolutely. It's a rich topic. A couple of things you said I want to tell in my reading that I thought were great ideas. One was to put your email schedule in your email signature. In other words, how often do you check your email during the day?
00:14:28
Speaker
I check it and i've seen people do check it check my email twice day nine am and two pm whatever more three times a day and then or have an autoresponder i'm busy now and will respond later just a couple of i thought really practical ideas for folks to become more of the boss of their email as opposed to the way it is now for many of us.
00:14:50
Speaker
That's right. And help to set the expectations of the people you're communicating with about your availability. It helps ease their anxiety. It helps them gain some expectation of when you'll respond. And then for your own benefit, it means they're going to be bugging you less.
00:15:08
Speaker
Robert, is there a website or a podcast that you want to point people to? Yeah. Go to technologyformindfulness.com, all one word, and the blog is there, the podcast is there, lots of different resources, and I do pop up from time to time on other people's podcasts like this. The Insight Timer there too?
00:15:27
Speaker
Yes, you can find that. And if you have the insight timer app, just search for me by name Robert Plotkin, and you'll find a bunch of guided meditations that relate specifically to using technology and dealing with the stress and anxiety of technology. There's an insight timer app that you can find for your phone.
00:15:44
Speaker
It is the largest source of free guided meditations of all apps and I have my own guided meditations posted on there and all of mine relate to technology or productivity in one way or another. That's fantastic, Robert. I would love to stay connected with you and I really appreciate your giving me and the listeners your time today. Thank you so much.
00:16:06
Speaker
Oh, you're welcome. I really appreciate it. I'd love to come back and stay in touch and do hear back from any listeners about any particular topics related to technology, mindfulness, legal practice. I'd love to talk more about it. Very good, Robert. Thanks again, and thanks all of you for listening. We'll have another show hopefully next week. Thank you. You're welcome, Michael. Thanks for having me.
Conclusion and Feedback
00:16:27
Speaker
Bye-bye, Robert. Bye.
00:16:30
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Thriving Lawyers Podcast. We love hearing from our loyal listeners, so please feel free to email us any questions, comments, suggested topics, or guest recommendations at the following address, feedback at thrivinglawyerspodcast.com.
00:16:45
Speaker
The Thriving Lawyers Podcast is brought to you by real-time creative learning experiences, a national provider of continuing legal education and professional development programs that leave participants engaged, encouraged, and equipped to pursue meaningful and sustainable change in their practices, their lives, and the organizations they work in. And by Osborne Conflict Resolution, your experience guides through the uncharted terrain of business and family law disputes based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on The Thriving Lawyers Podcast.