Brian Solis, LIFESCALE: HOW TO LIVE A MORE CREATIVE, PRODUCTIVE AND HAPPY LIFE
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:22]I'm here today with Brian Solis.
[0:24]Brian is one of the world's leading digital anthropologists and futurists.
[0:28]We'll find out what that means.
[0:30]He is a frequent keynote speaker and is an award-winning author of seven best-selling
[0:34]books.
[0:35]book is life scale, how to live a more creative, productive, and happy life.
[0:39]Good morning.
[0:40]Hello.
[0:41]It's nice to meet you.
[0:42]You too.
[0:43]Thanks so much for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:45]I really appreciate it.
[0:46]I love the name of it, so I'm super excited to thank you.
[0:51]Thanks.
[0:52]So I want to start by just asking what is a digital anthropologist and futurist?
[0:57]What does that mean?
[0:58]And how did you become that?
[1:00]I went to college for it, of course.
[1:03]No, not at all.
[1:04]The digital anthropology part of it was something that at the time was something that
[1:08]I pretty much created out of necessity.
[1:10]I was a digital analyst, but also a technology advisor.
[1:14]So what that means is I was studying in the 90s how all of this emergent technology,
[1:21]web 1.0 digital cameras, online photo sharing, some very, very big dramatic shifts in technology,
[1:31]how that was affecting markets.
[1:33]So to give you a quick example, when I was advising the first online photo sharing network,
[1:38]the consumer sentiment at the time was there's no way I'm putting all my personal pictures
[1:42]on the internet.
[1:44]And then now that's all we do.
[1:47]And so somewhere along that path, people changed, norms changed, behaviors changed.
[1:53]So I realized that in order to get technology adopted and understood that I was going
[1:58]to understand people.
[1:59]And so that's where the digital anthropology came into play that I started applying anthropology,
[2:05]sociology, ethnography work into understanding how technology was and could reshape societies
[2:13]and behaviors and norms and values, et cetera.
[2:16]And understanding that actually really started to explain where markets were going.
[2:22]And so a futureist doesn't predict the future, futures plays out scenarios based on certain
[2:28]contexts so that you can make more hopefully wiser decisions about the future and investments.
[2:34]Well, that's that's super cool.
[2:36]I wish I had known that was a career option for me when I was starting out.
[2:41]I'm going to lay it on the table for my kids.
[2:43]So like, this is one thing you could do sounds really awesome.
[2:49]So your digital anthropologist and futurist, one of the best apparently.
[2:53]And then you've written seven best-selling books basically, right, seven best-selling books.
[2:57]And now you've written life scale.
[2:59]So where did the idea for this book come from?
[3:01]Oh boy.
[3:02]So I'll just, I'll just kind of be super honest might as well.
[3:05]Yeah, please.
[3:07]Try to try writing another book.
[3:09]And the last seven books have been really about what we kind of just talked about,
[3:14]you know, technologies, impact on markets and businesses and how businesses need to adapt
[3:18]and change and what the future business organizations and markets look like.
[3:22]And, you know, not necessarily aimed anywhere towards the mainstream.
[3:26]They were really written for executives.
[3:29]And I thought that what would have been my eighth book was sort of a time to maybe start
[3:35]to bridge a little bit between writing for executives, but then also writing for the individual
[3:41]within the organization.
[3:43]Because the challenge that businesses face is that people aren't being empowered or recognized
[3:49]that they offer new ideas and that they can do things and that they do things differently
[3:54]because they're still operating in these very rigid operational models.
[3:59]So I wanted to empower people to rise up and help businesses change a lot faster because
[4:05]it's not happening fast enough.
[4:07]And I thought, okay, this is going to be my big breakout book.
[4:10]And I better, I better write a proposal so that I can get editors to understand where I'm
[4:14]trying to go since it's so different than what I've done in the past and it's going
[4:19]to help me grow my audience.
[4:20]And so essentially what I was setting the stage for was the need to dig deep and create
[4:26]something that was going to be new and powerful and hopefully exciting and also market
[4:34]building for myself.
[4:36]So I couldn't even get past the proposal stage.
[4:39]I had hired an editor to help me just kind of polish the proposal, a proposal is really
[4:47]deeper than I thought it was going to need to be.
[4:50]And I was getting all of these edits back that, you know, can you explain this?
[4:53]This isn't coming across as I think you're thinking about it.
[4:56]And, you know, next thing I know is months, months later.
[5:00]And I lost my drive and my passion for it so frustrated and I just gave up and I never
[5:08]give up.
[5:09]And I just gave up and I kind of just chalked it up to the fact that, well, I've got all these
[5:14]research reports I need to write anyway so I don't want to take too much more of my time
[5:19]away from my day job.
[5:22]And then it just sat on my shoulders for months, you know, you failed, you didn't get
[5:28]that out, what's going on.
[5:30]And next thing I know I just started soul searching and really thinking about the fact that
[5:35]a lot of my reports were going through similar types of edits and the other day I still
[5:41]had to write it a book and still needed to get something done.
[5:46]And that's when I started to really understand and this is why I was just going to say
[5:51]I'll be honest.
[5:52]It's that I didn't just fail and that I also just really started to see a pattern of
[5:57]not failures but not necessarily being truly my best self in every aspect of my life.
[6:03]So as a husband, as a father, as a friend is that all of these things were sort of similar
[6:08]and that they shared sort of a shallower version of myself kind of cultivating or just
[6:14]managing every single front that I work on.
[6:18]And that's when I started to study what was really going on in my life that that suddenly
[6:24]was okay.
[6:25]And one point in my life was it okay to just be this sliver of myself.
[6:31]And that's when I started to uncover the impacts of technology on everyday life, ironically
[6:36]the stuff that I studied, all of these years I was now studying how it was affecting
[6:42]my life.
[6:43]And long story short was, you know, spoiler alert, you know, technologies have impact
[6:48]on us, our kids is devastating and we don't necessarily know because it's not actively
[6:55]marketed.
[6:56]I just like cigarettes weren't marketed as they were bad for you at the beginning.
[7:01]And the real big spoiler was that they were designed to be distracting and they were designed
[7:05]to be addictive.
[7:07]And that's the revenue model.
[7:09]And the only answer for me because I still had to write that book was I wasn't going
[7:14]to give up technology because it's a big part of my life.
[7:16]I was just going to have to figure out how to live life now in a time where distractions
[7:24]are normal and technology is normal.
[7:27]And it's not like any of it's going away, it's going to get more complicated and easier
[7:32]at the same time.
[7:33]And my advice is more apps, more services, more technologies.
[7:36]So I figured I needed a life manual and that's what this book became, but I didn't know
[7:40]it was going to be my eighth book until I realized that it changed my life and then
[7:44]I made it into a book.
[7:45]Wow.
[7:46]And I love how at the beginning of your book you talk about how you've gotten so distracted
[7:49]in your own life that you noticed you were too distracted to write the article you were
[7:53]working on which was called How to Focus while being distracted.
[7:57]That was like my favorite part of your book.
[7:59]That's hilarious.
[8:01]It's true and I had to actually build, I had to build the discipline to even be able
[8:06]to focus to write an article like that or even to write a book.
[8:09]And so the book was constructed to be the journey that I had to go on to fix my own life
[8:13]and then, you know, fix it so that it would help others.
[8:17]And so it's not the book that I set out to write at all, but it is the book that I needed.
[8:22]And on the cover of your book you illustrate a cycle.
[8:25]And speaking of illustrations, I feel like the design of this book is one of the coolest
[8:29]I've ever seen.
[8:30]I love how you have little sticky notes and little pieces of cardboard, looks like they're
[8:35]like taped inside the book and passages are highlighted.
[8:38]It's like the most user-friendly book ever.
[8:41]Like it captures my, I mean I certainly for the people who, you know, their attention tends
[8:46]to wander.
[8:47]This book is so attention-grabbing and it's like the perfect way to design that.
[8:52]So anyway, I just thought that was the coolest.
[8:54]But anyway, on the cover of it you show a cycle which you break down in detail in the
[8:58]book.
[8:59]But what is the short version of how to break free from distractions, focus, spark creativity
[9:04]and unlock new possibilities?
[9:06]What's like the couple of sentence version of how people can do that?
[9:10]Oh boy, well it's all very easy actually, and I'm just kidding that.
[9:15]I guess the real answer is that each part of the book is broken out into stages of
[9:24]a journey.
[9:25]It's how I got the name life scale.
[9:26]And when you open the book you see a little person running through what looks like a board
[9:31]game like shoots and ladders or a candy land and that was the inspiration behind what ended
[9:37]up becoming a very creative form of table of contents, a way of expression so that you
[9:42]could see each stage of the journey that you were going to go on.
[9:47]And the reason I did that is because I didn't want to say, hey, by the way, changing
[9:50]your life is really complicated and it's going to be overwhelming.
[9:53]I wanted to make it so that you felt actually joy and excitement going through each stage.
[9:58]In the early stages.
[10:00]you have to learn how to be able to recognize,
[10:03]or just at least be aware of what's happened to you
[10:06]or your loved ones or your kids,
[10:09]and also what's happening still.
[10:11]And I tried to write that not in a shock-value way,
[10:15]but more of a, did you know?
[10:18]And as a means of just kind of getting everybody to say,
[10:20]wow, I had no idea, and this makes sense.
[10:23]And then the next stage, you go on to be able to,
[10:26]what I call productivity hacks,
[10:28]just teaching yourself how to focus for one minute,
[10:33]eventually 25 minutes, eventually 60 minutes,
[10:37]because we can't go on this journey,
[10:39]we can't learn, we can't change,
[10:41]if we can't take the time to actually focus.
[10:45]And that's one of the stories I'll quickly share
[10:48]is that the Pomodoro technique was something
[10:50]that was really profound for me, that it teaches you,
[10:52]that like the kitchen timer teaches you to focus
[10:55]in 25 minute bursts, and then you take a five minute break.
[10:58]And the first time I tried it,
[10:59]I was keeping a scorecard,
[11:01]and I couldn't even make it, I think three minutes,
[11:04]before I physically reached for my phone,
[11:07]without a notification, it was just embedded
[11:09]in by wiring that, hey, I should probably
[11:13]reach for my phone now.
[11:14]And so it wasn't even because of a distraction,
[11:16]it was just because it was baked into my rituals
[11:19]or my behaviors.
[11:20]So deeply, that's just, I didn't even notice
[11:23]that's what I was doing.
[11:24]But every time you do something like that,
[11:26]let's just say you're trying to focus on a particular task,
[11:29]every time you allow yourself to be distracted,
[11:32]it takes about 23 minutes to get back into the zone.
[11:35]And if you think about it, the average person
[11:38]gets about 200 just notifications a day,
[11:41]that's a lot that you're pulling away
[11:42]from whatever that task at hand is.
[11:45]And without building the skills to kind of be able
[11:48]to put those at bay into focus,
[11:50]our work is actually degrading.
[11:52]And that's what happened in my proposal,
[11:54]that I wasn't, even though I felt I was great.
[11:58]And that social media and every device that I use
[12:01]reminds me that I'm the center of the universe,
[12:04]because every time I say something
[12:05]or post something, people react,
[12:07]my work wasn't reflecting the idea of greatness
[12:10]that I had of me and what I do.
[12:13]And so then as you get further and further into the book,
[12:16]essentially you're building on those skills
[12:17]that you got in the previous pages
[12:19]and it runs you through exercises
[12:22]that when I realized and that without giving it all away,
[12:26]our parents had this definition of success and happiness
[12:31]that was passed down to them from their parents
[12:33]and passed down to them from their parents and so on.
[12:35]And you bring in whatever your belief systems are
[12:39]and kind of forge this level of tradition
[12:42]that has been shared pretty much for centuries.
[12:46]And I think what happened with technology
[12:49]over the last 20 years and specifically since,
[12:53]since the iPhone in particular, that's been,
[12:55]I think in my work, one of the single greatest disruptions
[12:59]in history is that it changed the entire dynamic
[13:02]for information and connections.
[13:05]It empowered individuals for the first time
[13:09]to be the source of information.
[13:10]It empowered people to connect instantly
[13:12]with anyone around the world.
[13:14]And suddenly it was not only intoxicating
[13:17]and seductive, but it was empowering
[13:20]in that you had the same type of reach and ability
[13:27]and also emotions and thoughts that a celebrity
[13:33]might actually be going through.
[13:34]No one teaches you how to be a celebrity.
[13:37]And when you are one, suddenly your entire life
[13:40]is upside down and this is why we see
[13:42]so many celebrity struggle with life
[13:45]because it didn't have the foundation for it.
[13:48]And you have to sort of learn on the job
[13:50]and some people fail dramatically.
[13:53]And others take time to sort of cope
[13:55]and learn how to work with it
[13:56]and others hire the best people around them
[13:58]to help them navigate it all.
[13:59]But not us, our parents weren't there to help us
[14:02]because they didn't know this
[14:03]or our teachers or our mentors or whoever in our life
[14:06]because they were going through it
[14:08]in their own separate way as well.
[14:11]And like me, it was normal.
[14:13]How do you sell a book to people
[14:14]about managing and conquering their distractions
[14:17]if no one knows that they're distracted?
[14:19]And last but not least,
[14:22]the later stages of the book are all actually very human.
[14:25]It's about resetting the definition of happiness.
[14:27]It's actually about resetting the definition of success
[14:31]for a modern era.
[14:33]Now that everybody has these tools
[14:35]and now that everybody's believing these things
[14:37]and changing their beliefs
[14:38]and believing that they're popular or engaged,
[14:42]but also that we're all in one way shape or form
[14:45]distracted and or addicted
[14:48]that we needed a new operating manual for life.
[14:51]And that's what I set up to create.
[14:53]And that's the journey that we all sort of go on.
[14:55]I'm much more human journey.
[14:57]So how do you define success for yourself?
[15:00]You know, I went through, yeah, that was a hard,
[15:04]it was a hard question to answer
[15:05]because I found myself applying my parents' definition
[15:09]of success.
[15:10]You know, so university, great job,
[15:14]marriage, house, assets, a lot of assets,
[15:18]the way that we're sold, stuff is sort of becoming milestones
[15:24]for who we are and how we're defined and how we're perceived.
[15:28]That was sort of my common definition of success.
[15:32]And then I realized it actually success and happiness
[15:36]and even creativity is one of the reasons
[15:38]by creativity is a pillar of this book.
[15:40]We're actually more in intertwined
[15:42]that success and happiness were linked
[15:46]and that happiness wasn't tied to when I have this
[15:49]or when I do this or when this happens,
[15:52]then I'll be happy, which is what a lot of,
[15:54]I call it the happiness trap that a lot of us
[15:56]couldn't get caught up in.
[15:57]It was that happiness was actually inside of me now
[16:00]and that the act of creating rather than consuming
[16:03]actually was also an exercise of sort of bringing out
[16:07]more and more happiness that I wasn't allowing myself
[16:10]to feel that being present, even as simple as just putting
[16:15]everything aside and taking my kids out for a walk
[16:21]was happiness and things that I just wasn't getting to
[16:24]that are on my list and suddenly you lose time.
[16:26]So success actually were things that I was allowing myself
[16:29]to feel every single day, but also not getting distracted
[16:34]away from the goals that I was setting
[16:36]and the vision that I was putting together
[16:38]that I was assembling in a physical manifestation
[16:42]of what I was visualizing that I wanted to do,
[16:45]that that wasn't success, but those were goals
[16:48]and that I was creating milestones that allowed me
[16:50]to feel success and also allowed me to feel happiness
[16:53]on the way to those goals.
[16:54]So it was something that I could just enjoy now.
[16:58]One interesting and one of the many interesting things
[17:00]in your book was when you cited neurologist Dr. Daniel
[17:04]Leviton study, which said that every time you switch tasks,
[17:07]your brain engages in a neurochemical switch
[17:10]that uses up nutrients in the brain to accomplish it.
[17:13]So if you're doing four or five things at once,
[17:15]you're not actually doing four or five things at once.
[17:17]You're just switching, switching, switching, switching
[17:19]and exhausting your brain.
[17:20]And so there are some dangers to that,
[17:22]which I feel is something that leads to distraction
[17:25]because we're all multitasking all the time.
[17:27]And I read that and thought, well, is that why I can't even
[17:29]retrieve the words I need half the time?
[17:31]Like all this stuff,
[17:33]my brain is like, you know,
[17:35]doing one of those swirlies that like the computer does.
[17:37]It's like frozen.
[17:38]Are these dangers of multitasking?
[17:41]Are these reversible?
[17:42]Like if I just tone it down a little bit for a while,
[17:45]well, the words come when I want them
[17:47]or is it long-term effects of this technology?
[17:51]What do you think?
[17:51]Oh, so I have the answer.
[17:54]But I'll ask you a question first.
[17:55]You ever sat around a table with friends
[17:57]and tried to recall the name of the movie
[18:00]or who the actress or actor was in the movie
[18:02]or some moment in time that everybody was talking about.
[18:07]And no one had the answer, but it was on the tip of everybody's tongue.
[18:10]And so somebody said, well, let's just Google it.
[18:13]We all do that.
[18:14]It's just sort of a sign of what happens
[18:16]is the more you do that or the more you look something up,
[18:20]you're actually preventing your short and long-term memory
[18:22]from sort of firing as a fit muscle, right?
[18:26]So you become dependent on the instant access information,
[18:31]the same is true with multitasking.
[18:33]You're essentially rewiring your brain to function differently.
[18:39]And it's the reason why I couldn't, for example, go deep
[18:42]and with great clarity on my proposal when I failed
[18:47]because my brain was so used to operating
[18:49]at this much more superficial level, multitasking,
[18:52]probably checking social media, responding to emails,
[18:55]answering calls and texts, all while trying to write this proposal.
[18:58]So I was operating in a very normal way,
[19:00]but not understanding the impacts of what your brain is actually producing.
[19:05]So when you multitask, you're essentially just kind of skating
[19:10]or surfing along.
[19:11]You're not actually doing the best job that you can do.
[19:14]So for example, if you were single-tasking, but life kind of rewards us
[19:19]for thinking that we are multitasking
[19:21]and that we're getting all of these things done.
[19:23]But if you were to really sort of assess and compare your work
[19:27]to several years ago, you'll see, wow, it's not as great as I thought it was.
[19:34]So yes, it's exactly what happens in the end of the day.
[19:37]Your brain is exhausted, but so is your body
[19:39]because when you're also multitasking,
[19:41]it's not just your brain that's producing all of these different nutrients.
[19:43]It's actually your body producing everything from, you know,
[19:46]endorphins, oxytocin, six different chemicals, for example,
[19:50]at any time when you're using social media.
[19:52]And it's not unlike what happens to your body when you're using any type of stimulant
[19:57]that your body gets sort of, I don't want you to wear it.
[20:00]because that does happen, but it's such a strong word.
[20:03]But let's just say it gets used to that as being the normal.
[20:06]And so that therefore it craves it,
[20:08]and then you build your patterns around it.
[20:10]And so over time it has a huge health and wellness
[20:14]implications that we're just now starting to study
[20:17]that aren't just affecting your memory,
[20:19]but also affecting your happiness,
[20:22]but also every health implication that you can imagine
[20:25]from being exhausted to being addicted
[20:28]are all now starting to be linked to our uses of technology.
[20:32]The good news is is that...
[20:33]And I'm like, great, this is a great conversation.
[20:36]I feel awesome. I'm like doomed now, but...
[20:40]The great news is that every time you go to sleep,
[20:42]your body for the most part,
[20:43]if you get a good night's sleep,
[20:45]actually recreates or reproduces those nutrients.
[20:47]And so you have a choice when you wake up
[20:49]the next morning how you want to use them.
[20:51]And I made a decision that I wasn't going to give up technology.
[20:55]I was just going to be more mindful about how I was going to use it.
[20:57]And I was going to focus on rebuilding me
[21:00]and rebuilding Amy for my family
[21:04]and also professionally because I still have ideas
[21:07]and things I want to conquer.
[21:09]And so all I had to do was find a way
[21:12]that was pleasant and encouraging and motivating
[21:16]to then rewire my brain and my body intentionally.
[21:21]And that's what life scale does.
[21:23]And as you described in the book that it was...
[21:25]It's visually appealing.
[21:26]I tried to make it fun and inspiring.
[21:29]That yeah, of course I want to take control.
[21:31]And it's not fair that all of these things
[21:33]happen in my life without actually me saying,
[21:36]yeah, this is okay, that we just sort of went along with it.
[21:40]And all because companies decided
[21:43]that they were going to design them
[21:45]to be what they became.
[21:46]So if busy moms were to take one action item away
[21:50]from this talk with you,
[21:52]that they could implement into their busy lives
[21:53]aside from reading your book,
[21:55]which is the obvious one thing that they should do.
[21:58]What's the most important thing?
[21:59]Is it time away from the phone?
[22:01]Is it focus on one thing?
[22:03]What's like the most important?
[22:05]I think the most important is to put the phone down
[22:09]and take the iPad away from the kids for a minute
[22:11]and just allow yourself to,
[22:13]even if it's just a simple 30 minutes of research,
[22:17]just look at the work of Tristan Harris.
[22:22]He has a site that it's almost like a magician secret
[22:25]through the field and he explains what we're doing
[22:29]every time we're looking at the phone there.
[22:30]He explains from his perspective what they did and why.
[22:34]And so that we can at least maybe shock ourselves
[22:37]to say, ah, that's what happens every single time
[22:40]I look at my phone and that's what happens every single time
[22:42]I put an iPad in my kid's hands.
[22:45]And as a human being, you can't help,
[22:50]but feel compelled to want to learn more
[22:52]and learn how to be better as an individual and as a parent.
[22:56]That's where I started.
[22:58]And do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[23:02]Maybe someone similarly struggling with a proposal
[23:04]the way you were or someone struggling to convey something
[23:07]they think is really important.
[23:09]Yeah, before you go on a life scale journey,
[23:11]you might want to take a look at the work of a gentleman
[23:13]by the name of Cal Newport and he wrote a book called Deep Work.
[23:16]Now the book itself is very deep,
[23:17]but there are some really, really, really interesting things
[23:20]that help you understand what the foundation of Deep Work.
[23:24]Writing a book is Deep Work.
[23:26]A lot of people write the book because they see it
[23:27]as a form of self-expression.
[23:29]So anything I create or anything I write is great.
[23:31]You have to actually understand.
[23:33]It's not about what you create is what people consume
[23:35]and you're writing for someone in a way
[23:37]that is going to really touch them.
[23:38]Just like the design of the book was meant to you.
[23:40]I know you're distracted.
[23:41]So I'm going to create a piece of paper that doesn't just
[23:45]speak to you, but it helps you turn the pages.
[23:47]And so that type of design with intention was audience driven.
[23:50]And the only way to get there was to allow myself
[23:53]the depth and the time to even have that idea.
[23:56]And we don't give ourselves that space.
[23:59]And Deep Work by Cal Newport was one of the things that
[24:02]helped me get that space.
[24:03]I ended up renting a place in Lake Tahoe
[24:06]and shutting everything out and turning everything off.
[24:11]And it was hard and it was painful.
[24:13]It was almost like going through withdrawals
[24:14]because it is going through withdrawals.
[24:16]But I got there.
[24:17]And that's the best advice I could give you.
[24:19]The only way to do it is to allow yourself to do it.
[24:21]At the depth that you could express yourself uniquely.
[24:25]Awesome.
[24:26]Well, thank you so much for all this fantastic advice.
[24:29]I am going to try not to be on my phone so much today,
[24:31]but I know I will fail, but at least I'll be aware of what I'm doing.
[24:35]And thank you so much for sharing your hard-earned wisdom
[24:39]with all the listeners.
[24:40]Thank you.
[24:40]Oh, it's my pleasure.
[24:41]Thank you.
[24:42]OK, bye.
[24:43]To this episode has been brought to you by Boombox Gifts.
[24:46]Memory boxes filled with personal messages and photos
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[24:53]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound
[24:55]for the audio editing and mixing.
[24:57]Thanks for listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.