Staying Human in a Digital World with Craig Mattson

Tim: 0:38

Welcome to Speaking with Confidence, the podcast dedicated to helping you unlock the power of effective public speaking. I’m Tim Newman, a recovering college professor turned communication coach, and I’m thrilled to guide you on your journey becoming a powerful communicator. I want to thank each and every one of you for your support. It truly means the world to me. Please visit timnewmanspeakscom to get your free ebook the Top 21 Challenges for Public Speakers and how to Overcome them. Today’s guest is Craig Mattson. Craig is an organizational researcher who serves as a professor of communication at Calvin University. He’s written several books and numerous essays, often exploring communicational complexities of organizational life, but when he’s not writing and reading and podcasting, he’s enjoying the natural world hiking, running and playing driveway pickleball. Craig lives with his wife Rhoda in Grand Rapids, michigan, and their four adult children live, study and work across the Midwest. Greg, welcome to the show.

Craig: 1:37

So grateful to be here, Tim. So let me ask you a question. I love the concept of the show and I love talking about talk, so let’s do it.

Tim: 1:44

Well, before we get into that, let me ask you a different question.

Craig: 1:48

Okay.

Tim: 1:50

How long have you been playing pickleball and are you a pickleball addict, like a lot of the pickleball people that I know?

Craig: 1:57

I have been playing for about a year, so I don’t know if I quite have achieved addict status. I finally did go to a real pickleball court a couple of months ago and I was glad to see that there were some transferable skills from my driveway to the court. I’m a little scared at how many people get injured playing pickleball, so there are a lot of intense people.

Tim: 2:21

Yes, so I had my knee replaced. It’s been a little over two years ago and when I was doing my rehab in the rehab center, almost every person in there was there for rehabbing a pickleball injury, and so for me, that that’s enough for me to I’m not, I’m just not going to do it because I’m, I’m at, I’m at the point where, where, where my body is starting to break down based on, you know, the things I’ve done, you know my previous life, and so no, I don’t go skiing, I’m not playing pickleball or tennis. So I’m the golf addict, I’m that guy. But you know, pickleball is something that has taken off over the last five to ten years, and it’s great over the last five to 10 years and it’s great, you know, here in Hilton Head, obviously it’s a resort town and this time of year we have the locals and it’s a little bit of an older population and it’s really just taken over, I mean courts are all over the place.

Craig: 3:32

Yeah, I mean I’ve enjoyed it as like a way to connect with my kids. I’ve enjoyed it as a way to connect with neighbors. But yeah, I haven’t become really, really skilled at it and I also haven’t become obsessive about it yet. So I don’t know if I’m just, like you know, sort of emotionally compensating there, like I’m not good at it. So I tell people I’m not an addict, but I do. I do enjoy it. It’s a lot of fun.

Tim: 4:02

Well, it is. I mean, it is a way to get out and exercise and you know if, as long as you don’t get hurt that’s right, that’s that’s, that’s the key.

Tim: 4:12

And, um, you know it’s a lot of quick. You know, you know quick moving, stop and go, and you know, at at least for me in my stage, that that’s a recipe for torn Achilles tendons. Uh, you know ACL injuries. Well, and ACL injury, I’ve only got one, one left, but you know it is what it is. One left, but you know it is what it is. Well, let’s go ahead and get into the real topics of the day. Let’s talk about your book here for a second. You know, how did you develop the idea for the book Digital Overwhelm? And because I think it’s a fascinating topic and I love the way you laid it out with the examples, especially the forward, how you talk about this, it’s not this, it’s not this, it’s not this and this is so. So how do you develop that topic?

Craig: 5:20

really overwhelmed, I think. Um, in 2022, I interviewed some uh 47, gen Z and millennial professionals and I asked them a kind of open-ended question how are you coping with the intensities of life and work in the early 2020s? And you remember that time. We’re kind of still in that time and still’re sure yeah still in it.

Craig: 5:35

Um, but yeah, as I listened to their stories and they had some jaw-dropping stories about what it’s like to be at work today um, yeah, I, I kind of summed it up as digital overwhelm and then that was just like a catchy phrase and I found that a lot of people, as soon as I used that phrase, would say, oh yeah, I’m totally in that, but then I had to do the work of defining it and that took a little bit more careful scholarship and reflection.

Tim: 6:07

Yeah, I mean I look around at just the people that I know. I mean I look around at just the people that I know. I think I don’t know that there’s anybody that’s not in digital overwhelm unless you’re, unless you’re a kid Right and your and your and your parents have have, really kind of you know, said we’re setting limits on screen time and screen time could be computer TV. What have you?

Craig: 6:33

I mean if you’re.

Tim: 6:34

I don’t know anybody that. That’s that.

Craig: 6:36

That’s not in digital yeah, I’ve met one person, one guy. I had a student in a class and he told me I don’t think I’m digitally overwhelmed, so god bless him. God bless him. I mean, yeah, he’s a fortunate soul. But most people I’ve talked to have have said exactly they have that sort of aha factor like, yes, that totally names where I live.

Tim: 6:57

Yeah, and I don’t know if you know this, we have a couple of things in common that I’m not sure you know about. You know, I left my first academic position after 16 years for a number of reasons, kind of along the lines of what, from what I understand you, you weren’t really interested in leaving your first position. That’s right, right. I, I was at a point where I I felt that I had accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish and I didn’t want to move forward at that institution, and so I. So I was. I was looking and I went to Georgia state university, which was a very different institution than where I came from. I came from a small, private, 4,500 student, not very diverse to you know, a division to an R1.

Craig: 7:59

So yeah, Georgia State would be a very different sort of institution.

Tim: 8:03

Yeah, urban, and it reinvigorated me for a time until until COVID hit. And that’s that’s when I realized for you know me that digital overwhelm had really kind of I wouldn’t say sucked the life out of me, but hit me pretty hard.

Craig: 8:25

Yeah, I closely identify with that to define digital overwhelm as the intersection of tech development, rapid tech development, and just emotional upwelling in yourself. And when those two things, you know, meet, the emotional upwelling, all the feelings, and then just like the constant riptide of technological development, like the constant uh riptide of technological development. For us in covid it, you know, was trying to get used to the zoom room, um, and, you know, accustom ourselves to digital spaces, but also the smartphone, um and its many capacities, the, the, the joy of reels on instagram and tiktok, but also the addiction and the compulsiveness and sometimes the political ugliness of that.

Tim: 9:18

So it’s just a lot, it’s just a lot, so how did you deal with it?

Craig: 9:26

I was. Honestly I can’t say that I have like figured out a way to master this. I wouldn’t like hold myself up as like a moral exemplar here, but I, I mean, I have found some practices that I use to try to keep myself. Coming back to my center, I start the day, you know, and in a pretty boring quiet way. You know.

Craig: 9:52

I write in my journal about what happened the day before um, and that I often find just the work of handwriting um is a very sort of centering thing. I also try to read, uh, every day, apart from a screen. So, um, I, you know, look at books, that old technology, and then I think you know the goodness, like you’ve been mentioning, of just being outside and being in the natural world. All those have been sort of centering practices. But I have to say that, again and again, dealing with digital overwhelm is not a one-time conversion experience. I mean, you keep returning to the work. Some of the wealthiest people in the world, some of the most powerful technologies in the world, are really trying to harvest our attention and monetize it, and so we, you know, the resistance to that is just an every single day thing.

Tim: 10:54

It’s funny and I’m not using the term funny, ha-ha, but it’s funny how the whole idea of addiction right. When we talk about addiction to things like we would normally think of alcohol, drugs, gambling, food. I would say that the digital world is also an addiction, but we never truly really talk about it or address it on a bigger, wider scale at home or in a team at work, but it’s not really talked about on the macro level publicly. Yeah.

Craig: 11:43

Yeah, I think it’s baffling to people on the macro level what to do about it. You know, you do see some prominent figures trying to address it the Surgeon General trying to address the problems of kids’ use of smartphones. Jonathan Haidt, a moral foundations psychologist, he’s thought a lot about this and he’s gained some prominence advising schools and parents to pull away from their kids’ use of smartphones. And then you know the TikTok conversation in Congress and in the White House. That just sort of exhibits the confusion that we feel about this and the difficulty of doing anything. On a sort of macro level. My book really looks at what you might call like a mezzo level, like a middle level Right, how, how, you know, not just yourself, but in the sort of circle of choice that you and your co-workers have, what can you do? What can you do? What can you share? Um, how can we keep human there?

Tim: 12:57

yeah, and I, I, I like the conversation that you had with um I think it was, uh, andrea monday, uh, on on one of your episodes and I, I, I really related to some of the things that she was saying, because in my world I get some of those things with the family emergencies and the family tragedies and you know to be in those positions and then have to go to you know, for me it was department chair and dean have to go to you know, for me it was department chair and Dean. You know, for other people it’s, you know, supervisor, boss, whatever coworkers, whatever it is and say you know I’ve got to go, I’ve got, I have to deal with with these things and being okay with that.

Craig: 13:54

And so I really related to yeah to those stories. Yeah, me too. I andrea’s stories were some of the most important for me in the book too.

Tim: 13:57

Digital overwhelm yes, I think in some ways she was a real wake-up call to me you know, and I’ve said this on on podcast before, when I get a book, I don’t start at chapter one. That’s, I’m not. I’m, that’s I opened, I opened the table of contents and I say, wow, that’s interesting. Now I’m going to start here. So, unless, so, unless somebody tells me to, you have to start chapter one and read all the way through, I, I don’t. I don’t do that. Um, good for you, because I will eventually read up, read all of them. And the chapter that had that, that, when I opened it up, was the chapter on meaning, and that just also happened to be the chapter that andrea was in that and that was that was that was not kind of planned as I was going through this at all um yeah, I think his name was devon um, I mean his, I mean really, really powerful stories that are relatable.

Tim: 14:58

And you know you talk about intergenerational communication. Why are we as because I put the blame on us as the elders, the older generation why aren’t we doing more to have those conversations and to understand the communication differences better?

Craig: 15:26

I don’t have a great answer to that. I think intergenerational communication is sort of kindergarten stuff, like it’s basic respect, care, empathy, curiosity. This is stuff we know how to do when we’re five years old but for some reason it just keeps recurring as a problem in the American workplace. I do think some of it comes down to technological changes. You know, the olders among us are like yeah, I don’t want to change things, I like the way we did it, and the youngers are all up for the world of perplexity and chat, gpt and other. You know massive renovations and how we do work today. So I think that’s a factor. But honestly, it really does come down to being humble enough to listen to people who have a different experience than you. I mean, that’s pretty basic stuff, it’s not fancy.

Tim: 16:24

It’s not, and I don’t think that and I don’t know that it’s changed ever, because I know when I was younger, the boomers and so forth they didn’t start coming to us and say or talk to us about how we communicate. It was you fall in line. There wasn’t any real discussion about it. This is how we’re going to do things and this, this is what we’re going to do. Um, yeah and uh, yeah, you know so, but I think we’re at we’re. I think we’re at a time really because of technology and the how quickly technology changes and the amount of access that we have to information, how quickly that changes.

Tim: 17:18

If we don’t start to look at how the younger generations communicate, we’re really going to be in trouble. So I don’t know how much you know about some of the lingo, that like cap and all those other things, and I just sometimes I’ll go through and I’ll see what things mean and I’ll talk to my 30-year-old kids and I’ll start using those words and they get upset and I said, look, you better start learning these things because you know you’ve got kids. Because you know you’ve got kids.

Craig: 17:59

But that’s I mean, I do it kind of as a joke, but also halfway serious too, because you need to know how to communicate with them. Yeah, I do think language is a huge, huge dimension of this. I’m so glad you brought it up. I’m not surprised because you’re you’re riding a wave and the wave, the board. Staying flexible, staying agile, like you’re trying to do, like I think that’s, I think that’s wisdom, but it’s not comfortable.

Craig: 18:42

And the reason that the boomers told us Xers, you know, fall in line is like there’s there’s it’s hard to run a company, it’s hard to run an organization, there’s, there’s it’s hard to run a company, it’s hard to run an organization. And when you’ve got a bunch of, you know, young kids in there, we’re going to destabilize things. It probably makes a certain sense to tell them to shut up and get in line. But honestly, in the long run, it’s not wisdom, right, Like, in the long run, it’s better to say, yeah, I think this is the way we should do things. But how are you seeing it from your angle? And even if, at the end of the day, you do things the way you know, you think they need to be done because you’re running the company or the team. Just the fact that you’re opening up your framework and you’re allowing other voices in like you’re going to be better in the situation and the team’s going to be better.

Tim: 19:35

So yeah, yeah, and they’re going to feel like they have ownership too and be more invested into whatever it is, whatever it is.

Craig: 19:43

Yeah, that’s wisdom, yep.

Tim: 19:45

Yep, but it is hard. I think you know we talked a bit about offline when I realized that I was old and and that I better start doing things a bit different. But where do you come down on the whole idea of technology in the classroom Phones, computers, ipads Because that’s a that’s a tough and sticky one too.

Craig: 20:05

It sure is. There is no easy answer on that. I have colleagues who like have pretty strict rules, like have pretty strict rules. I have a friend, a millennial friend, who is a professor, and she puts up one of those. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen these like back of the door shoe holders. You kind of put your shoes in them. Well, she has one for phones, so everybody’s got a pocket that when they come in the room they slide their phone in.

Craig: 20:31

I don’t do that. I do tend to be a little bit lax, and what I do is basically try to cultivate tech mindfulness in the room. So I’ll say, look, I have very few rules here. I’m not going to police you, I’m not going to surveil you, but I would ask you to be mindful. What are you doing and why are you doing that right now, and what does it have to do with what the rest of us are doing? And so I periodically just have these little meditations where I say, yeah, like it’s halfway through the semester, so let’s kind of return to this, this digital fact of our lives, that we just have all these algorithms and notifications that are really trying to monetize our eyeballs. And do you want that, is that what you want for your life and what are our goals here? So I kind of try to talk people through it rather than legislating through it no-transcript numbers.

Tim: 22:02

So they gave me their phone number. So I would sit back and I would watch. And if they started, if their computer was open and they were doing something else, I’d text them put it away. And they were doing something else, I’d text them put it away.

Tim: 22:15

Put it away, put it away, you know because if you want to do that with I, don’t care from the perspective. If you want to do that with me, that’s fine. We’ll have a different conversation. But there’s when, when we have guests, guests in, we need to act professional and show, show, show respect in those types of things. But I was also really lax, like you. Um, it’s, you know, we all have to make decisions yeah, that’s right.

Craig: 22:40

We all got to make choices and you know it’s I.

Tim: 22:44

I hope that you’re gonna make good choices and I’ll help you make good choices. I’ll put you in positions to make good choices, but ultimately it’s up to you yeah and so it’s in positions to make good choices, but ultimately it’s up to you. Yeah, and so it’s it’s. It’s hard, though, when you know you you’re, you’re going through and you, you know they’re not paying attention. That’s actually a good thing.

Craig: 23:08

That goes off, just so you know goes off, just so you know, gotta fix this. So, but uh well, I mean, I was thinking that that part of the reason I’m lax is that it’s not all up to us. Like it really frustrates me that these, um, very large corporations are so powerful. Um, I I don’t know that I can actually be angry with my students or with my coworkers or the people around me if they get distracted. Oh my gosh, like who do I think they are? They’re not, you know, a saint from the second century. They’re they. They are just ordinary people like me, and I’m as distractible as the rest. Like me and I’m as distractible as the rest. So I think we have to give grace to each other, even as we try to help each other, keep our balance and try to find some digital health.

Tim: 24:00

Yeah, and you know the whole idea of you know, and my wife and I have this conversation on a regular basis. I’m I wouldn’t say that I’m great, but I’m fairly good if, if I’m having a conversation with somebody where I’m involved in something and the phone vibrates, I’m I’m pretty good with not looking at it.

Craig: 24:23

the only time I do.

Tim: 24:25

The only time I do is if, if, like my, my, because my kids have a different vibration and tone, my wife has a different vibration and tone, my wife has a different vibration and tone. So when they go off, sure, those, those I stop. You know, almost all the time, and I’m not again I’m not saying that I’m perfect with this, but you know I, I think if, if we can, um, if we can just just practice, at times it’s okay that you know whatever’s coming through on Tik TOK or whatever’s coming through in that text message, as long as nobody’s head’s falling off, you don’t have to necessarily deal with that, whatever, it is right that. Second, you know my wife’s in real estate and we were having a serious conversation the other day and one of her clients texted and she stopped right mid-sentence and I said well, what are you doing? She said I’m gonna lose a sale.

Tim: 25:19

You’re you know what. You’re not gonna lose a sale if you don’t respond in 10 seconds. That’s not, that’s not how it works, you know. So that’s, we’ve just been conditioned. The phone bings it. It’s like Pavlov’s dog, you know, that’s. That’s kind of how I look at it. We got, we got. We got to look at it, we got to look at it, yeah.

Craig: 25:39

Yeah, we get a little dopamine hit and it’s hard to resist. It’s hard to resist.

Tim: 25:44

Yeah, so what can we do with with young professionals in terms of building, you know, meaningful connections in tech, heavy environments? You know, the way I look at it is, I don’t care how much technology it is, how much AI, how much of all these other technological things that are going on. To me, everything is about personal relationships and we have to we have to not only build but cultivate those personal relationships. So how can we do that with our young professionals and our kids to, to get them to understand that and get to that point?

Craig: 26:22

Well, I think what I learned in my research is that, yeah, I mean, a lot of young professionals are figuring this out. They’re, they’re grokking it, to use you know a slang term they’re, they’re. They’re grokking it, to use you know a slang term they’re, they’re. They’re doing the work to figure out how to be human in these digital spaces. So it’s not always a matter of how do we coach them. It’s sometimes a matter of what have they figured out about something that you know we might feel a little confused about ourselves, but I think there are times when, as a manager, for instance, if you’re a millennial manager and you’ve got Gen Z team members where you might have to, you know you might have to have that conversation where you’re like what kind of person do you want to be on this team? What’s the kind of human that you’re really wanting to be, and how can we move towards that?

Craig: 27:18

I think the sort of practical point that I have learned about keeping human in digital spaces is it takes a lot of energy more energy than you’d think it would and just like a simple, a simple fact, when you are in a digital meeting, you just have there’s such a small portal through which you have to pour your whole personality, your whole soul and so that that just takes a lot of energy. You really do have to lean into that. You really do. You know you have to speak up and I think that is just a sort of practical reality of digital communication. Your limits If you can avoid scheduling a ceaseless round of these kind of digital performances that you’re doing with your team, I think that will help you to stay sane. So I think sometimes saying no to a meeting or requesting a reschedule can be a good way to respond to the digital demands of the time.

Tim: 28:35

Yeah, that’s hard too. I mean that is yeah, I just think about it from you know, from my perspective, and what I see you know some of the other people I’m dealing with going through, it’s constant and it’s nonstop.

Craig: 28:56

Yeah, yeah, I mean it’s hard to say no, uh, especially if you’re a younger professional. You you may wonder, like can I say no in this situation? Um, but I mean, at the same time, like the Gen Z folks are showing themselves quite proficient at you know, saying here are my boundaries, here’s what I got to deal with. So I don’t know if that’s the word that Gen Zs need to hear. That might be more the word that Gen Xers like you and me need to hear it is.

Tim: 29:25

I definitely agree with that. Yeah, but that’s again for me. For me it’s, it’s incredibly difficult because my personality is, you know, the whole thing is is I may not be the smartest person, but I’m, I’m going to, I’m going to make sure that I outwork you or out, I’ll thank you, or you know, whatever it is to to to get done. But when you look at it, I would say even millennials have a much better handle on saying no. You know, my youngest daughter God bless her, I love her to death. She really opened my eyes to it, like right before COVID hit. She was working in a situation she wasn’t happy in. We talked about it, so you keep doing your job search. And she did something that infuriated me. She quit her job by email while on vacation. Huh, Wow.

Tim: 30:39

That’s gutsy, and I was furious. I said I mean, you’re killing your personal brand, you’re killing your reputation, you’re doing this, you’re doing that. All the things that we’ve always been told for our generation. Right, right, right. You don’t quit your job unless you have another job. You, if you’re gonna quit, you do it in person. You, you all those things. And she said dad, I’ll be okay, this is how we do it now. I said no, this isn’t how we do it now, but.

Tim: 31:19

But but where she was right was she was in a position where, in her mind, it was untenable and where I would have stuck it out until something else came along. She said enough was enough, and that’s that’s where, where we have to um, maybe, maybe there’s a better way to to quit and do those things, but but being able to make that decision that she was in a place where she didn’t really wasn’t healthy for her that, I think is is a very positive thing and needs to be, I would necessarily say, celebrated, but acknowledged and and and move forward from there yeah, tim, I think one of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is just our attitudes towards work itself.

Craig: 32:09

And there’s your attitude towards your job, which might be sucky, it might be amazing. There’s your attitude towards the tasks you have to do today. That’s another thing, but there’s an underlying, underlying, often untalked about Posture towards work, towards toil, and it’s such a huge reality in human life. It’s not just when we’re on the job, it’s in all places of our lives. We’re working in the yard, in the house, with our friends, at church, at school, whatever we’re doing toil all the time. And so I think one of the benefits of intergenerational conversation is that it brings that back into our awareness. We’re like oh yeah, I do have an attitude towards work which comes out when I say things like kids these days don’t know how to work. That probably needs some investigation. And so in that story with your daughter, there’s an underlying attitude towards work that makes sense to her and is different from from your attitude, and probably both of you can benefit from that.

Craig: 33:11

There’s a kind of considerateness and tact in your approach to work that your daughter probably could learn from, daughter probably could learn from, and then there’s a real strong sense of personal boundaries and limits and possibilities that you can learn from your daughter. I think that’s the beauty of intergenerational, it’s a gift of intergenerational exchange.

Tim: 33:35

It is, and I think there was some growth on those things, just like you said, between me and her and how I started to address things, and that was one of the pieces that you know when we talked about when I started to realize I was old, that you know the population that I was really working with I wasn’t necessarily relating to, like I thought I was anymore. Um, from that perspective and and a lot of good, you know, a lot of good came from that, I think, from um, hopefully it came across.

Tim: 34:16

Hopefully it came across with with with students and I know it came across with with my daughter. Come back to I put a lot more onus on us and our generation to be the ones reaching out to start these conversations or to understand how they go about doing things.

Craig: 34:37

Yeah, I mean, I think time is a fundamentally to get a little philosophical time is just a weird thing. It’s a little philosophical Time is just a weird thing. It’s a weird condition and we lose track of that. We just get frustrated by time or, you know, we get deluded by how much time we think we have. But I think hanging out with people in different phases of life can be a really wonderful way to inhabit time more wisely, so I love that story from your daughter.

Tim: 35:11

I think that’s really great. Yeah, I was. I was mad, craig, I was mad, I was mad. Oh my God, I was so mad. And and and again. You look back on things as, as a parent and I’m sure you do the same you think why did you react the way that you reacted? And I think a lot of times and I’m just speaking for me a lot of times I react because I can’t help them at that point.

Tim: 35:35

um, you know, they they put themselves in a position where, me being the person that helps people I there’s nothing I can do to help you at this stage. Oh yeah, now you’re truly on your own and I can’t fix it.

Craig: 35:50

Uh-huh. I think that’s a really humble and truthful observation. I think it comes with parenting adults a lot. A lot of people feel that, but I think it comes in the workplace as well. Um, sometimes, though, just your presence and your way of being is itself a kind of help, a kind of resource to other people. Sometimes, we think the only thing we have to offer is what we can say out loud, and maybe it’s more of the kind of person that you manage to be when you’re near them.

Craig: 36:23

Yeah, and sometimes we just keep the mouth shut. It’s hard to do, Tim.

Tim: 36:31

It is, it is, it is, it is, it is. And you talk about the intergenerational communication. The work that you’re doing with your podcast Mode Switch is phenomenal and I really am enjoying those conversations with the different generations. Me too, me too, I mean just learning a lot in how they go about the thought process as well, the thought process as well. Not necessarily, not necessarily, not always necessarily what they’re saying, but how they go about coming to the decisions and thoughts that they’re coming to.

Craig: 37:10

Yes, I I think that’s it’s a. It was something I sort of stumbled into. I, you know, kind of gradually found that, oh my gosh, there are people of different generations who really want to talk about what work is like, what it’s feeling like today and I’m thinking about your podcast Speaking with Confidence, and I think that a lot of the work of intergenerational communication is learning to speak with confidence from your particular standpoint. There’s an author named Leslie Newbigin who talks about proper confidence, and I think there’s an appropriate confidence that we can have when we’re in these kind of complicated and messy conversations with our intergenerational teams, um, where you just say like here’s how I’m experiencing the world, how about you? And like not avoiding those conversations and then also not like, I don’t know, being a bully in those conversations. That’s the tricky dance of speaking with confidence.

Tim: 38:19

Absolutely, and I think part of that as well is no, no one knowing who you are, knowing how you think and how you go about making decisions and what you value. You know the whole introspection and, as we grow, how that changes. And I I tell them, tell my, my students and clients if you’re still thinking the same way at 40 that you did at 20, you’re probably you may be doing it right, but I would suggest that you’re probably, you probably need to go back and do some more introspection. Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know, but but I just, I just know how the way I go about doing things now is different than the way I did it 10 years ago.

Tim: 39:10

The way I think about things, you know the way. Just my core values haven’t changed, but the way I communicate them has changed. The way I come across has changed, or the way I think communicate them has changed. The way I come across has changed, or the way I think about them has changed, and I think we need to do a better job. You know all the way around doing that because then again we get away from the whole idea of worrying about what other people think of us and how that affects what we do and what we think and what we say and how we go about it. Going back to TikTok, you know we put so much value in what somebody who we don’t know thinks is important, what value we put on the clothes that we wear, what value we put on how we look. You know, whatever it is that, to me, has to, we really have to get away from that and start worrying about yourself and thinking about who you are as an individual and not worrying about some of these other things.

Craig: 40:19

I do think self-knowledge is a real source of strength and wisdom. It’s not easy. Today, I think there are a pair of sociologists that I read when I was in grad school and one of their insights has just stayed with me over all my years of teaching Abercrombie and and um Longhurst and and they wrote this book about audiences. And they said today we all feel like and they were writing, writing this in like 1999. So it was a long time ago. But, um, they said, today we all feel like we are spectators and performers at the same time. And so you know that’s a hard role to carry off. You never know when somebody is filming you or with their phone recording you and you notice.

Craig: 41:08

I use the old fashioned word filming and you never, and you never know when you’re also going to encounter somebody else’s performance, that sort of weird constant oscillation between being a spectator being a performer. It makes self-knowledge like actually knowing yourself, like you’re describing, tim, hard. I do think that that means we need more analog practices, we need more analog habits to develop where we’re just sitting quietly with ourselves. Develop where we’re just sitting quietly with ourselves, um, and or you know, uh, going for walks, uh doing the kind of elemental human things, um, trying not to do more than one thing at once as often as we can.

Tim: 41:55

Uh, like these analog practices are are so, so important for self-knowledge yeah, they really are um why did you say oh my god because the whole, you know, idea of only working on one thing at a time, if, if, if I could understand that myself, let alone, you know, with helping other people do that. Uh, you know, I find myself doing so many different things at the same time. You know whether it’s going through emails, you know, trying to read something, trying to put something else together. I kind of have segmented some of the things that I do and I try to only work on thing on some tasks, 15 minutes at a time. I’m gonna do this 15 minutes.

Tim: 42:46

I’m gonna do that for 15, okay yeah, that’s a good practice but a lot of things that I’m doing now requires blocks of time hour, hour and a half and I after, after after 20 minutes, I’ve got to get up and walk away. It’s just the way I go about doing things, the way that I think. But again, knowing that and being able to plan for that is important. But then it takes me so much longer to get back on task because I start back to the old habits of talking on the phone and texting and doing email all at the same time.

Craig: 43:27

I’m with you, tim, I’m with you.

Tim: 43:30

Craig, where can people buy the book and where can they find what else you’re doing?

Craig: 43:35

I believe the phrase is wherever books are sold. Probably the easiest place to snatch it would be on Amazon. I, I would love it if you’d go to, uh, you know half price books or you know some uh more independent, uh bookseller. That’d be great, um, and you can also connect with me, uh, at the mode switchcom. That’s my landing website and there you can find the book and also sign up for my newsletter. So that’s the mode switchcom. So, yeah, I’d be honored if people would pick up my book and start halfway through, like you did read a chapter here, go jump to the end, read a chapter there and then, yeah, send me a note, tell me what you think, how you, how you experience these stories and these insights.

Tim: 44:27

Yeah, I think you’re going to learn a lot if you buy the book and get into it and actually think about it, don’t you? To me, this isn’t a book that you just read the book and you put it down. This is a book where you read the book and you and you think about it and process it and and how, how it affects you and how you can make some small adjustments. You don’t have to make big adjustments.

Craig: 44:50

it can be small, incremental adjustments yeah, thank you for saying that, tim. I I really appreciate your attention to the, to the work of the book I. I do think that it’s like part memoir I’m working through my own stuff. It’s also part social science, like I’m, you know, doing this research with rising professionals, and it’s also sort of a like a a kind of spiritual guide as well, like thinking through the issues of what it means to be human in these digital spaces today. So it’s all of that, and if you can latch onto a part of that and say, hey, this is helpful for me, that’s great, that’s super.

Tim: 45:29

I hate to even say this. I gotta say it because I all my reading is digital. Craig, I can’t. No apology needed man, I can’t.

Tim: 45:41

I can’t because I, you know, I take my iPad with me almost everywhere I go, yeah, and I cause I don’t get a lot of time to. You know, in this profession we read. We read more than people ever imagined that we read. But when I go to read things that I want to read about that’s, you know, I can pull out the iPad for 10 or 15 minutes and actually and not worry about, oh, I didn’t bring my book, or I didn’t bring.

Craig: 46:11

Oh yeah, that’s me, that’s me constantly. Where did I put that book?

Tim: 46:24

And so that’s. And when I started doing that, I mean I can’t go back, because what people don’t understand is you can still take notes. I tell my wife she, she is a, a book person. I said you can still take notes in it, I still write it. I mean you can still do all those other things, but anyway, and and so what? My point was? Uh, bookshoporg now also sells ebooks, which which I, you know. Bookshoporg now also sells e-books, which you know bookshoporg is. You know all local booksellers and I agree with you, I’d much rather people go to the local stores. You know those types of things. It helps a lot of things, helps that local store owner, helps the local economy, does all those kinds of things. So bookshopsorg and I don’t know if yours is electronically there yet or not, but go look.

Craig: 47:15

Okay, yeah, yeah, I would love for people to see how alternative options might work for purchasing a book like this.

Tim: 47:27

Exactly.

Craig: 47:28

Yeah, it’s available on bookshoporg, so good news there.

Tim: 47:31

There you go. That’s awesome. Well, Craig, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I really do appreciate it. I think you’re doing great work and look forward to talking to you again soon.

Craig: 47:42

This conversation has been encouraging. Thanks, Tim.

Tim: 47:46

Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcastcom to get your free ebook Top 21 Challenges for Public Speakers and how to Overcome them. You can also register for the Formula for Public Speaking course. Always remember your voice has the power to change the world. We’ll talk to you next time, take care.