Episode 173: The Technology Boundary You Didn’t Know You Needed Until Today
Remember the last time you were sucked into a rabbit hole?
Maybe it was this morning when you checked your phone right after you heard your alarm go off. Perhaps it was during your lunch break scrolling through Tik Toks detailing some of Robert Pattinson’s best (and worst) outfits. Or maybe it was during your one free hour at night where no one’s asking you to do anything.
These rabbit holes are everywhere, every day, in every moment. In today’s episode, Erin shares her #1 hack for jumping over the rabbit holes and back into real life.
ICYMI – Your Post-Episode Homework: Challenge yourself to completely unplug from your nemeses this weekend. Let us know how you felt on Monday morning by sending us a message @learntoimproveit on Instagram.
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Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Episode 173 Transcription
Erin (00:00):
Welcome to the Improve It Podcast,
Erin (00:11):
Improve It peeps. Welcome to today's show. I wanna start off this episode by reading a review from c e hs 1 1217, which is a member of this improve it peep Family. C e h 17 says, this podcast is great. I stumbled upon it a few years ago During the pandemic. Many of the topics such as professional development, entrepreneurship, overcoming perfectionism have resonated with me. Erin discusses real topics and does it in a way that brings fun and levity. It's unique, and I enjoy the improv theme and how it relates to many aspects of life. First and foremost, I just have to say, every single time we receive an Eyes Tunes review from you, our amazing Improve it Peeps family, a team of actual human beings, does a happy dance. Literally, I'll shake my booty, okay? I'll do a little wiggle in my chair and say thank you.
Erin (01:17):
Because what it does is it not only showcases that this content is surveying you, but it also helps us become more searchable in iTunes. And it is the only metric that any guest can see when they look at our show to decide if they want to come and guest spot on this show. And I'm trying to bring y'all some real great peeps. Okay? So thank you to Made Dear Friend for leaving this review. Appreciate you so much. If you have not yet left a five star review for this show, I would greatly appreciate it. This show is coming out two weeks post my birthday. Okay? I'm like, can I get a present? Can y'all just, I'm turning 40, help me please. <Laugh>. Botox in prayers is not enough. All right. I need your support. So if you could leave that five star review and help me help you get some awesome guests in your earbuds, it would mean the absolute world.
Erin (02:28):
So, enough housekeeping. Let's get to today's show because y'all, she is juicy. So I want you to ask yourself at any given point, are you feeling tired, burned out, like your eyeballs are burning from staring at a screen on Monday mornings? Do you show up to work feeling exhausted, unmotivated, uninspired? I want you to listen up pees, because today I have the heck of all hacks for you, and it is so simple, yet it is actually so hard to physically implement. So let me give you a little story. Week after week at work here at Improve It, I was showing up on Monday mornings feeling nervous. For whatever reason, I was feeling shaky. I had anxiety, and I wondered why on earth I was feeling this way. I would spend the weekend partially with my family. We would do things like go to the beach. We live here in Charleston, South Carolina. We'd go swim in a pool. We'd spend time with friends.
Erin (03:46):
But anytime I was not doing one of those things and I was sitting at home, or I had a spare minute in the car, I would pick up my phone and I would check my email, my work email, and I would pick up Instagram or LinkedIn, and I would scroll those apps. Now, I would look at my email. Let's say it was email that I scrolled on and or I stumbled upon, and I would see an email that I thought needed responding to. Maybe I would respond, maybe I wouldn't. And if I didn't respond, then I'd spend the day thinking about the email that I didn't respond to. And if I didn't respond, then I'd spend the day thinking about the response that I give and wait for the response from the person who I gave the response to. It's a lot of responding going on here, right?
Erin (04:34):
So I would be with my family and friends, but in the back of my mind, I would be thinking about my email, my work. I would do the same thing with Instagram, specifically Instagram. I would be living my best life in Charleston, South Carolina, a city that my husband and I dreamed of living in, because we crave warm weather, we have many family and friends here, and we love the ocean. So let's say here in sunny Charleston, South Carolina, I'd be at an oyster roast on Friday night live in my best life, I'd be at the neighborhood, the neighborhood, the Ne <laugh> sounded like the target lady from Saturday night left the neighborhood. I would be at the neighborhood server bar on Saturday with my neighbors having some drinks, eating from the food truck that's parked out front. On that same day, let's say I'd be at a pool with a selzer living the life that I always dreamed of.
Erin (05:32):
I would be having the time until yet again. She has a free moment. And I would open up Instagram and I would see Susan's life. Susan on the Instagram was in Cabo. She's eating lobster tail. She's dining with celebrities. She is in one of those endless pools that overflow into the ocean and has a pool boy and a cabana. Okay? Susan is not real. Susan is a, is a feta, a fake Instagram account that I just made up as the opposite to my life here. But what I'm telling you I would do is I would sit and compare myself. It would take me away from this life that I am living and have dreamed of living, and it would make me question the happiness that I felt in my own life. Why in the world was I doing this to myself? What was the point?
Erin (06:37):
Why was I choosing to take myself out of the two days, the 48 hours a week that I get to spend unplugged with my family and my friends? So here's what happened. If you haven't listened to the Self-Healing series here on this show, get yourself into the Self-Healing series about 20 episodes back from this one <laugh>. But that self-healing journey that I went on made me realize that I needed some serious boundaries in my life. If I wanted to keep giving to you, to my team, to my clients, to the audiences that I serve on stage, and my keynotes to you, my improve at peeps here, week after week, I was showing up Monday with nothing to give because I had not taken the time to give to myself. So are you ready for this technology hack that is going to blow your mind and change your get ready?
Erin (07:51):
Here's how it goes. It is so simple. Step one, here's what I did. I took my apps. So specifically for me, Instagram, LinkedIn, and my, my email are my nemesis. These are the things that can suck me into rabbit holes for hours and hours on end. So I take these apps specifically, maybe it's Facebook for you, TikTok they're ticky-tacky, whatever it is, whatever app you spend the most amount of time on that is taking you away from your family. I want you to take them and just move them on your home screen, on your phone to the last page of your home screen. So typically these apps sit right when we open up our phones. We, you know, have the security device, the code, and the the face screen that lets us into our phone. And then boom, these apps are right there. And all we have to do is press a button moving these to the last page of your phone, psychologically even tells you, okay, I gotta work to get this right.
Erin (08:51):
So you can't just easily pick up your phone and hit them. You have to work for it. So on Friday at five o'clock, I move Instagram, I move my email, and I move LinkedIn to the last page. Now Friday evening, before I go to bed, it's like a drug. I need one last hit. I will take one final swoop of Instagram. All right? Get that last little high, one final swoop of LinkedIn. And I will look at my work email just to see if anything's happened. And oh, I don't know, three hours since I last left work. Then Saturday morning, here's what you do. You wake up, you live your life, you resist the urge to scroll. Now, if you try to do it, remember these apps are now the last page of your phone. So you have to work for it. And that also serves as your reminder tip. It's like a little hand slap. Nope, don't touch.
Erin (09:56):
Now, for me personally, this resistance has been met with an abundance of watching my son play, having great conversations, enjoying my Saturday morning coffee, outside on my back porch with my dog and my family, and just being present to the life that I'm in starts Saturday morning. Now, here's step four. I keep all of this up the same resistance until Monday morning. This part is key. We have an episode of this show called well what is it? She's brain farting. It's about your morning routines. It it's like, it's like a yes and, and your morning routine. It's very early in this show, and I'm gonna redo that one because it is so popular and it's super important. Let me tell you, a morning routine is crucial for me. Some people say screw morning routines. I say giving to myself in the morning is the most important thing that I could do to make sure I can show up and give to you and to give to my family and to give to my team and our clients.
Erin (11:21):
So Monday morning, I still haven't looked. So Saturday, I've gone the whole day without looking at email or these apps. Sunday, I've gone the whole day about going through my email or looking at these apps and let me tell you, Saturday is hard. Saturday, it's like the drug that you want that you are like, oh, get me a little hit, right? And then by Sunday I'm like, she's doing it. She's doing it. She's thriving. So by Sunday night, I don't even care. Like Instagram could, you know, go obsolete. And I'm like, whatever. I don't need it. But by Monday morning I am thinking to myself, okay, I actually like connecting on Instagram with my friends and with my, my network and community of improve it peeps. And if we aren't connected on Instagram, keeping it real deal is the gram handle. I'll put it in the show notes and it's in every show note, let's connect.
Erin (12:15):
I love being on LinkedIn. I love connecting with my community on LinkedIn there, but when I don't give myself that time away from it, it feels like a chore. So now Monday morning, I'll wake up, I'll do my morning routine. After I do this routine, I sit down to my desk and I make that a ritual as well. I have my coffee. I turn on my little, I see you light behind my desk. It's one of those neon signs. I light a candle and I open up my, and then I open up email, I dive into email, I answer any emails first and any follow ups that need to happen. And after I do this, which is now a ritual, I will then look at social. But not until my emails are checked and responded to, this boundary has changed everything for me. 48 hours of not being tethered to my phone, 48 hours of being completely present to my life has changed my Monday mornings. And honestly, it's changed my week.
Erin (13:38):
This is a full-proof plan to actually give yourself time back. Now, people have asked me, well, what happens in an emergency? So here's, here's what also I need you to understand. My industry training development events, most of them in the corporate world are Monday to Fridays. There are rare times where we have events on the weekends. So from my team, we are able to shut down on the weekends. Some clients still email, but we all, we all know we don't respond until Monday. If my team is working and I'm not, which is very rare, I will communicate with them. Call me or text me if you need anything because my team also knows that weekends we don't respond on email and we don't respond on slack. Some people will slack. I have a couple people who are part-time and so they work, they get some of their work done on Sunday and they'll slack.
Erin (14:38):
But they know I'm not gonna respond to that slack until Monday morning. So communicating this to the people in your life who you do need to talk to on a regular basis is key because you can pick up the phone and you can pick up a text, but you're not picking up the things that take you out of your life. And yes, in those cases, emergencies, they can take you out of your day to day. Those 48 hours. And that's just happened. That has happened to me on very rare occasions. But the majority of the time, 80% of the time, I'm taking those 48 hours to rest and recharge. My team is doing the same. We don't have work on the weekends. It is recharge mode for all of us. The 20% of time where we have those rare occasions and events and I need to take a call or a text or a phone call about work, I'm gonna do it because I have given myself 80% of the time back. Now for apps like social media there, listen, there are no Instagram ticky-tacky LinkedIn emergencies. And if there are, hopefully somebody who is on the gram or on Ticky Tuck or wherever will text me and tell me about it. And I don't need a 9 1 1 to tell me that Susan is now in Turks and Caicos while I'm enjoying a mac and cheese and french fries at my kitchen table with my toddler. So the social apps are that they're social. There really should not be any social emergencies.
Erin (16:16):
So just a recap. Take your apps, move them to the last page of your phone. Do this on Friday at the end of the workday, Friday night, get your last little fix Saturday morning. Resist the urge to check those things that stuck you in. For me, it's email. So Instagram and LinkedIn. Keep it up till Monday morning. And don't look at those things until you have given to yourself first, whether it be getting up and taking a walk, getting up and having morning coffee and reading a book. Give yourself that time first, check your email and then check the socials when you get back into the office. Setting these boundaries, my friends, oh my gosh, will serve your inner child, which is the theme of this month's show. It will help serve that play that need to connect back to you and will also, if you have children, help you connect to the children in your life because you're not sucked into your phone.
Erin (17:18):
Let me tell you, I have been so much more present to my son on the weekends. He's three and a half. He calls him mommy daddy days. And I'm so keenly aware that I give a lot to my career Monday through Friday. I gotta give him those 48 hours. This also reminds you to go play, go outside, be it keeps you in your own life and not in somebody else's. Email is typically wants and needs from other people give to yourself. Social media is if you're a person who consumes, you are consuming other people's lives. If you are a creator, you are creating for other people. All of these things are for others. Give to you 20 some years ago, maybe longer than that. You could only work at work. You didn't have a ping in the palm of your hand to remind you about your job when you weren't there.
Erin (18:25):
Your work was at your office, the place where the work took place, yet a homeline, a landline that people could call you, but it didn't take you out of your present day. So as we have advanced with technology, we have to advance our boundaries. You can set them and if your company or your boss or your team doesn't adhere, then it might be time to have a conversation or to find a new company or a new boss who does care and adhere. There are so many amazing leaders out there who prioritize and care about your wellbeing. I know so many of them. I get to work with them. I get to be their partner and they get to be our client. I get to know them and witness how amazing they are to their teams. So trust me, if you are feeling like this can't work with where, where you're at currently, the grass is greener.
Erin (19:25):
There are people who will help you and adhere to these boundaries. So improve it peeps. Take this technology hack, apply it, put it into motion. Let me know how it goes. Connect with me on Instagram at keeping it Real deal or on LinkedIn. I'm Erin. Deal at Improve It if we're not already connected. And know that I will respond to you Monday through Friday and I'd love to have a conversation. Tell me how this is working out with you and in your own life. Because I know it has the power to transform the way that you show up and the way that you feel internally, which is the most important part. So keep failing, keep improving cuz this world needs that very special it that only you can bring. And we need that it recharged and refreshed. I'll see you here soon. Ah, hey friend, did you enjoy today's show? If so, head on over to iTunes to rate and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Now, did I mention that when you leave a five star review of the Improve It podcast, an actual team of humans does a happy dance? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's right. So leave a review for us on iTunes, screenshot it, and send me an email at info Learn to improve it.com. I'll send you a personalized video back as a thank you. Thanks so much for listening. Improve It Peeps. I'll see you next Wednesday.