Can You Go Phoneless?

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The Elvis Duran after Party.

It's the after Party Podcast. Don't we love a podcast after the party? Yeah, well, because that's what we're doing.

Could you imagine podcasting after an actual party?

No, not at all. So we were talking about the need to detox from our phones, put them down. We're so locked into our phones. We are forgetting about ourselves, you know, because every time you pop online, you're really not paying attention to yourself at all. You're paying attention to something else always. Yeah, a lot of people are

Yes, Digital de Talks Day.

When and why did you start this?

I started it. I'm going to say about nine years ago. Oh wow, Okay, my uncle sent me a video from YouTube and it's like this love story that wouldn't have happened if we were looking down at our phone. This man walks around the park. He asked this woman for directions. They fall in love, they have this great life. If you were looking down at your phone, you wouldn't have met, You wouldn't have had gotten married and had this wonderful life.

Wow. Kind of makes you wonder what we were all missing. What we're all missing when we're on our phone all the night. We'll never know because we're not paying attention. There's a whole world going on out there. You do know that, right? Scary there's a world going on out there while you're on your phone. Something I said, yes, yes, okay somehow So so Joanne, if someone needs to get you on a Sunday, they have to call you. There's no texting. Yes, your phone has to ring.

It actually has to ring if you text me. I wake up on Monday morning and I have text messages. I haven't responded to Facebook, you know, comments, all these things that I just I don't respond to it, and I tell them, you know, if you need me, you better call me.

Wow, So you had to train people over nine years. It took nine years to train them to call you on Sunday.

Correct.

And so my new friends do not like this, well, of.

Course, but let me ask you this, how does it affect your life? Monday through Saturday. I mean, are you using your phone less during those days as well?

Yes?

And it is my goal. You know how you get like the uh usage once a week?

Yeah, yeah, it.

Is my goal to have that less every week. And when it's higher, I'm like, what the hell did I do?

Yeah?

Why was I on my phone?

I have a question, do you on Monday, when you have all of these other texts and everything that came in on Sunday that you ignored, do you have to play catch up on Monday? Or do you just not answer those at all?

Depends on if I feel it's important enough. Okay, Like sometimes I'm just like I don't care about you, move on. But if it's like you know someone something somewhat important, sure.

Okay, it's fair.

Wow. You know it's interesting, Joan, because we're about to talk to someone else who is from what their parent company they work for is in Germany, where they I think legally not allowed to have their phones on nice or even their company at least says you you cannot respond to anything business wise on the weekends.

I love that.

We'll get to that in just a second. All right, any of the thoughts for Joanne, It sounds like she's onto something pretty cool.

Yeah, a great idea. I might have to implement something like that myself. Yeah, I'll talk to me. She just doesn't want you to talk to her.

The question why, I mean, I feel like Sunday is an important day. Why day? But aside from that, but why not like a random weekday? I mean, I feel like Sunday would be the day that you would really want to connect with people.

That's really my day to like recoup and get ready for the week. You know, I work Monday through Friday. I work at a town hall. I don't want to be bothered. If you want to bother me and you're like my dad, you know you're going to call me and you want to hang out with me, and you're going to pick up the phone. You want to hear my voice. Yeah, I need to reset. I want to be home on Sundays. I want to chill. I don't want the stress of the phone. The phone is stressful.

Yeah, as you did, you took charge. You took charge of your life, and it is your your rules. People will follow them, including yourself, because you have to follow your own rule as well. Joanne, thank you. That was very, very very eye opening. We appreciate you being part of the show.

Thank you, thanks for talking to me.

You're very welcome. Arleen is online eighteen, who I was talking to earlier. Hi Arlen, how you doing good? You doing well? So, Arlene says, my parent company is in Germany not allowed to have their phones on or even smart watches or anything like that during the workday. They need to lock up these phones in their desks. They

Agree? Agree?

I mean I'm in the US here, and you know we're I g said, like you guys, you're used to it. It's with you. We even are company in the US. Most of us work from home. We need our phone to just log into our computers. But still, of course you use it for that, but then of course you're checking it throughout the day. Anytime the Germans come here and they see us, they're like, what are you doing? Like, how can you have that out? You know why? You know, why do you need it? You know the interesting and

Wow? Didn't even know that? Do we know this?

No? No?

And I don't know if it's every company out there, but like, I mean, this is a pretty big company in Germany that I work that we're the parent company of. And yeah, they even they're smart watches like they The first I got introduced to it to them was a few years ago. One of their interns was here, which is a college student, and she was like, you guys who were smart watches? Were like, what do you mean? And then she explained to us they have to walk them up. They're not allowed to.

Have Now I like it. Yeah, but also how many times are we in here and we're talking about something and you look around and people are on their phone, not paying attention anything the time, and then we repeat, we repeat what someone just said because we're not paying attention. This is the first place I've been where the phones were allowed to be out during the show. The other shows that I was at, if you had your phone out, one of the hosts saw you oh my god, the end of the world.

Yeah, I get scary sweating now he's sweat.

Sometimes you use this the phone for research though, I mean in the moment stuff. Yeah, sometimes, But how do we how do the rest of us know that? I won't tell you this, Arlene. Back when people started bringing their laptops into the room, and I used to get all pissed off because I would try to get people's attention and they were on their laptop doing something I don't know. And we were considering making it illegal to

Actually, yeah, your small laptop.

We can always bring it back.

I like it. Yeah, I mean we have done. We've done in the US here because most of what's were remote. We have you know, company meetings online, you know, via our WebEx we use. And they started now we have to have our cameras on because they knew people were listening, but what else were they doing on their phone or something else and not really engaging. And so now unless for some reason you have some reason you can't put your camera on. Your camera's got to be on.

That's so funny.

Whenever we have like a big iHeart meeting, I'm at home and sometimes I'm cleaning and my camera off and i have my airpot in and I'm listening. But I'm cleaning and I'm doing this.

Yeah, but you're not. You're not paying attention to one. No, that's that's why. That why it's illegal for us to be on our phones while we're driving. Yeah, because I mean I've done to myself. I'll be on the phone with someone and I'll find myself running a red light. I mean, and so I stopped doing it because you need to be paying attention. And so I don't think

Well, I mean, go back ten twenty years ago, we did not have it, and come we had no problem with.

It then, you know, yeah, right, all right, any of the thoughts for Arlene or questions, no.

I like this. I like this idea though.

We're moving to joy right.

Yeah, all right, Arlene, thank you and thanks for listening to you so we sure do appreciate you very very very much.

Thanks you guys have a great days after party.