93: Technology and Well-Being: Creating Supportive Environments, with Eric Porres

He is the head of smart habits at Logitech and we talked about how digital technologies can support good habits , how they can support bad habits , we talked about how to measure well-being and how technology is impacting well-being , and we talked about the relationship between productivity and our well-being .

I think you're going to find this episode really interesting , Eric . I'm so excited that you and I are talking today . Thank you so much for making the time .

we dive into technology and well-being , I start with everyone . If you could have dinner with any historical figure , who would it be and why ?

Excellence , then , is not an act but a habit , and so I would love to spend a little time with Aristotle opining on that quote , and then , after Aristotle , maybe I would do brunch with Marcus Aurelius , and then I would have an amuse-bouche with Abraham Lincoln .

And it's so interesting that and not surprising you talk about habits and wanting to get in touch with Aristotle because of habits , because that is what we are going to be talking about today in terms of technology and well-being .

Going to be talking about today in terms of technology and well-being , kind of you know , how can we adopt healthy habits and what is the role of technology in that ? So , just to get us started , technology is really connected to who we are as humans these days and our well-being .

So how can we make sure that technology complements us as humans and our interactions with other humans , rather than taking away from ?

So what I would say , certainly at Logitech , we've been in the business or in that interface , that connection point between humans and computers , for decades , humans and computers for decades and what we've learned , exactly to your point , is that technology should complement rather than replace the human interaction and connection , and that applies , that extends , not only

into the realm of hardware but also in the realm of software .

So I'm fortunate to be part of a group that is responsible for a piece of software that we call smart habits ironically or coincidentally going hearkening back to my , my brunch with Aristotle and and the goal of our , uh , of our software , is to help individuals , nudge them into adopting healthier habits without distracting them from the work that they are doing .

So we can think about ultradian cycles of work , where , right , your most optimal time in which you can do concentrated , focus work might be 90 minutes .

But then , when we also look at the science around breaks and being able to take breaks , especially for one's eyes , as an example , we should really be doing the 20-20-20 rule , which is stare at something , if you can , that is , at least 20 feet away , for 20 seconds every 20 minutes .

So there's that balance , I would say , between what's good for us , right , like we know that healthy snacks are good for us , yet sometimes we'll go for the candy . So I think it comes down to everything in moderation , with nudges that move us along that path .

And the other thing , manya , I would say is , at least experientially and we know this from Andrew Huberman's work in terms of the optic nerve well , not just Huberman's work , but others in the realm of psychology that if we are exposed to something with the same frequency , eventually we ignore it because it's been in our visual field for so often that our brain

just says oh , it's like Sherlock Holmes who said hide something in the most obvious place . And so , in that same way , if we continue to receive notifications every hour , on the hour , we ignore them .

And so part of what we've done , as an example in terms of what we built with Smart Habits , is to understand that each individual's work habits are , in fact , different at their desk , and so your habit nudges will be a little bit different from my habit nudges , which will be a little bit different from your next podcast guest's nudges as well , because each

individual is unique . So , going back to your question , understanding and identifying the uniqueness of the individual and making sure that the support system around them is tailored for their experience is the best way that I believe we will be complimentary as opposed to become replacement overlords Right .

That is one of my biggest challenges and every time it pops up , no matter what I'm doing , like , yep , I need to take a break my eyes , I've been staring at the screen for too long and it really has me thinking about that when I'm not at my computer , thinking about , oh , I need to give my eyes a break .

I've been looking at my phone for too long or fill it in , but I would say that , absolutely , I found it to be an incredible tool to remind me .

habits show with Manya Chilinski but what we do know is that people who use smart habits , after 100 days of use so if we look at , let's say , james Clear's work in atomic habits and others who've studied habits the average person needs about 66 days , or so , in fact , to form a new habit . Now , is that 66 business ?

Let's survey people who use smart habits or who are about to use smart habits on some of the practices that they could do every day already , whether that be practicing mindful breathing , taking any kind of break , standing up from their desk and resting their eyes , to use the very specific example of resting eyes .

And then , a hundred days later , after they've been using the software , we survey that same cohort of people again and we ask them oh okay , have you ? Have you done the following ? And what we find is that people are 261% as of the timing of this podcast , 261% more likely to rest their eyes than they did before . So that , to me , is a great .

That is a great data point in terms of the complementary activity that we are enabling and it is a net positive habit-forming support mechanism that helps the individual .

So you know because of your work that organizations are always looking seem to be always looking for technologies to increase efficiency , to increase productivity . But how can an organization in particular make sure that the steps they take , or the technology , a byproduct of our well-being ?

When you have burnout , can you be productive Like , let's see , the American Psychological Association estimates that more than $500 billion is lost every year due to workplace stress . Who , world Health Organization identified stress as a health epidemic for the 21st century , for instance . As a health

epidemic for the 21st century , for instance . And then , gosh , it was Deloitte that's found that 77% of respondents in one of their workplace recent workplace service experienced burnout from their current job . So if we look at those numbers , you can't say , oh , but you have to be more productive . It just it doesn't work that way .

It works from saying you need to take care of yourself , because when you are your best self , you will be , but productivity is a natural by-product of that . It can't happen . It can't happen the other , the other way around .

And so we look at similarly with smart habits , we , we look at metrics again in that pre and post exposure basis and say does workplace satisfaction increase ? Part due to that software-enabled kicker ?

But again , I would go back to what I stated before , which is we have to get people , in particular folks in positions of people in the culture , decision makers , ceos and others thinking about productivity as the byproduct , not productivity as the input .

It's enabled us to connect in ways we never have before , but it can also create barriers , and people have different abilities to access or interact with digital technology in particular . So how can organizations make sure that any digital health initiatives are inclusive and accessible to employees , whatever their background may be ?

And so it is challenging not impossible , but it is challenging to find those innovation pockets of excellence .

It's almost like I wish every enterprise , every Fortune 500 company , fortune 1000 company , maybe even , let's say , fortune 2000 , start dipping into the mid market as well has at least one or two entrepreneurs and residents that have lived startup culture in some way , shape or form , and he or she are empowered to be able to run small pilots .

Because that is the place in which you start with a cluster . You don't say , oh , this is a broad mandate that we have to do with every individual . No , start small and then identify what the weaknesses are before you roll out a global initiative . I would also say , well , it's all about ? I think it is , as you know , about baby steps .

And also you can't measure , or rather you can't manage what you don't measure . So identifying the metrics ahead of time is important . And then , of course , as they say right , any technology that really works is supposed to be practically indistinguishable from magic .

So everyone can take a look at the Apple onboarding process , for instance , for any of Apple's products , and if you can say it just works , you don't need to read a manual to understand how it works .

If you look at how babies and very , very , very young adolescents interact with screens and how they adapt very quickly to any form , any form of screens , and especially two-way haptic interaction , that's another way to understand how to build systems that are in fact inclusive for all that leaves . No one leave . No child is really is .

We can apply that same mentality and modality to developing systems for solutions for larger organizations over time as well . I hope that answered your question .

Here is this type of community that we need to specifically address and here's what we're going to do it . And then here's this other specific type of community that has an issue we need to address . That's important , but I think making things accessible at the most basic level then therefore makes it accessible to everyone .

So you're looking for the early adopters , the people who are most likely to lean into new technology not to stereotype , but we could say younger generations versus old . How do you build new habits ? It's hard to break habits once you have them right .

So I studied a martial art for , or I have studied a martial art for over 20 years , and prior to that martial art I had studied a different one .

And so , in order for me to learn and become a master at the art of ninjutsu , I had to unlearn certain things that I did when I was in my youth , as a teenager , and I for sure can say it would have been much more difficult for me to unlearn and relearn if I had paused my pursuit until in my 30s or 40s , as opposed to starting my learning in my 20s

. And I could see it , once I became a teacher and practitioner , that it was more difficult not impossible , but more difficult for an older cohort or my older students to be able to unlearn bad habits and then start to relearn good habits . Same thing applies with learning and instruments . Same thing applies with so many different ways .

We have to have that malleability , a curious mindset , and being flexible and adaptable . And I go back to then Eric Shinseki's famous quote , which is if you don't like change , you'll like irrelevance even less . So I do think there is some element at play there as well , which is to say that we need to have that again .

Be flexible , hopefully be flexible and adaptable to change .

But for an organization who's looking at , how do we measure the impact of technology on our employee well-being , like , what are the metrics that companies could use to get a picture of what's the current state and are we making any difference ?

Is it to , for instance , reduce the healthcare costs that the employer has to contribute on behalf of the individual ?

So we know , for instance , that in the United States at least , US healthcare costs are approximately 5% or so of GDP and within that , if I look at musculoskeletal disorders and I think this stat came from Miller Knoll that nearly , if not over , a trillion dollars a year are spent by insurance companies and individuals for the treatment of musculoskeletal disorders for

neck , lower back joint and limb pain . So why do we do that ? Because we slouch at our desk or we sit at our desk for hours on end , especially those folks , or our friends , colleagues and peers , perhaps in academia , who are in the business of grant writing , as an example , which takes a long time . Grading papers takes a long time .

There are many different ways in which knowledge workers have so much knowledge that they have to sit at their desk to get their work done , but inherently , not everybody can afford necessarily an air on chair , although you tend to see them lots of times in backgrounds of Zooms but if that's the case ? So what can we do to help ?

What can we do to help inspire people to be able to break that habit of sitting at their desk or slouching at their desk , which then contributes to that pain ? Well , we can nudge them , in our case , and we know that .

And again , going back to metrics , and we know that , and again going back to metrics , we know that people are 154% more likely to stand up from their desk and 117% more likely to stretch during their day when they use smart habits versus when they don't .

So again , I look at that on a metric basis and say , okay , there's something there that we're doing and at a certain time , depending on the organization , depending on , at least in our case , our software distribution within an organization we can then compare what were the health care costs associated with the treatment of those pain disorders pre and post and see

whether there's been a net difference in those .

That's a longer term initiative that we're undertaking right now , but it's something that I expect that we should see a negative contribution , which is a positive in the sense that those healthcare costs do decline a bit because we're encouraging these better behaviors that ultimately not just are better for the employer but are better for the individual .

So that's , I think , a case where a metric that you can manage ultimately becomes a net win for both participants , both the employee as well as the employer .

You couldn't be in touch with somebody if you were in your car , and I look at a lot of the things that have changed in my lifetime and think , oh , this is great , I have this phone and I can do X Y Z on it when I'm away from my desk , and I think we tend to look at technology as a positive and that we're moving in a positive direction .

Is that really true ? Are we giving too much over to technology ?

I still use maps to this day when skiing as an example , but that's one that is maybe an impractical skill that is easily offloaded to a device . Conversely , I also have four children , three of whom are of telephone age , and occasionally I don't remember their phone numbers because I've offloaded that memory bit into a device that is universally accessible to me .

So I think some of it maybe . I would say it depends on the use case . So right , maps . Yes , I loved orienteering when I was a kid . My

mom would encourage me to do that . I did lots of outward bound like programs . When I was an undergraduate I wound up leading students as a crew leader , as a student runrun program at Duke University called Project Wild , which incidentally celebrates its 50th anniversary this year because I wanted to understand it at that very tactile level .

But also I fully recognize that Waze gets me there faster than a map ever would . In the same way that I have also adopted probably the best $99 I've spent on software in the past year has been a piece of software called Opal .

Opalso and what it does is it creates a pretty significant barrier to entry for me to doom scroll during the day and doom scroll during the night , so it effectively shuts down my phone my iPhone in this case , but it is available for Apple and Android and it allows me to create these times , these bouts of work where I just can't be distracted unless I really

force myself to . I have to go into the app . I have to say dismiss that , that block of time . I have to do it and it'll . It'll actually count down for me . It'll do it . Okay , in seven seconds you can dismiss it for N period of time . So it's created some nice engineering hooks , if you will , to prevent me from dipping into the bad habit .

And so that , I think , is the again that balance between what is the purpose . Certainly , folks like Nir Eyal , adam Alter , have written extensively about this very topic , adam in particular , about the dark side of understanding human psychology and the behavior and motivations , and similar to casinos and slot machines .

How do we create variable intermittent rewards within software applications ? Tiktok is one giant variable intermittent reward and that's why it keeps people hooked so much as it is . So I would say that's net negative . You go anywhere from TikTok doom scrolling to Waze as the great liberator of time versus great time suck of time , and so it's up to the individual .

Again , if you build healthy habits , are inspired to build healthy habits , you know where not to cross that barrier . Yeah .

Similarly , artificial intelligence isn't here to necessarily take your job . It's the person who understands how to use artificial intelligence who may be here to take your job . At the same time , when we think about technology like JAT-GPT , claude and others , the human is the instigator and the human is also the judge . Human is also the judge .

And so I think where we are right now in that kind of in conversational intelligence , from that perspective , it's either garbage in , garbage out or great work in exceptional work out , and that , I think , is really where we need to be mindful of . Again . Technology can be a great liberator .

I used to say and I was the chief marketing officer of an early artificial intelligence company called Rocket Fuel back in 2012 to 2015 .

And the co-founder was one of a classmate of Sergey and Larry Britt of advertising technology , and we would say , when it came to , we would help people eliminate the grudge work , grunt work and guesswork associated with the manual optimization of advertising campaigns and liberate them to do the most inspiring and insightful work of their careers .

And I think that is as true today as it was 11 years ago and that technology has caught up again to be necessarily a great liberator of human flourishing , if we let it . If we let it to , if we allow ourselves not to be completely consumed by it but if we allow it to be , for us to be liberated with it .

And that is my hope , that is my hope for humanity that we see technology as an augmenter and enabler and liberator and not a tyrant and destroyer of worlds .

Yes , that we see in so many movies where somehow technology has sent us all back to the dark ages because we haven't I don't know , we haven't learned the right lessons or something , Although that would also be a pre , you know , that would be even a pre-map era .

So I suppose for those of us who grew up in the , you know , in the age of orienteering and compasses , that could be a nice liberating artifact as well to experience all over again .

Anyone can find out about it and download Smart Habits for themselves at smarthabitslogitechcom , and I'm again super thankful for taking the time or having this time with you and really appreciate the questions and look forward to both listening to more of your guest speakers on this delightful podcast . So thank you very much .

I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn of resiliency , compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil . If this is something you want to learn more about , visit my website , www . manyachylinski . com , or email me at manya@ manyachylinski .

com , or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter . Thanks so much .