ProductiviTree: Cultivating Efficiency, Harvesting Joy

BREAK FREE From Social Media and Live!

• Santiago Tacoronte • Season 2 • Episode 35

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In this conversation, Angelo Valenti discusses the profound impact of social media on human behavior, mental health, and productivity. He explores how social media has evolved from a platform for personal connection to a source of misinformation and negativity. Valenti highlights the psychological effects of social media, including the need for approval and feelings of loneliness. He also addresses the addictive nature of social media, the dangers of comparison culture, and offers strategies for overcoming digital addiction. The conversation emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries with technology and encourages listeners to reflect on their online habits.

Takeaways

  • Social media has evolved from personal connection to a source of negativity.
  • Anonymity on social media can bring out the worst in people.
  • Dopamine addiction from scrolling can distract from real life.
  • Comparison culture on social media can steal joy.
  • Recognizing harmful social media signals is crucial for mental health.
  • Digital addiction can be systematically addressed and overcome.
  • Leaders should encourage healthy tech boundaries in remote work.
  • Productivity apps can be helpful, but they depend on individual needs.
  • Social media often serves as a distraction from meaningful engagement.
  • Taking breaks from social media can lead to improved well-being.

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Dr. Angelo Valenti has spent over 40 years discovering something remarkable. Most people are making their lives much harder than they need to be. As a consulting psychologist based in Nashville, Tennessee, he's witnessed what separates those who thrive from those who struggle. And it's not what you might think. Angelo founded the company Psychologist in 1982, where he spent four decades helping companies hire the right people and coaching leaders at every level. But what makes Angelo truly unique is his holistic approach. He realized that many highly successful leaders had forgotten how to find joy in their achievements. His breakthrough insight? External systems from social media to social expectations are controlling people lives instead of simply influencing them. Angelo has cracked the code on how to take back control and what he calls your easy way to enjoy life. Angelo is the author of You're Making This Way Too Hard. Find your easy way. to enjoy life. And yes, that unique spelling is intentional. The book addresses a critical question. Why do so many people have everything society says should make them happy, still wake up feeling unfulfilled? Welcome to ProductiviTree. Let's dive in with Dr. Angelo Valenti. Angelo Valenti, welcome to Productivity. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Let's start with your experience, Angelo. You've coached leaders, individuals through decades of change, and you're an expert also on the relationship between social media and humans and technology. When did you first notice social media um started to alter how people think, feel, act, and work in life? Well, if you think about it, when Facebook, I guess, was the first really social media that took off, and this was 2011, 12, something like that, it was people posting cute cat videos and what they had for dinner, and they were trying to connect with their close friends. And it's morphed from that into a worldwide... I hate to use the word community because communities are usually nicer to each other. uh worldwide... uh platform for information, misinformation, disinformation, uh and it's kind of gotten more pervasive and quite frankly, it's gotten a little meaner too. What do you mean with meaner? Do you think people is mean in social media? Well, yes, because people have, you can set up a profile and you can hide your name. It can be set up under any name you want. And you can use social media to intimidate people, to scare people, to threaten people. You can say things on social media that you'd never say to a person face to face. and you can hide behind your anonymity. And it brings out, it can bring out the worst in people. And on the flip side, if you take what random anonymous people say to you and about you seriously, that can have some pretty negative effects. mean, there've been cases where people have committed suicide over things that... uh cyber bullying, things that have been said to them or about them on social media. People have committed murders. People are depressed, anxious. uh Many people wake up in the morning and the first thing they do is grab their phone and see how many likes they got on the last post that they posted. And it's really taken over for human communication. Because it's very... When you think about it, it's very impersonal. mean, these are people that you don't know you've never met often, and they can have an outsized influence on you if you let them. You talk a lot about making things too hard. Is social media one of the culprits making modern life harder than it should be? I think it is. think it's, of all, social media, if you let it, can be a time suck. You can spend a couple hours on various social media platforms and that time is gone. You're never gonna get that time back. And when you look back on it, what did you really gain? What did you learn from that? What did you gain from that? It's pretty much mindless uh entertainment, if you will. mean, people aren't going on social media, for the most part, to learn valuable information that's gonna help them in their life and in their career. They're just looking at it because it's there. So that's one way that social media is making our life more complicated. The second way is people take it way too seriously. It's just people don't take TV shows that seriously. And I don't understand why they take social media seriously when most of what's posted on social media is edited, curated, scripted, and people are showing you exactly what they want you to see has nothing to do with their real life. I talked with a videographer a couple of months ago and he mentioned that a lot of these influencers they'll rent a Lamborghini for a day or they'll rent a yacht for a day or they'll rent an airplane for a day when they're living in their parents' basement in reality and they're trying to portray a life that bears no resemblance to what their real life is. As a psychologist, Angelo, what psychological patterns do you see social media reinforcing? Well, social media reinforces a need for approval. A lot of people have a deep need to be seen, be heard, and be approved of. So that need for approval is a big one. Loneliness is another thing that social media feeds into people's loneliness, sense of isolation. And maybe if they don't have a strong network of friends or relatives or a community, as I mentioned earlier. they'll turn to social media to get some kind of socialization or social contact. So those are just a couple, a couple things. This is a productivity podcast. So let's bring it a little bit to that side. How does social media beyond the hours that you mentioned reduce people's productivity? Well, it reduces people's productivity in a lot of ways. The time waste is a big one. And the second thing is to be productive, you really, I think, need to have a real clear understanding of what you want to do, what you're trying to accomplish. And I think social media is not only distracting, but it gives you a surface. Everything's on the surface. There's very little to deep thought, deep analysis going on on various social media platforms. So I think it keeps people from really digging deeply into the things that they should be thinking about, uh learning about, and acting on. Let's look at the other side of the coin. Could social media be also leveraged for self-discipline and motivation? Are there things in social media that can intrinsically motivate you to become, I don't know, I know that a lot that is in social media is about materialism. That's clear, Angel. Make more money, drive a faster car. You mentioned the Lamborghini before. But are there things that could help us become a better person? sure, on social media there are people who are posting ways to develop an exercise program for example that can help people, let's say over 50 who maybe don't want to run anymore or can't run for physical reasons, that can help people get in better shape physically. There's also people posting about nutrition. There's people posting about sleep. There are several platforms that are designed to help people with a specific issue, whatever they might have. It could be their gut health, it could be their joint health. It could be a lot of different things. There's platforms that help people plan trips so that they're more efficient and effective in deciding where they wanna go, how they wanna get there, how much they wanna spend. of good information available on social media, but it can often get lost in the mass of the other stuff. Hmm. What's your take on uh dopamine addiction from uh constant scrolling? Is it uh neuroscience? You see it, right? People go for hours. Is it some sort of way to evade reality? Is the neuroscience behind dopamine and excitement? Is a way to procrastinate? How do you see this doomless scrolling as they call it? scrolling, yeah. It is a way to distract yourself from real life. know, most of real life is not exciting. I mean, let's get right down to it. Most of it's just, it's not a drudge, but it's just kind of routine. So if you can get that dopamine hit in a way that's fast and... doesn't really affect your real life, it's real easy to do. I mean, there are other ways to get a dopamine addiction. If you actually accomplish something meaningful and get some feedback about it, that can give you a dopamine high, but it takes a lot more work. Running a marathon can give you a dopamine high. There are a lot of things that can give you that high, but a fast, it's like... I describe it, it's like eating cotton candy. I don't know if you have cotton candy where you are, but with spun sugar, basically is what it is. And if you eat cotton candy, it tastes really good and it'll give you a nice sugar high, but it wears off in about 10 minutes and you're right back where you were. And that's pretty much what social media does. It gives you that sugar high, but then 10 minutes later, how are you any better off really than you were? Comparison is a human thing, it's a human trait comparing between each other. How is social media helping or not helping us to create benchmarks and compare ourselves with other humans? Well, I don't think it's helping much because as I said, most of what people post on social media is fake. It's curated. It's scripted. So that if you're comparing your everyday life to somebody else's scripted life, the way I describe it in my book is you're comparing someone else's highlight reel to your blooper reel. And there's no way your real life is going to compare to somebody else's fantasy life or scripted whatever they want you to see. So there's an old saying that comparison is the thief of joy. And I think that if you want to compare yourself, compare yourself today to where you were yesterday, compare yourself to yesterday's version of yourself. If you've made some improvements today, if you're just a little bit better today than you were yesterday, that's a meaningful comparison because it shows growth, it shows improvement. and shows what you're potentially capable of. But if you're, you I love to play golf. Okay, that's my, when I'm not working, that's one of the things I really look forward to doing. But if I was gonna compare myself to the best golfers in the world and say, why can't I be like that? I'm gonna be disappointed because I'm not, first of all, I'm not that good. Second of all, I'm not gonna put the time and the effort and the work. that they put into in order to be the best in the world. So I'm going to compare myself to, did I play a little bit better yesterday or today than I did yesterday? Am I making progress in putting or whatever it might be? So compare yourself to yesterday, last week, last month, last year, and you could see what progress you've made. And that can give you a real sense of long-term satisfaction. That's very powerful, Angelo. Let's talk a little bit about addictions because social media has become an addiction. And I mean, like the term addiction resembles a bit of an anomaly. But if I look at myself. I spend much more time in front of my phone than I wish I do. How do you coach people, Angelo, to detox, to um make more of their time, or people that have serious digital dependencies? What have worked with your clients in the past? Well, it can be very difficult because like any addiction, it becomes a part of your life. And one of the ways I define an addiction is if you plan your day or your week around whatever that is, it could be alcohol, could be tobacco, could be gambling, could be sex, could be whatever people are addicted to. People are addicted to any number of things. If you plan your activities around that, you're an addict because it's controlling your life. If it's controlling your time, it's controlling your life. So you really, it's difficult to go cold turkey. from social media, just like it's difficult to quit drinking cold turkey or quit drugs cold turkey. ah But what you can do is systematically wean yourself. off of your digital dependence. And one of the first things you can do is do an analysis of what you're gaining and what you're losing through social media. And I don't think people really sit down and realize what they're losing by staring at their phone for hours every day. I mean, they're losing human connection. As you mentioned, they're losing work productivity and they're filling their minds with stuff that's not gonna help them in any way. What was one of the first sayings about computers was garbage in, garbage out. If you put in bad data, you're gonna get out bad data. And it's the same, if you're filling your brain with mush, it's taken up room that could be used for more productive, that space could be used much more productively. and it's not easy because it's so pervasive. And especially if you're in a room with 10 people and the other nine people are out staring at their phone and not talking to each other at all. It's difficult for you to be the one to walk up and try to start a conversation with that person. It's much easier to just whip out your phone and start staring at your phone too. So uh you really got to do it in a slow systematic way. And it's got to be important to you. You're never going to get rid of any addiction unless it becomes really more important to you to get rid of that addiction than to keep that addiction. Angela, I'm going to drop a question here that I want you to save and I will save it in a few minutes. Is there a way out of this? Is humanity able to stop this at all? But before I go to this question, I wanted to picture a couple having a dinner, having dinner at a restaurant. Both of them are in front of their phones. They're not talking to each other. They're just on their phones, connecting with other people. Do you think this behavior is going to be normalized in such a way that it's seen as a common thing? I think it's already that way. I don't think it's gonna become that way. I think it's already there. I don't know the last time you went out to a restaurant, but my wife and I like to go out on Fridays and have a little date night. And while we're talking to each other, uh most of the people around us are on their phone. And to be honest, the couple, if whoever's, If you're going out to dinner with somebody, if they don't have a problem with it and you don't have a problem with it, then there's not a problem. But you're not learning much about that other person. You're really not engaging in any kind of conversation and you're not making any connection. So it becomes much more superficial. It becomes two people occupying a similar place at the same time, but they're not really interacting with one another. And it might've saved some relationships. because it people from talking about difficult things that they might rather not talk about. But, you know, in general, it's taking the place of genuine connection with people. And go ahead. Let's stop there for a second. You said it's now normal. It's accepted. And this is where I wanted to go. Will there be a time where humans will literally stop talking to each other and only communicate via digital means? Do you think we will reach that point? don't think we'll get 100 % to that point. But I think we're certainly heading in that direction. uh And I think I don't even want to get started on artificial intelligence because there are a lot of people who have a relationship with artificial intelligence instead of having a relationship with another person. uh So I'm not sure we can put the genie back in the bottle. But I think there's still an inherent genetic need for some type of human contact, for human connection. And I don't think that'll ever go away. If we get to the point where somebody's marrying their phone, then we've reached a point of no return, we're not there yet. You coach people to enjoy life on their terms. What does that mean and how do you help clients to reframe their online lives? Well, what they first, what they have to do is really get a clear understanding of what their terms are, what's important to them. And one of the first things I do with people is dig into what are their values? What's important to them in their life? What do they really care about? And many people never really sit down and think about what they really care about it. But if you, if you watch what people do on a regular basis, you can get a sense of what they really care about. People always have time and energy to do the things that are really important to them. Right? You know, if, if, if a boss says, my employees aren't motivated. Well, watch him on Friday afternoon, see how fast they get out of the office and jump in their cars and go, go to the lake and fish. They're motivated. They're just not motivated to do what you want them to do. They are motivated. So people, have to people, a person has to understand what's important to them, why they're doing what they're doing. And I think we've talked at length about social media, but there are, if a person says, love my family, I really love spending time with my family and they're working 12, 14 hours a day and they're never with their family, that tells me that their work to them is more important than their family. And why are you working 14 hours a day? Well, I'm doing it for my family. And then I'll say, well, have you ever asked your family whether they'd rather have you work eight hours a day and be home for dinner and put the kids to bed? Maybe go for a walk or something? And they say, oh no, I'm doing it for my family. Well, they're not. They're doing it for some other reason, whatever that reason is, but they're not doing it for their family. Let's give some tactical advice um to our audience. Can you give us a couple of signals that someone's social media is hurting their productivity, their lives, even if they haven't realized yet? Well, one of the signals is if they're missing deadlines, if they have some deadlines at work uh and they miss those deadlines because they're spending too much time on social media, that's a red flag. If they're distracted, if they're not able to concentrate on what they ought to be concentrating on, that's a signal. If uh the people that are close to them seem that, uh more distant or you're not having the same kinds of interactions or meeting people as regularly as you used to, that's a sign. mean, you need to just think about every time you say yes to picking up your phone and scrolling on social media, you're saying no to so many other things. So one of the things people could do is, Maybe say no to the social media once in a while and say yes to something that involves actual interaction with another person or just solitude. You know, I like to take a walk in the morning at a park nearby, near my house. And when I'm walking, I'm walking for the, for the peace, the quiet, just see deer and turkeys and Every once in a while I'll see a bald eagle, which is kind of nice. But most of the people who are walking in the park, they're either talking on the phone with somebody or they're listening to music or they're not appreciating the setting that they're in. So one of the things people can do is just Enjoy a little bit of solitude. Either take a walk in the park or just sit in nature and listen. Listen to the birds. Listen to the sounds of little animals scurrying around. Just enjoy breathing the fresh air. That's something really simple that people can do. And to flip it to the exact other side of it, one of the things people can do To make their life more enjoyable easier on their terms is not to argue with idiots on social media. Just because somebody posts something doesn't mean it requires a response by you. You could just ignore it and go on with your day. But people are so easily drawn into an argument with somebody they don't know about something that maybe they don't even care about that much. and nobody get their minds are never changed. Nobody ever changes anybody's mind by arguing on social media. Can we dig a little bit into this and to the psychology of this? Why does people get triggered, Angelo, by something or someone that is 6,000 kilometers away, they will never meet, and they don't even know their background, and so there is no context. Why get people so triggered in social media? I think because it's so darn easy. Back in the day, way back in the day, if you had a disagreement with somebody and it got to be a heated disagreement, somebody was gonna challenge somebody to a fight or a duel. And you were gonna settle it face to face and there was gonna be physical violence involved. Well, There were consequences to that. Somebody's gonna get hurt or killed. or somebody's gonna at the very least lose face and be shamed by the community for backing down from a challenge or a duel. Well now anybody can say anything to anybody. And so many people feel like they need to respond to that. It's like they're challenged to a duel and it's just a duel of words. and the words often don't have any real meaning behind them. And I think one of the big problems I think we have, at least in America, I can't speak for the rest of the world, is that we have discounted the value of reason and analysis and elevated the value of emotions, how people feel about them. Well, an emotion is a very, it's a very personal thing. The same thing that might aggravate the heck out of you rolls right off my back. Doesn't bother me at all. But, you know, and you can't really, you can't control other people's feelings or, but you can control how you react to any given situation. And I think what we've done is we feel like we have to give an emotional knee-jerk reaction to what somebody says or what somebody does. And it's so, it's impersonal. You can do it, like you said, from 6,000 kilometers away. But you don't have to. Right? How can leaders, uh mostly in companies and probably also in governments, encourage healthy boundaries with tech, especially remote teams? Because the concept of remote work has become a free for all. You have a computer at home, you can be connected 24-7, literally, you can. How can leaders give some... mindfulness, health back to their people. Well, that's a great question and it really hit home to me. I didn't really give it much thought until the pandemic about four or five years ago where people were forced to work remotely and leaders had a real challenge on their hand of how to lead a workforce where there's no face-to-face, no personal really uh contact with them. So it's really important for leaders to make sure that they're touching, and I don't mean physically touching, I mean making some type of a contact or connection with their workforce, with the team that's working remotely. Just to check in, and it doesn't have to be a formal Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting that happens every Friday. The team's all gonna get together Friday at two o'clock and we're gonna talk about this. It can be a text, hey, just checking in, see how you're doing, or great job on that project. I just wanted to say, I really appreciate it. So the leader can make sure that they're letting their team know that the leader's thinking about them and is paying attention to what they're doing and they care about them. And that's the most important, really the most important thing a leader can do is let their team know that he... cares about what they're doing and he appreciates what they're doing. And for a remote workforce, that's very difficult to do. And people who are working remotely need to realize that they may be hindering their career growth by working remotely because there's an old saying out of sight, out of mind. And if the leader... If the people who are making the important decisions in the company don't get to see you very often, or don't get to see what you're doing very often, it's very easy to forget about you. So if you're happy doing your job and you don't want to advance in the company and you just want a steady paycheck, working remotely is great. But if you want to have more influence in your organization, if you want to become a leader in that organization, you got to find a way to get in the office or make plenty of contact with the people who are making those decisions. Otherwise they're gonna forget about you. Angelo, there are a lot of productivity apps and work and life hacks in social media. Are they useful or are they procrastination in disguise? Well, they can be useful. It just depends on the person. A productivity hack that happens to hit exactly where your weakness is can be very beneficial. I mean, there are some life hacks that can be very beneficial. For, know, I mentioned exercise before. If you're a very sedentary person and you happen to see something on social media that gets you up and moving a little bit more. then that's provided a value for you. uh In some cases, it's just another way to waste time. But they can be valued, but it just depends on the person. That's why one size fits all advice doesn't fit everybody. And usually doesn't fit anybody because everybody's situation is just a little bit different. That's why I like to coach one-on-one instead of group coaching. Cause I like to really... uh I'd rather have a deep influence on one person than a superficial influence on a bunch of people. Can we do five rapid fire questions? I want you to answer in 30 seconds or less. Okay, sure. Let's go. Number one. Best time of the day to check social media, if at all. 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Because if you start at seven o'clock in the morning, before you know it, it's nine o'clock in the morning and you've wasted two hours. Number two, the app you delete first for better mental health. Oh wow, that's a good one. better mental health, probably Facebook. Number three, a positive use of social media that you would actually encourage. uh I would encourage people to reach out to people that they haven't seen or talked to in a long time and send them a friend request and see if you can start reestablishing a relationship with that person. And it might turn into phone calls and it might turn into, let's plan a trip to go see each other. A lot of the friends I have on Facebook are friends I've had since. junior high or high school, and I graduated from high school in 1967 and I'm still friends with a lot of people that I went to high school with. And that wouldn't be possible without Facebook, because we're all over the world now. Number four, one question every user should ask themselves before posting anything. Who's this gonna help? Who's this gonna hurt? Number five, what's worse for productivity? Mindless scrolling or mindless meetings? Boy, they're both terrible, but I've been anti-meeting for longer than I've been anti-scrolling. So meetings are often time sucks for people. The only people who should be in a meeting are the people who absolutely need to be there because they have valuable information to share or hear. Other than that, people being in meetings just because we called a meeting. waste of time and people hate it and they get pissed off about Angelo, I have a controversial question that I will let you decide if to answer or politely decline. The US, America, is leading the social media politics. Escalations of every kind are happening through messages, answering tweets, um and every other... mean, I think we have gone through uh territories that we have never explored before in terms of um doing politics. What's your take on... Pettyness is the word I'd use. the right one. Thank you, my friend. What is your take on that? Well, my honest opinion is that it's all theater. Everything's happening behind the curtain. The stuff you see on social media is to keep people distracted. Okay, and because you'll see all this stuff on social media about this is gonna happen, that's gonna happen, this is gonna happen. And then something else completely different happens and nobody was posting about that until after it already happens. So stuff's going on, and this is not just America, this is everywhere in the world. The meaningful stuff is not happening on social media, it's to keep the people distracted from what's really happening. My opinion. That was a great answer. Angelo, what's your, let's give some advice before we wrap this up. What's your one line advice to someone who feels trapped in the scroll loop, but doesn't know how to break free? My one piece of advice is just try it for a half a day. See what happens. See if you feel better or worse. See if it made any difference in your life one way the other, whether you looked at social media or didn't. Just try it for a little while first. See what happens. How can people know more about you, Angelo, connect with you, explore your coaching programs, or get your book? And please let us know more now about your book and how to get it. All right, the title of my book is You're Making This Way Too Hard, Find Your Easy Way to Enjoy Life, and it's available on Amazon, it's available on Barnes & Noble, it's available on my website, which is angelovalente.com. Also, uh I've just built a very cool coaching program called Enjoy Life the Easy Way, which is gonna be available very shortly. oh through my website and you can kind of pre-order it or if you want some advanced notice on when it's going to be available, just go to my website, angelovalente.com and hit the coaching tab and uh you'll find out about that. uh I'm on LinkedIn, not that hard to find on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. I don't post a lot on X because I think that's the garbage dump of all. of all platforms. ah post every day on TikTok. I post one little video, try to give people a little uplifting positive message every day. uh So if you want, and if you want to set up an individual discovery call, free discovery call, learn a little bit about how we might work together, go to reachangelo.com. It's real easy. Doctor, thank you so much for this super interesting conversation. ah You have a lot of wisdom in human psychology, but also on sound advice on how to help people get out of social media and recover their lives. I'm taking away two things. The first one is that comparison will steal our joy. And you're comparing not apples to apples, but to things that you don't even know if they're real or not. And the second one is that it's up to us to say no. You said, say no for a bit, say no for social media for a day, for half a day and see what happened. And I think that exactly the same, we say no to drugs or certain type of foods or certain music styles, it's also to us to say, no, not this morning. I'm not going to open my phone the first thing in the morning. Dr. Angelo Valenti, thank you so, so much. Thank you, it's been my pleasure. This has been a lot of fun.