Digital Minimalism For Sanity, Focus, And Real-Life Connection

What if the quiet you crave is on the other side of a few simple phone boundaries? We sit down with strategist and community builder Kelsey Green to unpack digital minimalism as a values-first way to use technology without letting it use you. From the rise of anxiety and scattered attention to the illusion of connection on social media, we get honest about how the constant scroll erodes presence, creativity, and relationships—and how to take your focus back.

Kelsey shares what her Screen-Free Sunday challenge reveals about compulsion, why “brain drain” happens when a phone is in sight, and how batching messages, using Do Not Disturb, and curating feeds can lower stress fast. We dig into the fear of missing out and the myth that seeing updates equals staying close. Instead, we talk about prioritizing real conversations with the few people who matter most, and building in-person circles through tiny, daily actions like choosing a human checkout, making eye contact, and joining local groups.

We also explore the gray area where late-in-life distractibility may be environment and anxiety—not lifelong ADHD—and how earned dopamine from nature, deep work, and hands-on hobbies resets the nervous system. Expect practical steps you can try tonight: a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. phone curfew, leaving the device in another room, a paper “Instead” list to replace doomscrolling, and gentle exceptions so family can reach you in emergencies. By the end, you’ll have a toolkit to reclaim time, attention, and genuine connection—without abandoning the tools you still need.

If this conversation helps, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Your attention is precious; thanks for spending it here.

You can find Kelsey at https://www.kelseylgreen.com/

Books mentioned in the episode:

Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport

Deep Work - Cal Newport

Slow Productivity - Cal Newport

The Anxious Generation - Jonathan Haidt

Last Child in the Woods - Richard Louv

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And A Pre-Digital Childhood
• 2:40 Are Phones Making Us Anxious
• 3:18 Meet Kelsey Green And Her Mission
• 8:26 Defining Digital Minimalism
• 10:06 Screen-Free Sunday And What It Reveals
• 14:54 Curating Feeds And Dodging FOMO
• 19:54 Practical Boundaries That Actually Stick
• 26:16 From FOMO To Real-World Friendship
• 32:58 Is It ADHD Or Just Frayed Attention
• 38:10 Leaving The Phone Behind And Why
• 44:00 High-Value Hobbies Beat Doomscrolling
• 48:21 Kelsey’s Programs And Resources
• 50:26 Book Plug And Closing Encouragement

Transcript

Mary: 0:05

Welcome to No Shrinking Violets. I'm your host, Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist and certified integrative mental health practitioner. I've created a space where we celebrate the intuition and power of women who want to break free from limiting narratives. We'll explore all realms of wellness, what it means to take up space unapologetically, and how your essential nature is key to living life on your terms. It's time to own your space, trust your nature, and flourish. Let's dive in. Hey Violets, welcome to the show. I started my career before there were cell phones. My family had a rotary phone when I was in high school, and it was in the kitchen. And I had 15 minutes to talk to my friends, often while most of my family was within five feet of the phone. My friends and I communicated by writing notes on paper, our 1980s version of texting. I'm pretty sure I could still identify the handwriting of my five closest friends from 45 years ago. I love paper books and physical newspapers. When I first made a Facebook account, I was trepidatious, not excited. I thought friends meant, well, friends, not just a random person I met at a party the night before. I still turn down Facebook requests from many of those people. And if I've never met you, well, that's almost an immediate no. I don't want to share my life with everyone. Okay, yeah, I have a podcast. And I did include some stories in my upcoming book that even my closest friends probably don't know. But those aren't stories I want to tell my friends. They just inform my life and the concepts I write about. But I don't typically share my lowest moments on social media. I'd rather talk to a real person. Okay, so while I wasn't born in the age of stone tablets, I did take a typing class in ninth grade on a manual typewriter. And I also worked with teenagers before they had all the stress and anxiety of carrying the world in their pockets, before they looked down at what was in their hand more than they looked up at the sky, or out at the landscape, or gasp actually at other people while they pass them when walking. I can tell you, without even reading the research, even though I have read it and I know it backs me up, that cell phones have made us worse humans. The rapid way we consume videos and skim through stories and mindlessly scroll down a page of posts is like pouring weed killer on the branches and stems of our neural connections. We need stillness. We need to be able to sit somewhere in nature and breathe and allow our brains to rest. We need to actually remember how to look each other in the eye. Is it any wonder that anxiety disorders have become commonplace conversation? Anxiety itself is needed and normal, but anger and anxiety that feels ever-present and overwhelms your ability to live the life that we want seems to be the new normal. And I think we need to acknowledge the reasons for that. So I am looking forward to dissecting some of these topics with my guest today, who probably didn't grow up with a rotary phone in the kitchen and likely communicated with her high school friends via text, not cleverly folded paper notes that could end up in the hands of the teachers and be read to the entire class. My guest today is Kelsey Green. She is an aspiring digital minimalist, strategist, speaker, and community builder on a mission to help people reclaim their focus, creativity, and in-person connections. She explores how our digital habits impact our relationships, our attention span, and sense of fulfillment, and how setting simple boundaries can open space for what really matters. Welcome to No Shrinking Violets, Kelsey.

Kelsey: 3:43

Oh, I'm so excited to be here, Mary. Thank you for having me.

Mary: 3:46

I cannot wait to jump into this because y'all know I am a nature girl. So, um, okay, so I'm gonna start, Kelsey, with I mean, I don't know your age, but I know you are younger than me. You've always had the internet, right? So I want to get into that a little bit, but I would love to start with you talking a little bit about maybe some pivotal moments from your life and how that helped you end up where you are now doing the work that you do.

Kelsey: 4:13

Absolutely. Thank you. Well, Mary, um, I love that introduction and what a perfect uh tee up for this conversation today. So thank you for that. And um thanks for your kind words. I'm 43, so I actually do remember a time, certainly before cell phones, and I love to chat through that uh today. But just to give you a quick glimpse of my background and who I am, I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I um, you know, took a pretty windy route that ended up in a very similar spot to a lot of women, which was total burnout rock bottom. So I had done my master's and my undergraduate degrees in environmental conservation and management. And I went into um the nonprofit sector where I proceeded to, you know, totally um just kind of fall into the trap of constant, constantly being on email, on the phone, always responsive, um, you know, overworking. And because not all, certainly, but many nonprofits, of course, you know, there's something to be desired in terms of a livable wage. I also had a side business, uh, right. So I was um I was really um just working so much and constantly tied to my phone and to my email, and at the same time had a bit of a health crisis um with you know uterine fibroids and was in a toxic relationship and drinking a lot, and then it was COVID, you know. So mine really culminated in this just fireworks of a uh rock bottom. And I'm you know, I'm really grateful for it if you've if you've had one of these in your life, um, you may or may not feel the same way, but it definitely offers you some some clarity, right? And growing up, I do recall a time before cell phones and they were sorting sort of coming into existence when I was in college. And to be fair, I always was a bit resistant to having a a TV. Um, I grew up with a single mom who did a pretty good job of of not always plunking, you know, her kid in front of a TV. Parenting seems so challenging. I'm not a parent, so I no judgment there, but um, she did a good job of trying to have us be doing other activities. And I resisted getting a cell phone. I didn't really have a TV. I don't own a TV now. So I wasn't ever fully immersed as I I would guess that some people are, right? But I did find myself in that place where I felt like I couldn't be off of my phone, even to be with my family, right? I had to be checking email all the time and responding, even literally if it was midnight on a Sunday. Right. And so that was kind of the start of my digital minimalism path. Although I'd say that it's definitely a journey, and I'd love to talk about that today, uh, because you know it's hard because it's hard.

Mary: 7:16

Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard. And I think the thing that so all right, so there's many things that make it hard, but it is so woven through every single thing that literally we're swimming upstream. I think when we try to put our phones down and try to make boundaries with it. And I know before we're done today, we're gonna talk about some ways to do that because I'm guessing that a lot of people listening feel sometimes helpless. And I know I make pretty good boundaries for myself. Like I try to put my phone down two hours before bed, which most of the time I don't succeed at. I'm gonna be honest. But for a long time I worked with women in menopause and sleep, and that's you know, one of the big things is you have to unplug. So I try to practice what I preach, doesn't always work because it's really hard. And I think sometimes you're so immersed in it and you realize, my God, an hour just went past and I'm dumber than I was when I started this, you know. And I know for a fact that our when our brains consume three to five seconds at a time and switch to the next thing, it's not giving us time to sit and be grounded. So, one of the questions that I want to talk about, well, first of all, can you tell us what you mean by digital minimalism? Because I think that's a good place to start so we know what we're talking about.

Kelsey: 8:36

Absolutely. That's a fantastic question, especially because I know that that term can be a little bit scary for people, right? And I'll just straight out of the gate recommend this book, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. He's uh one of the, I'd say, leading thinkers on this movement. And he's also a computer scientist, right? So the main point that I want to make sure everyone takes away from this is that digital minimalism is not about throwing away your phone and you know, not using your computer anymore and being a Luddite, right? It's it's really not about that. It's about how can you utilize the tools that exist, some incredible tools to help support your values versus subvert your values. So if you're trying to build community, if you're really focusing on your health and wellness, all whatever your core values are, is your use of technology supporting that? And I work with women to help them bring about some of their creative projects, right, into the world, like birthing these beautiful creative projects, finishing a book, things like that. And one of the first very pragmatic things that we tackle is, you know, their their use of the digital devices. Because to your great point, it's really tough to tell how far we've gone down this little rabbit hole. Um, for example, I run these screen-free Sunday challenges, and this is 24 hours fully off screens. And this is really tough for people. I did not understand how tough it would be at first. 24 hours is a long time for people to be off screens, partially because people don't realize how much they're on them. So we say, like, okay, so I won't stream Netflix that night and I won't scroll social media, but then people forget, oh, you know, I've got a map to this new place, or and I've got to pay with my Apple Watch, you know, I've got to look up the recipe. I mean, all these things, right? And the screen free Sunday challenge, you know, is a commitment. And it's just, but it's one day, and it really helps to illuminate how much you're actually on these devices, you know, and also critically that compulsion to be on them. Even if your family's in sight, you've talked to everyone, there's nothing critical happening, there's no emergency, that compulsive feeling that you have to check the devices will really, really be made clear in a 24-hour period off screens.

Mary: 11:20

Yeah. And as you were talking about health, I feel like if we put a framework on it, like how we try to eat right, we try to eat healthy things. And, you know, we have these times where we're like, um, you know, I really want the Doritos or I really want the cupcakes. And if we try to go on a diet, because when I'm not gonna lie, I looked at your website and when I saw that 24 hour, I was like, there is no freaking way I could do that. And again, I'm a nature girl, like I'd rather be outside than anywhere else. But that's hard. And I know from working with college students how hard it is just for them to do it. So to circle back on what I was saying, to think about it as what are you consuming? Because trying to think about, okay, we need to have food. And I think when we think about the connection to the internet, to social media, we need to be on those things at times. It's our way of getting information now. So if we look at it in terms of that, I think there's a lot of parallels because we need to always consistently make the choices, the good choices. You know, how much do I want to consume of this thing? So I think that's one way to frame it. But also, it by saying I'm gonna do this for 24 hours, I do think what you're saying has to be so true that you're like, I knew I I was not doing well, but this is really, really hard.

Kelsey: 12:48

Yeah, yeah. And I love the parallel to eating well because as you said, that is a choice you make over and over and over again every day, right? And in at least in my ethos of wellness, once in a while I'll still have raw cookie dough. You know what I mean? Like, like I love it. Like there's there's you know, there's room for pleasure in life, of course, right? Um, but that is the exception, you know, that is a once in a while. And so if you use that, that logic, you know, treating yourself and with kind of a limited and infrequent little treat is is kind of how I look at is social media, right? The first step I'd say if you're looking at actionable, you know, steps to take is to curate the heck out of your feed. So if you're gonna be scrolling through Instagram all day, oh my goodness, you know, be very proactive about curating that so that you're at least getting some better stuff in. And, you know, I'll take long breaks from social media like months at a time, but as a business owner, as an online business owner, you know, creating content, you know, you use that platform and it's a great platform, right? Um, but I will, you know, slowly I've I've really distanced myself from it. I don't follow any of my friends. I don't want to have the FOMO, but I also don't want to have the illusion that I am maintaining that relationship via social media because that's a very shallow way to connect. Better than nothing in some cases, absolutely, yes. But I want to make sure that I think about the fact that I haven't talked to my friend, even on Zoom, if they live in a different country or whatever, in six months, and not and not have my brain tricked into thinking, oh, we've been connected, we know all about each other's lives right now because we've seen it seen it on social media. That is not that's not connection in the way that I want to be connecting with my friends. Yeah.

Mary: 14:51

Well, the one thing I was going to say is on Facebook, and I think my generation I to think is a little more Facebooky than Instagram. You can just see a feed with just your friends. And if you don't want all the ads, you don't want to go down the uh the rabbit holes of the reels that showing show up. So that is one thing, but I love this idea of not following your friends on social media. So have you missed out on things? Have there been things where okay, so yeah, talk talk about that a little because I think that fear of missing out is it's really a thing.

Kelsey: 15:26

Yeah, yeah. And I'm not saying that I won't ever pop into someone's profile and kind of check out what's going on, but uh in general, uh, and and uh Cal Newport makes a great argument for this. So if you want to look into this more deeply, check out that book again, Digital Minimalism. But he argues that uh that you your relationships will be better in the long run when you are prioritizing trying to connect in person and trying to at least connect via phone or or Zoom or whatever, if you can, right? Um so the thing is though, about this approach is that the tech companies have really leveraged this fear of missing out onto us. That is now the the case for needing to be on social media all the time, is this fear of missing out. And you know, Mary, you're you're right. Once in a while you're gonna miss something. Like that's just that's just the nature of it. The issue is that, you know, or the belief that digital minimalists have is the benefits that you are going to gain from at least putting some boundaries in place will far outweigh the usually very minor things that you're going to miss out on, you know, like someone's lunch, obviously is a very silly example. But even someone's vacation or if they have an important life event, you know, to be honest, the question I ask myself is if I'm only getting updates and seeking updates through social media for these people, are they truly my my closest friends? You know, and I don't think we need a thousand friends. Um, there's that number, gosh, it has a name where it's about the size of a historic village that you can really keep in your mind. I think it's 150 people, right? That you can really kind of be tracking through time. And I don't need to know the status updates of a thousand people, right? I just want to make sure I'm I am connecting with like the 10 to 30 most important people in my life, right? And maintaining those relationships in a real way.

Mary: 17:34

Well, and I know some of the things that I've started with, I don't look at my phone in bed. Like I try to in the morning, I don't pick it up till I'm out of bed. I mean, I think it starts with the little things because one of the things that I've noticed for myself is when I really try to put the phone aside, and I'm also a reader, I go outside a lot, but sometimes I'm like, wait, what what do I do now? Because it has filled so much of our space in our life. So if somebody is thinking, how do I do this? What are some practical tips that you can give to people?

Kelsey: 18:12

Yeah, well, you make an excellent point. And that was the first piece of feedback I got from those 24-hour challenges is that people had no clue how to spend the time. The flip side of that, the upside of that is that people that don't have enough time, you know, they're all, you know, just kind of everything's crazy and there's there's not enough time to do this or that or write your book, whatever. It's that they found a lot more time when they started putting these boundaries in place. But at first, yes, it is a little tricky when you have that void, you know, it's been referred to for sure. And that's why the the screen free Sunday challenge is a is a is a you know, is a challenge and a pretty drastic approach. But yes, you can start putting in place these little baby steps, similar to how if you were going to do a drastic dietary change, you know. Um, you can go cold turkey. And I personally that's um an approach that works for me sometimes, but baby steps are are great. And I can run through a couple of mine if if you like.

Mary: 19:14

Yeah, please do.

Kelsey: 19:16

Yeah, so I have a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Um no phone boundary, and you're you know, just like you said, it doesn't always work all the time if I get home later than 7 p.m., you know, and I have a couple of things I need to do, whatever. But for the most part, off the phone, and the phone's actually in the closet because if you've experienced this, when your phone is within sight, you have that urge to check it, right? And there's a study called The Brain Drain, an academic paper that talks about how when your phone is in your sight, your attention is more fractured. So you're actually just a bit more dumb if you're trying to work with your phone next to you, or you know, really important if you're trying to connect with someone else and your phone is next to you, even face down. You know, you just are paying less attention to that person. So anyway, so 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., the phone is away and off screens at 7 p.m. So no Netflix or whatever. And no, this November, when we're um filming this, I am doing a no scrolling challenge for myself. So a month of no streaming and no scrolling. And, you know, it's early November, so uh it's been interesting, even just in those few days. And then I don't have any notifications, sound or visual notifications on my phone. So um that when you talk about missing out, that will happen sometimes with things that come in that would be nice to have taken a call for, like the doctor's office or something, you know, appointments that need to be made or whatever. So it's slightly annoying sometimes that I just have to call them back. But I find that not having those sound notifications on means that I'm focusing on whatever it is that is in front of me. Even if that's just doing my dishes or whatever, it's that I am I am working on being more present and not having my attention being fractured because of those sounds.

Mary: 21:24

Well, and I think what people need to realize is it does take time for your brain to kind of detox because there is going to be a lot more quiet and a lot more downtime and a lot more stillness. And we don't always know what to do with that.

Kelsey: 21:45

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I hesitate to really draw a parallel between addiction, you know, to something like a drug um to the phone, but a lot of the mechanisms in the brain are the same. You're foraging for that dopamine that you didn't earn. And the more we call it fake dopamine that you're collecting up, the tougher it's going to be to not be collecting up that dopamine. I mean, you are a therapist, you know. I think you, you know, you I know a lot of your listeners have obviously understand this concept too. It's just that we don't, because of where we're at currently, with these super smart, you know, tech nerd gods um having made this so, so, so compelling, we don't, we don't quite realize, I think, what's happening.

Mary: 22:34

Yeah. Well, it was interesting to see it start as when I worked in a high school, and I would see the first few students who would start to bring cell phones. And then the first time that I had a student in my office talk about her boyfriend at another school just broke up to her with her. And I'm like, Well, how do you know? Well, he texted me and I'm like, oh, and that was sort of for me how the roller coaster clicks to the top and then it just goes down the other side and gains momentum. And what interestingly, I seem to be perceiving now is that young people are starting to recognize that it feels bad. And they are trying to find ways to disconnect. And I know even when I worked with, I would say five years ago, they would do the thing where when they went out to dinner together, they all put their phones in the middle, and whoever picked theirs up first had to pay the bill. They were trying to find ways to make it acceptable to put the phone down because I think instinctively we know this isn't good for me. But I do think that there's starting to be this realization among people that have grown up with these phones attached to their hand that it's not helping their mental health.

Kelsey: 23:54

Yeah, I I have heard that too. And I was surprised by this because you know, it takes a lot of awareness to recognize that something that has been there since you can remember is is bad for you and make a conscious choice to put that away. I'll make a recommendation for the book The Anxious Generation right now. If you're a parent, um it's it honestly scared the shit out of me. Like I, you know, and I appreciate it because it's data driven and he doesn't really pull any punches about what's happening to our brains and our and our communities because of this. So if you're a parent, I'd say 100%, you know, read read that. Um, but I I agree. I think it's still a small percentage, but there is a growing understanding that this is something that we need to look at, right? And I think individually that can come from that feeling that I've certainly had, I presume many of your listeners have had when you do lose an hour to scrolling, you know. The first day of my no scrolly, you know, streaming challenge, November 1st, I went to post something, you know, content, and I literally ended up reading about these restaurants in New York City, you know, they're like, oh, Thai food, so tired now. And I'm like off in this wacky, you know, I love food, so okay, my, you know, I've got a lot of restaurant stuff on my feed. But, you know, before I even understood what was happening, I was deep in thinking about, reading about, you know, articles about these restaurants in New York City. Um, and I looked up like, oh my gosh, holy crap. This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about where you literally compulsively pick up your phone, scroll, and you've lost that time. And anyway, the point is, I think we are starting to recognize how it feels to have that sort of, I would I describe it as an emptiness and a hollowness after you get done doing that, which if you contrast with how it feels to have a really fulfilling in-person interaction. And even like here on digital, you know, on Zoom, because we, you know, we're across the country from each other, we can't meet up in person, you know, it feels really different. Right. And I think that's something to pay attention to.

Mary: 26:20

Yeah. And I think it's good for people to know that even though this is what you do, the algorithms are so effective. It knows exactly what to put in front of you to get that hook. And so I want to take um take the side road now to talk about connection because I think part of where FOMO comes from is we want to know what's happening with people and we want to be part of things. So now that has moved so far into the digital realm, which of course was spurred on even more by COVID when we had to be separate. So I think a legitimate concern for people is how am I going to find ways to reconnect to people in real life when we have for so long now been doing that virtually? So, what do you say about that? How do you help people maybe think about ways they can build a true in-person connection?

Kelsey: 27:20

Yeah, thanks, Mary. This is something that I am so passionate about. So I love that we're talking about this right now. And it's interesting because a couple years ago, when I was building my course, How to Build Your Circle, I knew I wanted to focus on in-person community, but because you know, digital age is here and we do so much of this online, I was like a little shy, you know, about talking about digital boundaries and in-person and in now. I, you know, the course has evolved. Now I like, no, to build the in-person community, you have got to put some boundaries on your digital use. That's just the truth, right? Unless you're already somewhere along the journey of digital minimalism and you've got great boundaries. That's great. You know, I suspect if you're if you have that, you probably aren't listening. This isn't the podcast episode that you know you're needing to listen to. But so bravo to you. But for the rest of us, which is most of us, you know, this, these are my beliefs, but the data also supports this, right? So there was the term loneliness epidemic coined some time ago. And there is there are so many studies that show that with the rise of the smartphone came a decrease in mental health and a decrease in the amount of time that we're spending together. To your point, COVID obviously didn't help that, right? So that's that's unfortunate. But we've got the digital communities now, we've got the digital relationships, we've got the connection online, and that's that can be fine and great. But meanwhile, our in-person communities are crumbling, right? So when we talk about how do we go about rebuilding some of these, I think it's important to note that because we have kind of gone so far down this path, probably is going to take a bit of work, a bit of discomfort. And I just saw a great quote that said, if you want a village, you need to act like a villager.

Speaker 1: 29:19

Oh, yeah.

Kelsey: 29:20

So, you know, if you want community, you need to act communal. And so some of the things that I recommend that people do, especially if you are above the age of, you know, 35, 40, when it becomes like a little funnier to make friends, you know, and to build community, is you know, really putting yourself in the actual spaces where people are having your phone away. I'm talking about in line at the grocery store when you could be paying a quick bill or responding to a text, you know, putting your phone away and work on making those little conversations that we used to have back in the day. I don't Know, I feel like we used to chit-chat with strangers all the time, and now that everyone's just looking down at their phones, does really pause. And I'll just note one more little actionable step here that relates to this is batching your phone time. So, you know, I still want to be responsive to people that are texting me, clients, friends, family. But I set aside, not always, of course, but I try to set aside a time. Okay, I'm gonna take a full hour right now to do all my texts, to answer my emails, to scroll, post content, whatever it is, right? And even some fun stuff, even some fluffy stuff, eating the cookie dough equivalent of social media, whatever, watching the dog memes and videos, you know. But when you're out in public, really trying to be off your phone and trying to re-engage with the people around you. And especially if they're different age, you know, they look like someone who's really different from you. I think we could really use a little bit more, you know, sort of connection with people that are not exactly like us, which of course the algorithm presents to us, right? We're getting stuck in these echo chambers. Those are some of those, those first things you can do.

Mary: 31:12

And I think that the anxiety has increased about that. I mean, when I worked at a college during COVID and we had to go fully online, one of the things that I predicted is that when we're back in a classroom, because there was so much fear around COVID, there's going to be a lot more social anxiety. And I do think that's the case. And so again, going back to the idea of these small changes, that when you are somewhere out, put your phone away and actually look around. Like when I am in the grocery store line, I always make eye contact with the person that's ringing me up, or unless you're going through the auto checkout, which is now everywhere. But I try to sometimes intentionally go through a line where there is a cashier and make eye contact and just say, How's your day today? or make small talk because we've really forgotten the art of that. And when I would walk through campus, I would always want to try to make eye contact with students. And 80% of the time they're looking down because they're catching up, you know, between classes and they're catching up with things. But I think the do not disturb setting is so valuable because that immediately takes away what you're talking about, the alerts. It makes it harder to worry that, oh, if somebody texts me and I don't get back to them, they're gonna be mad or they're gonna think I'm ignoring them. Well, if they see that you have that on, that immediately releases you and makes it easier to say, okay, from four o'clock to five o'clock, I'm gonna actually go in and look at the text that I got and respond to them. So that idea of batching things, I think is a great idea because you're still doing it. You're just having a little bit more control over when and how you do it.

Kelsey: 33:01

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I love a do not disturb function. I mean, I don't have sound on anyway, but to your excellent point, that function, and I don't know if it's on Android, I have an iPhone, but um, maybe there's something similar, right? But lets people know that you probably aren't gonna be responding. And for me personally, I think no one expects that I'm gonna be responding immediately anymore, you know? So everyone sort of knows that it might take me a couple of days, it's just not my priority. But yeah, if it's if it's a new thing that you're implementing, yes, that's a that's a great function for sure. And I think even telling people, ideally when you connect with them in person, you know, or on the phone, that you're trying out this new thing. Um, and it doesn't mean that you don't care or that you're, you know, you're not there for them or you don't want to know what's going on, but that you're that you're trying to just find a little bit more distance and presence in the day-to-day. Yeah.

Mary: 34:00

Yeah. And I think we worry a lot about what other people will think. And that in many ways, and in many things I've talked about on different episodes, gets in the way of choosing to do what's best for us because you know, we're we're the caretakers, we are the connectors. And sometimes we sense what we need. We need to have some distance from the frenetic energy of scrolling or trying to keep up. And by giving ourselves permission to do what we need to do, it can make that a little bit easier.

Kelsey: 34:34

That's a great point. Yeah.

Mary: 34:35

Yeah. And I think, Kelsey, there are probably people listening thinking, well, it's not out of control for me. I'm it can't be that bad for me. What would you say to someone who is on their phone every day for, you know, and your phone will tell you how many hours you average in a day, but people think, oh, it's not affecting my brain. I'm fine.

Kelsey: 34:55

Yeah. Well, tracking the numbers is great to look at that because I think I'm constantly surprised, you know, at how high those are. But I would suggest doing a maybe a mini challenge for yourself if you're not sure if you've got a problem to yeah, to see how it could go to put your phone away and on silent, you know, for a couple hours. And I do a little tick mark when I have um that urge to check it. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm doing. Like when I first started doing this work, I was pacing around my house like as if I was looking for something, and I had no clue. I would stop myself, like, what am I doing right now? I don't even know what I and I was kind of looking for my phone unconsciously. So when you catch yourself reaching for your phone, feeling like you want to, pacing around your house, you know, to make a little check mark and just do that experiment with your own brain, with yourself. And also our inability to be bored, yeah, I think is a really interesting metric. Yeah. So yeah. So, you know, I'm, I know you're a nature person, I'm a nature person. So I think it's quite easy to be off your phone when you're going for an all-day hike, you know, and you're literally out of service. So you don't really have a choice. But when you're in your normal space, like your house, you know, doing your normal routine, I think that's when it can really, really show up. And I just don't want to forget, you know, we were talking a lot about the issue and how hard it can be and the detriment. But I I would like to make sure that I talk about the benefit.

Mary: 36:41

Yes, yes, yes, right?

Kelsey: 36:43

Yeah. So I have a lot of adult women friends that were diagnosed with ADHD later, you know, after in their 40s. And I started feeling like I maybe had that too, right? Like I was suffering from ADHD, I couldn't focus, I couldn't get my work done. Even if it was a pretty simple task, it was just kind of torturous and boring, you know? And I'm a pretty hyper person, so you know, I I have a lot of energy and and I do feel like I love multitasking and getting stuff done, but I just couldn't do the deep work. You know, I was having issues writing, I love writing, you know, but it was just it was so hard. And once I started putting these boundaries in place, it started to become easier, not right away, but after some time, it started to become easier for me to do the deep work. And that's another book that Cal Newport wrote, Deep Work. And and I'm right now I'm reading slow productivity. So there's just, you know, there's all these um great resources out there to help you. But I realized that I was much more able to do that kind of work when I had those digital boundaries in place. Right. And I think that is a critical point because, you know, our attention is so fractured. We're I I think a lot of us are feeling just very overwhelmed. Our lives are very chaotic. And as you mentioned, when you don't have that stillness, when you don't have any space to process something that's happened in your life, you're reaching for something that you're gonna be able to forage this fake dopamine from, and you're not able to like do this work, you know. I feel like these are the reasons that that it's important and the benefits are amazing.

Mary: 38:41

Yes. Thank you so much for getting us onto that because it is so true that again, if we talk about how we change our eating and we feel healthier, it's the same thing. You can't just decide, oh, I'm gonna change what I eat, and by next week I'm gonna lose 10 pounds and I'm gonna feel great. Anything that truly is a change does take time. But I think of the book Last Child in the Woods, and I think it's Richard Love, L-O-U-V. Um, and I'm gonna link all these books in the show notes because they're so important. But he talks about um mostly kids, but being in nature, just seeing nature calms you down. So when you talk about ADHD, my ears perk up because having worked in public schools, I know that true ADHD starts when you're a child. So when I worked with a college population and I started to see so many of these 18-year-olds being newly diagnosed, I'm like, I don't know that this is uh ADHD. Um, and so let me tell you, when I say ADHD, it is a deficit of attention. Attention deficit, HD is hyperactivity disorder, which the hyperactivity is more rare. But if we talk about attention deficit, it is just a deficit of being able to attend to something long term. And when you have that as a child, a lot of that is your wiring. Now, a lot of times, though, also you can find a chaotic home situation, but not always. But when that starts to happen later in life, that is an environmental issue. And the other thing that I want people to realize is a lot of times what the symptoms of attention deficit disorder are are mimicked by anxiety. So often what people actually have is anxiety, that restlessness, that something's not right. I don't feel comfortable, I want to come out of my skin, I can't concentrate on what I'm doing. That can be generalized anxiety disorder. And where does that come from? The fact that your brain has not learned how to have stillness, how to be bored, how to sit in a place and actually be mindful and not be thinking about what am I missing?

Speaker 1: 41:02

Yeah.

Mary: 41:02

And you're right, those benefits are tremendous. We just have to have the patience to get there. And you're telling us it's not linear because even you struggle with it. And so don't give up if you're trying, you're gonna have some days, especially if it's maybe a rough day for you, where you might use that crutch more. I'm just gonna lose myself in binging or you know, binge watching something or scrolling through my phone. You can get back on track, but it's so important to know the benefits.

Kelsey: 41:35

Absolutely, yes. Yeah, thank you for pointing that out. And it's great to hear that you stepped us through that as a mental health professional and what you saw as well. So, yes, to your point, yeah, some days gonna be a wash. You know, some days you have a terrible day and you just kind of fall into that that bingey trap. But you know, the the great news is the more you practice this work, I'd say the easier it is to more quickly get back on track like the next day because you go to bed feeling like, hmm, like, you know, like I kind of I don't not I'm not super excited about the way I feel right now. And it's easier to get back on track the next day and then make maybe make those little bingey sessions a little shorter, right? Yeah. So absolutely, and I don't want to be anyone to be discouraged by this because as we've noted a couple of times now, it is hard and they have made it so compelling for our brains, right? So much money poured into this. So you're you know, you're you're fighting a little bit of an uphill battle. It does get easier, it is worth it, you know. And there are ways to make sure that just want to point out a little pragmatic tip that, you know, for example, my mom was having some health issues. I do want her to be able to call me, you know, if she's in the hospital. So I have a call through mechanism for any 24 hours a day for her or my stepdad to reach me at any point. So if you have kids, you know, I'm not recommending that you go off your phone and and don't answer. So you can have those mechanism breakthroughs too, but uh, you know, most of the time things are probably not an emergency. And you and I remember a time when we were fine leaving the house, uh-huh, you know, not not knowing where we're going exactly, and also not having anyone able to reach us. And that was fine. So I think a really interesting exercise is leaving your house without your phone. Woof, that one is still tough for me, you know. Even if I'm just going to yoga and to run errands in my in my small little town, it is hard to leave without your phone. Yeah.

Mary: 43:50

Yeah. And I've forgotten it sometimes, but I'm usually like if my husband and I are going out for to dinner, we'll pull out of the driveway and I'm like, oh, wait, I forgot my phone. And sometimes I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna leave it. But that's cheating because he has his phone. So, you know, I think it's it is one of those things that's hard to do. And I think the other thing that maybe people can start to think about is what can I do instead? Because that brings us back to that feeling of loose ends. Like, what am I missing? What am I gonna do with my hands? What should I? We used to know, like I really try to read a physical book. I try not to get on a Kindle, even though sometimes that's where the book is that I want to read. But it helps me to put down something electronic because I have reading time in the morning if I'm reading a physical book. But it's sort of like if you're binging anything, whether it's TV or food or whatever, when you get the urge, I think it's really helpful to have a list that, and I almost said a list on your phone. I'm like, Mary, like that's not it, but have a list of what can I do instead? Take a walk, um, you know, go to the library and find a book, uh, go out for a coffee, you know, different things like that. There are a lot of things though that are connected to a phone, but I think trying to brainstorm those things. So when you do feel that sense of, you know, now I have anxiety without my phone, that will calm down. Yeah. Just breathe and go do some yoga or some things, you know, what can we substitute? I think can be helpful.

Kelsey: 45:23

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's great. And oftentimes what I've seen in my survey results, the feedback is that people tackle these projects, especially around their physical environment that they have put off for a really long time. Yeah. So I think that's always a great one. Um, you know, always optimizing and um cleaning your space and wanting, you know, your your sanctuary, right? Working on that. And I yeah, also kind of want to point out for the long term, one thing that we want to think about is we used to have hobbies that were not connected to the, you know, to digital devices, right? Back in the day. And so from what I'm seeing in the research, the hobbies that we have where we are producing something physically with our hands, whether that's quilting, sewing, woodworking, you know, even writing, creative projects. Yeah, baking, absolutely, right? These are they they hit us in a different way than even if we're producing something digitally, I think you know, that that's wonderful and great. You know, a lot of times we do our writing on the computer probably, and and that's wonderful. But I think um for our mental health, for our wellness, for our sense of accomplishment in our day, what we think our brain needs is to totally check out and blank out and get this respite, you know, of scrolling or binging. But as you know, your brain is still doing stuff, it's still having to process all of that information. It's not a rest, right? And if you if you want to be winding down and doing something that's going to fill your cup, it's these hobbies, these high-value hobbies that you can look for to reintroduce back into your life that may have gone away that you can work on a little bit, say in the evenings or in these in these moments of, you know, kind of feeling like you want to be scrolling. And that will bring you more fulfillment and a more of a feeling of purpose, you know, than the scroll, you know, the doom scroll will ever, I think.

Mary: 47:39

So great suggestions. And I know I shared with you before we started recording that my husband and I are looking to move into a city now because I think that we live in a pretty rural area. And I think that ability to connect, because now that I'm not working in a college population where there's a lot happening and there's a lot of connections, in-person connections, and you work for yourself, you know, that can be a little bit lonely. You know, so being able to make connections somewhere and finding a group, a book club or a hiking group or something where you're actually physically with people, I think is really important. So Kelsey, you've given us, you've given us such good suggestions today. So review a little bit what you offer and where people can find you. And then I will also link that in the show notes.

Kelsey: 48:27

Absolutely. Thanks, Mary. Yeah. So my website is Kelsey L Green, L like Lemur, and um the Instagram is same handle, Kelsey L Green, LinkedIn. You can find me there too. And really, I do two main things. I uh offer a course called How to Build Your Circle. The next cohort will be in February, and that will have um a live digital component, you know, because we're spread out all over. Um, but that is really walking you through from the very beginning, like if you're feeling isolated, lonely, sad, no in-person connections, to building a thriving social circle. And the other thing that I offer is called Summit in Six. That is a mastermind for women that are working to bring their, you know, birth their personal creative projects into existence. And they're interested at least a little bit in setting the digital boundaries and doing this work with a cohort. So that is a very intense, high accountability mastermind, and that will start in um in January. So that that's really the two main things that I do. And then I work selectively one-on-one with people that are interested in in building this um, you know, thriving social circle for themselves or want some coaching around um around things like that.

Mary: 49:47

Yeah. Well, I think you're doing really important work, and I think you are ahead of the curve because I don't find a lot of people doing what you're doing, but the books that you named are really, really in, you know, they're interesting. They open your mind, they really start to delve into the topic. And I think it is something where we're gonna start to recognize more and more that we need to regulate it. So I think you're doing important work, and I really love that you were here today. So thank you for the conversation.

Kelsey: 50:16

Mary, such a delight to be here and speak with you and your listeners. So thank you so much for the opportunity.

Mary: 50:23

Sure. And I want to thank everyone for listening. My upcoming book, Nature Knows, goes right to the nature-y heart of this topic, helping you to connect to your inner nature while using the wisdom of plants to help you find belonging, set boundaries, and maintain wellness. So if you want to be on my book launch team, I would love that. You'll get all the fun updates and insider perks. There's a link in the show notes. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.