EP 32: Tips and Tools for Less Stressful Social Media & Email Experiences

Our mission is to give you tools and strategies that will help you move from being stressed to feeling your best.

In this episode we share tips and tools for less stressful social media time and managing your email inbox.

Co-hosts Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are certified HeartMath® Trainers, and certified stress educators, who are skilled at helping people discover the power of living form the heart.  To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in Canada, click here. To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in the US, click here. 

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Barb Fletcher, Deb Timmerman

Deb Timmerman  00:00

You're listening to the less stress in life podcast. Your hosts, Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are on a mission to help individuals and organizations manage stress and change. Together, they bring you real conversations, inspirational stories, and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best. Hello, everybody. Deb Timmerman here. Welcome to our series of 52 practical tools for less stress in life. This is episode 32.

Barb Fletcher  00:33

I'm Barb Fletcher. Our goal is to give you tools and strategies to help you move from being stressed to feeling your best. Today, we're going to talk about a hot topic. It's the conversation about social media and stress. The average person now spends around six hours per day accessing digital media, according to a research piece done by Kleiner Perkins, back in 2018. So, I bet the number is even higher today, with over three hours of that time spent accessing digital media by your phone. And I know every week when I receive a notification on my phone, about how much time I've spent on it. I cringe a little bit. I don't know about you. 

Deb Timmerman  01:22

Yeah, me too. I've been paying a lot of attention to that number. Because I was feeling like social media was creating more angst in me than it was connection. And so yeah, I've been paying attention. So why do you think social media is taking up so much space and time in our society?

Barb Fletcher  01:43

Well, for sure, I think the last couple of years in the world that we've lived in a pandemic and all the other changes that are going on, I think we've craved connection, we wanted to be with other people, even though we couldn't maybe physically be close to them. I think sometimes we want information that maybe we want to support somebody else who's living with a challenge. At the same time, it can be a distraction. You know, the evidence is suggesting that social media is creating a space for people when they're bored and as a result of productivity actually goes down, because their brain is constantly churning through things. Some recent stats, 53% of people wake up at least once every night to check their phones. That's a scary thought. Because we know that sleep, and we've talked about it here, is one of the most important things we can do to prepare and regenerate it for the following day,

Deb Timmerman  02:50

I might be just a little bit guilty of that, because my phone charges next to my bed, face down. But if I wake up during the night, I will click on that to see what time it is because it's easier than rooting around for the clock. So, wonder if they count that in the statistics?

Barb Fletcher  03:08

Yeah, mine is in exactly the same place charging next to the bed. And for now, I tap my watch to see what time it is. But I think that there are people who are actually waking up and can you imagine that blue screen in the middle of the night and how that creates a new awareness for you.

Deb Timmerman  03:28

Some of you know that I was in nurse manager for a long time, and I was on call 24/7 365. And that phone sat next to my bed with the notifications on. Now I have all notifications off. I have Do Not Disturb. It's really there for emergencies and it's a convenient place to charge. But I can understand that. Because when I would get a ping or a call, I had a really hard time going back to sleep and your brain does start going to that problem solving mode. Most of the time, the calls from work where can I do this, or we have this situation? What do you think about this, and you know, the goal would be to get staff to use the policies they already have and their own decision-making capabilities. But once I was woken up, I had a really hard time turning my brain off and going back to sleep.

Barb Fletcher  04:18

I recently did some work with a group of firefighters, and they have a separate app that alerts the firefighters to when a call comes in. And many of those people were keeping those apps live even when they weren't at work. And so, you can imagine the adrenaline rush that they were experiencing; the cortisol stress getting released in their body every time that ping went off.

Deb Timmerman  04:47

So, these are some of the negative connotations of using social media at night. You touched on some of the positive things like connection and being together during the pandemic. Barb and I have never physically met each other in person. Everything that we've done has been via zoom and we've been quasi working together now for what, four years. It's been a while. So, it's interesting how this can be such a wonderful tool on one hand, and yet on the other, have such negative connotations.

Barb Fletcher  05:25

It really is, you know, I think, for us, even, we have family that live away and we connect with them virtually, probably at times more regularly than when we might, if they live in the same city. So, there are some really positives to connecting with people in social media. I know, my mom, who's since passed, really enjoyed seeing images and photos and stories, but there were times that things that came up when actually trouble her.

Deb Timmerman  06:04

I think in the last probably six months, it feels as if social media, to me, has become more of a source of angst than it has been of connection. And that's largely because everyone has an opinion these days, about their beliefs and attitudes and I totally get that. But what I see happening is that folks put their opinions out, and then others engage and then there's this nastiness, because you don't believe the way I do kind of thing going on in social media. What are your thoughts about that?

Barb Fletcher  06:49

Well, I find it troublesome to see so much divisive behavior in social media. And in fact, you know, when I see it, if I see it consistently, I probably unfollow or snooze, individuals who are sharing that because I know that the larger story becomes one that becomes more troublesome for more people. I don't want to be part of that. So, I, you know, I might unfollow them. But I think that yes, you're right, it can be divisive, and it can be very quickly mobilized. I think about a time when we didn't have social media, and we had a daily newspaper. And so, it had to come early in the morning and the latest controversy was there for us to read about and  then you maybe had to write a letter to the editor, which, who knows how long that would take to get there. And it might be another week before you actually jumped in on your opinion on something in particular. Today, you can throw something up, and moments later, somebody else can jump in. For me where the real opportunity lies is how do we support others? If somebody is not doing well, somebody who's not feeling great? I often don't respond to what they're saying. I private message them and I often say have these tools, is there anything I can do to help rather than becoming a very public display.

Deb Timmerman  08:23

Well, I think one of the things that happens is that we don't realize when we're doing the scroll or we're reading that, that we're having an emotional reaction that triggers the same chemicals in our body, as it does if we're trying to run from a burning building, or we're under threat from a tiger chasing us. So those chemicals. that adrenaline and cortisol are released in our body. Last week, Elle mentioned how long those chemicals stay in our body. If it's a woman, it's like 24 hours. So, if we're getting hit after hit after hit, because we're scrolling and engaging, that just keeps the stress hormones in our body going all the time and there's no break from that. And that's what causes such wear it down and wear and tear in our body. It makes us feel so drained.  

Barb Fletcher  09:17

It's easy to get caught up in that unconscious scroll, just look for a little while longer, or we'll see something, and they'll take us down a rabbit hole. And you know, without tools, what happens is that cortisol does take over and we just, you know we can be addicted to what somebody else is doing. We often hear about people who have FOMO, fear of missing out, or perhaps they see what appears to be a happy situation when if we were to peel back the curtains, it doesn't quite look as good as what we thought.

Deb Timmerman  09:52

Amen to that. So, let's talk about some tips for managing social media. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about social media and Sleep. And we talked about turning off screen time, I tried to do it two hours before I go to bed. How about you?

Barb Fletcher  10:08

for sure I'm not as disciplined as I need to be. One of the things that I do turn off is I turn off the pings and the notifications. Because I'm like everybody else. Nothing like a good ping to wake me up and get me ready to engage in a conversation,

Deb Timmerman  10:27

I don't use pings at all anymore, I don't use any notifications and that has to do with being interrupted during the day and having a hard time getting my focus back on. I use block scheduling, and I turn those off. During those times, they do show up on my scroll screen. So, I can quickly check if there's something that I need to respond to. But that's helped a lot. Because during the day, even when I was working, even with all the tools we teach, those pings would interrupt my thinking, and then I'd have a hard time getting back on track. So, I don't use them at all.

Barb Fletcher  11:06

The other thing is actually to have a goal of why you are engaging. Why are you spending time there? What What's the objective? Is it really to support others? To interact? Are you just an observer? Are you posting to add value? So, what knowing why you're doing it before you jump in, really creates an intention, 

Deb Timmerman  11:35

Rather than picking up that phone and getting that dopamine hit because you're on it and you get bored. Part of the call to action this week is really paying attention to how many times you go to that phone, because you're looking for something to stimulate, rather than using that time to take a breath or get into that calm space before you get on there.

Barb Fletcher  11:55

We read a book in book club called stolen focus. And one of the things we talked about there was the number of pings or messages we received from people. And what he related that to was, if those people each came to your door and rang the doorbell, and you had to get up and go in answer the door, would you be as inclined to do that? And how would you feel at the end of the day, probably pretty tired. If we look at how many messages we received during the day, so I think and which goes exactly to what you speak about, over a long term, we actually lose our ability to focus.

Deb Timmerman  12:41

I have been trying to connect with my body when I do get on and I scroll and notice what's happening inside. It seems as if a lot of folks use Facebook to vent and to get commiseration for their crappy day . There, I'll just said it. It's easy to get caught up in those emotions for those folks. And I try to recognize what I'm feeling in my body, and where my brain is going before I even respond. And for the last six months or so, I've been engaging and responding less, because I asked myself is what I'm going to say going to add value or not add value. And then just thinking about, you know, maybe I will heart it or thumb it like I've seen it, but I don't engage because what I was noticing is I was getting super frustrated. And starting to grit my teeth clenching my jaw. Because I was not paying attention to what I was feeling when I was doing that scroll. I even took a break on my personal page for like a month. I just was like I am done. Don't want to get caught up in that. And what I noticed is, as I stopped commenting on those things, more positive things started naturally appearing on my page.

Barb Fletcher  14:06

I think that's so important because I know that if somebody posts something that troubles me, I can I like you can actually physically feel that. And I'm you know, creates worry or another emotion. And if I don't self-regulate, if I don't make that appropriate adjustment. I carry that along to whatever else might be happening during the day. And that's not really fair to any of the other experiences that I'm going to have.

Deb Timmerman  14:39

One of the things we talk about now is that we want to change the world. We want things to be better and if we're constantly putting out negative things and judgmental things, that's the vibration we're sending out into the world. If we regulate and get right inside, and we put that energy out, that's a whole different thing. kind of energy and a way of showing up than it is if you're airing your dirty laundry, on Facebook.

Barb Fletcher  15:08

I remember in the last couple of weeks chatting with someone, and it had a really bad day. And they shared a litany of troubles. And my response to it was what you said all of it is true. Now, it's time to reset. Now it's time to self-regulate and find ways to move on. Because when we stay in that energy of all the difficulties it grows.

Deb Timmerman  15:40

Yeah, and I'm okay with that kind of venting, like I had a crappy day they talk about it, because really, they're just looking for support. What I'm not okay with is degrading the service at the local diner and I don't like the political stuff. I feel like the way I vote is private. And that's mine. And we live in a country that allows that and that's where I'd like to keep it. That's just me. Other people like to use it for something else. But I don't engage in those posts for just that reason, because it brings too much angst in me.

Barb Fletcher  16:14

So, we've talked about individual situations, is there something specific that an approach that you use for your business, that's different than what you might have done in the past?

Deb Timmerman  16:28

Yeah, I do. So, when I was taking the break from personal social media, I did not take a break from business social media. And I found that Meta, Facebook now, has a different view that you can use, where you can just go to your business, as your businessperson, not as your individual self. I used to access my business page through my individual page. I don't do that anymore. If I'm on for business, I go to the business page only. So that has helped my screentime come down immensely. I'm down to like three hours now, a day, which I think is pretty good, considering how much we post and comment. Now that that isn't the same for how much time I spent in front of a computer, because that's where we do our education and our coaching and our communicating and I'm also doing some work for a local organization, 10 hours a week, that's almost all computer work, emailing and reaching out. And so, it's a lot, but that three hours from six hours has made a huge difference in the amount of energy I have at the end of the day. And I'm not so Facebook fried is kind of the term I come up for it. It's like, when you're overloading and taking all that in and you're not recharging, even if you're using recharge tools, it's still too much.

Barb Fletcher  17:57

Email, it's one of my challenges and I try and keep the numbers to a limit. And it seems like if I take a pause, I ended up with growth that feels like it's exponential. And so, are there strategies and tips that you use to keep your email under control?

Deb Timmerman  18:19

Yeah, so this doesn't work for everybody. I actually do check my email very first thing in the morning and the reason I do that is that I have an online scheduler, and people will change their appointments. And sometimes something will get added so that's the first thing I do and then I clean up my inbox every morning from all the junk that comes in overnight. And I've started to unsubscribe to things, you can always go back there. I mean, the Internet gives us this wonderful ability to search. You don't necessarily need that in your inbox and then I block schedule.  I use block scheduling, and I go in and I clean up at the end of the day as well. It's made it so much more manageable. I think at one time I had like 20,000 emails in my old Yahoo account. You know, you have to use an email now for everything. So, everybody is sending you stuff. I typically do unsubscribe. And the other thing that I'm more mindful of now is I work at strange times, I'm an early bird, I will get up for 5am. And I might work for a couple of hours. And I don't send emails to someone else's inbox at that time. I schedule those for 8am or if they're Pacific Time, it's noon my time because I don't want to be adding to somebody else's email burden. So just being a little bit more aware of cleaning stuff out if you don't need it, quickly unsubscribing I find that that I am. I like the coupons and those types of things were the things I purchased to come to text because there's so much easier and faster to clean out. You just you know, a simple swipe. So those are the ways that I manage it. What do you do to clean yours out?

Barb Fletcher  20:01

Well, I'm envious of how diligent your you are with email, I think I need to spend a couple of hours, you know, unsubscribing to just sit down and unsubscribe. And I think that would make me feel a lot more content than I am. You know, I have mine come up direct emails, and then I have some promotion and update a couple of categories that Gmail has. And so, I know that the ones that come into primary are probably the ones that need more attention, more immediate attention. The danger, of course, is there's always a few that slip into one of those other categories that I need to pay attention to as well. So, I think unsubscribing, so that we're just getting the things that really matter to us. And probably being more conscious, when we agree to share our email with somebody else, is probably a helpful note as well.

Deb Timmerman  21:06

Since we've been planning this episode, I've been paying attention to what comes into my inbox and there is somebody in our circle who sends an email every morning. Every day, so has a couple of different projects going on. And I love the work, but recently, it's like, wow, do I really need an email from you every day. And if you're one of those folks who is sending email, I'll share this tip Paces Connection is the place that we all go to for trauma informed everything and it is a huge database of material colleagues that are networking. And they do a once-a-week summary, which is really awesome. It's called a roundup, and all of the pertinent things from that week are all listed in one email. And those are awesome, I set aside 15 minutes for that email every week, because what I get from that one email is so powerful, and then I can, in that one little time block, send it out. So, if you're somebody who is marketing and doing a lot of emails, you know, typically if we're getting something every day, I'm probably not reading it. I'm probably deleting it. Because it's just too much. It even if I flag it and come back to it or want to come back to it. I don't get back to it. So, I'm not reading. So, considering how to use some of these kinds of strategies, so that you make it really effective for the person who's reading it, I think would be great.

Barb Fletcher  22:39

I agree. So, the call to action for people would be to have a look at how you're spending your social media time. We get reports weekly. See, see where it is that you're spending your time and making a conscious choice. Is that really how you want to be how you want to be focusing? Or is there another direction? And then identify what strategies you might need to put in place to move you away from perhaps what you're currently doing, to where you'd like to go. Until next time.

Deb Timmerman  23:12

Have a great week. Less stress in life is possible. If you're new to this kind of thinking and would like to explore what's possible for you. We'd love to connect. You can reach us through our website at less stress in life.com. That's less stress in life.com