When the Game Designer Tells You to Put the Phone Down

Joel Bergman makes video games for a living. He runs an indie game studio in Indianapolis called Grizzhoot. He has spent his entire adult life designing the very loops that pull people in, keep them engaged, and make it harder to put the controller down.

And he is the one who told Dave Rodriguez to read Digital Minimalism.

That tension is the entire episode. A game designer recommending less screen time. Not because games are evil. Because attention is finite, values matter, and most of us have stopped paying attention to either.

This post is inspired by our latest episode of The Vitality Journey Podcast, available now on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

The Numbers That Should Stop You Cold

Behavioral health is one of the six dimensions of vitality, and it covers how you manage your time, your spaces, your impulses, and your habits. The data on how Americans are doing is grim.

• 70 to 72 percent of US adults report at least one habitually unhealthy behavior, including gaming and technology use.
• 60 to 80 percent of Americans feel overwhelmed or stressed by clutter in their homes.
• The average modern technology user spends two and a half hours per day on social media and messaging apps.
• People check their devices 180 to 350 times per day.

Adam Alter, a Princeton-trained psychologist and business professor, captured it after spending an entire five-and-a-half-hour flight playing a single mobile game. His conclusion: the thing that is killing us is our screens. Researcher Joel Nigg, cited in Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus, calls our era an attentional pathogenic culture. We are not just distracted. The culture itself is making distraction the default.

Why a Game Designer Reads Digital Minimalism

Bergman did not come to this from a place of judgment. He came to it through journaling. He started writing daily as a creative practice and noticed a pattern that kept showing up on the page: hours and hours of YouTube, days in a row, with nothing to show for it.

That awareness is the entry point. Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism does not start with rules. It starts with values. The idea is simple, and it is the part most people skip: identify what you actually care about, then audit which technologies serve those values and which do not. Cut the ones that do not. Reduce the ones that almost do.

For Bergman, who designs the very technology in question, this was clarifying rather than contradictory. He still plays games for hours. But he plays games with built-in stopping points, narrative arcs, and natural exits. He is engaged on his terms, not the platform’s.

“Before you even try a digital detox, you need to figure out what your values are. Then find activities that take the place of the digital.” Joel Bergman

Four Insights from the Episode You Can Use This Week

1. Phubbing is real, and you are probably doing it

Phubbing is the act of phone-snubbing someone, paying more attention to your device than to the human in front of you. Dave shares the lunch where he experienced it firsthand, and Dimitri admits he has done the same to others. The first step is naming it. The second step is leaving the phone in another room.

2. Solitude is not isolation

Newport defines solitude as a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds. You can be in a coffee shop and have solitude. You cannot have solitude with earbuds in, scrolling. The discomfort of being alone with your own thoughts is the discomfort that podcast listeners, news scrollers, and binge watchers are paying to avoid. That avoidance has a cost.

3. Texting is not a phone call

Newport recommends three rules for text. Treat it like email, not a live conversation. Keep your phone in Do Not Disturb mode by default. Schedule specific times to respond. The panic to reply immediately is a learned habit, not a moral obligation. People can wait. You can drive without checking. The world will not end.

4. Reclaim leisure that demands something of you

Reading. Long walks. Hobbies that use your hands. Joining something where you actually have to show up. Bergman joined a book club. He walks his dog. He listens to podcasts on purpose, not as background noise. The replacement for passive consumption is active production. Make something. Move your body. Be in a room with other humans.

The Mistake Most People Make on the 30-Day Detox

Newport recommends a 30-day break from optional technology. Most people fail in week one for the same reason: they remove the technology without replacing the function the technology was serving. Phones fill silence, soothe boredom, and provide low-effort dopamine. If you do not have a plan for silence, boredom, and rest, you will go back to the phone.

Bergman’s preparation looked like this. He set his phone to grayscale to make it less appealing. He deleted social apps from his phone but kept them on his computer, raising the friction. He set time limits to zero on the worst offenders. And he had real activities ready to go, like books, walks, the dog, and the book club.

That is the model. Lower the friction to good behavior. Raise the friction to bad behavior. Have somewhere to land.

Where to Start This Week

You do not have to do all 30 days. Pick one practice. Maybe it is grayscale on your phone. Maybe it is putting the phone in another room during dinner. Maybe it is one walk, one book, one hour of solitude. Behavioral health is not built in dramatic resets. It is built in the daily, boring choice to put the screen down and be present to your actual life.

If you are ready to take the longer view, our team at Destiny Works coaches people through The Calling Quilt™, the framework that ties behavioral health to your vocational, physical, financial, mental and emotional, and relational health. Real change happens when all six dimensions move together.

Your Next Step

If you are ready to go deeper and take an honest look at all six dimensions of your vitality, explore The Calling Quilt™ coaching at destiny-works.com/the-calling-quilt

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Full Transcript

Dave: So how are you doing on managing your time, managing your spaces, managing your impulses, and managing your habits? These are the factors that define your behavioral health. So how is yours? Are you feeling out of control? Are you rarely in the flow? Are you spending way too much time doom scrolling or gaming? If so, then stick with us and let’s start restoring some sanity and peace to your life. Welcome back to The Vitality Journey Podcast.

Dave: One day at lunch, I got phubbed. Have you ever heard of that?

Dimitri: No. Phubbed?

Dave: Well, let me explain. So I was looking forward to getting together, having lunch with this guy. Almost immediately, no, immediately after he sat down at lunch with me, he took his phone and he sat it on the table face up.

Dimitri: Oh, man.

Dave: So you can see where this is going, right? And then he was bobblehead the whole time. Down, up. Down, up. I don’t think I got full attention from this guy. One time he even said, “I got to take this,” which happens. But he got up and left, and I’m sitting there, and then he comes back, and bobblehead the whole time. I don’t think he asked me a question about himself. I barely got to have a conversation with him because he was constantly distracted. So distracted. Well, that’s called phubbing.

Dimitri: I did not know that. I get phubbed.

Dave: You get phubbed. Well, here it is. It’s a portmanteau, where two words are put together to make another word. Phone and snubbing.

Dimitri: Ah, okay. Phubbed.

Dave: So he snubbed me by paying so much attention to his phone.

Dimitri: To his phone. That’s a problem.

Dave: It is a demonstration, I think, of unhealthy behavior.

Dimitri: I can even say I’ve done that. Now that you say that, I know I’ve done that. I’ve been talking to someone, and I’m staring at my phone, too.

Dave: Oh, yeah. It’s easy to do. We’ll get into this more in this episode talking about what technology does to us. I did some research on this recently, and here’s what scientists are saying. Number one, it devalues relationships. Number two, we are more stupid.

Dimitri: Yeah.

Dave: We’re just more stupid. Because of technology, we’re losing memory. We are losing sleep. We do shoddier work. We are scattered, and overall we are discontent.

Dimitri: Wow.

Dave: This is what the scientists are describing. This is what technology is doing.

Dimitri: It’s quite dystopian, isn’t it?

Dave: Oh, it’s very dystopian. Here are some stats. 70 to 72 percent of US adults report at least one unhealthy behavior in their life, such as smoking, physical inactivity, excessive alcohol use, insufficient sleep, gambling, and here we go, gaming and technology. 70 to 72 percent say they have at least one unhealthy behavior that’s habitual in their life. 60 to 80 percent of Americans feel overwhelmed or stressed by the clutter in their homes, so they’re not managing the spaces. Then we get to technology. The average modern technology user today spends two and a half hours per day on social media and related messaging devices.

Dimitri: Two and a half hours in a day. That’s a lot.

Dave: How many times do you think we check our devices in a day? I’m going to put you on the spot.

Dimitri: Oh, man. I’m going to say like a hundred times.

Dave: 180 to 350 times.

Dimitri: Wow.

Dave: All those quick glances. Adam Alter, who’s a business professor with a PhD from Princeton, came to a realization. He’s a psychologist and a business professor. He took a flight from New York to LA and he got off the plane and realized he spent the entire flight playing a game. That’s a five and a half hour flight. His experience, he says, “My experience of compulsive game playing on my six hour flight suddenly reminded me that the thing that is killing us is our screens.” Screens are killing us.

Dimitri: I believe it.

Dave: And Joel Nigg, who is a professor referenced in Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus, said that we are living in an attentional pathogenic culture.

Dimitri: Amen. Does that make sense?

Dave: It does. It’s our pathology. I almost could see this being in the DSM-5, the book that describes all human ailments, both mental and physical. We are attentionally pathogenic. We are devaluing relationships. It’s all because of technology. We’re more stupid, losing our memories, losing sleep. Behavioral health is a thing. It’s a real issue.

Dimitri: On the sleep thing you just talked about, sleep hygiene, thanks to all the streaming services I can watch all the episodes, but dude, it’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m still watching television because I’ve got to finish the season.

Dave: So this podcast exists, and Destiny Works exists, to help people reclaim their vitality. We talk about physical health, emotional health, relational health, financial health, vocational health. But we also talk about behavioral health, and that’s going to be our focus on this episode of The Vitality Journey Podcast. And here to help us sort it all out, when it comes to behavioral health, no pressure, is Joel Bergman, who, and this might surprise you, to help us figure out how to manage our behavioral health, Joel is a game designer and game historian. This will be a fascinating conversation.

Dave: We’re going to get back to our conversation in just a minute, but before we do, I want to extend a personal invitation to you to attend one of two workshops that I’ll be conducting in June. These are the Vitality Journey workshops, and in the 90 minutes we’re going to be together, I will help you form a personal strategy to address the six health factors that define your vitality. We’ll do an assessment of those health factors, help you dream of what it could be, come up with a few really important goals, and some habits that you can change that will ultimately affect your vitality. So please think about joining me. The first one is going to be on Thursday night, June the 4th, and it will be a virtual workshop over Zoom. And on Saturday morning, June the 6th, we’ll be doing an in-person workshop in central Indiana. You can get the information and you can register for either workshop on our website, destiny-works.com. I really hope you can join me, because I do believe it’s going to be transformative as you consider the possibility of increasing the vitality of your life. So join me at one of those workshops, and let’s get back to the conversation.

Dave: All right, here to help us get our behavioral health sorted out, when we think about the topic of behavioral health, it might surprise you that the person we want to talk to is a game designer and historian. His name is Joel Bergman. Let me tell you a little bit about him. Joel studied media arts and science at IU Indianapolis with a focus on video game design and development, which I think is so cool. We’ve had a lot of great guests on this podcast, but I think Joel’s going to top the cool factor here. After graduating, he programmed and designed mobile apps, games, and museum and trade show installations with clients including the NCAA Hall of Champions and the Children’s Museum, one of my favorite places in all the city of Indianapolis. In 2015, he studied games leadership and management at the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy at the University of Texas at Austin. He designed and programmed virtual reality games at Alchemy Labs. In 2021, he founded his own independent game studio, Grizzhoot, making action and platforming games. All that is fascinating.

Dimitri: Fascinating. We’ve got questions. So many questions.

Joel: Thanks for having me.

Dave: Before we get into it, because Destiny Works, the organization of this podcast, is founded around the idea of purpose and calling, let’s start with your story. How’d you get to where you are today?

Joel: I’ve always been into video games and computers. Growing up, we always had a computer in the house because my dad worked in tech. My mom’s a music teacher, so I split the difference, right in between, where I got some of the creative and a lot of the technical stuff too. My dad was always bringing home computer games to play on our computer. I grew up going to the neighbor’s house and playing their Nintendo and Super Nintendo. When I was 10, I got a Nintendo 64 for Christmas and played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. That game was just so formative for me. It was really the first game where, when the game ended, I sat and watched the credits and that really clicked for me. It was someone’s job to make this. And I want that to be my job. Ever since I was 10 years old, I’ve been chasing that, trying to make my own video games and learn everything I can about how they’re made.

Dave: How would you put into words, this is why I do what I do?

Joel: I love the imaginative world building and exploration that video games let us do. I want to make games that bring people that sense of wonder and joy.

Dimitri: Zelda, by the way, is one of those games. We have the newer version on the Switch. I am in love with that game. So many parables between the game and what I do in real life. You have to build yourself up. You can go fight the bad guy right now, but if you only have three hearts, you’re going to die. So you have to go through the worlds to get stronger and make connections with the other people in the world and work together.

Dave: Are these the things you’re talking about that make what you do satisfying?

Joel: Yeah. There’s a lot of reasons why people play games, and we can get into that later. There’s an essential sense of accomplishment, conquering challenges. That’s a big part of why people play games. It’s something that we don’t always get in the real world, where we have a challenge, complete the challenge, and get a good sense of accomplishment. Games do a great job of rewarding you for accomplishing goals.

Dave: For you, is the accomplishment to build the game or to have people play your game?

Joel: It’s mostly to have people play games. I love watching people play. Play testing is a big part of video game development, where I’ll sit back and watch someone play and watch their face to see how they’re reacting. It’s a great way to figure out where there are problems in the game that aren’t working, so you can go back and fix them. But it’s so fun to just watch people play.

Dave: Gaming is technology meets psychology. Does that sound right?

Joel: Definitely.

Dave: Could you give us the brief history of gaming? I think it’s fascinating.

Joel: Even before video games, games are such an important part of humans and animals alike. They give us a way to experiment and learn, fail, and get back up and try again in a controlled environment that gives you feedback. When computers came around, it was a really easy jumping off point to combine those two: having that feedback, that play, and combining it with computers. In the 70s and 80s, arcades were really big, and then we got the home consoles and the Atari and Vectrex. Then there was a big gaming crash in 1983 because the market was just oversaturated. That’s when Nintendo came onto the scene. One thing I think is really interesting is in Japan, the Nintendo Entertainment System was called the Famicom, the family computer.

Dave: On purpose.

Joel: Yes, on purpose. It was partially because of the video game crash. People didn’t want a game console. They wanted a computer. That’s why the Nintendo Entertainment System was a gray brick. It was trying to look more like a computer or a VCR than a game console.

Dimitri: Fascinating. With the front load. Yep.

Joel: Game consoles really took off. They were single-purpose machines that all they did was play games. So you didn’t have to go to the arcade and get a bunch of quarters.

Dave: I remember that. I was a youth pastor. I spent a lot of quarters on Centipede.

Dimitri: You go through Nintendo and Sega Genesis with the 8, 16, and 64 bit cartridges, and then you got into Sony with the CD-ROM.

Joel: CD-ROM allowed way more data to be stored. So you could have full video, CD-quality audio, much better soundtracks, voice dialogue. It’s a cycle that just keeps iterating over and over again.

Dimitri: I want to stop there for a second, because now ownership has changed. When you went to the store, it was $59 or $69 for a game. You went and bought it, and it was yours. Now you pay the same price and it’s almost like you’re renting it. If that system fails, or you can’t have access to internet, you can’t even play the thing that you paid for. Why is that?

Joel: A lot of it’s just the economics of it. It’s a lot more expensive to manufacture a disc or a cartridge and get that distributed. Server space is so cheap now that it just makes more sense for a lot of companies to go the digital-only model.

Dave: How does VR play into gaming these days? Is it going to be a thing?

Joel: It kind of goes in and out of style. It’s been a gimmick mostly. I don’t see it replacing console and PC gaming at all. It’s a separate thing.

Dave: And the hot topic of the day, AI?

Joel: I have a lot of thoughts about AI. I think the current models are fundamentally a dishonest technology, because it’s built on humans. The AI is trying to pass off something that this machine made. A lot of times people can’t tell if it’s real or AI generated. You can’t tell who made it or why they made it.

Dimitri: People are playing games for different reasons. The reason you went to the arcade is your friends. The boxes were big. I went there because there were kids in the youth group and I thought I’d hang out with them. I ended up being there because I would put in the quarters and play, and it drew me in because I wanted to win. But now it’s like, I want headphones, and I want pizza shutters on the door, and I want a Red Bull, and I just want to be in a dark room with all the lights off. Talk about that big change. What’s happening?

Joel: A lot of it came from the switch from the arcade to the home console and PC market. There are a lot of different kinds of games, so different people play different kinds of games for different reasons. There are tons of people that only play multiplayer games. All their best friends are people that they’ve met within the games, or they have their own gaming group they play at certain times every single week or every day.

Dimitri: So games can still foster relational health, build community.

Joel: Yes. There’s community to be built inside this gaming world, as well as it can be very isolating and solo. The solo play can be a good thing as well, as long as you know yourself and know when it’s becoming a bad habit.

Dave: Before we get into behavioral health, I’m fascinated with how you’ve explained the positive products of gameplay. Could you review them?

Joel: One of the biggest things games do really well is just giving you a sense of accomplishment. Games can be a form of expression, where you can customize your character, build your own world. You can use that to say something about yourself or the world that we live in. You can play games with your friends, meet new people, explore fantastic worlds, be told an interesting story that you can be a part of and change the narrative. There’s a lot of aspects of games that I think are like the highest form of art.

Dimitri: On the other side of that, Mortal Kombat. I still remember the blood code. Mortal Kombat is a fighting game, and when it first came out you could just fight. If you put in this code during the start screen, you could enable blood to come out when you would punch the character. It was a big issue. This was before game ratings existed. Parents were like, you’re introducing violence in a new form into video games. Talk about the engine. Some of this stuff is like, this isn’t a video game.

Joel: The violence in games is definitely an issue. A lot of it comes down to parents not understanding what their kids are playing or why they’re playing. There’s also this misunderstanding of sometimes content being in a game. It’s there to say something about humanity rather than an endorsement of the violence necessarily. It’s pretty nuanced. Grand Theft Auto, incredibly popular video game, lets you do some pretty horrific things.

Dave: Just for our audience. Grand Theft Auto is this game where you can steal cars, you can beat people. You can be a criminal, assume the role of a criminal and do all these things in this game. Yes.

Joel: But the game doesn’t necessarily reward you for some of these behaviors. The game will punish you for a lot of the behaviors. So it’s allowable, but just because something is permissible doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an endorsement.

Dave: Is the onus more on the parents or the authors?

Joel: I think a lot of it comes down to the parents. There are age ratings for these games. Grand Theft Auto is rated Mature, meaning for people 17 years and older, and a lot of kids are getting hold of them. So their parents aren’t taking it seriously. All the current generation consoles have parental controls as well. Parents can put time limits on the games. They can limit what kinds of content their kids are allowed to play. Kids will try to find ways around it, but I think it’s important for parents to understand what their kids are playing. Watch them play. Pay attention.

Dimitri: Roblox. The game play itself isn’t salacious, but the community therein can be corrupted by people trying to hurt children. Talk to us about that, the psychology of why it was created, and now the community that can be hunting children inside this game world.

Joel: Roblox has some problems in addition to that. The whole microtransaction model.

Dimitri: Can you explain that for us?

Joel: Roblox is a game with a virtual currency that ostensibly parents are buying for their kids. A lot of the times the kids are getting hold of their parents’ credit card information and buying it themselves. A lot of times they’re spending inordinate amounts of money.

Dimitri: Just for our viewers. There’s a sub economy inside video games. You use your real money. You’ll take your real $20, and with that you’ll buy a virtual currency, and it will never be $20 worth. It’s always some other amount. But it enables you to enhance your character or go faster or whatever the game allows.

Joel: Most of the time they’re cosmetic enhancements where it lets you customize your character to look the way you want, or have different effects. Some games even do this thing that a lot of people consider a form of gambling: loot boxes, where you’re basically paying and the game will randomly give you certain pieces of equipment or costumes for your characters. Things like Fortnite use that a lot. It’s playing to the scarcity mindset. The FOMO. How many hits am I going to get if I do this?

Dimitri: My son has been earning money. He had thirty bucks. He has the Meta Quest. I said, “Well, you can spend your money in the game,” and he spent it. And I think he lost it, like in 30 minutes he did something and now he was so salty. After that, I was like, “Yeah, man, you spent your real-life force.” And that’s not recoupable. You can’t get that back. The frustration that I saw he experienced over this thing that wasn’t real was mind-blowing.

Joel: But the thing is, you were there to define and help him understand. Parents, interact with your kids on this. Left alone, they’re kids.

Dave: So what can game developers do?

Joel: There are a lot of tools that a lot of games have built into them to prevent inappropriate behavior. Things like being able to block players or report them for negative behavior. Parents and kids need to be aware of that. If someone’s behaving inappropriately, there are methods built into a lot of these games or platforms that will let them report that behavior, and hopefully ban the offending player.

Dave: Obviously we’re talking about this in the context of behavioral health and compulsive impulse control. How much of the dilemma of technology compulsion do you take into account in game design?

Joel: It’s definitely something that’s on our minds. We try to make games that are engaging and that people want to spend time with so they get a fun experience, but we also have to be conscious of their time. People are spending a lot of money on games, so we want to make sure they’re getting their money’s worth. But there is personal responsibility on the players to understand if it’s becoming a problem.

Dave: One thing that impresses me about you is how much you take human psychology into account when you’re creating what you’re creating.

Joel: We make what we call game loops, this atomic level of game design where it’s the pattern that the player is going through in the levels. It’s collecting power-ups, it’s fighting the enemies, it’s beating the boss, doing that over and over again. We want that to be satisfying. That’s also a good way to build in checkpoints and good stopping points. Multiplayer games are based on rounds. You play through a couple of rounds, and then that’s a good place to stop.

Dave: The potential exists, if they’re paying attention, that you can exit. You’re not pulled in with the golden hook that’s going to keep you.

Joel: Sometimes there’s social pressure of, “My friends are playing and they want to go another round, and I don’t want to disappoint my friends,” or “My guild is doing a raid at this time, and I don’t want to miss the raid or miss out.”

Dimitri: There’s the framework, the governance of the game, the pattern of the game, and then there’s also the content itself, which goes back to violence, blood, even Sims. There are versions of Sims now where you can get players pregnant. Why is that built into the game?

Joel: It’s also about understanding the audience for the game. The Sims isn’t necessarily made for kids. Most of the people that play it are adults.

Dave: Where would you say, just your opinion, the line is between engagement and unhealthy compulsion?

Joel: I definitely struggled with this when I was in high school and college. It’s more fun to play a video game than it is to do homework. I think that’s partially just the way the world is. But it definitely takes understanding and knowing yourself, knowing what kind of patterns you’re susceptible to. And a parent knowing that about their child.

Dimitri: That speaks to why gamification for educational content is now a thing. My daughter learned how to read through gamification. There’s a bunny that hops, and she could learn to read through this bunny that did all these things.

Joel: For those who aren’t familiar, gamification is when you take elements of video games, things like the rewards for accomplishing goals, breaking down goals to be really specific, and adding an element of fun to education. It can sometimes be used in other ways that aren’t necessarily as good. A lot of apps will keep you in, “Oh, you’ve got to keep your streak up, or you’re going to miss out on something.”

Dimitri: I did Noom for a while, the fitness app. Man, they were gaming me all the time.

Joel: That gets you sucked in. It works.

Dave: One of the things I find fascinating about you is your self-awareness. You’re the one who told me, “You need to read the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.” Can we talk about that?

Joel: The premise of Digital Minimalism is being conscious of the amount of time you’re spending doing things digitally, and trying to take back your time, take back your attention, from things like social media.

Dave: It seems like, “Wait a minute, that’s a game designer.” It’s like fighting yourself inside.

Joel: A lot of it was, I realized how much time I was spending on social media, on video apps, on screens. It’s hard to escape because so much of our work now is all digital too. We have these multi-purpose devices that we call phones, but when was the last time you used it as a phone? It’s a technology communication device. It’s less of a phone, but it’s connected to the entire universe of information.

Dave: Newport’s perspective, obviously the title, is there a way to minimize your digital exposure while still embracing technology?

Joel: A lot of it is based on identifying your own personal values and seeing if a technology that you’re using aligns with those values. The things that aren’t aligning, you should cut them out, or find ways of lessening them.

Dave: That was the fascinating thing about the book for me, and also the hard thing. If you tell me you need to cut the amount of time you have the phone in your hand, well, that’s got numbers. But to say you need to figure out what your values are, that’s a different beast. How did you go about that process?

Joel: A lot of it was introspection. I got into journaling before I even read Digital Minimalism, just as a way to connect with my artistic self. I like to think of myself as an artist and a technologist. Through the process of journaling, I was getting to know myself better and seeing patterns of, “I watched a lot of YouTube videos while I’m journaling.” I was writing that I did that a lot, days in a row. What are things that I can do that might be better uses of my time?

Dave: What skills are you bolstering in the digital world versus the analog world? When you’re on the screen, you’re obviously not moving your body. But you might be bolstering your hand-eye coordination. Where do you draw the line?

Joel: It’s up to you to understand yourself. For me, I still play video games for hours and hours at a time. A lot of it comes down to the kinds of games that I play. I like the narratives and the exploration games. Those have a lot of built-in checkpoint mechanics where, okay, you beat a boss, now’s a good time to wrap up. Some of it is just knowing your limits.

Dave: Has gameplay ever hurt you or any relationships?

Joel: In the past, especially in college and high school, I struggled a lot with, video games were more interesting than the things I was supposed to be doing my homework. I have ADHD, so it was really easy for me to get sucked into where it was like, “I’m not feeling rewarded for doing the things that I’m supposed to be doing.”

Dave: Let’s talk about what Newport says: how to become a digital minimalist. He said first, choose a 30-day period during which you will take a break from optional technologies in your life. He means stop it all.

Joel: It’s pretty tough. So fast.

Dave: 30 days. I’m saying, how could I do that?

Joel: It does go by quickly if you do it. The replacement is mostly the app. When I did my digital detox, as he calls it, I set my phone to be in black and white mode, so it was less interesting to look at. I deleted a lot of apps from my phone. I told myself, “I can still use social media. I’m just going to do it on my computer instead of on my phone.” Because if I’m doing it on my phone, it’s always in my hand, always in my pocket. It’s too accessible, too easy. But doing it on my computer, it’s like, “Okay, I have to sit down in a different room, on a different device.” Most of the mobile operating systems have ways to limit the time you spend on apps so you can set time limits. I set time limits for zero minutes for a lot of the apps I shouldn’t be spending as much time on while I was trying to do this digital detox.

Dave: Was it hard for you to set the timer? Was there a lot of resistance?

Joel: It was pretty easy because I knew that it was going to have a positive impact.

Dave: You were motivated, because you had done what he suggested first: figure out what your values are.

Joel: Exactly. That’s the first step. Before you even try a digital detox, you need to figure out what your values are, then find some activities you can do that align with those values that can take the place of the digital.

Dave: Newport says, during the 30-day fast or detox, explore and rediscover activities and behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful. Did you do that too?

Joel: Yeah. I got really into reading. I joined a book club recently. I walk my dog a lot. Listen to podcasts. Real analog.

Dave: Is there difficulty in that? If you had four hours a day on the screen, and now all of a sudden you don’t, I could imagine going nuts. How do you find that thing to fill that time?

Joel: It goes back to your personal values. Spending time with other people is a great way to do it as well. You’re less likely to be on your phone if you’re with a group of people engaged.

Dave: There’s the power of relationship. So your recommendation would be, if you do this detox, have some things in place. Set the timers, but you’ve got to have a plan, because otherwise you’re going to sit there and do other things.

Joel: Having another person to keep you accountable is very important.

Dave: Newport says, at the end of the break, reintroduce optional technology starting from a blank slate. Make sure that each technology you reintroduce has value and serves your life. That is a level of intentionality. For people to live with intentionality is a very hard thing. There’s a lot of energy. It feels to me like everything around us is pushing us into a reactive mode to what’s handed to us, instead of living intentionally. Do you find that to be true?

Joel: Everything is passive. It just works because you’re there. You don’t have to do anything anymore.

Dave: Newport suggests practices to replace technological addiction. Number one, solitude. He said, what’s happening in your brain, not the environment around you. Solitude is not necessarily about physical separation. It is about a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds. It’s being alone with your own thoughts. It can be scary.

Joel: It’s important, fascinating, and scary at the same time.

Dave: But if I realize I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired of technology ruling my life, we’ve got to do some hard things, like being with my mind, with me. You don’t always like the person that’s there. We’re all a work in progress. Which is why I go get the snack, or why I play the game again.

Dimitri: And on that, real quick, that’s kind of huge. Everything’s an input device. It is, to put into you. So when you disconnect from that, you now have to output. This is what I love about what you said at the top of this, which was you have a creative side of you. Part of your medium is inside the digital world, but you can have analog fun. You’re outputting now. You’re writing, contributing to the outward universe.

Dave: That phrase, “when your mind is free from input from other minds,” when I read that in the book, I was like, come on. If that doesn’t describe what’s happening to us right now, I don’t know what does.

Dimitri: It’s other minds telling you what to think, and you didn’t even have your ideas. You’re getting all roused up about it, and it’s not your original thought.

Dave: Second thing he said: reclaim conversation. You must be fully present to one another. Learn to listen. This is where we experience the joy of being heard, being seen, being understood, and grow in the capacity for empathy. One of the recurring themes on this podcast is the Harvard study that said the number one factor of happiness in your life is relationship. As you, in your community, do you find that people who are so deep into the gaming world or gaming solo, is it harder for them to communicate with people, and how do they overcome that?

Joel: Some of it is, gaming really appeals to the neurodivergent mind. I’m on that neurodivergent spectrum too, so I understand the antisocial behaviors that it can contribute to. But I think a lot of people, they have things that they like, and they’ll love to talk to you about them. So you have to get someone to open up about that. If you have a friend that seems like they’re getting really stuck in gaming by themselves, reach out to them, see if you can start a conversation with them.

Dave: These ideas were like sledgehammers to me. Consolidate texting. He says three ways. One, treat text messaging like email.

Joel: That’s easy. I ignore. I have 99,000 unread messages.

Dave: Two, keep your phone in Do Not Disturb mode by default. Three, schedule times to respond to text. That was important for me, because for some reason along the way I’ve had this panic that if you text me, I’ve got to respond immediately, like you called me on the phone. But he says, schedule times to respond to text. I’ve been thinking about that. Part of it is, I’m an achiever. I want to make things, and if you send me a text, I want to respond. What’s fascinating about that is, this impacts behavioral health. People are doing this while they’re driving. That’s how much this encroaches upon, because you feel the need to immediately respond. And you’ll violate traffic laws and the safety of others to respond to this. Now my newish car is telling me my text messages.

Joel: In doing these things, you are going to miss out on some things. You kind of have to be okay with that.

Dave: And then he says, reclaim leisure. Reading, exercise, long walks, hobbies. Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption. Do something with your hands. Do something with your body. Use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world. And join something. Show up. Your book club. Was any of this difficult for you?

Joel: It was difficult maybe the first week, but it got easier. I constantly found myself taking my phone out of my pocket and looking at it, and being like, “Okay, no, I need to put it back in my pocket.” There were times where I’m sitting there and I’m like, “I could be watching a YouTube video, but I just need to sit here with my own thoughts and figure out what I need to do.” I got in touch with some of my other hobbies that I’d been neglecting. It helped that the weather started to get nice while I was doing this, so I could take my dog on long walks.

Dave: This is fascinating. Thank you. I’ve got more questions, but maybe we’ll come back. We’ll have a round two. A couple of takeaways. First, this book is phenomenal. It’s a great framework. It’s an easy read. What I hear you saying is, set time limits, utilize the technologies in a way that is conducive just to what you have to do, and spend time in the analog world, in real life, reconnecting with yourself. And parents, engage with what your children are doing. We can’t put the onus on game developers and programmers to control behavior. You still have to parent your children.

Joel: It’s very true. And utilize the controls inside the technology. They all have built-in systems for monitoring the types of content and putting limits on it. People don’t always know about them. So it’s important to understand that.

Dave: How do people find you?

Joel: I stream my video game development on twitch.tv/Grizzhoot, G-R-I-Z-Z-H-O-O-T. If you’re interested in the video game development world here in Indianapolis, we have a group called Indie Indies. If you go to Hoosiersmakegames.org, you can learn about where meetups are happening. We get together a couple of times a month to share our games that we’re working on. We do a showcase every year to show off games that are made here in the Indianapolis area.

Dave: Very nice. Well, we end our podcast with a blessing. I have a blessing sort of on this topic. So here we go. May you find space within the rush. May what feels too heavy become lighter. May you release the pressure to hold everything together, and trust that what matters most will remain. May peace meet you in the pause, and may you remember that your life was never meant to be carried at the speed of your schedule, or technology. We’ll see you next time on The Vitality Journey Podcast.