Jul 26, 2021
When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph. David Ralph 0:25 Yes. Good morning. Good morning to everybody. Everyone across the world. Thank you so much for being here with me. Can we have a group hug, which is WeChat a little arms round and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing? You know, I I've gotten apologies to me, I have gotten an apology to make I recorded a show the other day, called opportunities are everywhere. When we reference Lucas Gordon photography, and I listened back to it this morning, I just dipped into one of my episodes. And that was the one I chose was so fast, I was a little a little little over enthusiastic. I don't know what was the matter with me. So if you listen to that, and thought, My God, you must be on drugs or something. I agree with you. I agree with you. I don't know why I was going at it so fast. It didn't feel like it at a time maybe. Maybe I was just excited. Maybe I was just an excitable man. And, and it came out in my voice. So I do apologise, I do apologise, I'll try to get back on to normal track because I do know, I get a lot of people across the board across the board across the world from abroad, listening to Join Up Dots. And some of them say, I don't catch all what you talk about. But I enjoy the passion. Well, I don't think that one you would have called or enjoyed the passion at all. So I do apologise, I do apologise. I'm going to take it slow. I'm going to take it slow. Why Today's episode is from a listener. And I hope you like these little little listens as well. It's not just interviews, we're trying to, we're trying to change it around, we're trying to put a little bit of element of what you want into it. So some people might only have a little bit of time. Going for a little 14 minute Join Up Dots. Others I've got hours and hours when go for that one, trying to blend it. It's all about you guys. Anyway, this is an email that came through from Marcus archers from New Zealand. And Marcus says dear David, David, I listened to your show sporadically. And I've always been partial to listen to it more. I think this is brilliant. This sounds like a native, doesn't it? Yeah. Can't be balanced. I don't know why I go off elsewhere. But I guess I'm easily distracted. One of the things that you can talk about is making time to be disconnected from your business and the world. And I struggle with this majorly. And I would like to become better. Over best. Right? I think I tell you what I tell you. I was there. I was wondering the field batting of sheep left right in the centre there. I was going to be in the new new Lord of the Rings field. That's how good at my accent was where? Why did David? Because I think Australians do that sort of everything's a question at the end of the day, David, I listened to your show, sporadically. And always think I should listen to it more. You having sounding good. It's all that I know what it means something that when your voice goes up at the end, like a question, but it's not a question. But it's a question. That's what the LC is a monster. Okay, yeah. being distracted and disconnected from the world. And it is a big, big problem. And I think it's it's the major problem. I know, my kids struggle with it. My I think everyone struggles with it. And I, I'm very good at disconnecting. But I also having an online business, I feel that poor, I feel that poor like, everyone really, you know, the world has never been more connected. And no matter where in the world you are, you can send a message to anyone in another part of the world, as long as you both have internet connexion. I'm a member in the sort of 80s in the 70s. Anyone from the United Kingdom will remember this, you'd go on holiday to Spain, and you'd have to wait a week for the newspapers to turn up. And so he was always a week behind the football results. He was always a week and one person would get the paper and you share it around with anybody else. It was like it was it was like a drug deal. But you go How can I have 10 minutes? In an hour? Can I have 10 minutes I newspaper done? I want I've gone back into that accident. I just like doing it. I really do. And yeah, but now you just got being and you just never never away from stuff is it's annoying, but it's the way it is. It's the way it is. Right. Also, I think one of the issues is that all these devices out there are designed to make you actually want to get hooked up to them, you can't fight it. They are like psychological experiments being paid on us. So that we will feel that desire. That's what it designed for. And as soon as you realise that Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and all the social media platforms are designed by people, I'm getting a lot slower today. And I I feel I feel more in control of everything. And they're in designed by people who are actively trading on our emotions, our stress levels, our need to not miss out on those kind of things. And once you realise that, and you realise that they're playing on a kind of internal algorithm, it's easier to stop. Okay, so some of the things that I actually do, right, I don't look at any games, well, I don't have any gadgets, I have my PC in Join Up Dots, HQ. And I have this morning laptop, which I'm going to get rid of because it started not logging on. And so I spend 1015 minutes trying to get it to work. So I'm actually going to get rid of it. So I'm now down to just my PC. So when I turn that off, I've gone. Absolutely no one on earth will be able to get me. But I've started to limit my amount of time I come to my office. And if I do come to my office, what I used to do is leave my computer on all the time, and I could just come along and boom hours easy to turn on. Now I'm turning it off. So I might come up here to read a book, I might come here to plan something. But actually getting into the online world, I don't unless I actually have to turn my computer on which once again is a little barrier for me to do. But you can certainly eliminate gadgets for one hour before sleep and after wake up. So my daughter will reach out and before our eyes even open in the morning, she's got her phone, and she's reaching and dragging it under the covers. So she's hi asleep, but she knows that she needs a phone. My wife needs a phone by the side of a bed. In case of emergencies. I go, what emergencies Are we going to have? Everybody that you love is basically in our house, or vape got people to support them, you know, you know, Batman woman, you know, getting a suddenly ever dot appear on the ceiling and you've got to go out and solve crime during the night. You don't need to have your phone on all the time. I just turned the notifications up. She doesn't talk about that. And I say no. Is that gonna be all the notifications because my wife's not good. We got a new radio, we got a new alarm by the side of the bed because she decided that the light of the previous one that we've had for a million years was too bright. It was too bright. It is keeping me awake. Well, if you hear the snoring, I don't think it is. But anyway, so we've gone to this other one that you can dim down. And she doesn't like the buzzer, because it sounds like a lowly reversing. You know they do that noise. And it actually gets louder. So you actually feel like you're gonna back to be run over and you sleep. And so you suddenly panic, but a law is just going to crash your head. But when you go, Oh no, it's always the alarm. So she doesn't like that. Now she's going for the radio. And now, the other night, she set the radio to come on at half past 12 in the morning, panicked. And they went out for God's sake, why is it doing this? Probably because you programmed it to do that. And then reset it again for half past two in the morning. So we had the radio burst into our life all the way through the night. But it wasn't, it wasn't the devices fault. It was the wives. I'm telling you that don't say anything, but it was the white spot. So what you need to do is reach out and turn off all your devices before and after wake up and have that set into your your routine. And turn off all your notifications. It doesn't only save battery life, it also saves you from a lot of distractions turn up all your push notifications from email, chat, social media, your application. If it's really really urgent, somebody will knock on your door for example, you know, people won't be drowning. I'm drowning, I'm drowning, I'm drowning. Send a text message to your best mate. That wouldn't happen. You would shout out Help me Help me, you know, urgent doesn't happen. And as we're talking about emergencies, do this as well. Because I get this a lot when people say to me, you really haven't got a phone, you haven't got a phone? Oh, no, I haven't got a phone. What do you do in emergencies? And I always say to him, when was the last time you had an emergency? And I go Oh, no, no, it does happen. I got When was the last time. And I would say to all of you if you're in that light? Yes, there's emergencies all the time. just jot it down and jot it down on a scale of one to 10. When you get something through, was that an emergency did that need it now. And you'll see you rarely ever. If anything I once broke down on the Alps, I was 12,000 feet up in a car with broke down, couldn't get it going. And my dad had an emergency phone, thank God because otherwise I don't know what we would have done that I think in my life is the only emergency I've ever had. Okay, doesn't really happen. Now, if you do need to have all these phones around you keep your phone in the drawer while you're working. Just just lock it away. And just try to think to yourself, now keep it there. And when you get that urge in your stomach, because you do you get a bit tense Do you get a bit twitchy just being said, Well, I'm feeling twitchy. I'm feeling twitchy, I'm going to go for another 10 minutes, don't beat yourself, I'm leaving it in there forever. Because you won't do that. That's like trying to lose 30 stone in a month. Just leave it in there go right now I can do another 10 minutes, I'll do another 10 minutes is now 1106, I'm going to wait to 1116 before I get back and start increasing it little by little 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, because you are trying to break free from an addiction. These devices are created. So you're addicted, it's the way they work. But you can't go cold turkey because it just won't work. Now, one of the things that I don't understand, but one of my mates says he does is he has only one device for checking social media. He can he can get Facebook, on your desktop, on your laptop on your smart phone, even on your Apple Watch. So you're checking everywhere, he now is it all through into one device. Now I've got one and it's called a man's name. I can't think what it is. But I put it in the links. And I haven't used it for a while. That's why I can't remember. But it has LinkedIn it has Facebook on it has all the notifications and I can go on to it. Within one second, I can see and turn it all off. So instead of going into Facebook and going into here and going into a or whatever, or having all the notifications, I don't have any notifications at all, I just have this one device, whatever it's called now coming was called is something to do with Roman is come to me. And I just log on once every three days or something and I have a quick look. And bang, it's done. Okay. Now, then the next thing that I would do, and these are the kinds of things I do, I have a thing called stay focused on Chrome, which I can programme my favourite websites. And we all have websites that were desperate to get into and we're going to check mines BBC Sport, are can go on to BBC Sport and find out where this football players being transferred. And that is not necessary. But I do. So I limited and I give myself 15 minutes a day on this website. And when it closes down, and it won't activate again till the next day. And you can set it up stay focused on Chrome. It's a free app. And it's brilliant. And as I say I look at it and I think to myself running out and running out I've got to do it bang is gone. And that's it. I just have to walk away from it. And so I prepare. And I think to myself, I have I got 15 minutes, yes, I have because what I don't want to do is it sort of waste of time, I want to make the most of it. Once again, your chance to do now somebody else told me what what they do, I have over sort of like the summaries of the websites, come to them in an email. So I can just scan down. I don't know how that's done, if anybody knows how that's done. But that's what he does. email comes through, it gives over sort of highlights of the website changes, and you can scan down and you can just keep up with it. Okay. And the last thing that I would say is go to emails once a day, okay, just just once a day that there's nothing, the problem is in business, people use it to talk, they don't use it to actually confirm, they just use it to communicate. So you're in there all the time sending two line emails back and forth, because you're too lazy to walk across the desk. If that is you then say to your colleagues, no, I'm not going to do this until 12 o'clock lunchtime, and bed, I'm going to open it up anything he wants saved about time, and I will respect or we can talk face to face. Because in the online world, email still remains the most personal way of online communication is it this is where the most important engagements happen, tweets and all those kinds of stuff it is. So bullet points, this is the big stuff. And so social media, like Friendster and multiply, have come and gone, all these kind of things, but email still remains and it always will. So limit yourself. Don't think that it's important. It's not if it is important in your company, your boss will come across. And if he's just sending an email expecting you to respond straight away, then it's not, it's not okay. So that there are kind of things Marcus, but I do. But the main thing that I do is I don't have a phone. I push everything now into messenger, and email. That's the only two ways that you can communicate with me away from that I don't look at anything. And I'm just aware of it. And I'm not a month, I still feel that that pole, that desire to check into these things. But by doing that, and just being aware and try to do 10 minutes and then make it 20 minutes and try to do an hour you will start breaking that addiction. And then you can do a day two weeks, you know, I can do a month at a time not look at anything. I probably could do longer than that now to just the way that I've organised it. So let me know Marcus, if you've managed to do anything and you try to stay disconnected and focus because it's a real game changer. And I will promise to practice my New Zealand accent. I really will. I'm gonna really Tommy best to do that. Until next time. Look out yourselves everybody. Thank you so much for being here and I will see you again soon. Bye bye. Unknown Speaker 15:48 That's the end of China. Unknown Speaker 15:51 You heard the conversation. Now it's time for you to start taking massive action. Unknown Speaker 16:01 QB create your life easy only life. Unknown Speaker 16:07 Will be back again real soon. Join Up Dots Join Up Dots Join Up Dots Unknown Speaker 16:15 Jolly Jolly.