4:13 Podcast: Can I Unplug Without Coming Unglued? With Carlos Whittaker [Episode 353]

Carlos Whittaker: I got that screen time notification that tells you every Sunday -- we all get it on our smartphones -- how many hours a day we have been spending looking at our phones. And my notification just happened to say 7 hours and 20 minutes a day. And I remember being shocked. But then I made an excuse like, well, you know what, this is my job. I'm on Instagram. I make videos. I make YouTube videos. And so, you know, I made an excuse.

But then I did the math. And the math equaled 49 hours a week, which then equals three months a year that I spend looking at my phone. And I kept doing the math. And if I live to be 85 years old, I will spend a decade, over 10 years of my life, looking at my phone. And that's when I said wait a second. I have a hunch why we're so disconnected as humans towards each other.

Jennifer Rothschild: Most of us are so used to notifications and alerts and pings and rings that even if we don't want to be on our phones, we don't know what to do about it. The constant flow of information affects our brains, relationships, and our emotional well-being, even if we don't realize it.

Well, today's guest, podcaster and author Carlos Whittaker, he went radical and disconnected from screens for two months. And what he learned is going to blow you away. He's going to show you what technology does to your brain and what you can do about it. You are going to find some practical encouragement and some biblical wisdom right here, so let's do it.

KC Wright: Welcome to the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

Now, welcome your host and my soul sister, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. And you can just call me the mother of the groom. We had a wonderful wedding last week -- it was beautiful -- and I'm still coming down off cloud nine. And now I have a very pretty long dress that I'm going to sell on Facebook Marketplace.

Well, I'm Jennifer, if we're new friends. And, yeah, my son got married -- our youngest son got married last week. That was KC Wright. He's my Seeing Eye Guy. It's just us two friends here in the podcast closet, with one topic and zero stress. We just want to help you be and do all that God has created and called you to be and to do. That's what it means to live the 4:13 life, so glad you're with us.

And this conversation we're about to have, so interesting --

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- and slightly uncomfortable. But be brave, my people. You're going to love this. It's fascinating. Just because Carlos went unplugged for two months doesn't mean you have to. But I think what he learned is unbelievable. And let's be honest, tech is such a part of our life, and it's okay.

KC Wright: It is.

Jennifer Rothschild: Because -- if we're new friends and you don't know this, because I'm blind, like, I rely heavily on technology. So I don't scorn it at all. I need it to function. It becomes my eyes for me. Yet I will say that sometimes I forget.

Like, I'll be riding in the car and Phil will ask me a question, I'll go, "I don't know. Alexa." And then I realize, wait, she's not in the car. Like, I talk to her all the time, even when she's not around. It's crazy. Like, she's my friend. I've done the same thing with ChatGPT. Like, I don't even try to think a thought. I'm just like, "Let me just see what Chat says."

KC Wright: Yeah. And why even use your brain half the time because you got ChatGPT there. And then I'm the same way. I'll be just in random spots, and my daughter, Elly, she'll ask me a question and I'll just yell out, "Alexa," because that's what we do at our house.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. I know. Isn't it weird?

KC Wright: And then I've got friends that are -- they're incredible, but they're like uppity uppity into things. They have legit serious jobs, and they're like, "We wouldn't put an Alexa in our house."

Jennifer Rothschild: Why?

KC Wright: "The government's listening."

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh.

KC Wright: And I'm like, well, if they're listening to me, they're thinking this guy's really boring.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. They're like, we need to find a bigger problem, something more interesting.

Well, and here's the thing about those Alexas. You can hit the button where they don't listen until you want them to.

KC Wright: Right. And they are helpful with timers and forecasts and --

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, yeah.

KC Wright: -- how many more days until this?

Jennifer Rothschild: I know.

KC Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, and the thing I -- there's some games you can play on Alexa, and one of them is this name that tune, like, and you can do the decades, '70s or '80s. And so I'll play against myself, and that way I always win. I love it. She's good for your self-esteem.

But anyway, we live in a connected world, our people, and it's just we don't want those connections, the screens, the devices, the technology to be the boss of us. We want to be the boss of the technology. So that's what we're going to talk about today, and it's very life-giving, very practical.

But I will tell you -- I'm going to give you one little disclaimer, one heads-up. I think it's so funny that here I am talking to Carlos about living a connected life, and we had a bad connection at one point. It was about halfway through the conversation with Carlos. So you'll notice it gets just a little wobbly, but stick with it because it remedies itself very quickly. But this is also while you want to get the book yourself so that you can read all about it. I think it's pretty ironic. So anyway, let's introduce Carlos.

KC Wright: Carlos Whittaker is an author, podcaster, and speaker. His motto is, Don't stand on issues, walk with people. He and his wife, Heather, live in Nashville, Tennessee, with their three amazing children, where you can find them working on the family farm, planning trips around the world, and dancing to "Single Ladies." Seriously, you need to Google it.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's funny.

KC Wright: All right. This is going to be a great conversation that we all need, so let's get started. Here's Carlos and Jennifer.

Jennifer Rothschild: Carlos, so here's what's interesting about the title of your book. If somebody titles a book "Reconnected," then it makes me wonder if someone who wrote the book maybe felt disconnected. So since you're the somebody who wrote the book, let's start there. "Reconnected." What was your -- what caused you to feel disconnected? Let's talk there.

Carlos Whittaker: Well, you know, I'll tell you, Jennifer, I feel like the last -- let's just say five or six years, probably more three or four, but I just kind of felt like this disconnection in general from humans towards each other. And there's just kind of been more of, like, just an anger, rage ecosystem that everyone's living in.

And I actually came to the realization that every single time that I felt any semblance of massive anger, you know, towards the edge of maybe what rage would feel like, it was coming from my screen. I never felt that when I was talking to somebody face to face. I never felt that when I was, you know, just kind of living my life. But whenever I looked at my phone, I would have extreme feelings of joy or extreme feelings of rage.

And so I got that screen time notification that tells you every Sunday -- we all get it on our smartphones -- how many hours a day we have been spending looking at our phones. And my notification just happened to say 7 hours and 20 minutes a day. And I remember being shocked. But then I made an excuse like, well, you know what, this is my job. I'm on Instagram. I make videos. I make YouTube videos. And so I made an excuse.

But then I did the math. And the math equaled 49 hours a week, which then equaled three months a year that I spend looking at my phone. And I kept doing the math. And if I lived to be 85 years old, I would spend a decade, over 10 years of my life, looking at my phone. And that's when I said wait a second. I have a hunch why we're so disconnected as humans towards each other. I have a feeling this may be the reason. So that's kind of the genesis of this experiment, is where it came from.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, I mean -- yeah. Because if you put that abstraction into concrete, it would be like you sitting in a room alone from July to September staring at your phone 24 hours a day. That is such a not alike.

Carlos Whittaker: Think about it.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's just gross.

Carlos Whittaker: Exactly. That's not living at all.

Jennifer Rothschild: No.

Carlos Whittaker: And most Americans average -- you know, I'm 7 hours and 22 minutes a day, and it's my full-time job to be on. Most Americans are averaging five to six hours a day. It's not much farther behind where I was.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow. Yeah. And they've got other jobs, right. It's not a digital...

Carlos Whittaker: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. So that puts it really into perspective. So for our listeners who don't yet know this, you did something, I think, rather radical: seven weeks unplugged. So I want you to explain what you did. And then after you explain what you did for these seven weeks, then I want to know what it felt like. Like, what were some of the early emotions and reactions to being unplugged for seven weeks?

Carlos Whittaker: Yeah, absolutely. So I did, I went pretty radical and I said, okay, I kind of want to reset. Let's reset my humanity per se. And so I did.

I spent seven weeks -- almost two months -- and I never looked at a single screen. I never consumed any content from an iPhone, an Apple Watch, a laptop, iPad, TV, nothing. And I spent two of those weeks living with funny Benedictine monks in the high desert of Southern California at an abbey at 23 hours a day of silence. Then I spent two weeks after that living in an Amish community on an Amish farm with the Miller family in Mount Hope, Ohio. And then after those two weeks, I spent three weeks with my family living at home in Nashville with no screens as well.

Now, they were still on their screens, but I wasn't, because I wanted to see what this would feel like, you know, living in the real world, in my real world.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right.

Carlos Whittaker: And so, you know, I did this experiment. And the kicker was that I got my brain scanned by a neuroscientist before and after so I could see if there was any measurable difference.

And so I'll go back to the beginning. I mean, if you can think about it, going from seven hours a day on your phone, on a screen, to 23 hours a day of silence at a monastery, it's rather jarring. It was not -- you know, people are like, "Oh, I would love that. That sounds like a dream." Well, let me tell you, I actually -- I thought the same thing. But it was about three days, Jennifer, of heart palpitations, night sweats, tightness in my chest.

Like, I was legitimately having physical manifestations of anxiety from disconnecting from my screen. And, you know, come to find out, I went to my neuroscientist physician friend, he told me that I was legitimately detoxing. Like, I was coming off of my serotonin levels being imbalanced; I was coming off of, you know, cortisol up and down; dopamine; all of the things that are happening in our brain, because of our screens, when I no longer had them. I was having literal withdrawal symptoms.

And so first three days were horrible, and then day four it felt like an elephant stepped off my chest. And so whereas the first three days was all about my phone and like, oh, my gosh, I miss my phone, day four through the end of the experience was an experiment about humanity and about relationships with people and about savor -- about noticing and wondering and all of these things that we no longer do because of our phones.

This book isn't about why phones are bad. There's a lot of other books on that. That's not what this book's about. It's about why it's so beautiful on the other side of the phone. And with those things, you legitimately just pick up your phone a lot less.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. So, yeah, I'm loving this. It makes sense to me, though, Carlos. Like, I have a love-hate relationship with sugar, a.k.a. the white devil.

Carlos Whittaker: Sure.

Jennifer Rothschild: And so when I -- I can't do balance with sugar. I do either over or under. And when I stop sugar -- you just described the first three days. Yes. And it's my brain trying to undo the addiction. So I think that's really important for us to understand, that it is an addiction. It's this urge within us to pick up that phone. And in a little bit we're going to talk a little bit more about the brain science and we're going to talk about why the phone is not bad.

But let's pause here, because you mentioned living with the monks and with the Amish family. So I'd love to know, what is something you observed from the monks that you learned, that you still apply, and what is something that you learned and observed from the Amish that you learned and now still apply?

Carlos Whittaker: Absolutely. So the monastery was very -- it was obviously a very interesting place. Like, that part of the experiment really honed in on my mind and my soul and the speed at which I was living. I think probably what shook me most -- and there are so many things. Obviously that's why I read a book about it.

But the thing that I've taken away and have had the best time applying to my current pace and season of life is what I call God's speed. Monks do so slow. They do everything so slow. They sing so slow. I was, like, first in line for lunch, first in line for the vespers. And there's no first in line with the monks. They move at what's called God's speed. Everybody walks at three miles an hour, and so the monks live this three-mile-an-hour life.

And I quickly realized that the pace and the speed at which we are currently living literally gives us no room to hear the voice of God. There's just -- I think a lot of people are moving way faster, and so -- you know, people are like, "Carlos, I can't hear the voice of God," or, "I can't" -- you know, "I don't feel this connection anymore." And I'm like, well, probably because you're actually outpacing God's speed. You need to slow back down.

So some of the things I've applied in my life, I just move so much slower. I wonder a lot more these days. You know, wondering is something that we no longer do. The phone is the wonder killer. Whenever somebody says, "I wonder," you pick Google and you Google it and wondering is over in one second.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yep.

Carlos Whittaker: We're the first generation on Planet Earth to lose the ability to wonder. And so now, because I had to wonder the entire time I was with the monks, I just -- I don't Google things anymore. I just sit in the unknowingness of my humanity and realize maybe we weren't created to know everything that we know. Maybe that's -- so, you know, there's the monks, right? There's a lot with the monks that I could go into, but probably the whole God speed and wondering is something that they really, really taught me.

And then moving to the Amish, I'll tell you, that was moving from, like, living in a cave to downtown Manhattan. The Amish go hard. They go fast. You know, I think I was a little shocked, actually, as to how fast the Amish were going. But it was amazing. You know, sun up to sun down, we're farming, we're shearing sheep, making hay, cutting the hay, baling the hay, visiting with each other.

Every single meal lasted 90 minutes long. It was actually so cool to get to a point -- it probably took me three days -- and I was like, why are these meals lasting so long? Like, why can't we just eat and get on with the day? But what I quickly realized was these meals was where we were reconnecting, right? Like, we didn't have Instagram. The Amish don't have Instagram to, like, see what their friend across, you know, town is doing, so they visit with each other, they talk with each other.

And what was beautiful, it's like the Amish and I, we don't agree on everything, but we were able to have these long conversations over a shared love of food. Disagree with some things, agree with some things. And I realized, wait a second, what's happened to the American meal? And so I did a little research for my book and realized that in 1923, the average American meal lasted 90 minutes long. In 2023, the average American meal lasts 12 minutes long.

And so we have lost the ability -- you know, and so, again, this is all when I was feeling, Jennifer, right before this experience, so angry, and these phones were -- well, it's because we're no longer talking face to face. We're no longer doing these things. And so the Amish taught me about meals again.

They taught me about getting lost and finding my way. We as humans have an innate ability to find our way, and we -- I think God created us to get lost and find our way, and we no longer do that. The amount of times I got lost on my little bicycle when Farmer Willis was like, "Hey, I need you to go to the feed store and pick up this part for my tractor." You know, it's supposed to be 20 minutes. I'd have to remember the directions, and so --

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow.

Carlos Whittaker: -- it would take two hours to go find, you know, his part. And I'd come home and -- it was just so cool. And so they really reconnected me with a lot of the external factors of living and how we need to be living in community. Their community is so thought out and everything is so stable. They've got stability there, and so -- yeah, so those are some of the things that the Amish taught me.

Jennifer Rothschild: And all of that, all of our spirits resonate with that. We all think, oh, yes, I want that.

Carlos Whittaker: Totally.

Jennifer Rothschild: And the reason we want it is that's how we were designed.

Carlos Whittaker: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: Now, I want you to just pause there and talk about getting lost. Because you're right, we intuitively think that's negative if we're wandering around having to get lost, and we go to our phone immediately to mitigate the discomfort and just to simplify our lives. So why is it important every now and then just to wander around and get lost? Why does that matter?

Carlos Whittaker: Yeah. I think it matters because I think we're legitimately dulling parts of our ethos in our minds that God created to be alive. Right? There's actual studies done by London -- it was a Harvard study done on London taxi drivers, and the ones that navigate based on landmarks and memory versus the ones that use GPS. There's literal traces in their brains, and the gray matter that is forming in the GPS brain versus the ones that are driving around navigating by landmarks. I think that just -- we were created to do this, and we don't know what we're doing anymore.

And so I don't even think that this just applies to getting lost driving around. I just think that, you know, maybe we -- a lot of people are having a hard time finding their way in life because we have all of this kind of external PS on our phones, and Google and podcasts and all of these things that are guiding us, when maybe we need to be guided in a different way.

And so I just think it's important -- I made a lot of friends when I got lost. I saw a lot of beautiful things, a lot of the countryside in, you know, Holmes County, Ohio, that I never would have seen had I had not gotten lost, and I just -- you know, now -- I mean, something that I do now, that I learned from the Amish, is I no longer use GPS.

So I look at directions before I leave my house, I write it on a napkin or whatever it is, and I find my way. And guess what? If I have to sit in traffic an extra ten minutes because Apple Maps didn't reroute me, then maybe I'm supposed to sit in traffic for an extra ten minutes, you know, and just ponder and be in solitude and have a little bit more alone time that I think we're really scared of these days. So I'm a big fan of getting lost and finding our way.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's a good word right there. And it kind of helps you live a little more at God speed --

Carlos Whittaker: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- when you're allowing yourself to be more vulnerable to the reality of just your humanity. And I think that's something that anything digital keeps us from.

But you just said that word: solitude, loneliness. Okay, so you talk about the practice of solitude in your book. But I would love for you to explain for our audience, what is the difference between solitude and being alone?

Carlos Whittaker: Yeah. You know, I think that there's an epidemic of loneliness. I don't think that loneliness is actually a good thing, right? There's a whole epidemic of loneliness happening. But think about this. We are a lot lonelier than we've ever been, but more connected than we've ever been. So you can actually be surrounded by other people and still be lonely. Right? Like, you can go to a party, you can still be lonely. That's not what I'm going after when I say solitude.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. What's solitude?

Carlos Whittaker: Solitude is, like, the intentional practice of not being inundated by other people's opinions and other people's conversations and truly sitting in a space where you can let your mind wander. Solitude is something that also is going extinct. Up until the car radio was put into motor vehicles in, like, 1920-something, every single time you went from point A to point B and you were by yourself, you had solitude. And now solitude is going away going away.

Our brains -- the ideas that I think God puts in our minds when we're spending time in solitude is no longer there. I think there's a lot of ideas that people are missing, a lot of life-changing ideas that people are missing because they're not spending time in solitude.

And so I think solitude is a healthy thing. I think solitude is something that every human was created to have. Now, I'm not saying 23 hours a day like I had at the monastery would be good for me. Only monks choose that for a certain reason. But I do think that -- maybe take a walk without your headphones. Take a walk without your phone. You know, go walk for 30 minutes.

The amount of people that have read my book in the last few weeks and said, "Carlos, I went on a walk for the first time without listening to a podcast, and it was so amazing. I actually felt so much breath in my lungs." Do you know why? It's because they were experiencing [audio cuts out] solitude is not a negative thing, and I think it's something that we have to chase after.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's a paradigm shift, especially for this digital age. And just think about it, Carlos, what brilliant creative ideas have been squandered because of the lack of solitude.

Carlos Whittaker: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Because we've gotten this shallow substitute of just let me have somebody chattering in my ear. And by the way, we want you to keep letting us chatter in your ear because this is meaningful.

Okay. But let's go to your brain scan. You did say you had your brain scanned before and after. So show us -- give us, like, some examples. What was the difference in your brain before this experiment and after?

Carlos Whittaker: Absolutely. So I need everyone to remember this wasn't a scientific experiment. This was only me. I was the only data point. It wasn't like 1,000 people did this and they had their test results. But this is what went into my brain. My cerebellum had the most healing at the end. And Dr. Damon, who scanned my brain, said it's actually striking how much healing took place in my cerebellum.

But I think the key factor for me was -- I did a cognitive memory testing on this computer for about an hour before the experiment and after. And before the experiment -- you know, they flashed faces on the screen and I'd have to remember the faces. Ten minutes later I'd have to remember numerals and letters in a row, that sort of thing. I was in the 5th percentile of memory for an adult man before this experiment. When I finished, I was in the 99th percentile of memory --

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow.

Carlos Whittaker: -- for adult men in America. So that by itself told me, holy cow, this phone is -- these screens are making me dumber. They are numbing our brains. And so it was striking. So that's all it took for me to make a choice to start experiencing all of these things on the other side of the screen and just pick up my phone a lot less. The phone's not bad. I'm on my phone still. But I have cut my phone -- a choice to start experiencing all of these things on the other side of the screen and just pick up my phone a lot less.

The phone's not bad. I'm on my phone still. But I have cut my phone use down from seven and a half hours a day to about three hours a day, and I still get everything done I was getting done before. I'm still inspiring people like I love to inspire people. I just made a conscious decision to honestly gain more than half of my life back that I was losing.

Jennifer Rothschild: And, you know, we're all aging. We're all different ages listening to this right now. And, dudes, we're the youngest we're ever going to be. So you want your brain to age well? I think, Carlos, what you've experienced -- you're right, it may show up differently in each of us, but the principle's going to apply. It is going to be good for our brains to actually use our brains in the way God intended us to use them, instead of having a phone or anything technological as a substitute.

Okay, so clearly this has made such a difference in your life. And now you just said you're at about three hours a day, and that's because also it's your work. So let's talk about this as our last question. This will just need to be our last question just because of time.

Carlos Whittaker: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: And that's why you've got the book, my people. And we're giving one away, by the way.

Okay. So we need technology, and we use it. We're using it now. It is actually beneficial, people are listening through technology. It's important to us. Okay. So, Carlos, how do we manage this? How do we keep it from reducing our connections and replacing true connection, like, with this shallow substitute? So I guess better put -- here's the last question. How do we get and maintain balance when it comes to screens?

Carlos Whittaker: I am coming from the perspective that placing a lot of rules in our life is -- I mean, how's that going for us, right? I think we've all tried to reduce our screen time locked, and by doing these and -- and I think all of that is fine. But what I have found is when noticing, with wondering, with getting lost, finding my way, with all of these things that I go through in the book, it's so much more life giving to do those things than it is, I think, to just kind of walk around like robots doing what our phones tell us to do, that that is going to lessen the amount of time that you're on your phone.

Now, I have applied some things.

[Audio cuts in and out here, so it was removed, but he talks about getting an old-fashioned alarm clock]

And so now I've removed my phone from my bedroom, and I've saved an hour there. So I subscribe to a newspaper. I read my news every single day from a newspaper and, you know, I no longer get consumed by the news on my phone. If something else happens on Planet Earth, I will find it out tomorrow morning.

And there's plenty of other things that I've done -- you know, like, I no longer get my coffee to go. I always drink my coffee out of a ceramic mug, which forces me to spend at least four minutes in stillness a couple times a day. Little things that we can do. The book is filled with the handlebars that we can hang on to when it comes to, you know, doing things that I think -- the way we were created to do them versus just allowing this phone to dictate and the screens to dictate the way that we're living.

So, you know, I guess at the end of the day, my recommendation to everybody is fall back in love with all the things we were created to do and your screen time will lessen.

Jennifer Rothschild: In case you missed that wobbly part of our conversation, Carlos was saying that he got an alarm clock to wake up with, just one of those old-fashioned alarm clocks, and he took his phone, of course, that way out of his bedroom.

So I love this idea of no longer getting coffee to go -- okay? -- even though I might be sitting here with a to-go cup. Carlos talked about the merits of just don't do the to-go thing. Drink out of ceramic. Stay in the coffee shop a little longer. I love this concept of just kind of being more present where you are.

One of the things I do, KC, is I play albums, like old-fashioned analog albums, instead of just saying, "Alexa, play Lionel Richie." Those are just some handlebars that we can hang on to to navigate this.

KC Wright: Such good practices. His last statement was this: Fall back in love with what you were created to love and your digital needs will change. So let's go a little more analog, our people.

But before you go cold turkey on all things digital, please go to the Show Notes now online at 413podcast.com/353. You can read the transcript there. You can get connected with Carlos and get his book. What a great summer reset. And we're giving one of Carlos' books away right now. And you know the drill. Here's how you win one. Simply go to Jennifer's Instagram, @jennrothschild. And you can see some beautiful wedding pictures there as well.

All right, our friends, thanks for hanging out with us. We really, really, really like you. Remember that you can unplug without coming unglued, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. I can.

Jennifer Rothschild: I can.

Jennifer and KC: And you can.

KC Wright: And also on that social media stuff, that's a lot of people's highlight reels. Nobody's posting real stuff --

Jennifer Rothschild: No. I didn't --

KC Wright: -- you know, real life. It's highlight reels and...

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. You got to keep it all in context. Everything needs to be kept in context and balanced.