Welcome Back And The Big Question

Yo yo yo, welcome back to the Feather Your Lifestyle Podcast Conversations on Lifestyle, Passions, and Hustles. My name's Chris. I am your host, and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 276 today. I wanted to jump into this uh this whole conversation I've just been challenging myself on of recent. And I've actually noticed it because I've been seeing it across even our business and our socials and different different spaces, and I've just been watching a few different things. Sorry to speak all cloak and dagger. But I guess it's the contrast between where our attention is currently going.

Doomscrolling And The Attention Squeeze

Because I feel right now, in the last year, two years, our attention is being sucked up and absorbed and demanded by more things than ever. And that's why a lot of the time we are just doom scrolling, right? Because it's easier to just jump to the next thing. Our attention spans are small and quick and very, very little. But there's also so many more things of where our attention can go. And I guess in the contrast, was if you are a content creator or if you do do something that is trying to demand people's attention, how have you found, in terms of actually retaining and gaining uh that attention? And I find it's getting harder and harder. Kind of like in a in a business world, it's it's becoming harder and harder to sell items because of cost of living. Right now, with eyeballs, there's more people demanding people's eyeballs, and therefore it's to lock in those eyeballs, it becomes a higher cost or a higher challenge. But I kind of wanted to bring it back and keep it focused on the conversation about where are we spending our time? Where are you spending your attention? And that's that's really what I wanted to talk about. So we're gonna roll the intro, we're gonna jump into it, and let's get into it.

Check Your Screen Time Reality

So the the big question, and this this is gonna be short because it does not need to be a long episode. I don't want to have to take your attention too long, but where is your attention going, right? If you actually look at your screen time, I did a video on this a few, I think it was a year ago, maybe a bit longer, and I looked at my screen time on my phone. Now I can look at it on my computer, which is across the majority of my devices, if I can have a look and see what that looks like. But it it's it's it's a bit it's a bit it's a bit scary when you actually have a look and see where your screen time is going. For some reason I can't access it here, but I I think if you spend the time and actually have a look and see where your screen time has gone, you're going to probably freak out a little bit. Yeah, you can do this on your iPhone or you can do it on potentially your your other devices if you're not using an iPhone or Apple or whatever, and actually just have a look around and see what's what's using the most. For me, it's a little bit diluted because we use my phone for my business. So obviously, using the phone for photos, using the phone for doing our eBay lives. But then if you start to have a look at that and see, well, okay, you pull those things out, and where are you spending your time otherwise? You're probably going to be very surprised. Not surprised, sorry, you probably won't be surprised, you'll probably be just like, oh crap, I didn't realize it was that bad.

Ecommerce Lives And Borrowed Hours

And there's what I love to do is when I get into new uh contextual contextual situations, whereas so I was at a backpack for VicKids fundraising events the other day, and I was working with people I've never worked with before because it was a few different volunteers and stuff. And we got into the conversation around what I do for a living, and I love to ask people about, oh, do they shop on eBay or have they heard of whatnot? Or have they heard of eBay Live and do they buy pre-love clothing online, etc.? And it always surprises me that I don't think I've ever met anyone out of random blues other than people in my own network, because it's kind of like an adjacent thing that there's people in my network that are obviously buying from eBay because that's what I do. But outside of my circles, I haven't met anyone that has bought something off eBay or whatnot or Depop or all these different places. So it's very interesting to learn because obviously there's clearly is people, and like even on our eBay lives, like we have repeat customers, we have new customers every show, and these people are buying things, but who are they, right? And think about what were they doing prior to this? Because a year ago, six months ago, eBay Live didn't exist here in Australia. So it's like, where was their attention going? I did a last week we did we did a Monday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday, two shows on a Thursday and a Friday. So we did two, four, six, eight hours plus would say one and a half, so that's nine and a half, and then I did a three and a half. So we're looking at like 12, 13 hours of streaming last week, and I think there was at least one person that was in all of those streams, even if they stayed for 10 hours of those streams. That's 10 hours of their time that I have taken. Obviously, it's 10 hours of my time as well. But the point is, it's like, well, where were those 10 hours a year ago? What were they doing with those 10 hours? And then all of these people doing, spending their time doing these things. Now, how people spend their time is totally completely up to them. I'm here to challenge you how you're spending your time and just to think about well, have we actually stopped to think about like how different it is now compared to a year ago, two years ago, four years ago, five years ago, uh, because of the different demands of what people want us to be watching. And it's so easy to get

Protect Your Mind And Wrap Up

stuck scrolling or seeing or distracted or something pulling you over here, something's pulling you over there. We I don't watch TV. I don't have uh TV where you can just tune in and watch the news or whatever. You hear me talking tune in. I mean, that's still old school style. I haven't I haven't had a TV for a very long time. Of course, I have a TV where I play video games and I have a TV where we watch Netflix, but you know, we're not watching just random shows that pop up or listen to the news and hearing other things. But on my phone, I have obviously TikTok, I have Instagram, I have all these different things. And I so many times I have pulled myself where I've gone to go send a message to someone, and then like an Instagram, like a DM, and next thing you know, I'm scrolling and it's been 10 minutes. I'm like, crap, I haven't sent a message to someone, right? How bad is that? So this is my little encouragement to you is like take a moment, think about this, because I clearly am. And I think it's important because I've had quite a few little realizations that it's like, ooh, maybe not too good. And I think it's it's it's important that we we we really protect our information coming into our minds and make sure we give our chance to be putting in the productive stuff that we need to be doing to grow, learn, and become a better version of ourselves. Sure, it's fun to get entertained, but be mindful of it because your time is going to continuously be pulled away. Your attention is obviously of huge value to other people. The more attention you give to others, the more potential money they can make. It goes for anything, right? So a lot of the time we don't realize how bad we're spending our attention. And if you could somehow track and manage all of that attention, where it went, how it went, and what it was used for, I think, I think we would reevaluate a lot of things. This is just a short, sweet, quick little reminder. Have a think about it. Let me know down in the comments if you have a look at your screen time and what you've been surprised by. Uh, we'll be back here again next week. We'll do it all again. And uh yeah, I really appreciate you. Feel free to leave a comment, like, subscribe. Uh, do all those great things. And we, yeah, I'll see you when I'm looking at you. Ciao.