Experience Digital Flourishing: An Inspiring Conversation with Amy Blankson and Tyler Rice of the Digital Wellness Institute

Hello and welcome to the Be Well, Do Well podcast.

I'm so excited today because I'm joined by two remarkable guests.

Normally I have one today, I've got two.

So it's gonna be, double the fun, double the excitement, and you're gonna learn a lot.

We've got Tyler Rice and we've got Amy Blankson from the Digital Wellness Institute.

And we're gonna have a chat today about technology, happiness, mindfulness.

Self-care.

So a lot of different topics, and it's just gonna be a conversation where you get to listen in on, what we've got to talk about and, and some of the insights that we'll share with you.

So Tyler, I'd like to start with you.

If you could introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your background.

Sure.

Absolutely.

Thanks so much for having us, in advance.

My name is Tyler Rice.

I'm a co-founder and COO of the Digital Wellness Institute.

And my background is, is actually in, in the healthcare consulting space.

So, one trend that I noticed back when I was starting off my career, I was working in the predictive analytics function and I was looking at, really kind of the, the self-insured and, claims data for the largest companies in, in the country in North America.

Specifically, and I was predicting fourth, you know, for the next 10 years, what was their number one spend again, a beat.

And 99% of the time it was mental behavioral health.

So I was looking at this and, and juxtapose against my experience at this large Fortune five company that had, an amazing amount of resources that they could spend on the employee wellbeing experience.

So, you know, I had free lunch and I had fancy gym memberships, meditation apps, and yet I noticed that there was this culture of being always on.

So after the workday, I went home and I opened up my laptop because I didn't want my boss to see that I wasn't working or responding at 8:00 PM when they were sending me an email.

So I was feeling this pressure to be always on and feeling that, well, when I'm not working, I'm also, you know, spending time on my own personal digital advice, and I'm losing time that I could be spending on things that bring me joy, build my relationships, help, you know, improve physical, mental, emotional health.

So that's where I really got turned onto the idea of digital wellness.

did a program at Stanford to bring it to the workplace and had the great fortune of meeting my co-founder Amy Blankson.

That's amazing.

Thank you so much for sharing that Tyler.

Amy, I'll let you, introduce yourself as well and tell us a little bit about your background.

Awesome.

Well, I'm Amy Blankson.

I'm CEO of the Digital Wellness Institute, and I came to this topic by way of being a speaker on the Science of Happiness for the last 15 years.

What's gonna happen with the future of the economy, and what does that mean for my personal happiness?

And over time, these questions have shifted.

And then the questions morph to Covid as we're all very familiar with, you know, the, the uncertainty that came there.

And then coming out of Covid, the questions are really looking at how can we rethink the future of work and life now that we've had this world shaking event.

What do we wanna do to shape the future of happiness?

And for so many individuals I talk to this question centers around this changing relationship with technology that over the past two years, the amount of time we spend on devices is increased by 30%, which means that 30% of our daily habits that we've had.

Our whole lives have now shifted.

We're reaching for our phones in the morning, we're reaching for them in the evening, we're reaching for them at dinner, during entertainment.

We're multitasking and it's driving us nuts.

I hear this from everyone from five years old to 95 years old and on every country on the planet.

So this is a really universal challenge that we're facing, and yet, because it's new to everyone, we haven't always figured out the best way to go forward.

And so that's what the Digital Wellness Institute came around to do.

We became the global leaders of digital wellness, education and training so that we could help give people a roadmap to figure out how do I navigate the future?

How do I find that sweet spot between thriving and balance in the digital era, and ultimately be happier.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

Now, it's ironic that we're having this conversation over Zoom using technology.

We met over LinkedIn, so the technology and, I think a lot of people think that technology is actually harmful for our mental health and our wellbeing, but it can actually be quite helpful as well.

And so before we get into talking a little bit about that, I'd like to hear from you, Amy, what do you define as happiness?

What, what does happiness actually mean to.

So I define happiness using the ancient Greek definition, which was happiness is the joy that we feel striving after our potential.

and I like that it has the word joy in the definition.

I feel like I'm cheating a little bit there, but I think there's a nice interplay between happiness and joy.

It's not just a momentary, fleeting feeling.

It's really something that we actively pursue.

It becomes part of our deeper sense of calling and purpose on the planet.

Wow.

I've never heard that definition before.

Can you repeat that one more time for us?

Sure.

Happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential.

Striving after our potential.

That's beautiful.

it sounds so nice and simple, but I think we've talked about technology getting in the way of that and it's really difficult.

I've got a 10 year old and an eight-year-old, and I remember when my son was quite young, and we would read to him.

On paper and then we introduced the iPad.

My wife had won an iPad, so we never had, you know, a tablet at that point.

She won an iPad, brought it home, and I was so excited, cuz I love tech.

I'm, I geek out on that all the time.

And so I started looking for magazines and books that we can read on the device.

And I thought it was okay.

And so I sat my son down and we would read it on the screen and I would swipe and I'd go from page to page.

And then I remember the next day we were reading an actual book and he tried to swipe the book and he is like a book's, broken, book's not working right . And that was the introduction to technology for him.

And he is definitely gone towards my interests in technology because he really enjoys it.

So Tyler, I'm curious, you know, during Covid when everybody was locked down and everybody had to stay at home, technology really was the only way to communicate with people.

I'm curious for you, did you find that that was a challenge or a opportunity because now it's a lot easier to be in touch with friends even though you can't see them in person.

Absolutely.

it's such a great question and, and I think the answer is both.

what we do at the Digital Wellness Institute, we're advocates of healthy tech, not anti-tech, right?

So we created a, scientifically validated model called the Digital Flourishing Model, where we're looking at eight dimensions of human wellbeing in this digital age.

So our previous conceptions of wellbeing are, you know, mental.

Physical health, pretty much, you know, kind of binary in, in terms of that.

What we're looking at is, okay, how does technology interplay and interface in those two dimensions, and then what other dimensions are at stake?

So we're thinking about our communication, our productivity, and an excellent example of how all of those are interrelated is that, you know, if my digital communication isn't optimized for, life and work in this remote environment.

And I'm getting pings and notifications from my friends who are all, you know, messaging me during the day.

Well, my productivity is gonna plummet, right?

When my productivity plummets, then what happens after hours, I'm gonna have to make up for that work or that homework that I didn't end up, doing when I was supposed to.

As you can probably see, I'm not gonna be able to go to the gym.

So my physical health is gonna suffer and there goes my mental health.

So digital flourishing is a concept that we can use to actually ground ourselves in, you know, how can we get the most out of technology while mitigating its affiliated harms?

And so, back to your question, you know, I found it a challenge because I didn't have this mindset of, this, this digital flourishing mindset.

Or this concept.

but I also saw it as an incredible opportunity to connect with folks from all over the world, like we're doing right now via Zoom.

An incredible opportunity to increase my productivity because I no longer had a 45 minute commute each way.

So I think positives and negatives, it's all about reframing and finding that state of flourishing where we are, you know, getting the most out of technology without it getting the most out of us.

Yeah, well said.

there's an author, Martin Seligman, who wrote a book, called Flourishing, and I love that you guys use the word flourishing in your model.

Digital flourishing.

because it's not just, you know, digital being okay with it or digital happiness.

It's flourishing is so much more than that.

It's taking advantage of the negatives and flipping them around.

Maybe it's just a perspective thing, right?

And, and that, that's really cool.

Anxiety has been something that I've suffered with a lot when it comes to technology.

And I did a few things to help with that.

So I turned off all my notifications on my phone so I don't get dings and bings.

on my watch, the only thing I get is a text message and, the call notification, and that made a really big difference for me.

But I'm also an office worker.

I sit at my desk and as an entrepreneur I'm in front of, you know, three big screens all day.

So, Amy, is there something that you do on your end, that helps you manage the notification anxiety, if you want to call it that, and just being pulled in different directions all the time.

I am constantly on the search to try out new approaches to optimize because the world keeps changing and I think it's really important that we as humans continue to experiment with what works best.

I also find that sometimes there is a finite period of time that some strategies work, and then our brains get used to them and we have to shift our approach so that we can stay on top of our toes.

If the task you're doing is really helping you to focus and be your best self.

And if not, then you know, don't, don't swipe, don't enter your phone.

It's supposed to be a phone lock screen, but it's amazing how quickly your eyes get used to that, that you just ignore it and you're swiping by.

so there's some other strategies that I am using now.

One of them is I use Focus Keeper, which is an app where I will set a timer.

It's like a Pomodoro timer on my phone for 25 minutes.

And I specifically do that for when I'm going through email.

Because I tend to perseverate and start to slow down as I'm going through email or maybe even procrastinate.

And that helps me to say, okay, this is not forever.

We're just gonna do it for 25 minutes.

Let's get through it and do it.

And then I have a reward on the backend.

I also really love the ability to flag for people outside of my sphere.

That I'm trying to focus, and I learned this from Nir Eyal, who is the author of "indistractable", and he was talking about how sometimes we have family members or children or other people around us in a co-working space who don't know what's going on inside your head.

You see your calendar and you know, okay, I've gotta, I've gotta be quiet for this particular period of time.

But everyone else wants to just pop in and see if you're busy, particularly when you're working from home or in a hybrid workspace.

And so having some sort of physical sign on your door that says, I'm focusing right now, please come back later, or I will be free at this time.

I have a sign that I'll put on my front door when I'm, When I'm recording at home and each of those things become signals for other people as well as for myself, this is focus time.

So learning what works best and learning how to capture your attention and and protect it are essential skills.

I think there's a great business opportunity there to create some kind of wireless display that just says, "in flow" - do not enter, or something like that.

you know, just have that sitting outside.

I have a small whiteboard and I just say, you know, recording in progress.

And my kids know that if that sign is there, they're not running around doing cartwheels or marching band or something outside the door , and they're, and they're staying silenced there.

Tyler, you mentioned Healthy Tech.

Do you have any kind of apps or, or techniques that you use on your.

to help you focus and get into flow.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

So it's, it's not about the apps that I have, it's about the apps that I don't have.

So, specifically for me, social media, I still, you know, have active social media accounts, but for me, the simple act of not having them downloaded as an app on my phone is a really meaningful way for me just to create that separation.

And actually I find that on weekends when I'm.

Not working.

I'll tend to download Instagram, for instance.

but then during the week, the work week, I prefer not to have it on my phone.

And so I, I'll interface with it on the, on the web or just on my, on my phone or on the search browser.

But I find that even having to go that extra step is, actually kind of a, a control mechanism for me where it just, it's no longer an impulse or it's a little bit harder to attain.

So sometimes I just, decide, you know, I, can use my time in a better way.

Yeah, that's, I like that because, having less is actually definitely more, if we, if you had TikTok, I don't know if you'd be doing dancing on TikTok videos and, and sharing that, but like, it's, right.

It's that temptation of having these apps and then starting to use them.

I, I took off all, streaming apps and no Netflix, no Disney, now, you know, all of those sorts of things on my phone.

And I found that I actually started to view more educational.

. So YouTube is there and I just keep saving things for watching later.

And it's your TED Talk is on there, Amy, and I thought that was really fun.

So I save that and I watch it on my tv, but it actually makes a huge difference.

Tell you're right about not having things rather than just adding more to it.

Yeah.

Great insight there.

Amy, I'm curious because you and I have kids and when it comes to technology and you know, they don't really understand happiness, I think kids live in joy, whereas we search for happiness.

Right.

So we're constantly on this, you know, this hunt for this elusive thing called happiness.

Whereas kids are already joyful.

They run around, they play, they don't have these, you know, burdens that we feel like we have.

Do you allow your kids to use tech?

Do you have boundaries around when they can use it?

Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, so my oldest daughter is 15 now and she was born two months before the iPhone came out.

So I date her along with the iPhone.

and it was interesting because she was born at a time where that technology was novel and new.

We.

We didn't know any of the associated, or unintended consequences that would come with it.

So I let her play with my phone at the age of one, and I thought she was a genius because she could unlock my phone, I mean, at, by the age of one, impressive.

And about two years later, I was horrified that I had taught her how to do this because we all see what happens when you put a toddler in technology and then you try to take it away from them.

And so over time, we have developed a language that we talk about digital wellness all the time, and I think that my children, more so than most, hear a steady dose of the importance of balance and screen time and monitoring and all of these conversations.

They could probably give my TED talk for me at this point.

And so I actually have let my kids all have phones.

Even my nine year old has a phone and a lot of people think, wow, that's really surprising.

I believe that we've talked about it enough that I have a high trust level of their capacity, and also what sort of monitoring I have in place that I know how well they're doing with it.

They're also content creators and I think it's an amazing opportunity for creativity and education when used properly.

. I also have a lot of friends and other children in my life and nieces and nephews that struggle with gaming, with screen time, with attention, with attitude, with depression.

So I know that that's, that it's not necessarily the norm, but the important part is starting the conversation, setting effective boundaries together.

And really beginning to make this more of a lifestyle as opposed to a, forbidden fruit.

So I think I would much rather have the children learn how to use technology while I'm watching than when I'm not.

Yes, yes, a hundred percent.

my daughter has decided that she likes to sneak around and be a spy.

And do, you know, fun little things like hiding around corners and stuff.

And, the other day she probably won't love that I'm telling you guys this, but, she had hidden a little bit of chocolate in her room and I, I saw her do it and I've always told her, yeah, you can, you can do all your sneaking around, but if you don't let me know, then it becomes a problem when I catch you, and.

That was an interesting time because she was sort of like, oh, okay, and we don't allow our kids to have phones.

They're eight and 10.

But your insight there, your, your perspective on, you know, if you don't give it to them, it does become like that forbidden fruit.

I agree with you because I'm starting to feel that, that if I were to give it to them, And allow them to use it whenever they want, that could end up backfiring.

So, definitely something for parents to consider is that, you know, by saying no and just making that hard stop that could actually end up negatively affecting the kids, their usage of those mobile devices.

And I will say that we've had a few stumbles along the way that they earned the right after a certain period of time.

But I remember when my oldest daughter was, I think she was six when she went on the internet, and she loves fashion and so she looked up cute girl, short skirt and, unfortunately, that would not have been a very good search term to go for.

but I had at that time some really strong, parental controls over what content she saw.

And so she thought the internet was broken, and in fact it was just blocked.

And I was really grateful.

And we talked about safe searches and we talked about why we had that protection on the computer.

And, and so this has been an evolving conversation.

I didn't just hand the phone over and suddenly it worked out.

but I, I do think that there's still a potential for, for concern.

I mean, there's new technology developed all the time.

There are new hacks, though we have to, we have to stay on top of it as parents to really make sure that we're evolving with the kids.

Tyler, I'd like to come back to you for a second here and talk a little bit about stumbles.

Like you said, Amy, with your kids.

You there, there was been some, some times where you had to kind of reevaluate your strategy.

So Tyler, when you've been on your journey of wellness and you know, your practice of wellness, have you found that sometimes you were getting off track or off path and what you did to bring yourself back on.

I'd like to hear about something that happened that, that maybe you realized it and you caught it and you said, okay, well, I'm gonna make this change in my life.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So my, my, my answer might be a little bit more convoluted and, and more meta so to speak, but, I, I think that happiness and relationships and community are inextricably intertwined, right?

And I look to kind of the World Happiness Index at the happiest countries, as a testament to that.

So I had the pleasure of spending, you know, a semester studying in Denmark in the middle of winter, right?

So the coldest month of the year.

And I'm from Minnesota originally, so I'm, I'm, I'm no stranger to winters.

but I, I use that as an experience to show, to, understand, the way in which I interacted in both of those different settings differed and how my happiness was so much higher in Denmark.

And the reason is, you know, in Minnesota I was so used to staying inside and I would sit in front of a screen, write movies with, you know, family or by myself would be kind of a common commonplace when I was, you know, an adolescent, a teenager, it was spent on, you know, Chat with friends or, you know, social media, what have you.

But when I was in Denmark, I was really introduced to the idea of hygge, which is H Y G G E.

. And it's an notion of, you know, inviting people into a space that is warm, that is cozy, that is inviting and being present with them.

And I, I took that lesson away with me after, my time in Denmark and when I graduated from university and lived in Minneapolis with my friends.

That is something that we employed as a strategy instead of sitting in the living room, with my roommates all on our own devices, all doing our, you know, our own things.

we created a community, right?

And we created fun evening events that were, you know, making mulled wine and playing board games or, or what have you.

But it was all focused on relationships, which is actually a dimension of the flourishing wheel.

So relationships, in the physical space was, was really important to me.

And, you know, it's not to say that we can't have relationships digitally, because I think that's a really great way to stay connected with folks.

But for me it was, it was balancing those and, really, emphasizing the in-person component.

Relationships are so important and, you know, you were talking about Denmark.

We live in Edmonton and in Alberta, Canada, and it's, it also gets quite cold here.

the thing I love about cold cities, and maybe this is common across the Nordic areas or Northern Canada, is that there's a lot of outdoor activities that bring people together.

In wintertime here, you'll often find ice festivals where they have a giant fire pit in the middle, and then around it they have all the ice sculptures and you can walk around and put your cold, go back to the center and, and it's a beautiful thing.

So relationships, thank you for sharing that.

And I, I think that's a reminder for a lot of people, the idea of, how do you pronounce it,

Hygge.

Yeah.

my, my wife read a book on that and she came out of reading that book a lot more relaxed.

I found, she was, she was more open to people and ideas and, and just having this coziness about it.

so I thought that was really cool.

If, if I can find the name of the book, I'll put it in the show notes, down below.

So Amy, I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit, but here, is there something that your friends or people that know you would be surprised to learn about you that they don't already know?

Ooh, that is a big question.

I think that I am an avid reader.

I read anywhere from 35 to 50 books a year, and the reason they wouldn't know that is because I actually read on my phone.

now as a digital wellness expert, everybody says, You know, don't read on your phone because of the blue light, but there's some really important strategies I think, that come with that, which are one, turning off the blue light or using blue light filters so that that's not as impactful.

two is that it's always with me.

So I always have that capacity to read.

So instead of going for other forms of entertainment, I'm learning and I love it.

the downside of that though is that when I was, I took my children to the library a few years ago and they were submitting their summer reading list and they were turning in all the books they'd read for the summer and the librarian said, oh, you can turn one in too.

I said, great.

And I wrote down all these books and the kids said, mom, when do you read, I never see you reading.

I was like, I'm reading all the time.

What do you think I'm doing on my phone?

And they were like playing games.

So the assumption was, you see me and you think that's what I'm doing.

but I think that for me it's a really great strategy of using that downtime for something easy.

Carrying a book is not always great for, when you're traveling cause it's extra weight in your suitcase.

So I, I like that strategy, but it is also kind of my vice with technology is that I, I'm always on it reading.

That's a pretty good vice.

I'll let you, I'll let you go with that one.

You get pass on that.

do you have an app that you use?

Is it Kindle or Scribd?

Kindle.

Yeah, just Kindle.

Okay, cool.

I use Kindle.

I like it.

I don't like that you have to pay per book.

So there's an app that I use called Scribe, S-C-R-I-B-D, and it's a subscription base.

So you, it's like Netflix, you pay once a month and you get access to everything, audiobooks, eBooks, sheet music.

It's, it's actually really cool.

That's trouble for me.

I wish I was a sponsor for them cause I mention it all the time, but it's, it's a great app and it's really cool, especially for audio if you like that.

Tyler, you had a bit of an advantage there, you heard the question.

So , is there anything about you that your friends would be surprised to learn?

You know, not my friends because I think they know this about me, but, somebody just generally at meeting for the first time, or even somebody I've been working with for the past three years, but I was, I was in a Beatles cover band, during my, my years in university.

So we were, we were in a small college town and we always joked that we were, in the top 10 Beatles cover bands in this small town, which we, we certainly were.

it was a great experience and I loved, I loved every minute of it.

Oh, that's so cool.

And what instrument did you play?

I was, George Harrison.

So I was, I was on, on the guitar.

Nice, my daughter and I, tried to learn ukulele during the pandemic.

And so Eleanor Rigby is a song that, you know, both of us know very well on the ukulele and, I think we're gonna, you know, continue learning.

But after the pandemic finished, our interest kind of waned a little bit on that front.

Well, this is fun and I wanna learn a little bit, or I want our audience, I should say, to learn a little bit more about the Digital Wellness Institute.

If you can just tell us more about it, how people can connect with you guys.

Sure.

So the Digital Wellness Institute does training and education specifically around these topics of how do you become a more digitally well individual.

So many people like the idea of wellness, and we've heard about mental health.

We've heard about physical health, but we don't often talk about.

Digital wellness until just recently.

We know the word digital and we know the word wellness, but putting 'em together is a whole new topic.

And so if you were to ask yourself, you know, how digitally well are you feeling today, you may not actually know.

So what we do is we help define digital wellness, is that optimum place of health and wellbeing that when you're using technologies is the best place you can be.

It's finding that sweet spot, and.

So in the midst of that, we help people to assess how are they feeling on a moment to moment level with their digital wellness?

Through our flourishing surveys, which is a scientifically validated survey to help you look at the eight different dimensions that Tyler talked about in terms of digital wellness.

So anybody who wants to can take the digital flourishing survey for free, just DigitalFlourishing.com, and it will give you some results about where you're at today, and then if you're looking for strategies to help you to optimize your behaviors, that's what we do at the institute.

We teach courses, we have certification programs, we lead workshops, we'll do talks and trainings, all focused on working with different audiences, whether schools or universities, or.

Places or just working with groups of individuals who are looking to improve their digital wellness and really become a thought leader in this space that's an all new territory for us.

So, if they're, if you're interested in learning more, that's at DigitalWellnessInstitute.com.

Oh, perfect.

Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes as well.

And lastly, I wanted to congratulate you guys on, winning the grand prize for the design for digital thriving.

So exciting.

Can you tell us a little bit about that and what that was?

we're so excited about this.

So we just found out this week that we were the grand prize winner for the idea challenge for designing for digital thriving.

And we really felt like the, the challenge was created for us because this is what we do.

and so we Put forth a proposal that really focused on bringing digital wellness education more globally, using language technology, and translation services along with predictive analytics and AI to really help bring these topics.

into a place that it's more relevant and accessible, not just for English speakers in America and Canada, but really globally.

And what we found is we've got a, an audience of 32 different countries at this point, as of today, that have certified digital wellness educators.

We're working on bringing this content out.

So the partners that are part of this challenge are IDEO, the Fair Play Alliance, the Sesame Workshop, Susan Kron Exchange and Riot Games, who are gonna be working with us really closely over the next year to begin to bring in more elements of play and gamification and design thinking to make this content more relevant and accessible all across the.

Well, this has been amazing and I'm so glad we had a chance to connect all three of us together.

I really appreciate your time and your energy and your presence here.

Is there anything else that you guys wanna share before we wrap it up today?

thank you so much for letting us be part of your podcast and part of your world and, I would say for any of the entrepreneurs who are listening to this podcast who are, are part of this community that really encourage you to pay attention to your digital wellness and think about not just

And and that means giving ourselves permission sometimes to go a little bit slower and by slowing down to really do better work and to be better humans together.

So, don't be shy about taking that personal time that we all need.

Amazing.

What a great way to end off.

Thank you so much, Amy.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Tyler.

I really appreciate you as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.