Episode transcription

(Be aware this transcription was done by AI and might contain some mistakes)

Anne Trager (00:00)
Our survival depends on figuring out how to live in a world of abundance. We are entertaining ourselves to death. The relentless pursuit of pleasure for its own sake leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to take joy in anything at all. That is a quote from Dr. Anna a Stanford Addiction Clinic specialist.

Fabrice NEUMAN (00:30)
So if I understood correctly, let's not enjoy ourselves too much. Hi everyone and welcome to the Human Pulse Podcast where we talk about living well with technology. I'm Fabrice Neuman, a tech consultant for small businesses.

Anne Trager (00:42)
And I'm Ann Trager, a human potential and performance coach.

Fabrice NEUMAN (00:46)
This is episode 30, recorded on January 18th, 2026.

Anne Trager (00:50)
Human Pulse is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started. Well, technically we already got started with that quote, which I heard from a podcast, which is called The Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett. And we will put the link in the show notes so you can listen to the whole podcast. It was really quite fascinating.

And the reason I brought it up is because it made me think of conversations I frequently have with my clients who want to feel less stress. They want to be calm when they have something hard to do and so forth. And yes, I get it. Me too. I really do want everything to be this nice little smooth ride. Okay. And ultimately what I hear underneath what they're saying is they don't want to feel uncomfortable. They want everything to be smooth and easy. And I really, really do get it.

There's no judgment here.

But what I think is that's only what they say. That's what they think they want.

So I think it's all bull, okay? What we human beings want to be able to do is whatever it is we have to do despite the discomfort. So let's face it, the discomfort of a hard conversation or of speaking in public never really goes away. If we didn't have any stress or reaction at all, we'd probably never do it, okay? We'd probably never do anything. We'd probably never get out of bed in the

So the problem with stress is that is when it's constant and never ending. We again as human beings are made to be able to handle these peaks of stress, you know, chasing after the lion for dinner, okay, or to get away from it, okay. And then, okay, well, I was being optimistic, okay. And then to have rest, it's always on and off, on and off, Hard stuff then easy stuff.

Fabrice NEUMAN (02:23)
He had to be chased by.

Anne Trager (02:34)
And it's that friction of the hard stuff that keeps us interested, actually. So contrast is a real constant for us. We need it. It gives meaning. Otherwise, I believe we do risk entertaining ourselves to death. So if I were to understand correctly, what Lemke is saying is she gave a very simplified explanation of how it works. The brain processes

pleasure and pain on a metaphorical balance. When we experience pleasure, it tips one way, However, the brain seeks homeostasis, a state level. So what it's going to do is it's going to pop out whatever it needs to pop out in order to down-regulate the dopamine receptors, the ones that get all hyped up when we feel good. So it's going to go like this.

Okay? And sometimes it goes like this, which gives us a hangover feeling. That's the pain side. And then we're going to want to seek pleasure again. And it's back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. So the thing is, is that this chronic overconsumption of what creates these high intense pleasure spikes in the brain will create us chronically overcompensating with ⁓ dopamine deficit, which

causes crashes and cravings and the whole system gets out of balance, out of whack so that you never have enough. And I'm actually going to stop talking now because you haven't really said anything so far, Fab, and I just find this all so fascinating.

Fabrice NEUMAN (03:59)
Yeah, but I guess so. really start heavy today, right? Because so these were heavy thoughts. But hearing you, think everybody can see the link between this and what we are living today with the ⁓ constant attention seeking tools surrounding us. know, we have TV, we have audio and video streaming services, we have social media. And I would add to that the new

social media soldier which is AI slop than we talked about in the last episode.

And we can call all those tools attention grabbing because they basically all fight each other to keep us in their grasp as long as possible. So maybe you're a little surprised that I include TV in there. But still, I did include that because, first of all, TV still exists. ⁓ Even though we don't watch TV.

Anne Trager (04:49)
Yes.

Fabrice NEUMAN (04:54)
ever. We don't have basically ways to watch TV as you know the main way of watching TV which is choose a TV station and watch whatever is on. We don't do that but we know people who still do right? And I'll include TV also because as we know new tech never replaces old tech. The new tech just adds itself on top.

Anne Trager (05:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-mm.

Fabrice NEUMAN (05:20)
And ⁓ the whole thing also makes me think, and I think often about this sentence, which was said by ⁓ Patrick Lelay in 2004. That's how you say it in English, 2004. So Patrick Lelay at the time was the CEO of TF1, the largest TV network in France and still is. And what he said, it's just an excerpt, is,

Anne Trager (05:35)
Mm-hmm, yes. Yes.

Fabrice NEUMAN (05:47)
What we sell to Coca-Cola is available human brain time. Let me say that again. What we sell to Coca-Cola is available human brain time. Basically, he said that at that time that TV station's mission was not for him to entertain, or educate, but just to be the vessel for advertisers. So at the time, there were lots of comments and...

up in arms against it and how dare he and what have you. And still, I think you can argue that today that he was right because today we have X and Instagram and YouTube and Netflix and soon chat GPT, know, trying fighting each other to have us see or hear or watch whatever ⁓ more advertising. And so.

Anne Trager (06:18)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Wait, wait,

we are contributing to this because we have a podcast and we are fighting for people to listen to us and see and hear us. Right.

Fabrice NEUMAN (06:45)
True, but so we'll see

how it goes. So we don't have advertising. Hopefully we never will ⁓ because this is not exactly what we want to do, but it's true. ⁓ But it's true. But then I guess the idea behind what we do is different. Like we don't want our audience to see more advertising. We would like to have a conversation with the audience and hopefully, you know,

Anne Trager (06:53)
Yeah.

Exactly. It's true.

Mm.

Fabrice NEUMAN (07:12)
exchanges and exchanges of ideas instead of what the latest color is for the new car you want to buy. And all of this, so we often talk here about one of our favorite French podcasts called La Conversation Scientifique by ⁓ Étienne Klein. So a scientific conversation. Étienne Klein is a philosopher and

Anne Trager (07:20)
Exactly.

Fabrice NEUMAN (07:36)
has degrees in astrophysics. He's fascinating. So we'll put the link in the show notes for our French speaking audience. There must be some of our audience speaking French. And so in that particular episode, we are referring to, he had two guests and they talked about the attention economy, which is basically what we described.

Anne Trager (07:43)
No.

Fabrice NEUMAN (07:55)
And during that episode, so Etienne Klein also ⁓ said something and he repeated something that he actually said several times, but he was fascinating to hear in that context, referring to a French author, Paul Valery, who wrote in 1939, remember this year, that humanity has lived under a regime of perpetual mental disturbance due to excessive means of communication. Still referring to that in

So 1939, right? And that relates to the shift from scarcity to abundance we were referring to earlier. This abundance we have now, but with this incredible scale and speed that we are experiencing today. So it's like linking it to the infinite scrolling or doom scrolling that sometimes we talk about.

effect of the many things we do online, meaning trying to find a reward, like reward as in dopamine rush for everything we do online. basically he questions, I mean, Étienne Klein, whether the human mind can still withstand the glacially tumultuous noise of the modern world or rise above it through mental effort. so basically it's a fight between

Anne Trager (08:55)
Hmm.

Fabrice NEUMAN (09:11)
mental effort against mental surrender to all the things we have around us.

Anne Trager (09:16)
Well it's so interesting that you bring that up. mean in 1939, okay let's just face it, don't even... he was already talking about this excessive communication which and it was nothing at all compared to what we're experiencing today.

Fabrice NEUMAN (09:31)
Yeah,

because at the time we had like ⁓ newspapers and radio and not that many radio stations, you know.

Anne Trager (09:36)
And radio? Yeah. Yeah,

yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we just got to put that in context. So I think these are really good questions. Are we going to be able to rise above? And I know that you've recently been making some changes to your day to day, potentially to rise above. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about that.

Fabrice NEUMAN (09:57)
Yeah, so it's funny because I don't do really, you know, New Year's resolution thinking that much, but still it happened at the beginning of the year. So I guess it's part of it and it's probably and surely part of your influence because you do New Year's resolutions. And so even though I didn't think of it that way, I did a few things like

you know, making more conscious effort to be monotasking. Because at some point, you you feel some, you do things and then you don't do them all the way to the end or you interrupt yourself. So I don't manage well interruptions, but I also have to admit that some interruptions are my own, you know.

because I start something and then I think about something else and so I stop and then I go back and basically then it leads to the feeling of not finishing anything which is really not a good feeling at all. So for example, I start to be more conscious to read something to the end when I start reading something and fighting the interruptions, right? So don't you dare interrupt me when I read.

Anne Trager (11:08)
I never do that ever, ever.

Fabrice NEUMAN (11:10)
And so

I was referring to that this drastic reduction in social media use and it was actually very easy to my surprise. Like, and I did start that with YouTube before the end of last year. For example, what I did is I disabled the history.

in YouTube so that I don't feed the algorithm with what I watch so the algorithm doesn't have anything to actually suggest for me to see next. So if I go ⁓ to my YouTube homepage, there's nothing in there. And it really helped. I have lots of things to watch already because I use subscriptions to different YouTube channels.

but then I don't need to discover that many things all the time.

Anne Trager (12:03)
That's such a

great hack. it's just like tell it not to keep your history.

Fabrice NEUMAN (12:07)
Yes,

exactly. And that also led to stow away my iPad. The iPad is a weird tool for me because it's a tablet. I like tech. Everybody knows that. But it was also a tool made for interruption. so I don't really like reading with it. So you read and then you have a

You have to make a conscious effort to, for example, stop your alerts and notifications and stuff like that because it's linked to all your other devices and that's not a plus in that particular area. Plus I had this realization that the one I have, which is actually somewhat new, ⁓ recent even, but it has appalling battery life. So I needed to recharge it all the time.

and it was annoying and added to my cognitive load. So I stowed it away. And I went back to my Kindle scribe, which is the big version of the Kindle reader, e-reader, right? Which I can use for reading and note taking because it has a pencil and I mean a pen and so, or a stylus, whatever you call that. And so I start to write by hand.

a bit more so that I can remember things and take notes and to-do list, simplified to-do list which was very useful for me as well so far. We're still at the beginning of the year, we'll see. ⁓ I also used it and so I looked for and found a service called Push to Kindle. So when I have a long form article I want to read,

Anne Trager (13:29)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Fabrice NEUMAN (13:45)
I don't read that either on my phone or my computer. I push it to my Kindle. It transforms it into some kind of ebook format that I can read on my Kindle very comfortably with the fact that when I'm on my Kindle, I can be on my Kindle alone. And it really helped for the first two, three weeks of the year.

Anne Trager (14:00)
Mm.

this.

Well, it's really interesting what you're saying. First of all, about resolutions and not doing it consciously but still using the new year. think one of the mechanisms that we have is that when there's something new, it helps us change. So the new year is just a moment to help us change. And actually this year I didn't do any resolutions. I had a couple of intentions but no resolutions. I just turned my focus in on one thing that was an intention. For me there's a...

There's a difference there. That said, I did it when the New Year came around and I'm always looking for some new thing in order to like focus a little differently what I'm doing. But that's just a technique that I have. And I love what you're saying about your using the Kindle. I do the same thing on, but on an old iPad. And what you're talking about is using one device for one thing.

Fabrice NEUMAN (14:41)
Mm-mm.

Anne Trager (14:54)
And it's a really effective tool to minimize distraction. One device, one thing. So I have this old iPad. It's an iPad mini. I love it. And I use it for reading. And it's never connected to the internet. so my, my, my ebook reading does not synchronize anywhere. So it's the only place I can read if I want to pick up where I picked up the last time.

Fabrice NEUMAN (15:05)
Hmm.

Anne Trager (15:19)
Because it's not connected to the internet, actually lasts a fairly long time without me having to charge it. But I do have a charger right next to the bed, which is where I read. One place as well, right there. it works really well for me. I don't get distracted by anything else when I'm reading. Anyway, that said, I want to go back to one other thing you said, which is that...

Fabrice NEUMAN (15:23)
Hmm.

You

Well, that's interesting,

Anne Trager (15:42)
which we've referred to, which Paul Valéry was referring to, which is like mental discipline, okay? Mental discipline. Is it all about mental discipline? I would question that. I think it's also about the environment and a bunch of other things, right? That you know, it's understanding how we work on and off, on and off, on and off, and creating an environment that allows us to be on and off, on and off, on and off.

in that same podcast, but it can cloud interviewed the philosopher, Apolline, you who also talked about something that reminds me of clients and that that fits in really well here and she, she challenges the idea that the only solution to distraction is concentration or self discipline. Okay, she really challenged that she argues that letting the mind go wild.

or experiencing what she calls dispersion, okay, can have its own virtues. And I really get what she's saying. I really believe we are distraction machines that we are really, really, really good at being distracted. So if we try to, first of all, if we try to like completely not be distracted, it's really, really hard. It takes a lot of energy and it's not really very helpful. Again, it's this

Fabrice NEUMAN (16:35)
Mm-hmm.

Anne Trager (16:57)
It's this balance we're looking for. Focus time and distraction time. Focus time and distraction time. Depending on, you know, how you, you know, what you're trying to do and then figuring out how it works best for you and then putting, creating an environment that enables it for you and it's going to be different for different people because we have different brain chemistry, all of us.

Fabrice NEUMAN (17:21)
Which is why ⁓ the idea of intention really rings true to me instead of having resolutions. Basically, having resolutions is...

Potentially a recipe for failure because you set a goal and when you don't achieve that goal, it's a failure, right? But if you have an intention, I'd like to go towards that then then you pave yourself the way to some kind of ⁓ You achieve something because you went forward towards that goal instead of setting a hard stop to something ⁓

Anne Trager (17:56)
Yeah, it

shifts it to process rather than outcome. Yeah.

Fabrice NEUMAN (17:59)
Absolutely.

And this why, you know, this view by Apolline Guiault is somewhat weird to me. Basically, she defends the act of idling on the internet as a modern equivalent to hanging out in the streets, Basically saying that...

All the social links, even digital ones, are driven by a basic human need for connection. Alright, I can see that. would argue that it was the view of social media 25 years ago when Facebook was built and invented. It's not the same way today. Because the problem I have with that is social media and today's internet in general.

use algorithms to make us stay longer where we are. And I don't see the equivalency of that.

Anne Trager (18:43)
Hmm. Hmm.

Fabrice NEUMAN (18:48)
when you stroll in the street. When you walk down the street, you don't have algorithms to keep you longer where you are, at least to a certain extent, unless you have all those advertising billboards everywhere.

Anne Trager (18:57)
Well, unless...

Yeah, I was going to say

there's the advertising or or like unless we were in what was that movie Minority Report? Okay. ⁓ we're we're almost there. Yeah.

Fabrice NEUMAN (19:09)
Yes. ⁓ But

then you see my point. I guess maybe we still have this potential freedom walking down the street that we are having maybe less and less when we use social media and stuff like that because of those algorithms that are getting very stringent more and more.

Anne Trager (19:23)
Mm-hmm.

Fabrice NEUMAN (19:31)
I was also surprised by what she said because on the other hand, she talks about another idea which is the concept of sensory malnutrition. Basically saying that the more you stay online, meaning social media online, you spend too much time

Anne Trager (19:40)
Mm-hmm.

Fabrice NEUMAN (19:48)
on it, the amount of time depending on each individual, you know, watching stupid videos on TikTok or YouTube. And then you feel a little disgust of yourself because you spent so much time on it. And so I don't think that you can feel the same kind of disgust of yourself when you just walk down the street aimlessly. Right. So I think ⁓ basically she counteracted herself herself in that interview, which made it very interesting.

Anne Trager (19:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Hehe.

Fabrice NEUMAN (20:14)
for that particular reason because it seemed that she was actually thinking about what her thesis was while she was interviewed, which is exactly what Étienne Klein does.

Anne Trager (20:22)
Yes.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and she's a philosopher, so that's the nature of her work. In the same episode, he interviewed a legal specialist named Celia Zolinski, and she made some really interesting, and she was talking about this attention economy, okay? And she made some really interesting suggestions ⁓ so that maybe we can actually get

Fabrice NEUMAN (20:30)
Yes.

Anne Trager (20:51)
people hanging out in the streets again. She really advocates first of all for a legal framework that grants users sort of what she calls a right to configuration to control the content and metrics that they are exposed to. She also suggests legal actions like class action suits and so forth.

as a counter power against the larger platforms. I have no idea if any of that is actually possible these days. Maybe the genie is just way too far outside of its, out in the world, to fix any of that. those are some of the ideas. And she also,

Fabrice NEUMAN (21:18)
Hmm.

Anne Trager (21:25)
suggests beyond the legal limits that she recommends is promoting, like really actively promoting alternative activities such as reading and reorganizing public spaces for collective leisure to reduce dependency on digital systems, like having a real public push to create those places where people can gather safely and meet and do other things. ⁓ Now this exists to a certain st-

to a certain extent in all communities. And maybe we need to do it more because the digital poll is so strong.

Fabrice NEUMAN (22:02)
Yeah, I have to admit I'm not very optimistic about this because I'm not optimistic about human nature to a certain extent. The latest example that comes to mind for me is that, you know, this appalling tool that people use on X to nudify people, right? And once again, you know, we can say what we want about tools that are doing horrible things, but mainly it's what people do with those tools that counts. And this... ⁓

what's happening on X and Grok and you know these days is ⁓ well appalling to me but we'll see. I guess we can only hope for what we can only hope for is giving people some other perspectives as we are doing here in that particular podcast and you know trying to think about ⁓ you know beyond the limitations of ⁓ those communication tools that we are fed.

Anne Trager (22:44)
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Well,

so if I circle back to a practical view of takeaways from today's conversation, first of all, I would say that in the face of all of these extremely addictive tools, we need a combination of awareness, of intentional use, of

creating environments that will help us to more intentionally use them. And self-discipline, that self-discipline really does come into play here and we can train self-discipline. It's like a muscle. So a few takeaways from the people we mentioned from these podcasts as well for those of you who are listening is that the person I quoted

from the beginning, Dr. Lemke recommends, well, she says that in order to reset the brain's reward pathway, it takes 30 days. That's a really long time, okay? But now we know, like this is a, like the doctor says, you need 30 days away from whatever it is. And on top of that, you got to know that 10 to 14 days, the first 10 to 14 days are going to be really, really, really hard because that's where we experience withdrawal.

So idea is to replace your high dopamine drip media activities with something else like going outside and walking and listening to the birds or whatever.

At the beginning, it's not going to feel enjoyable at all, and it's going to feel painful. And at the end, we can actually start feeling a little bit of joy and reward from a sunset or a walk. So the idea is to actually reset it if you feel like you need a reset. On a more day-to-day basis, she suggests also doing hard things first. So starting your day with the most painful stuff and the most effortful tasks, first of all, because you have more energy.

Fabrice NEUMAN (24:22)
Hmm.

Anne Trager (24:46)
first, it just makes it easier. And also, it's going to you do that before you do any pleasure seeking, because it's going to up regulate the the feel good hormones differently. So I think that's just another argument to do the hard stuff first. She also talks about creating physical and what she calls metacognitive barriers, like putting the phones outside of the bedroom or some of this environmental stuff that we were talking about.

so that you don't try to prevent what you're doing by relying specifically on your willpower because willpower is really energy-based and there's a whole lot more of it in the morning than there is in the evening. Another suggestion that I found that I've heard of from people who are specialists in flow and getting into that really intense hyper-focused state is

Fabrice NEUMAN (25:20)
Mm.

Anne Trager (25:34)
that first of all, if you give yourself a really long time to do something, then you're operating in this abundance, okay? And so you get distracted and you notice distraction, okay? But if you force your work down, say from 12 hours a day to like four hours a day, then you're gonna, like you force yourself to do, you have to get it all done and then your mind is gonna go into what we call tunneling, okay? And you get super hyper-focused on the task at hand.

Fabrice NEUMAN (25:57)
Mm-hmm.

Anne Trager (26:01)
because your brain realizes that time is scarce. then if you get rid of all of the external notifications and blah, blah, blah, you can actually get things done really, really well. It uses up lot of energy, so you don't do that several times in a row, like it's four hours in a day. And that's it. But it's an interesting technique. And then there's a final technique that I thought you would really enjoy.

particularly in light of the last episode. And she talks about honesty. she says, this is Lemke again, she says that telling, well she suggests that telling the truth in all things large and small is protective against addictive behavior because it increases self-awareness and strengthens the prefrontal cortex.

And I just think that's really cool if you don't allow yourself to tell all those little white lies like that, no I didn't really have three pieces of chocolate, know, I had a little bit of chocolate, it's just a white lie, okay? But if you're like really brutally honest, it changes things. So anyway, I thought there we have a a really substantial list of things to do for anybody who wants to try them.

Fabrice NEUMAN (26:56)
Hehehe

Yeah, that's very interesting. I would add one thing to that, which is how you think at you when you do things, and which relates to the memes online, for example. This is what comes to mind. What I mean by that

Anne Trager (27:20)
Mm. Mm.

Fabrice NEUMAN (27:29)
When you pull yourself away from either TV or social media or something, sometimes you run into people saying, did you see the latest this or that? And you did not. And if you can, you know,

make yourself at peace with that because no I didn't see because you cannot see everything so does it matter and maybe it does not as much and maybe it does not at all and then that helps actually so you can tell me no I didn't see and it's okay we can talk about something else and that's also being honest with yourself and I think that can help.

Anne Trager (28:03)
And to that I would add not only how people see you but also pushing back against some of the urgency. You know, sends message on one of those apps, whatever it is that's supposed to be asynchronous, and expects an answer and then sends you another one saying, you seen it like only an hour later? That's not asynchronous, that's immediate.

Fabrice NEUMAN (28:11)
Yes.

Hmm.

Anne Trager (28:25)
So there's a little bit of pushing back as well and which comes down to what people think of you as There's a lot to play with here. Anyway, that is it for episode 30. Thank you all for joining us. Please do visit www.HumansPulsePodcast.com for links and past episodes.

Fabrice NEUMAN (28:44)
That's HumanPulsePodcast.com for links and past episodes. Because you put an S somewhere in there, so that was, you know. Anyway, thank you for subscribing and reviewing wherever you listen to your podcasts. It helps other people find us. You can also share it with one person around you.

Anne Trager (28:50)
Yeah.

See you in two weeks.

Fabrice NEUMAN (29:04)
Bye everyone.