Escaping the Screen: Rethinking Work, Attention, and Human Connection with Joff Outlaw and Brad Marshall

[00:00:00] Gerry Scullion: Hey everyone, Gerry here. Now I'm going to be the first to admit that I'm addicted to my phone, and I'm sure you probably are too, and I catch myself endlessly scrolling, convincing myself that it's work, but deep down I know it's not. It's a distraction, and I'm not alone in this struggle, and today's episode I sit down with Joff Outlaw and Brad Marshall, authors of a fantastic book titled Busy Idiots, and I know you'd really love this too.

[00:00:25] Gerry Scullion: In that conversation, we unpack our collective obsessions with screens, and we explore what phone addiction looks like, the practical steps to disconnect, and how to take back control in a world designed to keep us glued. But it isn't just about us. For long time listeners of the show, they know I'm a father of two, two young children.

[00:00:42] Gerry Scullion: Um, it's really about those young minds growing up in this environment. I mean, what happens if we don't intervene? What does the future look like for a generation born into screen dependence? Let's dive in.[00:01:00]

[00:01:02] Gerry Scullion: Delighted to have you on the podcast. Um, we've got Joff Outlaw and Brad Marshall here, uh, authors of this fantastic book if you're watching it on YouTube. Busy idiots. And, um, I saw the book and I was like, I think he's calling me an idiot. Um, I definitely, uh, I've been, I'm halfway through the book and, uh, I'm absolutely loving it because I've been looking for something at this for quite some time, but maybe we'll start off.

[00:01:29] Gerry Scullion: Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and what you do. We'll go, we'll go alphabetically. So we go to Brad first. Okay.

[00:01:36] Brad Mashall: Thanks, Jerry. Um, so I'm a psychologist, um, by trade. Uh, I work in a research lab at Macquarie University as well. Um, and do the neuroscience thing. Uh, I have a clinic two days a week.

[00:01:50] Brad Mashall: Uh, it's primarily screens addiction clinic. Um, which is why you see some of the screen addiction stuff sort of flirt through there. Um, and I'm also the author of three [00:02:00] different books. So this is my number three here, but this one, yeah, it was a little bit of a different slant there. So that's my background, but, but primarily these days speaking training workshops and the like.

[00:02:11] Gerry Scullion: Amazing. Joff.

[00:02:14] Joff Outlaw: Yeah. So very different. I've spent 20 years working in very large corporates, mainly in your, your field, Jerry, service design, CX, UX, strategy. Um, and it might be a midlife crisis, but I decided it might be the book's fault, but I recently decided to pack in the corporate life and I'm now very excited to start a new venture.

[00:02:34] Joff Outlaw: So I've become a managing partner at a company called maker tech, a little agency based out of Auckland, and we're going to try and scale the business in Australia. So that's very new. That's three weeks into that now. So pretty exciting.

[00:02:47] Gerry Scullion: I see it here. Yeah, absolutely. Oh man, we're actually

[00:02:49] Joff Outlaw: redoing the website and the brand and everything.

[00:02:51] Joff Outlaw: So be a bit, be a bit kind about how it currently looks. I'm going to sort that out.

[00:02:55] Gerry Scullion: Well, I'll tell you, we'll have you back on to talk about that. And I'll actually have you back on as well, [00:03:00] um, Brad to go more into, you know, your own specific world of, of kind of neuro and understanding that I worked at next, I was in Cochlear for years, so not too far from Macquarie university.

[00:03:11] Gerry Scullion: So, so for folks listening, like, you know, both Joff and Brad are in Sydney. I lived in Sydney, as many of you know, for a long time. Um, and it's just great to hear about all the stories that you've been getting up to, but let's talk about. The book, okay, because we're here talking about busy idiots. Um, unfortunately, I did that survey at the start of the book, um, where you scored people out.

[00:03:34] Gerry Scullion: And I want to ask you, why did you make me feel so bad? Was that intentional? Because I maxed that. I was like, I think it was maximum 35. And I was definitely, if there was higher options, I would have been in the 40s.

[00:03:50] Brad Mashall: Yeah, so those questions, um, Gerry, and just for those sort of listening along, uh, that's Screener for your level of addiction to screens and whatnot.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Brad Mashall: Um, and so, you know, some of those items are actually sort of validated items that we use in research and I've sort of adapted them, um, for the, for the corporate worker. Um, but really, yeah, it's, it's, it's obviously a bit of tongue in cheek there. The categories that we go through. Um, it's supposed to just be a little bit of fun and have someone thinking a little bit about their tech use and whether it's in line with what they actually want out of life at work and at home.

[00:04:27] Brad Mashall: Um, and that's really what it's designed to be there. So for people who haven't seen and haven't got a copy yet. You know, there's questions in there about, um, you know, do, does your partner or, or significant other bug you when you're on the phone and pulling your phone out in the middle of a meal? Or are you you know, on it when you're supposed to be sleeping?

[00:04:45] Brad Mashall: That sort of stuff when it's getting in the way of life.

[00:04:48] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. I wake up and I'm like,

[00:04:50] Brad Mashall: yes,

[00:04:50] Gerry Scullion: I'm awake. I can get my phone now. That is the, the, the scenario that I'm in. I'm like bing. Internet time, [00:05:00] so it's not good. And I've, I've used all these different things on my phone. Like I'm an Android, which I know you, you kind of had a little bit of a dig by saying, Oh, we're not sure what happens on Android when you try and get into, you know, do not disturb mode.

[00:05:13] Gerry Scullion: And I'm like, I'm like really struggling with the, the whole kind of like technology because I've actually tried to. To pull away from it, but it's still kind of luring me in everything that I've tried lots of things. So this book, do you think busy idiots would fall into the category of a self help book?

[00:05:35] Joff Outlaw: Oh, we can't, we kind of tried to actively avoid that. We didn't want to position ourselves as wellness gurus because we're not, um, we need to make it more around productivity and work. But the reality is that. Work and home life are so horribly intertwined these days that, yeah, it probably does go in there, but particularly, [00:06:00] you know, the elements around technology and your time, I think, um, yeah, there probably is an argument for that, but if we could stay in the productivity terrain.

[00:06:08] Joff Outlaw: We're not going to

[00:06:09] Gerry Scullion: go down that road. So you've heard it here, folks. It's not a self help book. It's a productivity book, like, you know, but we were talking there before, you know, my own self addiction to the internet. And I think that's probably closer to how a lot of my own peers. They use the internet, like we're, especially if you're working for yourself, like I am, um, you become reliant on this and it's very hard to juggle both worlds of say, parenting, life, work.

[00:06:37] Gerry Scullion: Um, w within the book, you talk about lots of different things and the, the auditing piece is something that I want to get into a little bit more. What advice do you give to people who are in the world that I'm in at the moment? How do you effectively audit your, your digital, um, life like, you know, cause I, I read it and I was like, yeah, that looks, that sounds brilliant.

[00:06:57] Gerry Scullion: And then I'm like, how would I do that [00:07:00] my own life? Like, you know, what advice do you give to people like me to start an audit?

[00:07:05] Brad Mashall: Yeah. So, uh, Jerry, I guess what we're talking about there is our sustainable tech blueprint, um, in which sustainable audit is one of the steps within that. So the step before that is sustainable knowing where we take people through the persuasive design of technology, how it works, how it sucks you in, why it gets you spending more time online than you intend.

[00:07:26] Brad Mashall: So again, not fearmongering, not trying to act like we all need to just be completely offline. You know, there is fantastic things about technology. But we like to stick with the slogan here that you need to learn how to harvest technology and not let technology harvest us. So it's a tool that we need to use effectively.

[00:07:47] Brad Mashall: So, yeah, go ahead. And so how do we, how do we audit that? Um, I mean, one of the ways that we do it is through the questionnaire we were talking about before, but really it's about people. [00:08:00] Reflecting and we hope that this book gives space and we do this in our workshops to for people to reflect on their own use.

[00:08:05] Brad Mashall: So let me share a little story with you from a workshop recently when I was in one of the big consulting firms earlier this year, and we went through the sustainable tech blueprint and had this, um, this woman come up to me afterwards. And she said to me, listen, one thing that I've really taken from you is that I was sitting there thinking about the audit, sustainable audit and sustainable harvest, which is the trees.

[00:08:29] Brad Mashall: And I was thinking, you know, I keep taking my phone with me, um, when I'm walking the dog on the beach, beautiful beaches here, right? Walking the dog on the beach. And it was just intended, she said, just for music. That's all she really wanted it for. But before you knew it, she said, I'm looking back on it.

[00:08:45] Brad Mashall: Now I realized I'm on Slack, I'm answering emails, there's all this stuff at 7am while I'm walking my dog on the beach that I wasn't intending on doing. So when we talk about the sustainable audit, that's a really good example for someone [00:09:00] where we're not trying to come at it from a perspective where we're telling you exactly where your levels need to be.

[00:09:06] Brad Mashall: All I'm asking you to do is reflect on if it is where you want it to be. If you say that you genuinely want to be a cyborg and you want to be on technology for 19 hours a day, then hey, have at it. You know, I'm not going to tell you how to live. Um, so that's what the sustainable audit is about. And then our harvest trees as well after that.

[00:09:25] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. So looking at you, you've obviously researched this space and you're in this space, um, you know, it's part of your life, Brad. I can, I can hear it when you're talking. What are you seeing out there in terms of industry, in terms of how people are using technology? Is my case sort of reflective of the reality of the, of the majority?

[00:09:47] Brad Mashall: I mean, I, I think that when Joff and I decided to write this book,

[00:09:53] Joff Outlaw: yeah,

[00:09:53] Brad Mashall: I was talking to Joff about, you know, we were having a coffee and I was saying, Hey, listen, mate, I'm seeing more and more, especially [00:10:00] over COVID, parents come into my clinic, um, on the north shore of Sydney and, you know, talking to me about how busy they were and how crazy this is and there's technology.

[00:10:08] Brad Mashall: I had this family come in. And they were doing a team's meeting while in my clinic, right? Literally, like, I mean, I'm doing a consultation and they're on a team's call saying, don't worry, hang on a second, listen, I've got you muted and I've got the camera off, but I've just got to be in this meeting. And I remember having a coffee with Joff and saying, Hey man, like what's going on with technology in the corporate world?

[00:10:27] Brad Mashall: Because he is in these big corporates. And Joff, you explained to me that it was much bigger than that, right? This is about busyness in general. So, I mean, what was your take on it at the time, Joff, when I brought you that?

[00:10:39] Joff Outlaw: Yeah, I felt like if we just wrote a book about putting down your phone, then adults might kind of repel that a little bit.

[00:10:45] Joff Outlaw: Like, don't tell me what to do with my phone, particularly those addicted to them. Um, And really it's, uh, you know, I'm in the same industry as you, Jerry. Right. And there's lots of, you know, I use technology every day. I have to, I've got, you know, my team's predominantly in Auckland, right. [00:11:00] So I'm online all the time.

[00:11:02] Joff Outlaw: Um, but it's, it's, it's more the kind of behavioral stuff in the, in the corporate and the culture of, well, let's have a meeting. You know, let's just use instant messaging without any rules whatsoever. You know, let's just start pinging off messages. And it was a really interesting, actually, um, thought experiment that, um, a former colleague said, he said, I wish, I wish we could set limits on the number of emails that you can send a day.

[00:11:24] Joff Outlaw: He's like, do you think we'd be more productive, productive for it? And I was like, I'd love to do that. Cause I think we would, I think it's just so easy just to disturb each other constantly. And then you hate the technology, but it's. The technology is just that enabler and it's very good as an enabler to kind of put you into a busy trap.

[00:11:42] Joff Outlaw: But it's, it comes down to a lot to corporate culture.

[00:11:46] Gerry Scullion: On the, the corporate side of things, do you think a lot of this boils down to, to trust from, um, the corporate world of like being visible online and being kind of [00:12:00] busy shows that you're actually. Providing worth how much of that is wrapped up in the need for showing that you're online and you're doing these things like because there's proof there that we've seen it like being disconnected and allowing yourself to reflect and rebuild and recharge this huge benefits to that.

[00:12:20] Gerry Scullion: What are your thoughts?

[00:12:21] Joff Outlaw: That's a great question. I mean, the whole, the whole premise on the, of the book, really the mission of the book, we jumped to the conclusion is we, we hate this idea that we've, we're always supposed to be busy. So, you know, when you have a meeting, how does it normally start? You talk about the weather and then you go, you're busy.

[00:12:37] Joff Outlaw: Oh yeah. Really busy. Yeah. Fly on you. Oh yeah. Really, really busy. And it's like, how sad, how sad that that's the response that we think we should give. Um, and you have to actively make sure you don't do it. So when someone says house things, it's really hard not to write busy and just write, yeah, I'm fine.

[00:12:54] Joff Outlaw: Actually. I've got everything under control and yeah, I'm running out of time. Um, so the trust, the trust thing, [00:13:00] yeah, the trust thing, you know, I think, I think we all kind of like, sometimes feel like we lack permission to. To be adults and live our own lives when we're at work. It's like, we've become this, you know, this kind of version of ourselves where it's like, yes, absolutely.

[00:13:15] Joff Outlaw: No problem. Have a good day. And yeah, of course I'm busy. And it's not really sustainable. Like if you work in that culture for too long, you generally hate end up either burnt out or hating yourself and you have to leave. Um,

[00:13:29] Gerry Scullion: It's true. It's true. Like I'm actually working on a, on a pretty big project, uh, for a local government here in Ireland.

[00:13:36] Gerry Scullion: And. Even going right back to when you do your responses for the proposals and all those different pieces, usually you quantify the value of the work to the unit of a day and the time. So there's a compression already happening from the proposal stage. But when I, when I won the tender, I basically said to 'em saying, I wanna work to your cadence.[00:14:00]

[00:14:00] Gerry Scullion: Which was the first time I'd ever really approached a client saying that's in, as in like my day, I'm happy to split it out and treat it more like a consultancy in terms of the hours and when you really charging for the 7. 5 hours a day, it could be spread over three days. The value that I'm noticing that gives me is I control.

[00:14:19] Gerry Scullion: The, the work and it's better value for them because I'm not burning time when I'm sitting there having a coffee, but it also means that we get a greater outcome and not every client, if you're working for one of the big four, the big consultancies and you're going out there, like that unit of the day is a profitability.

[00:14:36] Gerry Scullion: So how likely is this if you're working in one of those big four consultancies that you can say, actually, you know what, I'm going to take a step back. This is not going to, it's probably unlikely. Isn't that right? So it goes back to the culture.

[00:14:50] Joff Outlaw: Those big consultancies, you know, billability or utilization, they drive you on that, right?

[00:14:56] Joff Outlaw: So, you know, you need to be 80 percent [00:15:00] billable, otherwise we're going to have to have a conversation and you've got to fill a timesheet in every week. So it's, it's systemically broken from that starting point where. As long as you're busy, you've got a job, right? And obviously if you do good work, then you, you know, you're more likely to get promoted, but just, just being billable is enough sometimes.

[00:15:18] Joff Outlaw: Um, but that leads to quite a disengaged workforce sometimes and not the best outcomes. I mean, even if you do a fixed cost project, what you've done there is quite clever, Jay. Even if you do a fixed cost project, you know, the client breaks it down and goes, okay, well, it's over this amount of time and therefore it's this cost.

[00:15:31] Joff Outlaw: So you de rates this and they bring it back down to that. Um, so yeah, it's a problem. I mean, I'm very pleased to say that, you know, in the agency we run now, we don't do time sheets, you know, because we're, you know, we're, we're smaller and we're able just to focus on the outcomes, but it's almost like you get to a scale and you go, right, this is too hard to manage, so let's put everyone into a box of eight hours a day minimum.

[00:15:53] Joff Outlaw: Yeah. I know. Like it's probably.

[00:15:57] Brad Mashall: Sorry, Jerry, but I was just going to add, beyond the [00:16:00] big four there, I think what we also just need to recognize and what Joff and I were trying to get to in the book as well, knowing that we're going to kind of ruin the ending a little bit for you here, Jerry, but one of the key elements that we're trying to get across here is that we would love to see a world where busyness isn't promoted as this Amazing quality that everyone has to be doing all the time.

[00:16:24] Brad Mashall: So if someone can achieve something in just two or three hours, this is kind of what you were talking about before, right? Why should they be, why should they be, um, disadvantaged? You know, why should they have to hide that? Why do they have to tell their boss that they're constantly busy to justify their position?

[00:16:40] Brad Mashall: They shouldn't feel as though they're at risk of losing their job or being given more work or made retrenched. Because they're not saying that they're madlessly busy. And so it's really unhealthy culture in many, um, departments or businesses that you find here, the busy culture. And that's what we're trying to attack you.

[00:16:59] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. I [00:17:00] mean, one of my good friends in Ireland, he's set up his own, uh, creative agency and he's able to define his impact. And we're going left field here of, of the topic of busy, he's able to define his impact on what he can generate and what the ROI is. So every engagement that he has, he's able to say, well, I've done this and I'm charging this, and this is what you can expect to get back.

[00:17:25] Gerry Scullion: And he says, like. Once it's written down at that, you can really show that his value is there. And it's always presenting every single day. I don't know how that translates into a nine to five, Monday to Friday. It'd be pretty crazy to be there every single day. Just to be clear today, I'm going to be getting paid a thousand dollars.

[00:17:42] Gerry Scullion: And of that, you go absolutely spare up to do it every single day. There'll be a second book for that,

[00:17:49] Joff Outlaw: I think.

[00:17:51] Gerry Scullion: Busy idiots who build by the day. Um, but generally speaking, I, I love what you're talking about here. Um, but [00:18:00] going back to the busyness thing, um, and I guess your, your, um, sort of value proposition, if you will, for the book is, is really trying to.

[00:18:09] Gerry Scullion: Be more productive and being less reliant on screens. Um, and many people listening, this will understand that technology companies out there crave for your attention. Attention equals money. Okay. So we, we, we, we're all pretty clued into that piece. The bits that I'm really interested in from both of your perspectives, cause you've got two wonderful kind of perspectives on the same problem.

[00:18:32] Gerry Scullion: Is what mechanics do you see as, uh, as the, as the pieces that work to get people more removed from, from their devices?

[00:18:45] Brad Mashall: Yeah. Um, I mean, there's obviously multiple ones here. One of the biggest ones that we found and that, and that I saw when I was doing the research, especially for this book, was around, um, real world social connection.[00:19:00]

[00:19:01] Joff Outlaw: If

[00:19:01] Brad Mashall: people feel real world social connection in their workplace, and again, I'm not sitting here saying you've got to be best mates with everyone at work, but real world social connection is a key part here. And it's not just a key part, um, in our relationships. It's also a key part to oxytocin. And so we know through the whole COVID experiment here that there's only so much oxytocin that you get, which is a feel good chemical, the social feel good chemical from doing video stuff like this.

[00:19:29] Brad Mashall: Being there face to face and being in physical proximity is really the driver of oxytocin. And so for me, it's about, there's, there's a flip side here of yes, you can have people limit their tech use, but you have to replace that with real world activities and stuff as well. So that's not me saying that, that work from home companies can't work or hybrid companies can't work, they can.

[00:19:54] Brad Mashall: But they've just got to be very meaningful about how they achieve that within their teams to get that [00:20:00] real world connection as well. And so, as you said, this is a productivity book, because the way that we see it is there's an easy link there. If you have happier staff that aren't lonely and that are more socially connected, they are going to be more productive.

[00:20:17] Gerry Scullion: Can I, um, play a little bit of, um, kind of futuristic kind of perspectives here on what this looks like? Imagine. Everyone maintains the status quo that we currently have at the moment where I'd say majority of my peers and people listening, you know, we use smartphones, we use internet, we're on zoom calls, all of those different things.

[00:20:37] Gerry Scullion: If we maintain this for the next 15, 20 years, 30 years, what does it look like in both your perspectives? Here's an opportunity to paint a picture for us.

[00:20:49] Joff Outlaw: Oh

[00:20:50] Gerry Scullion: God. Joff, Joff's looking for the blacks and he's looking for the paint brushes and the grays. I'm

[00:20:55] Joff Outlaw: trying not to go into kind of um, a binary way of thinking because that's the easiest thing to do, [00:21:00] right? You go, do we go kind of dystopia or utopia here? But

[00:21:03] Gerry Scullion: what does it look like in terms of the impacts on our, on our health?

[00:21:06] Gerry Scullion: Like on our wellbeing and all of those aspects? What are you seeing?

[00:21:12] Joff Outlaw: Yeah, I don't, um,

[00:21:16] Joff Outlaw: yeah, I don't, I don't imagine that's a positive society if we continue to be as, as addicted to screens as, I mean, I've got young children and it really scares, scares the life out of me because. You know, I, I was lucky enough to be born, you know, brought up without screens. And, you know, if I was bored, I'd say, my dad, I'm bored.

[00:21:36] Joff Outlaw: And he'd say, no, you're not bored, you're just like imagination. And then you kind of figure something out, right? Whereas, you know, my son's watching TV, like, I can't, I, there could be, it could be, there could be a fire all around him and he's just, he's just completely locked in, you know, whatever's happening.

[00:21:53] Joff Outlaw: The, and Brad knows much more about this than I do, but. You know, the tech companies are grabbing our attention like never before. So, you [00:22:00] know, there's, there's a, as a, as a father, I'm most concerned. I think once we look at productivity and the workplace, maybe in response to your previous question, I think it comes down to like really thinking deeply on a human level, what you want to do with your day.

[00:22:18] Joff Outlaw: Like if you don't, if you don't wake up and go, I'm really excited to do X, then you just gonna jump into your emails and then jump on your phone and send some slack messages and you lose yourself in the technology and then it's lunchtime and you feel terrible and then it's the end of the day and you go, what have I done?

[00:22:37] Joff Outlaw: Yeah. Um, so yeah, and obviously we, you know, it'd be, it wouldn't be a podcast these days about mentioning AI. Right. So. You know, who knows if that's going to actually relieve of, of some of this, this burden and help us or whether it's going to, you know, be used in malicious ways to steal even more of our attention.

[00:22:56] Joff Outlaw: But, um, yeah, I, I, I kind of most [00:23:00] interested in the work that Brad's doing here to help the kids. I think that's the most important thing when it's too late for us.

[00:23:05] Brad Mashall: Yeah. I, I think, um, I think Joel owes me a beer here because, um, I don't, I'm not sure if you're aware up in Europe there, but. Our Prime Minister here has just introduced legislation to ban social media finder 16s.

[00:23:19] Brad Mashall: And I was giving evidence, um, at Australian Parliament House two months ago on that. So I'm fairly sort of in the know of how all that's working and, and in fact, a lot of my research from my research lab was, excuse me, informed, um, that decision. So, um, there are certainly impacts if we just, to answer your question 20 years time?

[00:23:41] Brad Mashall: Um, I can tell you that in 20 years time, my fear would be that for a developing brain, if we just look at sort of teenagers and young adults, there is a lot of lost connection, a lot of lost social skills, a lot of lost ability to read social cues, to read all sorts of different stuff, the more we do things via video.

[00:23:59] Brad Mashall: [00:24:00] Um, if we bring this back to business, what that means for business, and we're already starting to see this, right? So when Joff and I speak at companies, you'll get the new grads, the cadets, all these sorts of people, you know, the emerging leaders that already struggle with some of this, but I think that's just going to be accentuated.

[00:24:17] Brad Mashall: So that's kind of what we used to call the soft skills, the ability to communicate, the ability to read the room, the ability to respond to emotion. This is the stuff that we're seeing. Um, is, is being lost on a neurological level on a neurological level. Right. And so if we fast forward 20 years, if we're not mindful about how to keep that oxytocin and that real world connection, um, in the workplace.

[00:24:45] Brad Mashall: And again, part of that is in Busy Idiots, having a sustainable tech plan there and being able to limit your own usage at home and work, but then being able to have that real connection as well. Because what I worry about is, you know, [00:25:00] Elon Musk, I heard him say the other day that in 20 years, every house is going to have a robot in it.

[00:25:04] Brad Mashall: Um, I'm not sure what they're going to be doing, but that guy, he seems to be able to get stuff done. So the world will be very different in 20 years. And I worry that we are going to fall further down this echo chamber where we become less and less tolerant of each other. And that makes work. I mean, we see this in elections, right?

[00:25:23] Brad Mashall: Just this complete polar opposite because we only get fed what we believe or the polar opposite of that. And it becomes very difficult in the middle. So of course, that's a challenge for companies and workplaces because you end up with this workforce where. You've essentially got 50 percent on this side and this side, and there's a whole bunch of stuff that no one can talk about.

[00:25:43] Joff Outlaw: And it's more than that. It's the, you're losing the ability to think critically. Right. So for some reason, I did a degree in history at university. And the main thing that history teaches you is to think about both sides and then come to a balanced understanding. It's really hard to do that if you've only ever seen one side of [00:26:00] everything.

[00:26:00] Joff Outlaw: Yeah,

[00:26:01] Gerry Scullion: absolutely. History is a fantastic, um, fantastic direction, I guess, to go like, and there's lots that you can learn from that, I imagine, Joff. Um, but just going back to that point there that you make, made a second ago, Brad, um, as regards, uh, Anthony Albany's Mentioning, I don't know if it's gone through policy yet, has it, has it, has it been informed?

[00:26:24] Gerry Scullion: It hit the Senate, it

[00:26:25] Brad Mashall: hit the Senate yesterday, and we had a Senate inquiry, testimonies and whatnot. It'll, it'll go through, it's got the support of both parties.

[00:26:32] Gerry Scullion: So January the 1st or something will go through, will it be?

[00:26:34] Brad Mashall: Um, it won't come into effect for 12 months, because basically they're saying to the social media companies that you need to You need to implement the age verification, uh, within, you know, here's your task, go away and do it.

[00:26:48] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, so ID verification, passports. No, so there won't be any ID,

[00:26:54] Brad Mashall: there won't be any ID verification actually. Yeah, so this is interesting, I was speaking to, [00:27:00] um, the member for Flinders, um, her name is Zoe McKenzie, she's part of the Liberal Party and she was on the Joint Select Committee last night, we did a sort of Instagram Live about this, ironically, on Instagram, it's hilarious.

[00:27:11] Brad Mashall: Um, and she was explaining that, uh, if you take, for example, TikTok, they, um, they booted something like 20 million. Don't quote me on that. You can fact check me people last year off their platform for being under 13, right? A million of them were Australian accounts. Now they never had any age verification for that.

[00:27:35] Brad Mashall: They have the ability within the algorithms to know who is under 13. So, for example, um, this bone here, this tendon, excuse me, not bone, this tendon doesn't actually fully develop until you're age 20. So the way that you hold a phone dictates how old you are. And so that's just one of the biometrics that they can use to measure who is under certain ages and who is over.

[00:27:59] Brad Mashall: [00:28:00] Point is, they have the ability to do it and the Australian government are telling them you've got 12 months.

[00:28:05] Gerry Scullion: Brad, you're Now invited to dinner parties for the, for the extension of your life at my house. Okay. Cause you, you'd make job work to do. Okay. Like just saying you're, you're there, but work to do, but Brad, that's a quote that I'm going to be using.

[00:28:19] Gerry Scullion: Like, so you're telling me that the bone between the thumb and that forefinger. So, so the way I can hold my, I can hold my phone. Like, you know, pretty much like, like a Viking, like a caveman, like the whole thing in one big lump, like, you know, big hands on me, like, you know, so. They're going to be using that detection to determine who's under 16.

[00:28:36] Gerry Scullion: Is that what you're saying? The responsibility falls into the tech company to, to determine if they're underage and if so, kick them out.

[00:28:43] Brad Mashall: Yeah, correct. I mean, the responsibility, how they do it is sort of up to them and I don't imagine, but they need to make reasonable attempts, um, to do that. And that's what they're, they're, they're steering for here.

[00:28:53] Brad Mashall: So again, and the idea here is that. This is about protecting those [00:29:00] key qualities, um, that we talked about that connection and the ability to be able to socialize and have those soft skills. And be able to see other people's point of view, because as Joff said, it's really important to be able to see, um, both sides here and all of that is, is, is important for the future of work in general.

[00:29:18] Brad Mashall: If we have a generation of kids that then sort of come into their 20s and they are the, the, the. The up and coming leaders of any big organization, um, it's, it's going to be difficult if they're lacking in these skills and we're already starting to see a little bit of that.

[00:29:34] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, I think so. So like, I guess this is really important for people who are.

[00:29:40] Gerry Scullion: In service design, I keep on going back to it, but even as you're forming teams and you're trying to think about what it looks like in two, five, ten, fifteen years, if these people are being so drained, um, and addicted to screen based activities, it's going to shift how operations work within [00:30:00] businesses.

[00:30:01] Gerry Scullion: The attention spans are going to be less, the increased kind of desire to get stuff done quickly. What's going to happen to empathy? Yeah, yeah. You put me in a bad mood for the day. I don't know if you can continue the podcast. I'm only

[00:30:17] Joff Outlaw: joking. Just on that, that train of thought though, because, um. And then we should probably get a bit more optimistic cause yeah, it's, it's late.

[00:30:26] Joff Outlaw: This is getting real kind of film noir style, isn't it? But, um, yeah, going back to service design. So main, main skill in service, one of the main skills in services is empathy, right? Research. So if you get, you know, if the, where the services and is going to come from, if everyone's just, you know, addicted to screens and.

[00:30:43] Joff Outlaw: You know, don't have those social skills and don't have that, you know, investigative nature, um, really, really hard to kind of really understand, you know, how we design human, human services without that skill. So, I mean, that's just our industry, right? There's, there's many of us that are impacted. [00:31:00]

[00:31:00] Gerry Scullion: It's funny.

[00:31:01] Gerry Scullion: Um, just, there's a lot of things going on in my head when you're talking podcast, but, um. We're, we're in the middle of a general election. General election happens in Ireland on Friday, and I saw overnight somebody, um, has created an AI candidate, and put it up in some of the posters in, in the city center, like where there's an AI generated picture.

[00:31:22] Gerry Scullion: His name's Hayden, Hayden something, and he's in a tie. Like it's obviously an AI generated avatar and, you know, vote for ai. Like, you know, we're autonomous and we'll get this stuff done. Like, you know, and the comments underneath these things, I'd vote from. I, I, I vote from, you know, he'll take instructions and I'm like, I know I guarantee if that was actually a serious thing, people would definitely, there's this whole kind of the erosion of trust in, you know, established, you know, organizations were at that point in society and see what's happened in America.[00:32:00]

[00:32:00] Gerry Scullion: Middle East, everywhere, there's, there's things shifting and, you know, it's so easy to lean into the technology side of things. So when you're having those conversations, you're, you're doing presentations and you're doing workshops with these organizations, you must see it, feel it and smell it in the room that there's this huge desire to engage more with technology.

[00:32:22] Gerry Scullion: So they know the problems are there, but yet they're still doing it.

[00:32:24] Joff Outlaw: Yeah. What do you say

[00:32:26] Brad Mashall: to them? It's so

[00:32:27] Gerry Scullion: true. It's so true.

[00:32:29] Brad Mashall: We, well, so the model is we have sort of three components here and you see the book follow a similar format. So it's manage your tech, which is what we've been talking about. And the second part is manage your time and productivity, which looks at the individual, um, how they're working with their boss, those sorts of things.

[00:32:45] Brad Mashall: And just how they manage their own productivity. But then probably the most important part for me anyway is manage your teams. And that's where Joff and I really go into, um, again, not just in the book, [00:33:00] but in workshops as well. It's our opportunity to get the communication flowing again. How do they want to communicate?

[00:33:07] Brad Mashall: How are they going to do that? We model those soft skills in there. We also just get that physical oxytocin going. It's one of my favorite parts there. It's just some old school stuff to an element of it. Joff, do you want to elaborate on manage, um, manage our teams a bit more?

[00:33:21] Joff Outlaw: Yeah.

[00:33:22] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, it's the latter part of the book.

[00:33:23] Gerry Scullion: And that's, that's an,

[00:33:25] Joff Outlaw: yeah, it's alliterative, right? So tech time and then team and the, um, but that's the team, the team part, that the soft stuff's always the hardest. Right. So, you know, when you do a kickoff meeting for a new project, I don't understand why kickoff meetings are so dull. Like it's the most important meeting, right?

[00:33:41] Joff Outlaw: You start in a project and it's like, right. And there's a project plan, scope, deliverables, risk log, if you're really lucky. You know, and everyone's like, Oh God, I can't wait to get started. And then sometimes, particularly if you work in a big corporate, you might know nothing about the people you're working with, you might not even know they're saying that, you know, you've just been thrown in a room [00:34:00] and then when the going gets tough on the project, you wonder why you can't quickly resolve it and work, work through it.

[00:34:06] Joff Outlaw: So. We've created, um, a template called a team pact and I know team charters became really popular for a little while. I was never a huge fan, but like team charters were a little bit, yeah, added some value cause they kind of got that team spirit going, but you know, you tended to come up with quite vacuous goals and then you give a team name and you put it on some t shirts and it's like.

[00:34:25] Joff Outlaw: Team Superman will deliver out of this world. And it's like, you know, I think, I think a good team patch, you've got to consider, you know, the rational stuff, which is, well, what are we going to do? Um, a key, a key question is who's responsible for what and who's in charge. Now, nobody ever likes talking about this, you know, like it's quite hard to be like, well, I'm the project lead.

[00:34:44] Joff Outlaw: So if I say something. And I, I said, this is what we're doing. You can disagree, but we might have to, we'll have to commit. Um, I learned many times in my career, quite senior people come up to me and say, I've asked so and so to do something. He won't do it and you know, he's, he's [00:35:00] doing something else and we're falling behind.

[00:35:01] Joff Outlaw: And I said, well, have you, have you told him you're the project lead? And he's like, Oh, I couldn't possibly say that. So in the team, Pat, we talk about the rational stuff, which is who's accountable for doing what. You talk about the heart, the middle bit, which is what, what do you, what do you believe? What are the goals?

[00:35:17] Joff Outlaw: Um, and the goals need to be prioritized because you can't have five priorities of all equal because you'll never agree a way forward. Yeah. And then the finals and the body, what, what, what work are you going to do? So if you, if you kind of take some time away from the boring project kickoff and. Do it that way, then you all start understanding, well, who's responsible for what and how are we gonna do it?

[00:35:38] Joff Outlaw: And then the final thing is like, for God's sake, have some fun on the company clock. Right? Like, work doesn't have to be miserable, so why not? Absolutely. And don't then don't, don't do a PowerPoint presentation during it. Like that's the thing. You go the, it's like, well, we'll we'll go to the, we'll go to the pub, but first let's go through start.

[00:35:53] Joff Outlaw: No, no, just go and go and find out about each other and have some fun like, um. Why not?

[00:35:58] Gerry Scullion: On that point, Joff, it's a [00:36:00] really good point because I'm a, I'm a big believer in no screens for meetings. I, I much prefer. Yeah, me too. I can rethink my workshops as opposed to meetings. And I did a presentation recently and it was, they, they called their presentation and it was replaying the findings of research and it says, do you need your laptop?

[00:36:17] Gerry Scullion: And I go, I didn't bring my laptop. And I was like, I'm just going to use the wall. Like, you know, that's all the information we need for this thing. And it's not like, Oh, Jerry's great or that kind of stuff. But I think the whole kind of organizations can sometimes just expect the certain format of these kinds of things.

[00:36:35] Gerry Scullion: Like, you know, you need a device to do the, do the playback. You need a PowerPoint to do these things. It's actually an interesting,

[00:36:41] Joff Outlaw: it's an interesting point because, you know, with the, what we're talking about with the addiction to screens.

[00:36:47] Gerry Scullion: Yeah.

[00:36:47] Joff Outlaw: I remember, I remember doing kind of. You know, when you do a, like a morning stand up and, you know, I would never mention any names, but I remember some people like it's so hard.

[00:36:56] Joff Outlaw: They found it so hard just for 10 minutes [00:37:00] to kind of like stay focused. And they'd be like, Oh, sorry, who hasn't gone? It's like, it's a 10 minute meeting. Stay, stay with me. But you just know that kind of in the background, just all over the shop, getting distracted. So I I'm with you on that one. I think there's something really nice about.

[00:37:14] Joff Outlaw: Yeah. Going into meetings about screens, because if someone does bring a screen, like, and I've had that before where you, you know, you're presenting and someone pulls out the laptop or the phone, now they might be taking notes, but it's really hard not to imagine that they're just distracted. And then that's, it's just not a nice feeling.

[00:37:30] Joff Outlaw: It's like, can we just be together for this meeting? And we've seen this job.

[00:37:35] Brad Mashall: In, um, in team packs, workshops, Jerry, we'll, we'll quite often challenge, um, teams to chuck their phone, laptops, everything else in the middle of the table, we'll chuck it in a bowl. First person that touches that during the day has to buy lunch, right?

[00:37:47] Brad Mashall: It's one of those old school just, and you see there's some people around the table and around the room that are very comfortable with it. There's others that are just sort of. There's, there's lights flashing up on these phones and they're trying to figure out if it's their [00:38:00] phone or they're, they're really uncomfortable, serious withdrawal symptoms.

[00:38:03] Brad Mashall: Yeah,

[00:38:04] Gerry Scullion: yeah, there's like, I'm not just saying this cause I'm on the call to you, but it's a really important read. Um, and like, if you've, if you sort of identify with anything that we're speaking with here. There's very few pieces of literature that are focused exactly on what we're talking about here. So I'd really encourage you to, to get the book.

[00:38:25] Gerry Scullion: You could charge a lot more for this book as a disclaimer, by the way, just as a piece, because we did do a giveaway in the private community the other day. And Kelly was working with me, awarded the book for the person who won it in the community.

[00:38:41] Gerry Scullion: You've broken it down really nicely, you've designed it really nicely, and I love the fact that you've got your recaps at the end, which, um, plays into the, the kind of the shift that we're talking about here in terms of surmising exactly what we covered for people who've got low levels of, uh, attention.[00:39:00]

[00:39:00] Gerry Scullion: And I think that's a really like a nice indication is like, that's a really nice approach for taking these things. Um, so. Depending on where you're at in your journey of trying to strip things back, you can go back and look at those different pieces, which I don't know who's involved with that design decision.

[00:39:16] Gerry Scullion: Um, Oh, look at Josh, I'm not saying it was me, but like the shoulders went up.

[00:39:21] Joff Outlaw: Well, if, if I didn't get the design, right. to spend in so long in design. So it's all I'm bringing to the table. Really, you know,

[00:39:29] Gerry Scullion: pretty much. You sure can hear is this like on YouTube, you can see his expression. Like I'm not going to say I've

[00:39:36] Joff Outlaw: lost all humility.

[00:39:37] Joff Outlaw: So yeah, let's get that out.

[00:39:38] Gerry Scullion: I know. Absolutely. So. Let's talk about where, where you're going to go with this next, because, um, you know, you've shifted to a new role, um, Joff, you're make, maker tech, is it, maker tech? Yep, yep, that's right. And Brad, you're still up in the Northern Beaches, private, uh, consultancy, correct?

[00:39:57] Gerry Scullion: That's your, your opportunity?

[00:39:58] Brad Mashall: Yeah, I jump around [00:40:00] still. I've got the clinic two days and research, but mainly we're doing speaking, yeah, these days.

[00:40:07] Gerry Scullion: Okay. So that, that whole kind of world of. Helping organizations holding their hand through this piece is something that you're available to be engaged with, is that right?

[00:40:18] Brad Mashall: Yeah, absolutely. That's our main, main piece these days. Yeah.

[00:40:22] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. So this is like a calling card. The book is like a, is a calling card. You know, it's, it's a great read. It's a great, very, very helpful. But if you want to get deeper expertise in this, there is a place where people can go and, uh, is it your LinkedIn's or what?

[00:40:37] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, there's, um,

[00:40:37] Joff Outlaw: yeah, LinkedIn's always a good place to, we're very active on LinkedIn You are very active. Yeah. I have to

[00:40:44] Gerry Scullion: apologize for

[00:40:44] Brad Mashall: that. But also on busyidiots. net. Yeah, that's right.

[00:40:49] Gerry Scullion: Busyidiots. net. Okay. Yeah. So, um, I want to thank you, right. For, for both taking the time and the energy, you identified a really nice.

[00:40:57] Gerry Scullion: It can, uh, niche organically of, of this [00:41:00] topic. Um, and I really encourage anyone listening to the podcast. I'm not, I'm not on any retainer. I don't get any commission for this. Um, but it is a really important read. If you want to avoid that scenario of happening in the next 20 years of, you know, perpetually doom screw doom scrolling five years or 10 years of your life away by looking at cat gifts, by all means, knock yourselves out.

[00:41:23] Gerry Scullion: But I don't, I don't. Um, so I'm going to put a link to the book in the show notes. Um, and I'm going to, I'm probably going to mention this a lot more over the next couple of months as I work my way through, um, halfway through the book. And as I said, like, um, hopefully I'm going to, I'm going to play back how I'm finding stripping back my, my digital life a lot more on the podcast.

[00:41:44] Gerry Scullion: So thank you so much for giving me your time and energy and working through their technical difficulties today, folks. I'd love to have you back on individually so we can go into each depths and talk about it is cause you're both, uh, remarkable practitioners. Um, so I'll put a link to both your [00:42:00] LinkedIn's into the show notes in the description on YouTube and a link to, what was that, BusyIdiots.

[00:42:06] Gerry Scullion: net?

[00:42:07] Brad Mashall: BusyIdiots. net. Awesome, Gerry. Thank you.

[00:42:09] Gerry Scullion: That's a good one. Listen, thank you so much for your time today, folks. Yeah. Thank you,

[00:42:12] Brad Mashall: Gerry.

[00:42:13] Joff Outlaw: Speak soon.