Episode transcription

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

Anne Trager (00:05)
Hi everyone and welcome to the Human Pulse Podcast where we talk about living well with technology. I'm Ann Trager,

human potential and performance coach.

Fabrice Neuman (00:16)
And I'm Fabrice Neuman, a tech consultant for small businesses.

Anne Trager (00:19)
This is episode 25, recorded on October 22nd, 2025.

Fabrice Neuman (00:25)
Human pulse is usually never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started. this time we're going to start with something we've already discussed, ⁓ but we didn't have microphones on and we thought we should restart the discussion, right? Because we discussed how we manage interruptions, which led to how we use or don't use actually the focus modes on our different devices how we can do better to manage our time. Let's be honest, when we talked about it, it was in the car. You basically grilled me. And so I wondered if you wanted to do that again.

Anne Trager (01:00)
⁓ Sure.

I think it started because I had just experienced ⁓ a moment with a client who we were having this deep conversation and I kept hearing ding, ding, ding, the ding, the ping going on in the background.


Anne Trager (01:24)
This happens all the time with my clients and usually it's like one ding and that's okay. But this was like ding and then it was ding and it was ding again. And I was a little surprised because he just kept going on and on, you know, rolling out his topic and not at all. handling the notifications. And I don't mean responding to the notifications, I mean turning them off. So I asked him to turn them off and he said, I didn't even notice. ⁓ And at the time I was a little judgmental. I didn't show it. I did a whole lot of self-regulation because I was thinking in my head, how could he not notice that? I mean, I was noticing it and I was going, ⁓ every time, you know?

Fabrice Neuman (02:08)
Hahaha

Anne Trager (02:10)
And I know that I am hypersensitive and I am very aware of everything that's going on. And still, how could he not notice? I mean, this led to another question, which is like, what are these interruptions really doing to like our relationships with other people? And then for leaders, because I work with leaders, to their leadership? What's happening here?

So now I'm going to have my little walk of shame because very aware of this topic, I then realized yesterday that I had notifications going off. I had a little notification that come up saying you have an appointment in a half an hour. And then another one that came off and I was mortified because I realized that I have them on too and I don't notice them. So, so what's going on here? I mean, what's really going on here? So anyway, that's what started this conversation.

Fabrice Neuman (03:02)
But the thing is, what you just said, ⁓ you notice your notifications like ⁓ taking your little walk of shame, as you said. ⁓ What struck me when you tell the story about this client is that, I didn't even notice. So then what's the purpose of having notifications on if you don't notice them? The whole point of... being notified is so that you don't have to think about what you have to do because your devices or whatever system you have will help you actually know when you have something to do. So if you don't react anymore to notifications, then it means that obviously you have too many and they don't serve any purpose anymore. ⁓ So...

Anne Trager (03:46)
Yeah, absolutely. If we are notified about everything, then we're absolutely notified about nothing because... yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (03:53)
Yeah, exactly.

It's basically the once again, you know, what's the phrase, you the boy who cried wolf or something like he, right? That's exactly the same thing, right?

Anne Trager (04:02)
Exactly, Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Well, so I'm, you know, I'm curious about this because I know when I'm, you know, helping people will build new habits and so forth and I know that we will immediately forget or no longer pay attention to a notification after it comes up two or three times. Our brain just does that. We've seen it. Our brain is out looking for novelty or a threat. So when the notification comes up that says, go for a walk or stand up, the first time you see it and you're like, yes, my coach said, I better do this, right? The second time it's like, ⁓

Fabrice Neuman (04:44)
Hehehehehe

Anne Trager (04:47)
Really? And then your body's like, listen, I'm in the middle of something. And then afterwards, you actually do tune it out to a certain extent because it's not new and it's not a threat. So who cares? And this is kind of way the brain works.

Fabrice Neuman (05:00)
Yeah.

but then so, if you ⁓ don't have any notifications, then there's no purpose either. so the once again, the idea is to find a balance between all the things you can do and help you can have get from your devices.

Anne Trager (05:25)
Well, and I hear this all the time when I speak to high performers is like, I need my notifications. I have to respond right away. There's this thing about immediacy of needing to respond immediately to what's going on. Again, I'm curious about this and I'm not, and I totally get it. And there's absolutely zero judgment when you need to have notifications on because that's your job or because you need to respond. know like you, you need to respond to your clients.

Fabrice Neuman (05:52)
Hmm.

Anne Trager (05:54)
That said, how can we make this more efficient? Really, I'm so curious. mean, how immediate is immediacy? How urgent is urgency? among all the average of 65 visual auditory and haptic signals that we receive every day, according to a study ⁓ that I found, how can we

Fabrice Neuman (06:05)
Hmm.

Anne Trager (06:20)
have the signals that will really be useful to us? This is a real question. So tell me a little bit about what you do, because your situation is different than mine.

Fabrice Neuman (06:29)
for me the balance is a struggle. Like, as you said, I need to be able to answer my clients. then you always also asked me the question, but, and you just did, which is to me a very interesting point. immediacy mean? And it doesn't have to mean exactly right now.

⁓ And because it also depends on what your client expects, right? And for me, it's also managing expectations. And so the more, I guess the more immediate I answer or I get, then the more ⁓ immediate they are expecting me to answer. And then it's a vicious circle where I basically run after my shadow because I need to...

Anne Trager (06:56)
Hmph.

Mmm.

Fabrice Neuman (07:18)
catch up all the time. And so it's a question for me very, very often. And so, which is also why I often tell my clients when they call and I can answer and I answer very quickly, more often than not, they're happy when I do that. And I always answer, well, when I can answer quickly, I do.

Anne Trager (07:20)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Fabrice Neuman (07:43)
But I always then add the answer, sometimes I won't be able to because I'm on another project, so please bear with me. And so they accept that and they all accept that, which means that, of course, then I don't two weeks to answer or not even two days, you know, but it might be two hours instead of answering in the minute. And this is where the definition of immediacy evolves. And that's very interesting to me.

Anne Trager (08:04)
Hmm.

Fabrice Neuman (08:12)
even knowing that it's a struggle for me, for example, because have clients I need to answer to, but also need sometimes to take time to write, for example, a story for a website or for my blog or something. And so I time without interruptions because on top of that, I'm not sure I'm very...

Anne Trager (08:12)
Yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (08:37)
different than anybody else, but I don't manage very well interruptions. ⁓ Sometimes, you know, when I need a focused time, then if I'm interrupted, then I don't react too well to that, as you know very well. ⁓ so, and then my struggle is that knowing that I don't like interruptions, blocking time to do something.

Anne Trager (08:51)
Yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (09:01)
is a, for me, I try to do that sometimes, but I always keep in the back of my mind, well, what if during that time blocked, which might be two hours and maybe it's too long, maybe an hour, somebody calls and I don't answer. And so I always have that in the back of my mind that, no, but I need to be available. And maybe I don't need to be that available all the time.

Anne Trager (09:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, so there are a lot of really important ideas in what you said. One is managing expectations, which is a dialogue with people, with the people around you. And what I find, I work with a lot of people in a lot of high pressure situations and a lot of them create urgency that doesn't exist. I mean, we make stories up all the time about what's important and what's not important and what that

immediacy actually is. We are literally making this up all the time because we never bother to have the conversation with the boss or the colleague saying, when exactly do you need me to get back to you? Or how often do you need to have that interaction? How quickly, if you send me an email, do you need a response? These are really basic questions we don't ask. And actually, we

need to ask. So we stop making things up and we know what the expectation really, really is or we negotiate that expectation so it's possible for us to maintain. And the second thing is this idea of interruptions.

Fabrice Neuman (10:31)
Hmm.

Anne Trager (10:32)
We know from a study from the University of California Irvine that it takes up to 23 minutes to get over an interruption. I mean, to get back to that initial state of focus that is assuming that within that 23 minutes you are not interrupted again. And all of the pings are interruptions, and then all of the interruptions by people are interruptions as well.

Fabrice Neuman (10:54)
Let's stop for a minute on that because this 23 minute thing, you could explain it to me a little better than usual because I find it... ⁓ I still cannot believe how that can work, right? Because if I try to remember what happens when I'm interrupted, okay, so I'm in the middle of a sentence, for example, writing an article. I'm interrupted by whatever.

Okay, I answer or I don't. If I understood correctly, first of all, whether you answer or not, the ⁓ amount of time after the interruptions is basically the same because you've been interrupted already, right? But then it doesn't ⁓ stop me from finishing the sentence after the interruption, however long the interruption was. So how does this work?

Anne Trager (11:49)
Yeah.

Okay. So it's a number and it's probably variable depending on the people. However, that said, I would have to go back to the initial study, which I haven't read in about six or seven years. So I can't respond exactly to that question. What I do know is it takes a certain amount of time for the mind to get into a ⁓ state of flow or deep work. And that time when you're interrupted, you basically have to start the process over again to get into that same brain state of deep focus. However long it is for you, it is for you. And maybe when you're interrupted, you're not in that state of deep focus. So I don't know. And again, I'd have to go back to the original study and we can find it and put a link to it in the show notes.

Whatever the time it takes, you tell me that you don't handle interruptions very well because there's something else that's going on. And that is that your brain is working very hard when there is an interruption. And again, we talked about it already, you're looking for novelty or you're looking for a threat. So your brain is actually going to have to, whether you're aware of it or not, the pin goes off and your brain is dealing with that information and saying, is this new? Is it a threat?

Do I have to do something about it? You get, you know, shots of adrenaline and cortisol at that time can be useful depending on what you want to do. So even if consciously you're ignoring it, your brain is really, really busy. So there is a certain amount of drain and fatigue that does overcome us all if we're, you know, processing that kind of information all of the time. It's like multitasking is that we never really do.

We never really do several things at the same time. We're always just bouncing back and forth. Consciously, we may not acknowledge that we're bouncing back and forth, but unconsciously we do because it uses up lot of energy.

Fabrice Neuman (13:53)
To me, that's ⁓ one of the answers to the previous question, which is ⁓ even if I seem to be able to manage going back to whatever I was doing before, first of all, you said, well, was I in deep focus before the interruption? That's highly questionable because I don't know if I slash we are that often in deep

focus mode because we know that these modes, this deep focus mode only lasts for a few minutes.

Anne Trager (14:28)
No, it can last a little bit longer. Okay. But that's another conversation for another story.

Fabrice Neuman (14:31)
Okay. ⁓

And then, but so not managing well interruptions, it does mean that it's draining ⁓ because if you want to maybe shortening this ⁓ interruption mode to go back to whatever mode you were before requires so much energy to go back in. And so I guess this is where...

Anne Trager (14:54)
Mm-mm-mm.

Fabrice Neuman (14:57)
That would be for me one explanation of my reaction to that. Yes, absolutely.

Anne Trager (15:01)
Exactly.

Well, and there's something else that's really important about what you said, and I'm going to come to it in a roundabout way. You know, when we started having these notifications all of the time, I went into radical turn off all the damn notifications mode. And, you know, as a general advice, you find it out there in productivity circles, turn off the notifications, turn off the notifications. And I think there is some truth to that.

However, not all the time. ⁓ I mean, on the surface, it does seem like the really obvious fix is just turn them off. and shutting down all of those alerts does reduce, you know, that cognitive load. It reduces stress. It reduces mental clutter and all of that. My clients, when they do that and they go notification free. ⁓ there we go. We had a, we had a,

Fabrice Neuman (15:33)
Hmm

Anne Trager (15:57)
notification did you hear it okay well so a notification popped up because for some reason I am not on do not disturb mode so there's my problem with tech is that I put do not disturb mode on and then it goes off so I have a problem with managing my notifications okay

Fabrice Neuman (16:15)
Well, then that's another discussion. ⁓ Keep in mind your point that you were making, but the one thing is that the reliability or lack thereof ⁓ settings like these that can be a problem.

Anne Trager (16:19)
It's interesting.

Yeah. So anyway, there we go. Now I have to get back into my state of focus. Yikes. Anyway, maybe it was done on purpose. Maybe my, my, you know, personal AI is listening in and saying, we need a sound effect or something. Okay. Okay. But we're not there and I do not have a personal AI yet. ⁓ So anyway, my clients who do go notification free do tell me that they feel

Fabrice Neuman (16:35)
Yes.

You⁓ and that's another line of conversation, my goodness.

Anne Trager (17:00)
sharper thinking and a sort of sense of freedom. And they never do go entirely notification free. That's something that I do. mean, I put it on do not disturb mode. And then once it's off, I mean, they're really often and I don't really care. I just don't want the notifications. The thing is, is that occasionally they come back on. So I need to manage that better. The problem with that is that it's isolating and that sometimes the important people cannot reach me. And this is a

And this is a problem for people who are in high pressure situations, is they can't

They can't let go of responsiveness entirely. So they need to find that balance, which is the word you said, between focus and responsiveness, between me and my priorities and what I have to do and them, the other people. Now, most of the time, because we are human beings, them will win out. This is something you told me in the car is that, well, it's important to you to respond to other people, to answer those questions.

There is a certain amount of anxiety that some people feel that they're missing out on things. You also kind of mentioned that it's FOMO. You don't want to miss out on something or you don't want to let people down. And not just you, everybody. We're human beings. That's what we do. We are social beings. So again, I go back to the question, how can we do this and find this balance in a way that is, that really works?

Fabrice Neuman (18:27)
and so this is where the focus modes that I talked about in the introduction ⁓ may help, but they do require a lot of work. Basically, so you just mentioned the do not disturb ⁓ on the, let's say on the iPhone first or so, that was the only ⁓ mode you had, is so,

Either you have notifications on or you don't. And then you had the possibility, at least with the first version, it was already there, where you can ⁓ designate people to be like VIPs so they can go through. So...

And this is what you have. I'm honored enough to be one of your VIPs. So even if you're on Do Not Disturb, my notifications will go through if I send you a message, which doesn't mean that you're going to answer them, but you know, but at least the notification goes through. ⁓ And there was also this other, I think it's still there. If you are on Do Not Disturb mode,

Fabrice Neuman (19:42)
if somebody wants to talk to you or reach you, they can call twice or three times I don't remember in a row, like in a very short amount of time. And so it will go through as a ⁓ emergency kind of situation or at least thought so. ⁓ But then it was not enough for people. And so ⁓ then there were all those focus modes ⁓ were added where you can program them depending on different situations. You can, for example, program a focus mode where you're under not disturbed. So it's for everybody or for nobody during whichever parts of the day.

and you can program. you can just, the basic thing is to program beginning in Do Not Disturb at starting at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. or whatever you want and then go back on, okay, I can be disturbed starting eight in the morning or even before. But then, ⁓ now what you can do, the interruptions also can be managed app by app. And so you can set, so I don't want to be disturbed by this app between ⁓ such and such a time, but these are perhaps okay or the opposite. And then you can even change the look of your phone depending on the focus mode you choose and you program. And then this is where I think, mainly for you, I believe, I don't do them either because this is not how I manage or maybe don't manage my time. I will agree with that. But it requires some time to

Anne Trager (21:27)
Hahaha!

Fabrice Neuman (21:34)
Think about the focus modes you want to program and then you have to program them and then if you create too many then you have to think about so which one am I going to use now? I hear some people doing that like in the Cortex podcast for example. ⁓ They spend a whole lot of time in programming their focus modes.

Anne Trager (21:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (22:02)
to be able to better manage their time. But to me, it sounds like they spend so much time in getting those focus modes ready. So it doesn't compute.

Anne Trager (22:13)
Well, yeah, and I just don't have the patience for that. And so it's either do not disturb or disturb. I mean, basically it's one or the other. And I would just really like my default to be do not disturb. And then the VIPs, where I have found that the VIP comes through

For example, I'm on a Mac, and so when the FaceTime comes through, it's not just a notification, it's like the actual call, and that has significantly interrupted some important meetings. So I don't actually want that to happen. So I have to go in, I guess, to FaceTime and say, don't ring on my computer while we're doing this. And I just don't, I mean, literally, that's too much.

It's too, I need to figure out where it is. I need to ⁓ figure out how to turn it off. I need to figure out what it is that I want on and what it is that I want off. And honestly, I'm not going to do it. And I'm not the only one. I was on a call with somebody else recently and she had all of these notifications going off and she noticed them. And she said, hang on a second, I need to handle these notifications.

And she, she, couldn't figure out how to turn them off. So she went and it was from Teams and she said, I'm just going to shut down Teams. So, you know, this is the thing, Teams. there's another one with all of those. How are we using these? How are we using these and these notifications, these tools like Slack or Teams or whatever in a way that's respectful. You know, so, so anyway.

Fabrice Neuman (23:30)
Hmm.

Yeah.

I was going to say the word Slack as well. Yes, absolutely. Slack comes out right afterwards.

Anne Trager (23:56)
What I do know works for people that I've seen is that to actually block windows that where there are zero zero notifications, it's complete total do not disturb. And when they align them with periods where they have high energy, they're usually a couple periods during the day when we are at our peak energy. ⁓ People get a lot of work done, a lot of deep thinking work done during those times. So I know that that works.

I also know that it's important for people when they're doing that to know when they are going to go ⁓ look at their notifications of all of their different notifications so that their brain is not like, my God, am I missing something? So basically, you put on your calendar a deep focus time and then you set up on your calendar written down so your brain knows it very clearly.

handling notifications and calls and wonderful things, okay? My people time or whatever you want to call it, okay? So that you can calm that FOMO. And it's important when setting up those specific scheduled times to make them appropriate to whatever your work situation is. I could do it once a day and it would be okay because of the way I've set up my work situation. I actually don't. I have three times a day when I look at them.

Fabrice Neuman (24:54)
You

Anne Trager (25:20)
you would need to do it more often because you are on a more time-sensitive ⁓ response system. what I'm seeing actually works as practical

Fabrice Neuman (25:35)
Yeah, potential solutions. ⁓ Yeah, I guess the joke on me as well is that sometimes, so I don't blog those times or I don't set the do note disturb for maybe even like 15 minutes because I need to do whatever things. And sometimes in those periods where, let's say, I should have, I put that in quotes for... purpose of not shocking the coach in you, ⁓ should have ⁓ put the devices in focus mode. Sometimes I receive a call and I know I don't have time to answer, so I don't. So I choose not to answer because I cannot be bothered at that very time and I know I will be able to call back 15, 20 minutes later or even an hour later.

Sometimes it's okay, you And the other joke on me is that more often than not, sometimes I'm, which is ⁓ circling back to what I was saying before, they call me or they send a message because they are blocked by something. And I can't answer. It's not that I do that on purpose. I'm adding that for potential.

⁓ clients of mine listening to this podcast. I'm here for you guys, I swear. But sometimes I don't answer because I can't. But more often than not, I don't answer and half an hour later, the same client calls back or send a message saying, ⁓ that's fine, I found the solution, it's okay, right?

Anne Trager (26:56)
Hahaha!

Yeah, so this is beautiful. And I see this with leaders I work with ⁓ who set up and they come to me and they say, I've spent all of my time, you know, putting out fires. And then we work with figuring out what are the fires and what's the reality of this situation and all of that. And then some of these leaders will set up, time, specific times with their teams to deal with emergencies.

⁓ So bring all of the fires on this day or at this time to me. And all of the sudden there are so many fewer fires because people figure them out on their own. Isn't that wonderful?

Fabrice Neuman (27:57)
Yeah, exactly. So

the lesson for me in that is sometimes it goes back to the definition of immediacy. Sometimes you ask a question before thinking about whether you have the answer or not. you know, giving yourself time, just a few seconds to take a step back and say, I don't know how to do that or...

Anne Trager (28:13)
Hmm. Yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (28:24)
Do I really don't know? Not know about? So maybe I do know something about this and I don't have to ask the question. Maybe I just have to think for five seconds and so I will be more autonomous actually.

Anne Trager (28:29)
Hmm.

And then we would get onto a whole other topic, is, well, is this constant speed and this immediacy and this immediately I need to do it right now?

What is this doing to us overall? Because like you said, we're not thinking anymore. And of course, then we're going to have AI, which is going to respond immediately. so I don't know what's going to happen. Anyway, another topic for another time. ⁓ Before we bring this to an end, because I believe we are up at the end of our time, I will put in the show notes a link to a one week attention reset guide that I have put together.

Fabrice Neuman (28:58)
Exactly.

Anne Trager (29:13)
So please go download it, use it, it's free. See if it helps you. Let me know what happens. There are some ideas and some tactical steps designed to help you explore this topic in just a few minutes a day. No big time commitment involved.

Fabrice Neuman (29:29)
Well, thank you. And on that note, that's it for episode 25. Thank you all for joining us. Visit humanpulsepodcast.com for links and past episodes.

Anne Trager (29:38)
Thank you also for subscribing and reviewing this podcast wherever you listen to it. helps other people to find us. And also please share this with one person

you who looks at their phone while they're having a coffee with you. There you go. Yeah, share it. Bye

Fabrice Neuman (29:56)
that's a lot of people. Okay, thank you, Anne. And See you in two weeks.