🛍️ Attention Economics, Impulse Spending & Social Media — with Rachel Duncan
Welcome to off the grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello. Hello. And welcome to off the grid, a podcast about all the ways that the algorithm is fucking with our capacity, our creativity, and our cash flow. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and this fall, I have published a brand new book called Your Attention is Sacred except on Social Media.
Amelia Hruby:That book has already sold hundreds of copies to lovely listeners like you. If you have purchased one, thank you so much. And I will be selling it for a few more weeks, but only for a few more weeks. So if you want a signed copy of the book, exclusive postcards, and other goodies, now is your moment to go to your attentionissacred.com, which is also linked in the show notes, and get your copy today. When you do, you'll get a 112 page manifesto that will help you reclaim your attention, your agency, and your creative integrity.
Amelia Hruby:All things that we need as we navigate the upcoming Black Friday shopping season. So that takes me to today's episode. This week on the podcast, I am sharing a conversation that I had with Rachel Duncan for her money healing club podcast. And in this conversation, we go deep into how social media impacts our spending habits and our finances. We talk about budgets, boundaries, and screen time, and we explore why restriction isn't necessarily the answer to feeling addicted to your phone, and also why rebellion and pleasure may be better antidotes for feeling too online.
Amelia Hruby:We get into so many of the themes from my book, as well as practical support from Rachel, who is a financial therapist and talks about money and all of its emotional and material manifestations all the time. So this is definitely an episode to listen to before you begin your holiday shopping or your holiday sales season if you're gearing up for your own Black Friday sales as a business owner. And if this time of year is tough for you around money and spending and navigating the feelings that come up around having more or less than the people around you, then I want to invite you to join Rachel in the money healing club. It's a one of a kind mashup of, like, emotional support group meets money learning classroom, meets creative healing space. And this month, they are doing a blackout Black Friday challenge where the community supports each other through the many, many, many sales emails full of urgency that are gonna be sent out in the upcoming weeks.
Amelia Hruby:I am not a member myself, but I'm a huge fan of Rachel's work. I'm an affiliate partner for her programs because in the conversations I've had with her and in workshops she's led for the interweb, I've experienced firsthand that the way she approaches money really helps me shift something internally around scarcity and stress and financial struggles. So head to the show notes to grab the link to learn more about money healing club. Use that code off the grid for 10% off your membership. And while you're doing that, stay tuned to this conversation where Rachel and I are getting into it all about attention economics, impulse spending, and social media.
Amelia Hruby:Let's dive in.
Rachel Duncan:Amelia, welcome to the Money Healing Club podcast. I'm so glad you're here. We're just gonna start with the biggest question. This is about Amelia's book, by the way, you guys. Your attention is sacred except on social media.
Rachel Duncan:So what is wrong with the attention economy? Paying attention to those two words, attention and economy, which you really pull apart. I'm so excited
Amelia Hruby:to talk about this, and I love talking about money. So I can't wait to get into the, like, dollars and cents of it all. So what is wrong with the attention economy? I like to think about this on a few levels. One is like, what is the attention economy?
Amelia Hruby:Right? Maybe some people use that term, but they don't actually really know what it means. And so I would define it as this concept that understands our attention as an economic resource. So it's like our attention is something that we can use to exchange to get what we want. Right?
Amelia Hruby:So this concept, this framework has really risen alongside social media and the Internet, where we go online and we get cool free stuff, but we're actually paying for it with our attention. And so your attention becomes its own currency. It becomes a commodity. It's something that you can use to trade on the social media marketplace. And from that, you might get entertainment.
Amelia Hruby:You might get social capital if you grow a following. You might get power. Like, we have watched social media influencers become incredibly powerful politicians. Right? So the attention economy describes this world that we all live in where attention is a currency that we're using online every day.
Amelia Hruby:That's the sort of rosy neutral way of describing it. Now if you know anything about economics and currency and you know anything about our current world, we also live under a capitalist economic system. And so when we think about that in the context of the attention economy, our attention is being exploited and extracted on these apps, much like our labor is often exploited and extracted when we work for a wage. And so if you're on social media and you're giving an app your attention, well, maybe you're getting entertained, but you're probably not making any money. And the owners of the app, they are making money.
Amelia Hruby:And so that's what I mean by extraction there. It's like someone else is making money when you are on a social media app. And so the attention economy to me, like, just describes all of that. And what is wrong with that is extraction, exploitation, the increased surveillance that has happened as social media companies need more and more and more data to keep making money off of our use of their platforms. Right?
Amelia Hruby:Like, they make money by selling our attention and our data to advertisers. So they just need more and more data and more and more attention. And it's left us in this place where it's like, we all feel like we have no focus. We're totally distracted. Our attention is fractured, and we can't even care about the things we care about anymore.
Rachel Duncan:I was thinking about this as I was reading your book. Also, like, the echo chamber of the algorithm that, like, oh, I am not exposed to some things or I'm not being shown some things I really ought to know about the world or some maybe perspectives that do go against my own. Generally not being fed that, and I'm also wondering that must be adding to the segmentation and the conflicts that we're feeling because I think when we're in these platforms, it's all like alike. It's, oh, gosh. There's so many people who think like me, And that's lovely to meet people and see things that jive with you.
Rachel Duncan:Totally. But we're very explicitly not being fed anything that causes discomfort. So now we also have, you know, swathes of of of society and culture that can't sit with the discomfort of disagreeing with somebody, because we all have to be with, like, like, like. Do you think that's
Amelia Hruby:in there too? Yeah. Absolutely. I think that that is maybe one of the, like, downstream effects of the attention economy is that, like Yeah. You're so you're already pulling in algorithms.
Amelia Hruby:Right? So on social media apps, each of them has their own proprietary algorithm that is designed to keep us on the app, to keep our attention there so they can keep making money, right, keep selling ads. And so these algorithms have figured out, as we've learned from documentaries like The Social Dilemma, you know, people who have been inside these companies building the algorithms have come outside of them and said, they are designed to keep you on the app. And what the algorithms have learned through their own learning models is that there are different ways to keep us on apps. And so for many people, it is that sort of, like, sameness that cultivates a sense of belonging and safety, and you want more of it, and they keep giving you those dopamine hits, and that feels really good.
Amelia Hruby:I think there's also the flip side of that where we see, like, rage bait, and we see some people be served up really inflammatory content, and that's what engages them. I often like to say, like, if you're conflict avoidant, you might have, like, a really cute little nice version of the Internet.
Rachel Duncan:I think that's what I'm saying. I have such mine's like comedians and cats. That's like my whole feet because I do not like conflict.
Amelia Hruby:100%. I mean, mine used to be the same way when I was on social media. So I definitely think that's a part of, like, the economic side of the attention economy is how these algorithms function and how they continue to pull on and make money from our attention. The thing I really try to say in the book like, I try to explain all of that, and I try to point out, like, there are so many impacts that the attention economy has on our lives. Like you're saying, Increased echo chambers, a decreased ability to handle disagreement and conflict together, while we're also seeing an increase in national and global conflicts around the world, some of which can be directly tied to social media.
Amelia Hruby:They're very real consequences. Very real. Very real reasons. The attention economy as it functions on social media is bad. But when I wrote this book, I was like, okay.
Amelia Hruby:A lot of people have made that argument, but I wanna actually point to what I see as like a core flaw in the whole premise of the attention economy. That is that I don't think attention is an economic resource. I don't think attention is a limited resource. So when people talk about the attention economy, as I mentioned before, like, they're trying to explain how we have a scarce amount of attention, and economics is how we figure out scarcity and distribute scarce resources. So, like, we gotta figure this out with the attention economy.
Amelia Hruby:But I don't think attention is scarce. So I think there's a sort of fundamental breakdown at the very, like, heart of this concept that really bugs me. So I had to write a book about it.
Rachel Duncan:I underlined when you started out, let's get into the etymology. And, like, I always start a paper with etymology. That's, like, my go to crutch. So let's break down. Could you break down for us?
Rachel Duncan:Because I think this is so beautiful. The etymology of the word attention.
Amelia Hruby:So the word attention comes from the French word, which means to stretch toward. So within the word attention, I think, like, from the etymology of this word, it's about how we stretch toward the world. And to me, that is not a scarce gesture. That's like an infinite gesture. And part of the way I make that claim in the book is like, yes, our lives are limited by time.
Amelia Hruby:Right? Like, we are mortal beings, but we can't count how many times we're gonna stretch toward the world in one lifetime. Right? It's like an uncountable number, which is one way of saying it's infinite. It's not finite.
Amelia Hruby:It's not scarce. It's so much I can't count it. Like, my attention is so vast. Everyone listening to this, like, your attention is so vast. It's literally how you stretch toward the world, how you experience it, and how you notice the things that you notice or don't notice, the things that you don't notice.
Amelia Hruby:And so I really wanted to start there in the book so I could set up this sort of premise I'm trying to describe here of how, like, if we don't accept that our attention is scarce, if we believe it is infinite and expansive, the same way that, you know, relationships are infinite and expansive, or love is infinite and expansive. Like, if we believe that, then we don't have to buy in to the idea that attention is a scarce economic resource. And if we don't buy into that, then we don't have to buy into the whole concept of the attention economy. We can start to relate to our attention differently. We can start to notice and really feel when it's being extracted or manipulated, and we can really reshape our relationship to the world, I think.
Amelia Hruby:So, yeah, our opening question, what's wrong with the attention economy? Well, you know, I think it's a good way of describing how attention is commodified on social media, but it's come to be this thing everyone takes as a fact, and I just don't think it is. Like, the world doesn't happen to function this way, and it's actually incorrect to think of attention this way.
Rachel Duncan:And I think you're right. And I think the efforts to put numbers to it, oh, number of followers, hours of watching, da da da, like, also are pretty meaningless. Right? Like, you know, attention versus audience. Those are different things.
Rachel Duncan:I'm also thinking, like, maybe think of, like, the different ways we experience time. Mhmm. Right? And I think the ancient Greeks really knew that we had two experiences of time. We had Kronos and Kairos.
Rachel Duncan:Mhmm. Right? And it's like Kronos, sure, the, yeah, the number of days in a year, and there are quantifiable things. But, like, wow. That is actually not our lived experience if you weren't counting the days.
Rachel Duncan:Depending on your level of attention or what you were doing, we experience time really differently. It's very it is very fluid and expansive and dynamic. And, like, one minute doing something versus another minute doing something else don't feel like a minute. A minute doesn't speak to it. You know?
Rachel Duncan:And so I was thinking a lot of that. Like, yeah, this is a very much more like a like a three-dimensional experience of attention. And I was I was also thinking of my work as a trained therapist. Right? Like, I sell attention.
Rachel Duncan:I sell very high quality intense intention where my hour with a client is not an hour with a client. Like, it is on the calendar, but that is not my experience. I don't believe it's my client's experience. It's entering through this different threshold of connection that, like you said, it is expansive and infinite. It's not an hour.
Rachel Duncan:We can't think of it that way. So I was, like, really relating to how we connect, right, which has so much to do. That's actually, I think, what we mean with attention. And it could mean connecting to each other or connecting to, as you say at the end of your book, which I do wanna talk about, you know, some of these practices we can do to to cultivate our attention. And it's a much more three-dimensional thing, isn't it?
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. Absolutely. I'm still sitting with what you said about, like, how therapists are selling, like, offering a specific type of concentrated attention that's given to the client. That's so interesting to me, and I hadn't thought of it that way, and it feels so So much of what we need, want, desire, and get out of therapy is having, you know, this trained person's full attention. That's
Rachel Duncan:all it is. You know, I thought when I went to grad school that I was, oh, I'm gonna learn how to give people advice. And, oh, I was wrong. It is stripping away everything so that you can be the fully attendant mirror. Yeah.
Rachel Duncan:And, yeah, just how how transformational that is, and it's not easy.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. Yeah. And I think that the other thing coming up for me while you were sharing was, like, thinking about clock time and work time. And something I try to get at briefly in the book is just the way that, you know, I think we really saw the seeds of our relationship to attention begin to shift when, you know, Charles Taylor put time on the factory clock. So we have this, like, a Taylorist approach to industrialism where every single moment is minutely tracked for its productivity.
Amelia Hruby:And I think that that was a similar or, like, analogous move to what I'm seeing happen with attention on social media. Right? Where it's like on these apps, they are tracking our attention with these, like, minute, you know, clicks, likes. How long did you linger on this post on your phone? Like, they're measuring everything.
Amelia Hruby:They're tracking everything, and they're sort of forcing attention onto these app metrics. And I think that is how time was forced onto the clock in the And so it's a horrible process. I guess I just like I'm struck in this moment by how deeply that has harmed so many of us, and how it has alienated us from that, like, gorgeously human experience of losing track of time, or being out of time, or being together in time. And I think that social media then has also, like, taken us away from this idea that our attention is a way of stretching toward each other, being with each other, tending to each other. And the, like, jargony philosopher in me wants to call it, like, ontological violence.
Amelia Hruby:Like like, that's really reshaped our experience of ourselves and our communities. And it's a really deep hurt and harm that I think Yeah. Is happening to us. And for me, like, another reason I wrote this book is that I think that social media is something that many, if not most or all of us, could opt out of. And I wouldn't make that claim for something like work or industrial labor because that's required for so many people to have money to feed themselves, clothe themselves, house themselves.
Amelia Hruby:Right? So I wouldn't say it in that context. But I think with social media, I have yet to really find a use case where I'm like, oh, yeah. You could never leave. You may have to change your life to leave, but I think most of us could really quit using these apps and take our attention back from them.
Amelia Hruby:My personal story is,
Rachel Duncan:you know, we met about a year and a half ago and when I was on your podcast. And right around that time, I was like, okay. I'm doing content creation. I had, like, joined a class. I was trying to get more comfortable on camera, and I was having fun with it.
Rachel Duncan:It was a creative thing. And I felt right about the time I was getting comfortable with it, I left it, and I took it off my phone. I do still have an account, and I check it on the web, but it's really just an extension of my work email because I do still get I get client requests. I get wonderful collaboration. So I haven't left it completely, and I do little snippets of podcasts on on it.
Rachel Duncan:But wow. It really changed. It was interesting just at the point I got comfortable with it. Because what was happening was that, oh, for me to get comfortable with it, I have to be really, really in it. I have to be consuming it.
Rachel Duncan:I have to know what people are doing. I have to know trends. And it was taking it was just taking my life away. It I I think I maybe have also, like, maybe an addictive addictive personality, but it was just taking so much more than it was giving, even though I was enjoying the creative part. And when I took it off my phone, you know, I don't redownload it, it it was kind of this detoxifying experience, and I had that little fear about will people find me, people totally keep finding me.
Rachel Duncan:And and then what it gave me. Now I I read. I it literally replay I read probably at least two books a month, and I look forward to bedtime. I look forward to winding down. I never have my phone plugged in in my bedroom, and it really gave my attention back to the things that matter.
Rachel Duncan:And I think you speak about this so well, you know, more in your off the grid podcast about being a business owner and, like, being afraid of of leaving social media. And it but it actually helps you get back to the root of why we're doing this. And there are actually so many ways to connect that are more even more effective. Like, my referrals, me being on other podcasts, is such a more effective way to spread my work than spending hours editing a reel. So I just wanted to share kind of, like, my process with this, and I'd love to know a little more about could you share you know, there was a time where you were heavily in it.
Rachel Duncan:Oh, yeah. And and you left, what, about four years ago? Mhmm. Was that right?
Amelia Hruby:Yeah.
Rachel Duncan:And what was the there was a a scale tipping time for you, and I want just wondering if you could tell us more about that time.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. For listeners who are new to me, many years ago, I was a micro influencer. I was so on Instagram. I shared different content pieces. I did a lot of work around selfies for radical self love.
Amelia Hruby:I shared feminist affirmations. I did brand deals with companies like Parade and Bando. And, you know, I was really trying to make a go of it on Instagram. And I think I never got more than, like, 3,000 followers, but I was able to crowdfund a podcast. I got a book deal.
Amelia Hruby:Like, there was this way that I was growing a whole audience and platform on Instagram. I was all in. I spent so much time, so much money, so much energy on this app trying to get people's attention and share my creative work with them. And after years of doing that, sort of the culmination point became when my book came out. So I had self published a book based on my Instagram series, actually.
Amelia Hruby:It was called Feminist Mantra Monday where I wrote these different affirmations every Monday and shared them, and it was kind of combining the more, like, spiritual practice I was learning with my, like, PhD studies in feminist theory. I was trying to bring them together in a more public way since it was so academic at school. Yeah. And so I was doing that. I compiled all of them into a book myself that I self published, and then I was very lucky, and I got a traditional publishing deal with Andrews McMillan.
Amelia Hruby:And when I signed that contract, everyone was like, you gotta grow your social media following if you want this book to do well. So I hired a designer. I hired a strategist. I got brand photos. All these different things that I did and spent money and time on.
Amelia Hruby:And I put my all into launching the book on social media. And after I did that, I just kind of felt empty inside. Like, it wasn't super successful, and I didn't feel celebrated and connected. I just kinda felt tired and confused by what I was really doing. And the more time and energy I put into Instagram, the more I just felt my sort of, like, codependent habits or anxious attachment style really flare up.
Amelia Hruby:Like, the more the more I, like, paid attention to the app, the more I checked the app, the more I took likes and comments to mean you know, I I just deeply connected it to, like, my self worth, my self image. I didn't think I was good enough unless Instagram comments told me I was good enough, things like that. Or, you know, I didn't think this picture was good enough unless it got more likes than this other picture or as many likes as somebody else's picture. And so I really got stuck in all of these loops over and over again. And at the start of 2021, I sat down and I wrote a list of my rules for Instagram that year.
Amelia Hruby:And these always sound familiar to people who struggle with social media, but it was things like, I will open the app on Monday morning and share these things, and then delete it from my phone until Thursday. And then I'll open the app again, and I'll engage with comments, and I'll reply, and I'll post some stories, and I'll delete it again. And I only share about these things, but not these topics. And I'm turning comments off actually, I didn't put turning comments off on the rules because that didn't exist when I was leaving social media. That's a revision that's happened in my brain.
Rachel Duncan:You would have now. Yeah.
Amelia Hruby:I would have now. It was probably something more like, won't respond to comments on posts or things like that. Like, I set all these rules. And when I finished writing the list of rules, I reread it, and I had this sort of breakthrough moment that the only other time in my life that I had needed that many rules around something was when I had been in toxic relationship that I had to go to plenty of therapy to work through and get out of. And that therapy helped me recognize my codependent patterns, my anxious attachment style, and kind of think through how can I change my behavior?
Amelia Hruby:And so something about making the list of rules just gave me the sudden clarity that I was doing it again. And I sort of had this conversation with myself where I was like, alright. You have three options. You can keep doing this and ignore the breakthrough you just had, which never works. You can keep doing this and go to all the therapy again and try to get over it, or you can just stop doing it.
Amelia Hruby:You just get off of Instagram. Just leave social media.
Rachel Duncan:Could you have learned from the the example that it reminded you of? You know what?
Amelia Hruby:I mean,
Rachel Duncan:to put it even darkly, like, it's it's a very much the addiction cycle. Right? This is the story of of, you know, someone who's maybe trying to break an addiction with a substance use on their own without support would have those kinds of rules. You know? And it is.
Rachel Duncan:It's a very fragmented way to try to heal. It's actually not you look probably looking at that list is like, this is not like the way you heal something. This is the way you restrict something. This is the way you cut it apart in a thousand pieces. It's actually not towards growth.
Rachel Duncan:This I think one of these things in, like, how I talk about with with money, it's I think we feel really fragmented when it's like, is that how I do anything else in my life? Do I do all these, like, restrictive things with, you know, I don't know, like, maybe exercise or, you know, another aspect of my life? Like, oh, no. This is not how I do other things, or this is not how I do things anymore, which almost sounds like you're in sight. Like, oh, there's an old there's a there's a ghosty shadow here.
Rachel Duncan:Mhmm. A part of myself that I worked hard to heal, and here it's come up in this other way. And I think when we look at social media, when we look at also money and stuff like that, we're actually looking towards how can we experience more wholeness knowing that these things can bring up this feeling of fragmentation. And the fragmentation is part of the experience to keep us in it because it's doing both things. It is the paper cut and the Band Aid.
Rachel Duncan:Paper cut, Band Aid. Paper cut, Band Aid. When when do we experience that I'm okay? I'm whole, and I'm complete. You won't get it there.
Rachel Duncan:Right? It's just paper cut Band Aid. Paper cut Band Aid. That was my experience too. Like, I'm not I don't feel like I'm growing from this.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. And I think that there is at least limited research on this, probably more than limited by now. But, like, if we think about, you know, the whistleblowers who came out of Facebook or Meta and said that, like, Meta has data on how social media harms teen girls specifically. Right? It promises them connection and beauty, and it offers them image after image of thinness and self harm.
Amelia Hruby:And so it's not metaphorical, what you're saying. Right? Like, the meta like, paper cut Band Aid is so literal, and research has been done internally and externally from these companies to show that. And I think when I look to the research, it's primarily around, like, younger users. I'm like, tell me, how are all the millennials doing?
Amelia Hruby:The millennial are self image. But I have my own experience and the experience of all of the people I've spoken to on the podcast, like yourself, Rachel, to, you know, point me to the fact that there's a certain promise of social media, and it tends to offer us almost the opposite of that. Dressed up is the thing we think we want. Yeah. And it shapes what we think that we want.
Amelia Hruby:So that's a big piece of it too. Like, at this stage in social media, I'm not really meeting or finding people who feel like when they go on the apps, it's just a jolly good time, and they're doing fine. And maybe five years ago, I was. Like, I have friends who are casual users who were like, this is chill. Like, I'm fine here.
Amelia Hruby:Like, I can get on and off, and I I can be whole in this space. Yeah. But it has just twisted and tightened and warped, and the algorithms have just gotten more and more extractive as these companies try to make more and more money. And, you know, what's happening is they are injuring our attention, which makes it harder for them to get the attention from us. So they just have to tighten the screws.
Amelia Hruby:They have to paper cut deeper. You know? They have to do more to get the same amount of attention. It's almost I haven't thought about this analogy before, but we could make one to, like, the process of getting oil out of the earth. Right?
Amelia Hruby:In the beginning, there were just these huge reserves. Like, oil literally gushed from the ground, the same way our attention did. It was just attention was everywhere. People were just hanging out. They were so excited to be online.
Amelia Hruby:They were like, give me something to look at. Right? Yeah. But now the oil that's available that's being mined is so hard to get, and it's lower quality. And the same thing can be said for our attention.
Amelia Hruby:It's so hard to get, and it's lower quality. So it costs the companies more to get it from us, but because of capitalism, they refuse to make any less money, so they are going to these extremes. And I think that is why I say I don't know anyone who feels good on the apps anymore. You know? Even when I talk to, like, my 75 year old aunt who's on Facebook and, like, just trying to talk to her friends, Even she's facing all these issues where she's like, someone impersonated her recently, made a whole account just pretending to be her.
Amelia Hruby:You know? And so I just don't know any social media users who aren't encountering some fundamental issue with their attention or their identity or their self worth or their digital security on social media. It's just become such a a harmful place.
Rachel Duncan:Or even as fundamental as getting enough sleep or, you know, the doom scrolling at night. So, like, I just wanna ask you about, you know, a theme that comes up with folks in the money healing club is, okay. I wake up in the morning. I've got a, you know, pretty good plan. I've got a good buffer.
Rachel Duncan:I have a lot of spoons. If anyone knows spoon theory, right, I got my 10 spoons. I'm good. And, like, yeah, you know, I'm gonna cook at home today, and then the the day goes on, and you use up your spoons, and you have a shit day at work, and and then you're just like, I can't wrap my head around that, and you get your DoorDash, and then you you thought you would, oh, I need to read that book or I wanna write my novel, but you start doom scrolling. And then the products are offered to you, and, you know, you're buying a new sweater set or, you know, a cruise.
Rachel Duncan:And you wake up the next day, like, what the you know, who was that last night? And so so often, the social media comes in and the doomscrolling. We all maybe we jeez. We call it doomscrolling casually. Doom.
Amelia Hruby:I know. Everyone. Yeah. Like, what
Rachel Duncan:a word. And it has real direct financial implications. You know, when when I work with folks with impulse spending, that is a huge one. So it's like, okay. This isn't a willpower thing.
Rachel Duncan:When you enter into a space where your willpower is nonexistent, they found all these ways to work against it. And I think relationship with money has a lot to do with relationship to social media, at least at least for my audience. So I'm wondering how you could reflect on that. Like, did you notice a shift in your in your spending or your cons you know, how you were as a consumer after being off of social media?
Amelia Hruby:Oh, 100000%. Let me tell you. You need to budget, quote, unquote. You're trying to spend less money. If you leave social media, you'll just magically spend less money.
Amelia Hruby:It was like the the only money hack I have to offer is get off of social media because you will see less stuff, so you will want less stuff, and you will buy less stuff. Like, and I I say that from firsthand personal experience because, you know, when I was on social media, when I was incredibly active, I would have said to you, social media doesn't impact what I buy. No way. Like, I'm a smart consumer. I only buy stuff I really want.
Amelia Hruby:And I don't think I was lying to myself, but I couldn't see it. I couldn't see the, like, subliminal levels that I was being influenced on, and I couldn't understand how, like, being in the midst of all of these aspirational images made me want things that it didn't occur to me to want otherwise. So in the book, I have this sort of funny list of stuff that I bought because I saw it on social media, and it convinced me that there was a problem I had that I didn't have before I saw it. So it includes things like so many candles, so many leggings. I own so many sets of Girlfriend Collective leggings because I saw them on social media.
Rachel Duncan:That too. I did that too.
Amelia Hruby:It also includes, let's say, like, this doormat that I have at my house that I thought was cute and saw on somebody's stuff. And, like, I still have it. That's a fine purchase, I suppose. But, like, I didn't need to spend $80 at Anthropologie that day. It had never occurred.
Amelia Hruby:I wasn't looking for a doormat. It just was cute, so I bought it. That, like, it's cute, so I bought it cycle came up over and over for me again. So I think kind of in my experience, two things would happen on social media. I would just see things that I liked, and I just buy them because it was so easy.
Amelia Hruby:There was no friction. It's like Yes. The Ariana Grande song. Like, I see it. I like it.
Amelia Hruby:I want it. I got it, or whatever. Like, seven rings. Or being on social media would convince me that I had these problems, or honestly, like these flaws that I could solve with a purchase. These flaws were things that never would have occurred to me before.
Amelia Hruby:Right? Like I'm trying to think of a good example. Oh, I
Rachel Duncan:have an example. Oh my god. Basically, gonna die if I don't get a weighted vest, everybody. Oh. I'm panicking about I have to have a weighted vest.
Rachel Duncan:I have to have it. And everyone's saying it's like pseudoscience and da da da. And there are these, like, quote doctors saying it. And I actually brought it up in a club call the other day, and we have one of our, members is a nutritionist. And she was like, honey, I got you.
Rachel Duncan:And she sent me all this great information. Like, there's no science behind it and, like, just, like, doing some workouts. Like, you know, and it was so good to get but I was in this tunnel of I kinda knew I was being duped, but it felt so real. And if you take care of your health, you wear a weighted vest. And, you know, I was like yeah.
Rachel Duncan:I was comparing products. I was all the way down the line. And then I'm so glad I paused. I brought it up with someone who knows this shit. And oh, yeah.
Rachel Duncan:And I didn't realize. I thought I was taking care of myself by buying that.
Amelia Hruby:This is why I own hypoallergenic pillows. I'm like, was told that was a problem. When in fact, actually, I just needed to wash my pillows more often. Just wash your pillows more often. And this is so human.
Amelia Hruby:Right? Like, maybe we have a problem, whether that be allergies or, you know, with my doormat. Like, my house isn't quite cute enough. Whatever the problem is. Yeah.
Amelia Hruby:And we're presented with this purchase that will just solve it for us. Yes. But so often, it doesn't. I mean, maybe in the doormat example, it just solved it for me. But if you bought the weighted vest, you still have to go on all the walks.
Amelia Hruby:You still gotta wear it around. You still have to do it. Right? Like, I bought the pillows, but they just didn't do anything. That was just like actually a false promise, I think, for me at least.
Amelia Hruby:So, you know, something that Jerome Lanier says in his book is that if we are using social media, we are consenting to hyper personalized advertising every second we are on the apps. Yeah. And so no wonder, especially at the end of the day, that we are not, quote, unquote, strong enough, heavy quotes there, to resist hyper personalized advertising based on exactly the problem you've been thinking about that day, providing exactly the solution that should resolve it for exactly the price that you can pay and after pay payments for the next ten years. Right? Like, it's all right there, and it feels so easeful after everything has been so hard.
Amelia Hruby:So, of course, we're just opting into that. It's much easier than going for the walks or washing the pillows. Right?
Rachel Duncan:Like, I
Amelia Hruby:would much rather press purchase than go put my pillows in the wash, and I still feel that way sometimes.
Rachel Duncan:And the real harm is then, oh, if you spend too much money, that is a you problem. Yes. That is the thing that absolutely enrages me. It's like, is not a you problem. Mhmm.
Rachel Duncan:You you're in a system that's designed to extract your money from you. This is and they're like, oh, well, it's your problem. You let us extract your money from you. What the fuck? Like Yeah.
Rachel Duncan:You know, are all these ads oh, frictionless pay. As if that were a problem that needed solving. No. We need frictionless saving. We need frictionless, like, ethical investing.
Rachel Duncan:That's where I want less friction. I know one asked for frictionless pay. I don't think don't I know. Was it really a problem for people to, like, take out their credit cards? Apparently, that was a problem that that now we really needed to tap our phones.
Rachel Duncan:Like, I just I just don't see these as problems that needed solving. We we need a little friction. We and I talk about that bringing in a little bit of natural friction because I'm sorry, guys. We gotta do it ourselves because the system won't bring that friction in. Like, it's not in their best interest to do that.
Rachel Duncan:And why I mean, in my world, personal finance, but I think also just becoming a more whole person is an act of rebellion, especially right now. It's such an act of rebellion to experience the wholeness that we all inherently have. Yeah. And we get it through, you know, through genuine connection. We get it through tending our attention garden, which I would love to talk about as as well.
Rachel Duncan:It's it is it's an act of there's a little bit of going against the grain. There's an experience of that, I think, at the beginning, the little record scratch. And one question I love asking my clients is, tell me about a time where you rebelled against something. And whatever that story, that that's the nugget we need to that's the seed Mhmm. Actually to get better with money.
Rachel Duncan:And I think some people, oh, I think I need to conform more. I need to be more mainstream. Actually it's actually the opposite because the conformity in the mainstream is gonna have you spend everything. I would love to ask you about your attention garden, something you kinda and the and I love you actually had a lovely little bookmark, five rules for gardening your attention, which I love this metaphor. I I also wanna say I have a, I've done a lesson about how to think about investing like gardening because the metaphors really, really work there too.
Rachel Duncan:So Yeah. Tell us about your attention garden, and I also love to know about your actual garden and how it's growing.
Amelia Hruby:Yes. Of course. Gladly. Yeah. So what I've found just broadly, whether we're talking about attention in social media or money or time, is that anywhere we are using an economic model, if we can shift to using an ecological model Yeah.
Amelia Hruby:It often is exactly like the healing we need. Because within economics, at this point, there's always scarcity embedded there. Like, economics in its original definition, I talk about this in the book, it wasn't about scarcity. But now, it is often defined as the study of how scarce resources are distributed. So I think that economics has been co opted by scarcity or colonized by scarcity, we could say.
Amelia Hruby:So if you're using an economic model, you're using a scarcity frames framework or mindset. If we move to an ecological model, we can move into an abundance framework or mindset, and that is healing that we all need. And so that's the same move I try to make in the book is to understand, like, okay. If attention is not an economic resource, what is it? It's expansive.
Amelia Hruby:It's generative, as I've already said. Like, how do we understand it ecologically? And to do that, I talked about gardening, which is, you know, the experience I have with nature and with trying to grow things and trying to shift my relationship to plants and the planet and myself, honestly, and other people. And so in the book, I offer five principles for gardening your attention, and they're really meant to pull us out of the mainstream, to invite us to notice where our attention is going, what's happening, and then to begin to shift it toward the things we actually want to tend to, the things that we care about, the things that we want more of in our life. And so I'll briefly just kind of mention the principles.
Amelia Hruby:The first principle of cultivating your attention garden is to explore what's already present. Because if you're gardening in the ground, in the earth with plants, you begin with the soil that's there. You begin with the weather where you live. You begin with the current conditions. You have to notice.
Amelia Hruby:And I think every transformative practice begins with noticing. So if we're gardening, we're noticing. That's
Rachel Duncan:our
Amelia Hruby:first step. And, like, when you think about that with your attention, it's noticing what do you pay attention to? What do you not pay attention to? What do you wish you paid attention to? Where does that wish come from?
Amelia Hruby:How does your attention feel? How's your relationship to time feel? All of these things come up when we start to notice. Once we've noticed, we can begin to make changes. So principle two is start small because, like, for all the reasons we talked about around, you know, my relationship to restriction, my relationship to rules, like, I'm not here to offer anybody a detox strategy for their attention.
Amelia Hruby:Like, that's not how I roll. So I'm not interested in telling you, like, throw your phone into the sea or, like, get rid of the Internet in your house. Right? Like, I'm not gonna say that because it that's not how change works for me. It's not all in one go.
Amelia Hruby:It's these small shifts that you make because you want to make them. So once you've noticed where your attention is going, with start small, I invite people to, like, carve out a pocket of attention that feels really good. And it may take some time to find it. Like, for me, and it sounds like for you, Rachel, like, reading was this for me. I love to read.
Rachel Duncan:It's like something I already know I love. Like, I have a sense I love it. Another one that comes up a lot for clients is, like, hobbies they loved as a kid. Mhmm. That often comes up as part of their healing process.
Rachel Duncan:Like, I love to color. I love to do collage. I love playing piano. And, like, it's often an old love. Like, I'd love to bring that up, and that feels starting small because you've had some experience with it.
Rachel Duncan:And I wanted this made me laugh because you talk about radishes or your start small as well. And my dad was a was a home gardener as well, and and he'd say, always I plant radishes because it makes me feel like a
Amelia Hruby:good gardener. Yes. They always grow, and they grow first. And so you're like, I already won the garden before we even really got started.
Rachel Duncan:I have food to eat. It doesn't matter if you don't like radishes. There are radishes.
Amelia Hruby:Yes. 100%. But I always start with radishes because they're so easy to grow from seed. They grow even when it's cold and weird and dreary outside. Yes.
Amelia Hruby:I that is always my start small in the garden. Cool.
Rachel Duncan:Your your ego boost. Like, you're getting there.
Amelia Hruby:Exactly. And I try to emphasize this in the book too is, like, some people I think well, I'm sure people do this with money habits, but something I see with, like, social media habits is instead of starting with something that feels good, we start with something that we perceive as, like, our biggest bad habit. We go right to the hurt, right to the hardest thing. And I personally have found that just always, like, sets me up to abandon any attempt to change. I'm like, oh, it's gonna be really hard, and I'm not gonna like it.
Amelia Hruby:I'm probably not gonna stick with it. That that that's not gonna be the first thing I stick with.
Rachel Duncan:Yeah.
Amelia Hruby:And so same with attention. Like, go towards something you enjoy and find some time for that. And I love that you're saying, like, people surface these hobbies from their childhood. I think that happens because when we're younger, we have a different relationship to time, which means we have a different relationship to attention, so we can bring that back into the present. Right?
Amelia Hruby:Because when you're a child, your time has not yet been put on the factory clock the way it has for all of us who do wage labor. And so Yeah. That's where we can begin to, like, reclaim our attention by reclaiming some some time. But, like, start small. Don't start with the expectation of, like, I'm only gonna read books for seventy two hours a week.
Amelia Hruby:Like, start with, like, I'm gonna read a book for seven minutes this week. And then from there, there are a few other principles. Principle three is be intentional, then let go of control. You know, I'm again, I'm sure you say this with money, but, like, trying to control it is often the fastest way for me to step into a perfectionist mindset, step into an all or nothing way of thinking or acting. But also with gardening, like, can't control the weather.
Amelia Hruby:Like, you can't control the conditions. You can't control if the bugs show up. So we can set aside the time to nurture our attention, but also things are out of our control, and it may not happen that day or that week or that year. So just inviting in more gentleness. Principle four is embrace biodiversity and seasonal rhythms.
Amelia Hruby:So often when people leave social media, it's something that took up a lot of their time, and they sometimes look to me and they're like, what do I do now, Amelia? And I'm like, literally anything you want. But also, you know, maybe try doing a bunch of different things because social media, I like to refer to it as like a monocrop for our attention. It's like one place we go, and we may see different stuff there, but, like, they all take the same format. Right?
Amelia Hruby:So memefied or all posts in the same size. So, like, it's very much just, like, training our attention to sort of get sucked into this one mode. And if you're not looking at social media, like, I I I probably wouldn't say, like, take all of that time and just go read really intense nonfiction books with it. Like, go do a bunch of different stuff. Give yourself that pleasure.
Rachel Duncan:It's like you could stare at a wall. You could go on a walk. You could play video games. Like, there are things you could replace that don't, like, look perfect.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. And just embracing multiplicity and diversity in that. So instead of just being like, I'm gonna swap this one thing for this one thing, swapping this one thing for
Rachel Duncan:Yeah.
Amelia Hruby:A bunch of things, and experimenting, and seeing what you like, and letting yourself, you know, go in new directions. And then principle five is just or just it it's actually a big one. It's to linger with what's regenerative. So Yeah. In gardening, something that hopefully you're fortunate enough to learn is that there are plants that come back year after year.
Amelia Hruby:And in the book, I share this anecdote of planting iris bulbs with my dad when I was younger, and I hated it. I was like, these are ugly. They go in the ground. Nothing's happening. It's so much work.
Amelia Hruby:Doing yard work was like the bane of my 12 year old existence. Mhmm. And so I was like delighted when the bulbs became flowers. And then I was, like, downright shocked when those flowers came back year after year, and we didn't have to do anything else. And I think that gardening our attention can work this way as well because, you know, what we know about the brain and neural pathways is, like, we can build grooves that make it easier for us to pay attention to the things we want to pay attention to.
Amelia Hruby:It is a lot of work to get your brain out of the groove of picking up your phone and scrolling.
Rachel Duncan:Totally. I mean, there's grief there. There's motor. There's like, oh, my thumb just goes there. Like, there's so much we have adjusted to with a high reward experience.
Rachel Duncan:So, yeah, when it comes to spending and spending money, impulse spending, and social media, there's the I was like, we're talking about high reward activity here. So it the this this switch is gonna be hard. Like, it's not gonna be easy, but it won't always be hard. Exactly. There's a grief.
Rachel Duncan:There's a transition, and every no needs a yes. That's that's my mantra. Every no needs a yes. We actually don't remove anything. If we think about human behavior, there's no negative behavior.
Rachel Duncan:You're always doing something. Mhmm. So it's all actually about what you're saying yes to, not about what you're saying no to. And then you don't I think that shifts the perspective of grief, loss, restriction. It's like, no.
Rachel Duncan:I'm actually saying yes to these things, and it take it does take some time. But your thumb won't it it will it's fine. You won't grab for your phone. You won't hear it ringing when it's not ringing. It it but it does it takes some time, and I think that's very real that that's hard.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. Absolutely. But just like you carved out that groove that, like, turned to your phone, like, you can create other neural pathways. Yes. You can build in new modes and new, you know, sort of vessels for your attention.
Amelia Hruby:And they can, over time, become as easy or innate or even natural to you as picking up your phone has become. Right? You can pick up a book just the same way you pick up your phone if you let yourself shift your patterns or your habits or your desires. And again, that's why I think working toward pleasure is what we wanna do here. It's much easier to change if you want the thing you're working toward than if you're trying to, like, discipline yourself into it.
Amelia Hruby:This is true with money. This is true with food. This is true with social media. This is true with movement. This is true with, like, all of the different threads we've been weaving in here today.
Amelia Hruby:Like, identifying something else that you want, in my experience, is the fastest way to actually make a change. Like, picking a different yes is the path toward making these shifts. So instead of centering a new no or going from yes to no.
Rachel Duncan:I could not agree more. I mean, like, maybe we could end with I'd love to know what what is literally growing in your garden? I mean, we're in harvest season right now. And what are you harvesting, literally?
Amelia Hruby:Yes. Yes. Let me bring it back to the the actual physical material garden you asked me about earlier. Yeah. So I live in Nebraska, and I have some gorgeous raised beds in my backyard.
Amelia Hruby:I live in Lincoln, so I live in a city. I'm not, like, on a farm somewhere. I as we record this, I'm looking out my window at this massive indeterminate cherry tomato plant that we have grown that is so big because I failed to prune it. And right now, it has a lot of green tomatoes on it. So I'm looking at dozens and dozens and dozens of tiny green tomatoes that I'm going to pick and then ripen in the dark in my basement over the course of fall.
Amelia Hruby:We also have green beans going. We have parsley going. And I think I have just picked my final green pepper and potatoes, which are two other crops I tried out this year. So that's the garden right now.
Rachel Duncan:Ugh. Homegrown potatoes. You never think a potato has flavor until you eat one that's homegrown.
Amelia Hruby:It's so true. And I truly like, that was an experiment for me this year. I just got a bunch of grow bags, and I cut apart potatoes that had, like, grown eyes in my cabinets, and I put them in, and I watered them, and they did regrow. I think I can fine tune some things for more success. But it was a fun way of, you know, sort of making something from not nothing, but, like, a discarded vegetable in my pantry, turning it into many, many more edible vegetables.
Amelia Hruby:So, also, again, a lesson in regeneration and abundance. Yes.
Rachel Duncan:As you said, I look out my window, and we we planted a few sunflowers last year, and I had let them go to seed. And guess what? I got a front yard full of sunflowers that I didn't plant, and they're so fun. I feel like we are solely supporting the bee and wasp population of the neighborhood, and I I love it. And it was I didn't do anything, but it's been so fun and a little subversive.
Amelia Hruby:I love it. I love a sunflower. They are subversive. They are so tall. They are doing their thing, and they make, like, wonderful seeds you can eat.
Amelia Hruby:At least some varieties do.
Rachel Duncan:So So Melia's book is coming out this fall, and you just go to so easy to remember. Your attention is sacred.com, and it's one of my best reads. And I I I mean, get out your highlighter. I think I underlined every other line in this book. So I think I would love it even if I didn't know you, but because I know you.
Rachel Duncan:I loved it even more, and I loved hearing your voice read it to me. And I think there is gonna be an audiobook
Amelia Hruby:as well. Is that right? Yes. Yes. There will be an audiobook available.
Amelia Hruby:You'll have to buy it from my website. You can't get it from Audible or anything.
Rachel Duncan:Gotcha. Alright. So, everyone, this is the Stalking Stuffer of the year. Emilia, thank you so much for being on the podcast, and, I look forward to all of the the content and guidance that you give all
Amelia Hruby:of us navigating navigating this world. Thank you so much, Rachel. I'm so grateful to be in conversation with you and to also receive your money healing wisdom always. So thank you. Thanks, Amelia.
Amelia Hruby:Thanks for listening to off the grid. Don't forget to grab your free living social media toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a softer sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Caitlin Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by Natalia Studio. I'm your host, Emilia Ruby, and until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the interweb.
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