Voices for Voices®

Refreshing: The Anxious Cycle of Wanting Newness | Episode 192

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 192

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Refreshing: The Anxious Cycle of Wanting Newness | Episode 192

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Are you constantly hitting refresh on your social media or email? You’re not alone. In this episode, we explore the multifaceted nature of 'refreshing'—from the compulsive act of checking apps to the seasonal changes in retail. We discuss how refreshing often stems from anxiety and the ever-present fear of missing out. You’ll hear insights into the psychological impact of these habits and how they relate to our daily routines and well-being.

Join us as we dive into the reasons behind our need for constant updates, including how it affects our productivity and our relationships with technology. We’ll reflect on everyday situations where refreshing becomes a significant part of our lives, from job hunting to our latest travel plans. Through this enlightening discussion, discover ways to mitigate anxiety and manage your refreshing habits.

Engage with us by subscribing, commenting, and sharing your thoughts on refreshing! Let’s take a step towards being more mindful digital citizens.

This episode dives deep into the concept of refreshing in our digital and physical lives. We explore what drives our need to keep checking our devices and how it affects our mental health and productivity.

• Discussion on the frequency of refreshing apps and devices
• Examination of FOMO and its impact on our behaviors
• Insights on seasonal product refreshes in retail
• Exploring refresh habits in job searching and employment
• Understanding refreshing in daily life, such as traveling
• Reflection on the psychological effects of keeping updated

Check out the career section at Voices for Voices® on voicesforvoices.org for helpful tools and resources.

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Justin Alan Hayes:

the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, justin Allen Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices. If you can give us a big thumbs up like, share, comment, subscribe, we'd greatly appreciate that. Thank you for being with us for over 190 episodes. At this point, we couldn't do this without you. Thank you for the love and support you have and continue to give in whichever way you're able to, monetarily or non-monetarily. We appreciate it all, thank you.

Justin Alan Hayes:

The refresh Refresh is a term that I became more aware of, acknowledged, it being the word refresh. We started down the path of personal computers, netbooks, ipads, smart devices. You know the many computers that we, you know we all carry for the most part with us, that we keep to us on a daily basis. I mean everything, up and including going to the restroom. So that's, that's how attached we have become to these devices. So the refresh what is it? And it spans across not just the, the digital footprint of digital devices. It spans also across professions and what that means. As far as the term refresh, I bet if someone was to come to your house, where you reside, where I reside, and counted each of the times we have refreshed something, we would be very, very surprised, and I'm talking on the level of the amount of time we spend on our devices. One of the settings we're able to look at, or of the aspects, the characteristics, is how long, how much screen time we have had on our device devices over the course of a day, and we can change that, that time frame, and take a. Take a look at that and if you're, like me, very surprised when you see that number, we spend a lot of time on our devices. That's just the name of the game. As far as how refresh ties into the digital footprint, I'll ask the question how many times have you refreshed your web browser or your Facebook, instagram or Facebook Instagram TikTok bank account? Once you're logged in, how many times do we refresh? And what that basically means is you got the little half circle with the arrow. You press that button or click on it and the webpage the app on apps mostly it's you hold it down, so you press on the screen and then drag it down, and then you'll see sometimes this type of a symbol that comes up, meaning that you want to see if there's new content, new TikTok videos, updates to your bank account, updates to a concert ticket website like Live Nation or Ticketmaster, and so we refresh on our devices, on our computers, anything with a screen. For the most part, we refresh.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Now I'm not able to refresh on this particular camera while it's filming, otherwise I probably would. I'd find a reason why, and not all reasons are bad ones. Not all reasons are going to get anybody in trouble. Not all reasons are going to get anybody in trouble. What it actually is, and what I think it's linked to, is that FOMO, f-o-m-o, fomo, the fear of missing out. Well, if I don't refresh TikTok right now, I'm going to miss out. I'm not going to get the most current picture of how many views, how many likes, how many comments, how many replies.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Email the same thing. You apply for a job or anything that really you're looking for, so you're looking for a reply from something. Maybe you're traveling and you just booked a train or a plane, or you are going to rent a car, and so you may go to your email on whatever device you're near, and maybe you're checking and maybe you're refreshing on multiple devices at once. I've done it before. I think we're talking about a plane ride making sure that the dates are right, making sure that the times of the flights, the flight numbers, how many connections. You know the financial side of things, the cost, if that lines up with what you or I saw before, we made the purchase of a particular plane ride for a trip, and so that right, that's not a bad thing. We and I'll speak for myself I like those confirmation emails, double check everything and then I like to star them or put them in a digital folder. So when I want to look at that again, I'm able to and what's happened sometimes is, with airfares flying I've noticed that, maybe you've noticed it, maybe somebody you know has noticed it where there is an email that comes through that may modify one or more of your flights, and so that's kind of important right to make sure that we're getting that correct information.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Maybe the the modified time isn't gonna work for your schedule or my schedule, and so then it's up to the airline to give us some options. Are we able to straight up cancel that flight because that modification and flight time is just not going to work, and so you want you want the ability to go in and rebook that particular trip, or maybe there's a modification where you're able to pull up and I'm speaking from experience where we pull up all the other flights that are around that time or those times and we see if that might work better. Is the layover longer or shorter? Is there? You know, based off of the layover, is that going to? If it's a shorter layover, then we're probably going to get to our destination a little bit later than if we had a shorter layover. So those are all things to take into account, and so the refresh is pretty important.

Justin Alan Hayes:

When we go from the email and I'm speaking from experience I received an email, I opened it. I see there's modification of flight time. If we have any traveling parties with us, we check with them to see what they think, get their input and then we make a decision on what we'll do. And so we'll usually, depending on what device we have. We might pull out our digital device, we might pull out an iPad, we might pull out our personal computer, our laptop or whatever device we have near us, and for me, I like to use the device that I am logged into or will give me a quick turnaround time so that I can go right into as quickly as possible from that email to the app. So if you're flying on United or American or Delta, frontier, whatever airline that is, then you want to go in and you want to remedy that situation. If there's no change that you accept or I accept that well, it's going to be a little inconvenient having a different time. And what I found, again on average so I'm not speaking on the whole, but on average I'm not speaking on the whole but on average the changes are usually very short, maybe 5, 10, 15 minutes.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Now, where that comes to be important is when you have a connection. If you have a shorter connection, is that time where you're going to arrive, into where you're going to have that connection, you're gonna have that connection? Is that gonna cut that down? And if you're talking about international travel, you want to have more time than not, because international thing, things just happen where we, where we are spending more time at that connection than we had planned. If we have an hour and a half connection, we may ahead of time thought oh well, an hour and a half, we'll go grab a bite to eat, we'll use the restroom and we'll go to our gate and wait to board. Well, if our plane arrives 10 minutes late and that change and modification in that flight schedule is leaving in a shorter amount of time, we may not be able to go grab something to eat. We may only be able to use the restroom and I've been in those situations and that's just the case. Situations, and that's just the case. Or we may be able to, instead of purchasing our food, and be able to sit down and relax a little bit and eat. We may be taking that food onto the plane.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So you got whatever bags you know backpack, purse, carryons and then you got, you know, usually a bag with food and maybe a bottle of water, a bottle of Gatorade, iced tea, what would have you? And so those are again things out of our control. So we're going to come back and talk about what that has anything to do with refreshing, has anything to do with refreshing. So refreshing in that case would be refreshing once. Once we would make that change to our airfare, we would be one of refreshing that email, or I would. I'd be refreshing until I got that confirmation, if I did modify my flight reservation after that notification of the modification that the airline was sending out, or if I changed anything. Maybe I want to prepay for a bag this time. So make sure that that shows up. You get the receipt, get that confirmation, so we're refreshing. We are refreshing again.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Emails Like right now, like I okay, did I get any emails that I was expecting? Maybe I reached out to somebody and was hoping to get a response before the weekend, and so we're refreshing and refreshing. How many times do we do that? If I were to estimate and this is purely an estimation, there may be some facts out there Hundreds or thousands of times we're refreshing.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I'll give you another example, work-related, when we want to maybe put out an additional podcast or TV show outside of our normal Wednesday schedule. We want to make sure that our TV show and podcast is showing, available on all the platforms that they show up on, and at the current time, give you a real-time example out of all the platforms I was hoping to be able to put out notifications, social media wise, about an additional episode this week that we we felt was important to have out there, and so there are three platforms that I am waiting for the episode to pop up. All the other platforms it's already popped up, it's live, it's there, tested it, and so you better believe I'm on my computer, my iPad, refreshing every 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes, and sometimes we have a schedule in our mind and sometimes we're just thinking, oh well, maybe I'll check this platform, maybe I'll check GoodPods, maybe I'll check Podcast Index, maybe I'll check iHeart Odyssey Spotify index, maybe I'll check iHeart Odyssey Spotify. And that's how we're able to give you all the direct links for each episode when we put out our social media notifications, promotions for the episodes. And so I'm refreshing and refreshing and have refreshed, and once we're done filming I'll go and refresh until they show up, until I'm able to go ahead and get that live link to that platform, so that I have, and we have as an organization, all the links for all the platforms, that day in and day out that our TV show and podcast, uh, appears on Uh, and so I can tell you I've done that probably tens of times on each, each platform because, as I'm going through and Odyssey's updated, I can go ahead and get that link and put that into our notification kind of our, our draft notification that we put together first to double-check everything though that it works, before we go ahead and schedule the social media post. Yeah, so I've been doing it a lot today, so that's a professional, real-time reason of a refresh, and so that term when I was growing up I didn't know what a refresh was.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I may have heard refreshment like on a hot day, we want a refreshment. So whether that's a bottle of water, a Gatorade iced tea, we want to be refreshed. It's a warm day, we want to have a refreshment, we want to cool down, or on a cold day, we want to warm up, and so we would be refreshed, feel a little bit better once we would consume said refreshment. So that's a professional experience of a refresh. And that is really for any retail location brick and mortar where new products are coming out and seasons change and seasons change. So for you know we talk about, you know textiles, you know shirts, pants, skirts, dresses, socks, the like. From season to season those items are usually refreshed and so going into spring, there's going to be a better selection and then that retailer's eyes for what us as consumers, what we may want, versus a winter selection. So in general, winter it's going to be cooler, we're going to probably have a little bit more long sleeves and pants versus spring and summer, where we still may have some long sleeves and pants, but we're going to mix in a little bit more the shorts and the dresses and the like, and so what that is Is a refresh.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So we're going to refresh our, our selection of clothing, our selection of carpet. Maybe there's certain carpet colors that sell better. You know, historical data would show you. You know, color one versus color two. Maybe color two sells better and the spring and summer area versus one. So either the store could pull the first one off of the, the, the sales floor, or they could make it less noticeable. So if you're looking at swatches, instead of it being maybe one of the top few swatches, it may be towards the back. So those are ways that an organization, a retailer, could look at the refresh.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And so we're talking anything from carpet to clothing. In that respect, same thing for digital Amazon, digital shopping, whether it's Amazon or whether it's the particular Best Buy. The same thing would be occurring but on a digital level. So if a product sells better in a certain season, if we're not in that certain season, that product would go to maybe the second or third or fourth or fifth page, because, as you and I know, we very rarely scroll through all the pages. So if we're looking for a GoPro, there may be pages and pages and pages of the GoPro models as well as the accessories.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And so again going back to that data, and so we have to have the data. That's why having databases and the like is very important. It's not the sexiest part of the job sorting through data but that data is going to help us make more informed, better decision making, shorten the amount of time from someone like you or I browsing the GoPros on a particular website to making that purchase, putting that particular product or accessory in our virtual shopping bag, and so those are ways that we work with refreshing, refreshment, and so, whether we're refreshing as an organization, a store, whether that is a brick and mortar or whether that is a virtual storefront, season to season, maybe we've run out of a particular product and we're not going to be able to because of supply chain disruptions, and so, right, we're coming in with all these terms and we talk about with education and careers and employment, and it's very important for us at Voices for Voices to be sharing that, because we do have a career employment section to our organization. And you go to our Voices for Voorg org, you go to the what we do and you you look for that career tab, click on that. That'll take you to the best employment searching, applying, working on resume tools that you will find, better than Monster, better than Indeed. These are used by highly respected associations. Let me give you a reference American Marketing Association. That was an organization I was affiliated, was president for two years of, and so I was able to make that reconnection when my time was up there and when we kicked off Voices for Voices, because we want to be that full service organization and we are that full service organization. So what are you doing? Why haven't you checked that out? Please check it out, share, let everybody know, sign up, put a job alert together.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So that's where we talk about the refresh today, on the professional side as well as on the digital side. Same thing have you said for checking our mailbox. Outside the actual physical mailbox, we may be going out waiting for a particular correspondence of some sort, and so we may. The refresh would look like me walking out to the mailbox, opening the mailbox, looking to see if there's mail. If there is, collect it, close the mailbox and look through to see if that correspondence I was expecting actually came. If the mail was not there, it could mean we just don't have, we didn't receive any mail today, and that can happen, and so we may, depending on the time of the day that we go out. If we're going out in the morning, maybe we'll go out and check another time in the afternoon, the afternoon, still not that we may go out in the evening. So that's a form of refreshing where we're checking the mail. That's the physical checking of the mail, this is the digital checking of the mail.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So we refresh a lot and that makes us makes me and us more anxious, because if we haven't received what we thought we were going to receive, when we refresh, when I refresh the platform, hoping that the the next episode that we wanted to send notifications, social media wise out, it's not there, well, I'm gonna continue to refresh until it is there. And so I'm anxious because the episode is not on that platform quite yet, and so I'm gonna refresh and refresh and refresh. That's also called ruminating, which I didn't know until I hit my rock bottom mental health wise, where we ruminate, we think and we do the same thing over and over again, and that can also be called insanity to an extent. We do the same thing over and over, expecting a different answer. That's one way to look at things. But when I'm looking at the podcast and TV show side of things. I know that the show is going to be uploaded. The Voices for Voices TV show and podcast is going to be updated and uploaded. Why? Because over 90% of the platforms have already uploaded that to their site, to their particular app, so I know it's coming.

Justin Alan Hayes:

There may be other things where I'm waiting for mail of a check from the lottery for millions and maybe billions of dollars. Well, that's probably gonna be insanity Doing the same thing, checking and checking and checking and checking, checking, thinking we're gonna get this check and we didn't win anything. We didn't scratch off and have a winner. We didn't get the numbers, the Powerball, we didn't get any of that. That's just a figment of our imagination that we are thinking that we're going to get that in the mail. So that's insanity.

Justin Alan Hayes:

The podcast and TV show side that's not insanity. It is insanity a little bit because it's adding a little bit of anxiousness and nervousness to my mind, because I can't do the next thing until this thing is done. I can't go to step three until step two is done. I can't go to step two until step one is done and that's as that goes, so refreshing. That can cause us anxiousness, nervousness, and I would just throw it out there Think about how many times you refresh emails, refresh social media apps, mail.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Think about that because we're spending a heck of a lot of time doing that when we could be doing other, more productive things. And I speak for myself, first, knowing that I just have to do better. And I speak for myself first knowing that I just have to do better. And when that thing? When that email, when that podcast is uploaded, it's going to be uploaded. When it's uploaded, that's just the way it is. So refreshing, the refresh, professional as well as individual. We refresh a lot. So that's a term that we've been pretty, pretty familiar with and continue to be familiar with, because we keep refreshing, refreshing and refreshing. So until that option goes away, we're gonna continue to refresh.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So thanks for joining us on this episode. The voices for voices TV show and podcast. Please give us a big thumbs up like share, comment, let everybody know. Check out the career side of Voices for Voices on voicesforvoicesorg. Go to the what we Do and that drop down will pop up career. Click on that. I'll get you everything you need. Thank you for the love and support you've given us and until next time, please be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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