The Dad Who's Always There But Never Really Present #699

Yesterday morning I was on a walk with my son Freddie, a moment that's supposed to be just us, and I was scrolling Instagram.

Then I looked up. And there he was.

That moment hit me harder than anything I've read about screen time or presence. Because I know better. And I was still doing it.

In this episode I share the 3-step process I'm now using to actually put the phone down and be present with my family, not just physically there, but mentally there too.

You'll learn:
- Why self-control alone will never fix a phone addiction (and what does)
- How to decide which moments in your day actually matter, and protect them
- The "Brick" — the tool I use to physically lock my phone during family time
- What your phone is actually replacing (and why attaching pain to this changes everything)
- The circle exercise - what are you missing while you're scrolling?
- Why a great life is built one small moment at a time, and how many you're giving away

I also share the Instagram post that stopped me in my tracks, why I've fallen off the rails with this myself, and why I'm going back to the process that works.

Ready to stop putting life on hold and start locking in what matters? Apply to join the Locked-In Life group cohort → https://wkf.ms/4foUmo1

Transcript

The Moment The Phone Won

Lachlan Stuart 0:00

Yesterday morning, a truth slapped me in the face. I was on my usual morning walk with my son Freddie, and I'm scrolling Instagram, just reading carousel, and I stumbled across this post of a man who had lost his 17-month-old son. And I looked up for a moment, and there in front of me is my son. And on a moment which is supposed to be just us connecting and hanging out and creating memories, I realized I was getting sucked into the vortex of these pesky bloody phones. Now, if you ever feel like you're physically with your son or with any members of your family or even friends, but you're mentally thinking about work where you've been sucked into text messages and emails, stick with me. Because in this episode, I want to share with you a process that I've started implementing so that I make sure that more of those moments don't happen where I catch myself living through my phone rather than being present with the people that matter most and the experiences that matter most. Now, this is based off of one of the modules of helping men get completely home. Because if you're a business owner or just a person who's got a bit of ambition, and you know, there are people who don't have ambition who is, and not that that's a bad thing, but who are mentally elsewhere. And the getting help, helping people get properly home is about giving you a process so that when you walk in the door or you walk into an environment where you want to be, you're actually there. Your head's not, as I said, in the emails or looking elsewhere. So that experience yesterday

What Properly Home Means

Lachlan Stuart 1:30

really worked me out. And I've been developing the locked-in life prof process for about two months now, having worked with men over the last 12 years. And if you're stumbling across my YouTube or podcast for the first time, my name is Lachlan Stewart, and I am a men's performance coach. And I've been working in the space literally for 12 years, worked with over 1200 blokes across workshops and one-on-one coaching. And having seen common challenges come through from men losing their marriages to not having good social networks, not having good mates, and not having hobbies or their health's gone, I've really boiled it down to this process that I believe is the key to helping men get back on track. And so this is what where you're gonna get value. And this is just one of those small steps that tie into a bigger, a bigger part. So if you're ever curious to find out more, make sure you go through my YouTube channel or just drop something in the comment and I'll I'll send you a link. Now, here's what I had to think about first. I'm gonna share my screen and forgive me. Forgive me for my handwriting here, but I'm just doing this on the fly so that you guys can get some visuals because I'm a visual kind of dude. Now, we want to think about this, like we always want to have an outcome in anything that we're doing, and as I said, the outcome that I want to give you guys is a framework that can help you put your

Step One Pick Moments That Matter

Lachlan Stuart 2:50

phone down and start being where you are rather than being sucked into the emails. Okay, so let's just call it be present. And I just want to show I'm writing like this, hence why it's uh it's a bit of a struggle for me to write. Now, the first thing that we want to look at is we need to decide which moments matter. Now, it would be so insane for us to go, well, if you're gonna just remove your phone, you should be able to remove the whole day and be strict as as soon as possible. You and I know that is not possible because we're so addicted to these things. And an easy way to start is to start thinking about which moments matter. So if we look at, let me just get a new slide here, and then we'll come back to that one. But if we think about just putting a list down, what are the moments that really matter in your day that if you could get back three to five moments in a day, what would it be? So for me, I'm gonna say breakfast. So breakfast with Freddy and my wife, so with family. The other one is definitely morning walks, a huge one for me. Another one is the first two hours when I get home from work, okay? And I'll just give you a fourth one. But the fourth one is when I get into bed at night with my wife, because I found myself even last night having reflected on writing this video and thinking about what I wanted to talk today, that when I'm in bed of late, I have been scrolling my phone. I'm thinking to myself, this is the perfect opportunity for me to catch up on social media or other things, but then it clicked, and I was like, Well, it's actually also the perfect opportunity for me to catch up with my bloody wife. So that was a really important thing. So as you're writing along, or if you're watching however it is, just start writing down three to five things, and what we're doing there is we're starting to put in place which moments matter, okay? Because now we're starting to get clear on okay, well, the mornings, the walks, walking the first front door, and also moments in bed. You can then start holding yourself accountable to it, and you can be be mindful, okay. So once we get clear on those moments, we now have to implement and act on that, right? So it doesn't need to be complicated. So let's bring us over to point two, which is

Step Two Add Friction To Scrolling

Lachlan Stuart 5:05

don't rely on self-control. Dude, I'm the worst at this. I have this device. Actually, I'm gonna get it. Bear with me. You can still hear me talking, but I have this device here, it sits on the fridge. You can see it's called a brick. Literally, all you do is scan your phone on it. There's an app, and it locks all the apps that you choose. And the cool thing is, is you don't have to do it manually, you can set up some stuff. Here's where I got beaten on it. I had that going literally for the first five months of the year. Even all Sundays were blocked. I was having the only time I could access social media in the morning was 9 till 10am. So that meant the mornings were completely blocked out, uh, and unavailable on my phone. I had that hour window to do my social media stuff for work, and then it was locked again all day so I could actually focus on work. Then there came a point where I was traveling a bit and I unlocked it because I was like, oh, yeah, got a bit of time. I convinced myself that it was fine, and obviously I've fallen off the rails, gone bonkers. So that is now being reintroduced, but it's just a way for me not to have to rely on self-control. There's gonna be other things that you can do. Some people have those lock boxes. Once again, I've tried that. Some of you may leave it in the car or leave it in the drawer at the front front desk or leave it beside your bed, whatever it is. But you just want to make sure that you don't rely on self-control because I know if I can see this, or if it's in my hand or it's in my pocket, I'm gonna be tempted. Okay, and we just want to remove the temptation, we want to put friction in the way of being able to use our phone. So initially, when I started bricking my phone, you you open the app and it just says, you know, if you use screen time on your phone, it will say, Oh, just put in your pin and you can have it open for a minute, 15 minutes, or the rest of the day. And so there's an easy get around, it's not really that big or that much friction. With the brick, you gotta go find the actual device, and I leave this on my fridge. So if I'm out, I'm screwed. But you gotta find a way, and then it will say, Are you sure? You've got to open up the app, you've got to put in the pin, you gotta scan the device, and then click okay. So there's a lot more steps, which then eventually you like, do I really want to do this? Probably not. So that's a way to start thinking about not relying on self-control. So on that same page, let's just put another column down there. I don't need to create a worksheet for you guys, you guys are more than capable of doing this. But let's just put a couple of ideas down there. I even had a client who used Clawed, Claude code to create app or something where it blocks his phone, sort of like a brick, which I thought was very clever. So I'm a bit sick too. So sorry for those disgusting noises. But you could brick your phone, you could leave phone in the car, bedside drawer, whatever

Step Three Name What You Lose

Lachlan Stuart 7:55

you want to do, you you come up with a plan, but just think about out of sight, out of mind for that process there, okay? Because if you manage to do that, that's a shocking, shocking shape, but let's just move all of this over. If you manage to do that, then you're gonna have stage two done. Now, stage two, so we decide what moments matter to start there. We then move on to don't rely on self-control. Then thirdly, we need to understand what your phone is replacing. Now, why is this so important? It's important because when you understand what it's replacing, you start to attach pain to why you want to implement these changes because it is very easy to just go, I'm I'm pretty good with things going the way they're going. And to be honest, if it happens once or twice or three times, maybe it isn't a big deal. But if it continues month after month after month, what do you think is going to happen to the relationships? What experiences do you think you're gonna miss? Are you gonna miss? And when you look back, and I was talking to a buddy about this this morning, I was like, mate, because we'll, you know, he's had a huge year in business, and I was asking him why he does what he does and where he wants to get to, and he asked me the same thing. My response was, I just want to have picture a scrapbook. When I'm 19, I can look back and I have provided for my family, but I've created some wicked experiences. And he said, Man, I I want the same thing. And I said, Well, pretty much to this point, we need to decide what moments matter and we need to do everything that we can to be there for them. And that's different for all of us, but once you get clear on that, then we can start building a plan to prioritize areas. So then we obviously got to not rely on the self-control and put things in place. I treat myself like an idiot because I know that that phone grabs me all the time. Now, if we can attach some pain to it, which is helping us get clear on what we're missing out on, we can understand what our phone is replacing, which brings me to this circle right here. Okay, so if we look at this here, the circle is our phone, and that's just picture we're bringing it right up to our face every time we reach for it on the outside of the circle. So if you just draw a circle on your page, I want you to write down all the things you're missing out on. So I and maybe take after this or or pause this video now, take three to five or three minutes. Okay, I'm just gonna write down the things that I miss out on with Freddy that are gonna give me pain point. So morning walk. So the things that I wrote here, and this is just a couple, but in three minutes you might get a few. But for me, like a the first one, milestones with Fred. It could be could miss his first step. So I you know, I saw him roll over laughing, all of those things because I'm sitting here and my phone's grabbing my attention, and then Amy might say, Lockie, did you see that? And I'm like, No, I didn't. And you don't get a replay on life, so it's important to think about that. The other one is like my morning walks with Fred, such an important and fun moment. But if I'm glued to my phone because I think I'm missing out on something here, the truth is I'm missing out on something out there. Daily catch-ups with Amy. Like, we all have busy lives, I know you do as well. And it's those micro moments where you can actually connect, and instead of having the phone there, you just checking up on all the other things. It's like you have to put the effort in to catch up. It's a daily deposit, it's an investment in your relationship and marriage. It's tough. I get it. We all want downtime, but by saying yes to more things doesn't mean you're gonna get more time. We have to make the time count that we already have, you know, time to read, helping with dinner, like just being present and investing in the family. Because if I want to be wherever I am, I got to make sure that this little sucker is not stealing me. So, does that make sense? So, to summarize, keeping this super simple, I saw that moment, uh, I was reading that post yesterday, and it is something that I struggle with, I know a lot of men struggle with, is being properly home. And one of the steps of that, and the things that we help you improve upon as I'm improving upon it myself, is being able to put your phone down, remove it all out of life so you can be where you are. And the three things that we look on, look at there is helping you decide what moments matter

Recap And Next Steps

Lachlan Stuart 12:05

so that way you can put some boundaries around that and have conversations. The second thing is don't rely on self-control. So, what could you put in place and where could you put it so that you have it out of sight, out of mind, and you can once again be with your family or be created in those moments. And finally, understand what the phone is replacing. We want to attach some pain to using this because if you don't think about the consequences and the long-term consequences, it's not gonna be bad enough that you're gonna put your phone down. You're just gonna keep picking it up, not really thinking about it in the moment. You're gonna be like, oh, I missed one small moment. But a great life is built one small moment at a time. And if you're missing those moments, your life, you're probably gonna look back and go, I didn't really live a great life, I wasn't really there. If you got value from this episode and if you want to learn more about how you can build a life or build the life that your business was supposed to create, make sure you follow me for more. And there's a couple of other videos that you can check out that will continue giving tips and tricks and processes like this to get your life back. My name is Lachlan Stewart. We'll see you in the next video.