Attention Expert: Notifications Steal Your Life | ft. Dr. Zelana Montminy HTS w/ DrG #417

Heal Thy Self with Dr. G

Wellness Loud

Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sponsored By: → Birch | For an exclusive offer go to birchliving.com/healthyself and get 25% OFF sitewide. → BiOptimizers | For an exclusive offer go to bioptimizers.com/drg and use code DRG to get 15% OFF. → Cornbread Hemp | For an exclusive offer go to cornbreadhemp.com/drg and use promo code DRG for 30% OFF your first order! → KION | For an exclusive offer go to GETKION.COM/DRG and get a 20% discount. Sign up for our newsletter! https://drchristiangonzalez.com/newsletter/ Episode Description: Is your phone the first face you see each morning? Do notifications interrupt meals, meetings—even your thoughts? Tired with no hard work to blame? Your attention didn’t disappear—it was taken. Dr. Zelana Montminy holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, trained in nutrition at Cornell, wrote 21 Days to Resilience, and advises Fortune 500 companies. She exposes how modern life trains your brain for distraction, and shows you how to take your focus back without more apps, hacks, or guilt. Here’s what you’ll discover inside this episode: The truth about “phone addiction”: Why you’re not addicted to the device—you’re addicted to escaping discomfort, and how to break that loop. The 23-minute switch cost: What task-switching really does to your brain and nervous system—and simple monotasking resets that restore clarity. From fight/flight to calm: How pings, tabs, and notifications keep you dysregulated—and practical ways to downshift your physiology fast. Boredom as a superpower: Why doing nothing can be more powerful than meditation for rebuilding attention—and how to practice it daily. Morning priming, fixed: The single habit that hijacks your focus before your feet hit the floor—and a three-minute alternative that protects your day. Rewriting your reward loops: Dopamine, novelty, and cravings—how to design “friction” and set a realistic dopamine budget that sticks. Environment by default: Notification triage, home-screen layout, and workspace cues that make focus automatic (and distraction annoying). Attention training that works: Short, science-backed micro-exercises to lengthen your focus span and reduce the urge to check. Boundaries that hold: Simple scripts to protect dinner, date night, and deep work—without becoming “that person” glued to their phone. Real-world playbooks: The habits Dr. Montminy teaches in companies and schools to restore mental bandwidth—adapted for your life. This isn’t more willpower. It’s behavioral science meeting practical, humane habits. Walk away with a clear plan to reclaim your focus, calm your nervous system, and feel genuinely rested again. Don’t miss this conversation. Join the rebellion against digital distraction and start getting your attention back today. 0:00 - Introduction 2:17 - Rapid Fire Questions 4:29 - The Hidden Truth: We're Addicted to Escaping Being Human 12:10 - Digital Addiction is Actually Escapism Addiction 15:06 - The 23-Minute Rule: Why Task Switching is Exhausting Your Brain 23:49 - The Lost Art of Boredom: Why It's More Powerful Than Meditation 29:26 - Morning Phone Habit 35:36 - Parenting in the Digital Age 49:22 - Practical Strategies: Reclaiming Your Attention Without Apps or Hacks 54:02 - The Power of Micro-Boredom 1:00:00 - Modeling Focus for Kids: What You Do Matters More Than What You Say 1:05:02 - Hope for Phone Addicts

Transcript

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0:00.0	boredom, the act of intentionally not engaging in anything, is critical for our well-being.
0:07.4	And we've missed that entirely. It's when the most important moments and thoughts of our lives
0:13.8	occur. Hey, you ever pick up your phone the second you wake up and you can't sit through dinner
0:18.6	without checking your notifications? Or do you feel exhausted,
0:22.9	even though you haven't really done anything physically demanding? Your attention span isn't
0:27.3	broken. It is being stolen. And there's a way to take it back and has nothing to do with apps,
0:33.0	nothing to do with hacks, or even your willpower. You think you're addicted to your phone,
0:37.2	but you're actually addicted to something much deeper. And that's escaping the uncomfortable reality of being
0:44.4	a human being. And while you're chasing dopamine hits and drowning notifications, your nervous
0:48.3	system is collapsing under the weight of task switching. Every time you switch tasks, it takes your brain 23 minutes to recover.
0:56.7	You are literally exhausting yourself to death. Dr. Zelena Monmini isn't just another self-help
1:01.6	guru. She's a behavioral scientist who studied the trends that are destroying our mental health
1:05.8	bandwidth, and she works with companies and schools on the front lines of this attention crisis.
1:11.2	And what she's discovered will shock you.
1:13.4	We are training our brains for attention deficit and it's becoming the norm.
1:17.3	In the next hour, you're going to learn why boredom is more powerful than meditation and how to
1:21.8	reclaim your stolen attention.
1:24.0	And the one morning habit that primes your brain for distraction even before you get out of bed.
1:28.6	This is not about willpower.
1:29.9	It's about understanding the war that's been waged on your focus.
1:33.9	Get ready to empower yourself against digital distraction.
1:36.8	And discover why doing nothing actually may be the most productive thing that you will ever do in your life.
	...

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