Welcome to episode 239 of Live Happy Now. I'm your host, Paula Phelps, thanking you for joining us once again.

With the holidays upon us, you're probably among the many who are planning your gatherings with family and friends,

and you might be wondering what to do about that unwelcome intruder who's been showing up the past few years.

Technology has changed our lives in many ways, but when holiday celebrations are spent with

guests on their phones or tablets, it takes away much of the magic of the moment.

This week's guest is Joe McCormick, who literally wrote the book on how to find focus

and human interaction in the midst of technology's interference.

Today, he talks with us about how to

keep the holidays happier by keeping technology from intruding on our quality time.

Joe, welcome to Live Happy Now. It's great to be with you. Well, we wanted to have you talk to us today

because you're an expert in noise, but probably not the kind of noise we think about when we

first hear that word. So I guess to set us up, can you tell us what you're talking about when

you say noise? When I'm talking about noise, I'm talking about the digital devices and the information

overload and the constant connectivity and distractions that basically command our attention 24-7. And a lot of this

information tends to really drain our brain. And it tends to be very useless at the end of the day.

But it consumes a ton of our time, you know, checking our phone 24-7 and constantly being distracted

by alerts and notifications. I call that noise.

Yeah, it's kind of like junk food where we just keep going back to it, even though it's not really doing anything for us and we're not shutting it off. Yeah, I mean, the analogy I use in the book

is it would be like having a diet where you ate popcorn and drank Diet Coke. You feel full, but you become

mentally anemic. You know, that's your diet, but it's not good for you at the end of the day.

You know, I specifically wanted to talk to you because we've got the holidays just around the

corner, and we know this is all about celebrating and spending time with family and friends,

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