We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stephen Jaye. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stephen below.
Stephen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.
Starting Reclaim Your Time was a risk in the sense that it represents a unique challenge. It’s not a typical business in the sense that it was built to address a specific societal challenge. Many people view it in the terms of a social movement more than a product or service that people pay for. There isn’t a playbook and there are limitations to the use of standard business playbooks in this particular initiative. The reason I took this challenge on is because I realized that no matter what happens I will continue to encourage people to live more intentional lives, which means spending less time in front of screens. It is an initiative that motivates me regardless of factors such as money and praise. This is how I knew that I was going to do this.
Stephen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I have always been interested in large scale systems, from how the weather works, to why people behave the way they do, to long-term societal trends. My approach to addressing the issue of addictive, attention-grabbing technology is based in behavior replacement. I determined this was the key through experimentation. When I tried the standard techniques of tracking screen time, settling limits and imposing rewards or punishments I ended up just replacing one screen-based activity with another one. For example, I could avoid excess screen time on my phone by watching a YouTube video on my laptop, or on the television instead. This will accomplish a specific numerical goal, but not produce actual meaningful behavior change. However, we are all less tempted to pull out phones, turn on TVs and mindlessly scroll if we are engaged in other activities that are either captivating or aligned with our life goals. This is where Reclaim Your Time steps in. www.reclaimyourtime.co
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I had to unlearn the lesson of deference. This is something that is baked into our education system. All those years in school teach us to wait for someone to tell us what to do and then wait for it to be evaluated, for a grade. Nearly two decades of that, early in life, can map to someone’s subconscious. For me, this meant wanting someone to approve of anything I did, in jobs, business and social situations. Anyone who wants to become a leader needs to unlearn this. Sometimes, we need to trust ourselves and act. We need to trust our instincts and we need to trust the research and observations we have made. To overcome this required a lot of work in mindfullness and personal development.
Any advice for managing a team?
I honestly believe people need to be reminded of why they are doing what they are doing more frequently than they are in nearly every business. It is so easy to get caught up in day-to-day tasks, deadlines, and things like quarterly goals. I’m not saying this is not important, but sometimes it is not as important as keeping people motivated, especially in the long run. The most common way to connect a person to their job, or the role they are fulfilling in an organization is to have them understand the mission of the group and how their role is a key component of it. This produces intrinsic motivation and makes managing people a lot easier.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://reclaimyourtime.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reclaimyourtime.co/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-jaye/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@reclaimyourtime
- Other: https://stephenjaye.substack.com/
Image Credits
These are all images taken on my phone