00:00:07
Speaker 1: We are living at the start of the fifth Industrial Revolution, and as you know, I am a huge optimist about technology and how it can make our lives more human, filled with more connection. But that doesn't mean that I want us all walking around like robots, and in fact, sometimes with the advent of new technology, it means using less of it in our day to day lives. Hello Future, it's me KAV. This is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier. The planet is Earth, the year is twenty twenty six. My name is Kevin Surilli. You can listen to all of the latest Hello Future episodes however you get your podcasts and of course on the iHeartMedia app, make sure to downloaded. It's really one of the greatest audio apps that's out there on the market because you can just go into the backstories and follow whatever rabbit hole your curiosity leads you down. Of this program, know that I have been on a mission this year to try to lower my screen time. All over the country, more and more Americans and dare I say global citizens are trying to get off their phone. They recognize that it is an addiction. The dopamine levels in our brain are wired in a way to be on these apps all the time. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when I would go on a social media app and I would reach the bottom of my feed and it would say all caught up. But nowadays it's designed to just keep going and going and going and going. So I'm really grateful to have my next guest on this program Jason Morales. He's the co founder and CEO behind Until, and this company really grabbed my attention. Their tagline is Reclaim your Time, and it's I say, I want to reclaim my time and attention. And it's an app that encourages people to put your phone down to be more human. And the background of this company is really interesting because he's united some of the leading technologists in our country to get behind this. Jason, thanks so much for showing up to Meet the Future. Tell me a little bit about what Until does and how you went from working in tech to trying to get people offline.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, Kevin. Really appreciate joining you for this broadcast and also love hearing about your journey, so it's been great to catch up on that front. It's not so dissimilar from mine. I have worked in tech for the majority of my professional career, I frankly found myself racked with this problematic use, this compulsion that I had towards being always connected, always on my phone, and found myself wanting to do something about it. I'm also a father. I partnered with other parents who were having a common conversation amongst us saying, what are we doing here for the next generations? How are we setting up an unsustainable environment for young people? And so these were certainly motivations for how we came to develop until some of the background. I was a technology strategist. I represented data and AI, primarily data modeling and data warehousing, reporting, analytics, how we use data. I worked for Microsoft for the majority of that time, and I had a real emphasis and focus on responsible use of data in that context, and so my sort of internal and external brand was to promote how we are being proactive and re sponsible with their use of technology. I personally found the more I learned about how data is used and how frankly tech vendors were sort of exploiting the use of it, that it was very invasive to see my behavior data or my personal data being the basis by which I was advertised to it got to a point where it was frankly out of control. And so I really began this journey looking to provide alternatives that communicated that technology does not need to get into our business and levels that we don't even know were agreeing to in order to work.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: Nobody likes it sometimes like I'll be using technology to your point, Jason, and suddenly I get all these ads for stuff that came up in a conversation. But until what does until do so, folks who are unfamiliar with it?
00:04:55
Speaker 2: What is it currently? So until we have started with an app, and what it does is helped to create a game and a little bit of a social experience for how we unscreen from our device. In effect, it helps me to measure how much I'm off my phone rather than measuring how much on my phone. The way it works, as you, a player would open until up and a timer would begin, And through a little bit of research that we did in the early use cases, we came to find that the timer alone wasn't good. It was nice to meet certain milestones. Can I go fifteen minutes without being compulsive about looking at my phone? Can I go thirty minutes after that? Or sixty minutes, and we created a reward system points that reward the player for meeting those milestones. I get a point for fifteen minutes, two points for thirty minutes. I get a little bonus with five points if I go a full hour or more.
00:05:56
Speaker 1: Patrick Kennedy is doing incredible work on mental health in America and I was at earlier this year. I was attending one of their events in Washington, DC, and you know, his wife Amy Kennedy said, how ironic it is that we live in a time when there's now a market for this basically the product that you've created of getting people to unscreen, which I love that word. How do we unscreen this app until there is now a market to get untethered from being on our phone? Twenty four to seven? I mean, why do you think that is? I mean, just analytically speaking, you've worked at the you know, upper echelons of technology. The team that your advisory board are. It's folks who have worked on gaming like Fortnite and Call of Duty. There's a broader tech backlash happening, but with this I don't even associate it with the tech backlash. I associate it with people just want their brains back. From where I sit, there's a difference between toys and technology, and I think a lot of people are marketing toys like technology, but really it's just toys.
00:07:02
Speaker 2: There does seem to be a backlash. I don't know if it's that I'm at the forefront of seeing this movement occurring, but there seems to be so many different angles where people are really pushing back. And interestingly enough, kind of your original question, there's this cone that I liked right that the only way out is through fighting against it. Your resistance actually creates more tension. And so it has been a motivation for me in multiple contexts to begin the process of healing or overcoming by observing where the behavior starts and in effect considering what that is really bringing awareness to what it is going into the problem more directly how that relates with until of course, it's completely ironic and frankly peculiar maybe not intuitive that you would have an app that helps you to get away from your apps, something that seems counterintuitive in that, and that being said, this is also where we are at. We have to meet ourselves, We have to meet people where they are to begin the process of overcoming this problem that they're being faced with, and in doing that, I think that awareness or that consciousness that comes into that engagement becomes more enriched and more realistic. We're not trying to moralize or fight against the problem in a way that again creates a tension where it's a good versus bad or you know, but more to really understand the complexity of it and address it where we can meet it. We can't solve the whole problem. We are not even thinking for a minute that any app will solve the whole problem. How can we provide tools that address the aspects of the problem where we can make measurable change in our lives and move forward.
00:08:55
Speaker 1: What are some of those tools?
00:08:56
Speaker 2: Great question. Well, the first target area is just to com pulsiveness, the compulsion that comes so with receiving a notification, with having a thought, oh I want the answer to this, I know where to go. I'm going to continuously reach for my device and having experience this personally. The idea of like even the ghost notifications, right, feeling a buzz in my pocket for something that it didn't happen, you know, there was no actual notification. This compulsion was the first area to address. The tools that we bring to light are to in effect put a reward mechanism where we're trying to go fifteen minutes before we engage the phone or another app or whatever else we would like to look at. And so what an effect happens is you reach for the phone, you see your timer, you see oh wait, I'm three minutes away, I'm four or five, ten minutes. But whatever it is, I'm going to wait until I hit that fifteen minutes or that thirty minutes, that hour before I pursue what it is that I'm trying to look at I think I need on my phone.
00:10:01
Speaker 1: In addition to being the CEO, you're the growth strategist. I mean, right now you're an app, but really you're tapping into a much broader movement and you're gonna have to come back on the program because I want to dive into this broader movement. But how do you see UNTIL growing? Is it through partnerships with ed tech, is it through higher education? Is it through K through twelve? How do you see UNTIL growing as a platform.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: Well that's also an excellent question, difficult question. So much of the problem, any problem when we're looking at topics of addiction or self help. A lot of it is framed in a context of saying, I need to do this myself, this is the problem I have, I need to solve it. And so one of the other foundational aspects of Until's approach is that this timer, this opportunity to fulfill this time. We actually call it a fill, to fill our time with, you know, unscreening and doing something else. We created a social mechanic to it, so now I can join a sink a sink fill, I can sync up with others to fill my time and multiply my points, multiply my reward, and now have an accountability with others while I'm playing, have a sense of community and connection. What are we doing when we're on screening and we're of course not engaging in real time during that, but looking to meet that goal and then share what your flywheel.
00:11:28
Speaker 1: What I'm hearing is get people offline, but get them to go in real life to some type of human to human activation. That's interesting. The way that I look at it, which I find fascinating is there is such a market for human to human activations and meetups and doing things that candidly folks are just good old fashioned fun, going on a hike, going to a museum. You know, I see all these ads for candlelight concerts or Harry themed corn maze. I mean, like the sky's the limit. But it's stuff that is so much more fun than sitting and staring at your screen. And if you've got kids out there, I am sure we've all seen it. They're walking around like zombies. And I'm an optimist. So I am so grateful that Jason Morales, CEO of Until I was able to come on and to break this down. Please Jason come back. Everybody go check it out. If people want to learn more about Until, how do they find out more?
00:12:28
Speaker 2: So we spell until with two l's, so Until is actually U N T I L L dot app and that's where you'd find our website and you can learn more.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: Awesome, Thank you so much and having great tomorrow today,
Speaker 1: We are living at the start of the fifth Industrial Revolution, and as you know, I am a huge optimist about technology and how it can make our lives more human, filled with more connection. But that doesn't mean that I want us all walking around like robots, and in fact, sometimes with the advent of new technology, it means using less of it in our day to day lives. Hello Future, it's me KAV. This is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier. The planet is Earth, the year is twenty twenty six. My name is Kevin Surilli. You can listen to all of the latest Hello Future episodes however you get your podcasts and of course on the iHeartMedia app, make sure to downloaded. It's really one of the greatest audio apps that's out there on the market because you can just go into the backstories and follow whatever rabbit hole your curiosity leads you down. Of this program, know that I have been on a mission this year to try to lower my screen time. All over the country, more and more Americans and dare I say global citizens are trying to get off their phone. They recognize that it is an addiction. The dopamine levels in our brain are wired in a way to be on these apps all the time. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when I would go on a social media app and I would reach the bottom of my feed and it would say all caught up. But nowadays it's designed to just keep going and going and going and going. So I'm really grateful to have my next guest on this program Jason Morales. He's the co founder and CEO behind Until, and this company really grabbed my attention. Their tagline is Reclaim your Time, and it's I say, I want to reclaim my time and attention. And it's an app that encourages people to put your phone down to be more human. And the background of this company is really interesting because he's united some of the leading technologists in our country to get behind this. Jason, thanks so much for showing up to Meet the Future. Tell me a little bit about what Until does and how you went from working in tech to trying to get people offline.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, Kevin. Really appreciate joining you for this broadcast and also love hearing about your journey, so it's been great to catch up on that front. It's not so dissimilar from mine. I have worked in tech for the majority of my professional career, I frankly found myself racked with this problematic use, this compulsion that I had towards being always connected, always on my phone, and found myself wanting to do something about it. I'm also a father. I partnered with other parents who were having a common conversation amongst us saying, what are we doing here for the next generations? How are we setting up an unsustainable environment for young people? And so these were certainly motivations for how we came to develop until some of the background. I was a technology strategist. I represented data and AI, primarily data modeling and data warehousing, reporting, analytics, how we use data. I worked for Microsoft for the majority of that time, and I had a real emphasis and focus on responsible use of data in that context, and so my sort of internal and external brand was to promote how we are being proactive and re sponsible with their use of technology. I personally found the more I learned about how data is used and how frankly tech vendors were sort of exploiting the use of it, that it was very invasive to see my behavior data or my personal data being the basis by which I was advertised to it got to a point where it was frankly out of control. And so I really began this journey looking to provide alternatives that communicated that technology does not need to get into our business and levels that we don't even know were agreeing to in order to work.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: Nobody likes it sometimes like I'll be using technology to your point, Jason, and suddenly I get all these ads for stuff that came up in a conversation. But until what does until do so, folks who are unfamiliar with it?
00:04:55
Speaker 2: What is it currently? So until we have started with an app, and what it does is helped to create a game and a little bit of a social experience for how we unscreen from our device. In effect, it helps me to measure how much I'm off my phone rather than measuring how much on my phone. The way it works, as you, a player would open until up and a timer would begin, And through a little bit of research that we did in the early use cases, we came to find that the timer alone wasn't good. It was nice to meet certain milestones. Can I go fifteen minutes without being compulsive about looking at my phone? Can I go thirty minutes after that? Or sixty minutes, and we created a reward system points that reward the player for meeting those milestones. I get a point for fifteen minutes, two points for thirty minutes. I get a little bonus with five points if I go a full hour or more.
00:05:56
Speaker 1: Patrick Kennedy is doing incredible work on mental health in America and I was at earlier this year. I was attending one of their events in Washington, DC, and you know, his wife Amy Kennedy said, how ironic it is that we live in a time when there's now a market for this basically the product that you've created of getting people to unscreen, which I love that word. How do we unscreen this app until there is now a market to get untethered from being on our phone? Twenty four to seven? I mean, why do you think that is? I mean, just analytically speaking, you've worked at the you know, upper echelons of technology. The team that your advisory board are. It's folks who have worked on gaming like Fortnite and Call of Duty. There's a broader tech backlash happening, but with this I don't even associate it with the tech backlash. I associate it with people just want their brains back. From where I sit, there's a difference between toys and technology, and I think a lot of people are marketing toys like technology, but really it's just toys.
00:07:02
Speaker 2: There does seem to be a backlash. I don't know if it's that I'm at the forefront of seeing this movement occurring, but there seems to be so many different angles where people are really pushing back. And interestingly enough, kind of your original question, there's this cone that I liked right that the only way out is through fighting against it. Your resistance actually creates more tension. And so it has been a motivation for me in multiple contexts to begin the process of healing or overcoming by observing where the behavior starts and in effect considering what that is really bringing awareness to what it is going into the problem more directly how that relates with until of course, it's completely ironic and frankly peculiar maybe not intuitive that you would have an app that helps you to get away from your apps, something that seems counterintuitive in that, and that being said, this is also where we are at. We have to meet ourselves, We have to meet people where they are to begin the process of overcoming this problem that they're being faced with, and in doing that, I think that awareness or that consciousness that comes into that engagement becomes more enriched and more realistic. We're not trying to moralize or fight against the problem in a way that again creates a tension where it's a good versus bad or you know, but more to really understand the complexity of it and address it where we can meet it. We can't solve the whole problem. We are not even thinking for a minute that any app will solve the whole problem. How can we provide tools that address the aspects of the problem where we can make measurable change in our lives and move forward.
00:08:55
Speaker 1: What are some of those tools?
00:08:56
Speaker 2: Great question. Well, the first target area is just to com pulsiveness, the compulsion that comes so with receiving a notification, with having a thought, oh I want the answer to this, I know where to go. I'm going to continuously reach for my device and having experience this personally. The idea of like even the ghost notifications, right, feeling a buzz in my pocket for something that it didn't happen, you know, there was no actual notification. This compulsion was the first area to address. The tools that we bring to light are to in effect put a reward mechanism where we're trying to go fifteen minutes before we engage the phone or another app or whatever else we would like to look at. And so what an effect happens is you reach for the phone, you see your timer, you see oh wait, I'm three minutes away, I'm four or five, ten minutes. But whatever it is, I'm going to wait until I hit that fifteen minutes or that thirty minutes, that hour before I pursue what it is that I'm trying to look at I think I need on my phone.
00:10:01
Speaker 1: In addition to being the CEO, you're the growth strategist. I mean, right now you're an app, but really you're tapping into a much broader movement and you're gonna have to come back on the program because I want to dive into this broader movement. But how do you see UNTIL growing? Is it through partnerships with ed tech, is it through higher education? Is it through K through twelve? How do you see UNTIL growing as a platform.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: Well that's also an excellent question, difficult question. So much of the problem, any problem when we're looking at topics of addiction or self help. A lot of it is framed in a context of saying, I need to do this myself, this is the problem I have, I need to solve it. And so one of the other foundational aspects of Until's approach is that this timer, this opportunity to fulfill this time. We actually call it a fill, to fill our time with, you know, unscreening and doing something else. We created a social mechanic to it, so now I can join a sink a sink fill, I can sync up with others to fill my time and multiply my points, multiply my reward, and now have an accountability with others while I'm playing, have a sense of community and connection. What are we doing when we're on screening and we're of course not engaging in real time during that, but looking to meet that goal and then share what your flywheel.
00:11:28
Speaker 1: What I'm hearing is get people offline, but get them to go in real life to some type of human to human activation. That's interesting. The way that I look at it, which I find fascinating is there is such a market for human to human activations and meetups and doing things that candidly folks are just good old fashioned fun, going on a hike, going to a museum. You know, I see all these ads for candlelight concerts or Harry themed corn maze. I mean, like the sky's the limit. But it's stuff that is so much more fun than sitting and staring at your screen. And if you've got kids out there, I am sure we've all seen it. They're walking around like zombies. And I'm an optimist. So I am so grateful that Jason Morales, CEO of Until I was able to come on and to break this down. Please Jason come back. Everybody go check it out. If people want to learn more about Until, how do they find out more?
00:12:28
Speaker 2: So we spell until with two l's, so Until is actually U N T I L L dot app and that's where you'd find our website and you can learn more.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: Awesome, Thank you so much and having great tomorrow today,
