Brand strategist, writer, and business mentor Lindsay Hyatt has been online since the AOL free-hour CDs, and after two decades of building her career on visibility, she's questioning all of it.

In this episode, Lindsay talks with Becky about what happened when she started deactivating Threads for a week at a time, the Pavlov's-dog realization that the dopamine hit stuck around even after the "reward" training stopped, and what it felt like to sit out a Buffalo Bills coaching-change controversy instead of weighing in online. They dig into the difference between community and content, why "reciprocity" disappeared from the online business space, and how Lindsay is relearning to do things purely for fun, with no monetization angle.

Topics Covered:
(00:22) Lindsay's 20-year career built around being online, and the moment she started questioning it
(03:00) How social media felt different in the Twitter-in-2010 era versus now, and what changed after the pandemic
(06:01) The disappearance of reciprocity in the online business space — "talking into the void"
(10:56) What's left when you strip away the performance: confronting depletion, exhaustion, and who you are offline
(12:16) The practical mechanics of deactivating Threads week by week, and the milestones that came with it
(14:00) The Buffalo Bills coaching-change story — sitting with the urge to comment and not doing it
(18:37) Consumers versus creators, and forgetting how to make things without a monetization goal
(21:26) "Taking my power back" — free will versus addictive, manipulated habit loops
(25:19) Rediscovering analog joys (biking, music, the flute) and unlearning the expectation of a dopamine hit
(32:49) Returning to a traditional day job for financial stability, and reframing it as freedom rather than defeat
(36:14) Lindsay's advice: give yourself grace, expect it to be imperfect, and try deleting the app for just one day

Resources Mentioned:
• Lindsay's website: https://www.lindsayhyatt.com/
• Lindsay's podcast, Reprogramming: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reprogramming-with-lindsay-hyatt/id1687118927

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