Ditching my Phone
(not permanently - heaven forbid!)
Five more minutes
At the start of every new week, I take a look back at what I accomplished the week before and think about how I can improve going forward. One of the prompts in my planner1 asks for “One change I can make next week.” For years, ever since I first purchased and became addicted to my smart phone, the change that comes to mind is to leave that phone in a different room. Not just to spend less time on it, or to scroll less, or to limit my game-playing. But to physically leave it elsewhere as I go about my day. Not to have it at hand at all. I am 100% sure this would make me more productive, and happier, and creative, because the few times I’ve been able to do it, it’s worked incredibly well.
As a person with ADHD, I have trouble with transitioning from one activity to another, especially when the second activity is something I need to do. There’s a rule of thumb for people with this issue: “Don’t sit down!” A planned 30 minute lunch break turns into three hours in the comfy armchair, switching from app to app on the phone, not getting up till someone else enters the room and breaks the spell (at which point I have to jump up and look busy, because I feel so guilty about not doing it sooner).
Even before having a smartphone, I used to do mindless/addictive stuff for too long at a stretch: solitaire (with real cards), TV (with no streaming, just watching what was shown). But the phone has made it much easier, and it’s always in my hand to allow playing games, scrolling through social media, reading headlines, browsing wikipedia, and instant access to facts. I’ve read enough science fiction to expect the physical phone to become an implant at some point, so that I’ll just have to think about what I need and have the answer appear in front of my brain. So maybe this is one of the last opportunities to put it down. Even if it takes what seems like a herculean effort.
Recently I’ve found myself wanting to go through life the way I used to before the smartphone. Waiting on someone for coffee or dinner and just looking around, reading, writing, sketching, stitching. Now my phone immediately comes out of my bag and I don’t pay attention to what’s happening around me or inside my brain either.
People also used to better tolerate having to wait, as I remember it. If your friend didn’t show up on time, you just assumed they were running late. Now the second it’s past the agreed time, people start pacing. Maybe this is because with the phone you are able (and even expected) to send a heads up if running behind. But maybe people actually run late more nowadays, now that there’s a way to explain.
I think that we are less patient, less able to entertain ourselves, than we were before smartphones. Not just the ‘digital natives’ born in this century,2 but even those of us who grew into adulthood without this technology. I put off getting a smartphone for a few years, but once I got it I was instantly sucked in.
It’s getting old
The first iPhone came out in 2007, and the first Android smartphone in 2008. There had been some internet-connected devices before then, but it’s generally agreed that the iPhone was revolutionary in its ability to pull so many functions together in a portable device. From the time smartphones were introduced, there have been concerns about ‘smartphone addiction.’ And recently there has been a trend towards ‘dumb phones’, whether purchasing a phone with fewer features, removing or blocking apps, setting limits on use, etc. So I know I’m not alone in feeling the way I do.
I’m not disparaging the smartphone tech, or AI (which is for another post), or social media. It’s amazing. But when I spend so much time fooling around on the phone, what am I NOT spending my time on?
There are only 24 hours in the day, and we choose how to spend those hours. To make time for things that are important for us, we need to STOP doing other things. When I look at how I’m spending my time, it’s very clear that at least a few hours a day (and I’m being generous here) are spent on the phone engaging in mindless activities that take me away from the important tasks. I know this, and yet I am seemingly incapable of leaving the phone down and getting on with my life.
But I’m getting signals from my brain that I’m ready to try. I’ll be scrolling, opening various apps one after another in an endless loop, and I’ll find myself getting bored and frustrated. I think, “I wish there were something I could read that’s longer and more interesting than social media posts and headlines about horrible news.” And then I remember the book that’s sitting next to me. Even picking up a book seems like a major effort though. Reading fiction used to be a guilty pleasure for me, a distraction. But now it’s a step up in both effort and meaning from what I do on the phone.
Another sign: I’ll pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time, and suddenly I’m looking at email, texts, weather, news… and eventually I put it away still not knowing what time it is. I think, “I wish there were a way to just check the time, without all these distractions.” The answer seemed to be getting a smart watch. Not only would it keep me from grabbing the phone, but it gave me the opportunity to buy a new toy!3
The problem with the smart watch though is that even when I ‘disconnect’ by putting my phone far away, I’m actually still connected. If someone texts me, I get notified and can even return the text. If someone calls me, my watch buzzes to let me know. Plus, the watch is tracking my steps, my resting and active heart rate, my workouts. And I use it to check not only the time, but the date, my calendar, the weather… I can’t fiddle with it as much as with the phone, but it’s still a distraction. With all these useful features though, could I just take it off? I realized this summer that I needed to try.
Going old school
When I was in college, my mom gave me a watch that my grandfather had given her for Christmas in 19554 (I know this not just because she told me, but because there’s an inscription on the back). I wore it for years, on and off, and then it stopped keeping time and I put it away.
Once I realized this summer that I needed to give up the smartwatch in order to ditch the phone, I pulled it back out. I took it to a local store that still repairs watches, and for a couple hundred bucks, they fixed the issue, cleaned and refurbished it, and replaced the scratched crystal. I switched to the analog (and self-winding!) watch in August.
It took some time to get used to not having alerts, calendar, weather, reminders, and health tracking.5 But now I can leave the phone behind and be separated, not just from communications, but from everything on the phone. The lure of it, the urge to pick it up to “check one thing” and staying distracted for much too long. I can check the time and be done.
I have more peace in my life, and my peace is important to me. The watch is also a physical and visual reminder of the importance of family and of the past as a way to reach the future.
I can’t always ditch the phone, and even then I can’t always do the important things I said I could instantly be capable of when I was free of it (I wrote about this problem regarding inbox zero a while back).
But I’m much more likely to do something valuable when I’m disconnected. And all that ‘real’ stuff is much more enjoyable, once I get to it, than spending time being sucked into a vortex of scrolling and games that make me feel trapped and guilty. So I’m going to keep on trying.
The weekly version of the Monk Manual - I used to use the daily, but my days never have nine meetings in them since I left my last job.
Which is already 25% done, if you can believe that!
I’m normally vehemently against consumerism, but I have a soft spot for new gadgets, especially when they seem like they might make me more productive.
That’s not a typo - this watch is an antique.
If I’m not tracking every step I take, how do I get credit for them? Are they even happening?
TV used to be the monster in the room, but we've replaced it with others. This only means we haven't really dealt with the human need to waste time and brain cells. Maybe that's a good thing. Indigenous cultures (including when our ancestors were indigenous somewhere, may have lived very hard and inconvenient lives, but they also took time to rest. A Canadian First Nations friend of mine told me that his people did the chores that needed to get done and then broke for the rest of the day. Just being and hanging around. That kind of "wasteful" time and space rejuvenates physically and mentally capacities. And the chores and to-do's will always be there.