Yet, after all, why not?

“Oh man, fuck this.”

We were playing Halo on the big screen and I was compulsively checking the small screen in between games when I was all of a sudden fed up, fed up to the point of wanting to hurl the phone across the room and into a lake, or a fire; perhaps a lake of fire for a much-needed eternal punishment. At least that’d stop me from reaching for the thing constantly, for no real reason, to read things I’d already read or look at things that I’d already seen some variant of ten thousand times.

My teammates seemed to deserve an explanation — sudden expletives are very common in Halo games but this one was more of a non-sequitur than normal, occurring as it did between rounds.

“My phone. I just can’t leave it alone. I’ve been trying to cut down for years and it just doesn’t work,” I raged.

Acknowledgements from teammates; this afflicted them too, and as far as we could collectively tell, everyone else.

“Tomorrow I’m just not going to use it at all,” I concluded.

Good idea, was the consensus, but also an unstated but intensely felt “no you won’t.”

But — as evidenced by my 30 day post-something-everyday malarkey — I like all-or nothing challenges.

As of 9:19 PM the following day my screen-time looked like this:

It wasn’t quite all or nothing; I used it to take photos including one of this absurdly small baby wētā we found in the house:

And the cake I made, which — despite the hideous photo — was one of the best cakes we’ve ever eaten:

I finished the day with less than 10 minutes screen time, despite taking photos and texting a friend about the possibility of mountain-biking. As always, caveats; because I use Beeper (do try it) I get all the messages from my various messengers and social medias in one app on my laptop, and I used that to stay in touch with friends and across an urgent work task that came up. So it didn’t mean zero screen time, but it did mean barely any phone screen time. In fact — apart from when I did Outward Bound and the phone sat in a drawer for a month — it was easily the lowest my screen time has been in a decade.

Did it make a difference? Did it ever. I’m always wary of the placebo effect, but I felt far less distracted. My normally scattershot attention was more focused, I remembered more things, and found tasks far easier to start.

Most importantly, I was much more present with the kids.

Others with ADHD will know how meaningful that might be. It went so well that I’m doing it again today.

How?

I put my phone on the charger in a different room and made a point of not picking it up unless I wanted to do something specific (photo, message.)

That’s it.

I kind of wish I’d downloaded an app or come up with a clever trick or something but sometimes (often) simple solutions are the best ones.

Hijacking our urge to do things

I am adverse to participating in or starting a moral panic but I think we’re well past that with phones; there seems to be a widespread acknowledgement that they’re invasive — and how could they not be, with an army of clever and highly qualified people alive using every cognitive technique known to science and the gambling industry¹ to keep us on them as long as possible?

But I want to talk about, or at least explain to myself, why I think they can be so pernicious.

Phones are a problem because they usurp our desire to do things.

Fun things. Creative things. Productive things.

Sometimes, those things are on the phone, but if we’re honest they’re mostly not.

If we’re going about our day and we feel that spark of creativity, which often masquerades as boredom; that little “I’d like to do something now,” or “I’m tired and I deserve a treat” what do we do?

We pick up the phone. After all, it’s right there.

And once it’s there in our hand, it gives us an endless array of potentially exciting choices. Fun! Danger! Mystery! Excitement!

One more pull. How will the slots line up this time?

I hate to dip back in to dopamine discourse (this maligned neurotransmitter is not what it is frequently made out to be) but it’s close enough to true that we have a limited amount of dopamine to spend each day and if we’re using it on our phone, no matter how much we feel like a treat, it’s harder to use it to give attention to the things that we actually want or need to be doing.

Think of it like a car, petrol-driven otherwise; if you keep driving around aimlessly you’re going to run out of fuel for the trips you want to take.

That’s why I found the day a lot easier with the phone parked in a corner, attached to a cord like in the olden days; I wasn’t using up my limited attentional resources either taking a quick dip in the Sea of Endless Screams or resisting the urge to. It was just… somewhere else. And when I actually wanted to message a friend or take a photo, there it was.

And I don’t like feeling like feeling like my creativity is being hijacked.

Feels bad man

If you’re reading this on your phone, don’t feel bad! Don’t even feel that you have to do anything; it’s not like phones are inherently iniquitous or that not using them is virtuous. The reason I did this, and keep doing things like this, is because I want to be a present dad and a good friend and to get the stuff I want/need to done, and the phone too frequently gets in the way.

If you feel like your phone use is too high, consider why. What would or could change for you if you weren’t on it? Would you be able to do something that you want to, and currently feel like you can’t?

If that’s the case, feel free to go park it in an (in)convenient corner for a day. Put the ringer on and make it loud, which should mean you don’t miss anything really important.

See if anything changes. And if it does, let me know

Obviously leave a comment about what you're doing here first, though. I like comments. Reading them genuinely makes my day. And if you feel like emailing, josh@tworuru.com will find me. 

1. Whether “pull to refresh” is intentionally mimicking a slot machine is debatable (it’s probably a coincidence) but there are plenty of other techniques that riff on gambling that are fully intentional; the actual slot machines that apps like Temu now contain are a bit of a clue. ↩︎