I use my phone way too much. Clearly much, much more than what’s healthy. Clearly, it’s detrimental to my concentration. Clearly, its mere presence influences my capacity to focus. Clearly, I need to do something about it!
- Problem: I got sucked into mobile phones due to the need for connectivity with people, but the reality is that I don't use it for that. For me – and most people, I suspect –, it is a device for consuming content.
- When we acknowledge this fact, then the decisions we make about this device become quite different
- “Is it okay if I leave the house without my consumption device?”
- “I have been thinking about buying the latest consumption device”
- Problem: I pick up my phone to check the weather forecast, see a red dot in an app I care about, open it and end up wasting time (and don’t even check the weather)
- workaround: disable notifications for apps that don’t need it, remove email, move red dots to a secondary screen of apps
- Problem: I pick up my phone and refresh whatever time-wasters I don’t even care about just because I’m bored or anxious or uncomfortable
- Problem: I get way too many notifications that keep interrupting me
- Problem: the most disruptive way of interrupting me (through voice calls) is also the one with the highest noise (highest probability it’s spam, a scam, some marketing company, or something I just don’t care about.) The only person who actually calls me is my wife… apart from spammers.
- workaround: set up scheduled Do Not Disturb mode so that only my favourite/repeat callers can bother me
I stopped maintaining this list a few months ago because, clearly, the point had been made: something needed to change. Stacking workarounds on top of each other without addressing the underlying cause seems futile.
It has been four months since I have upgraded my mobile phone to this one:
