Two weeks ago, I decided to hide my phone before bed.
I thought that not having my phone around in the morning would just speed up my routine. Instead, my phone absence motivated me to do my work.
It’s improved my discipline when it came to morning habits.
Every zing, ding, badge, buzz, and pop sound instantly grabs my attention.
In a few minutes, I go from working diligently to finding an excuse to get to my phone. Soon I start “the cycle” and next thing I know, 20 minutes have gone by.
This only happens when I don’t intend to use my phone.
Thinking back on it, I’ve never gotten a text that needed a direct answer immediately. That goes double for email. Phone calls have more importance, but we all have free answering machines (who calls people anymore anyway :-]).
Notifications are a bane on our existence. Nothing effects day-to-day concentration like them.
The effects are widespread, pulling us out of flow and depth and leaving us very superficial and disjointed. That superficiality and disjointed nature leave a lot of work on the table. Instead of the interesting stuff that we have the power to craft now, we spend more time creating tweets, texts, and Facebook comments that don’t push our skills or help us grow.
Serious, right?
I turned off my notifications for almost all my apps on my iPhone, and most badges (still have one for text, I should get rid of it). The hope is, I stop looking at that buzz so much and focus on whatever I do.
I hope you join me, there is so much work to do.
I overestimate and under value the sleep I get.
This happens because I count the hours in bed as the hours of sleep. The thing is, for an hour before I go to sleep and an hour I wake up, I am not asleep.
My phone has to get the “cycle.”
The cycle is texts, emails, “Boom Beach,” and social media I can fit in before I start to feel tired or there is nothing less. Then I allow myself to put on some music and go to sleep.
I know intellectually that this isn’t good for me, but I still do it.
Last year I wrote about not taking my cell phone to work, and the changes it made.
This month, I am removing my cell phone from my bed room before bed.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
I want you to take the cell phone you have and do two things (if you are reading this on your cell, do it afterwards :-] )
Don’t look at your twitter, don’t look at your texts, don’t look at the latest score. Just sit there and enjoy the moment. Just disconnect.
Do you feel that, the urge, the need to look at the phone, and the idea of slipping and not getting to see the latest thing. That is Fear of Missing Out, and I think its one of the biggest sores on our technology.
The cellphone made us connected, connected in a way we haven’t been before.
There is always a price, and that connection cost us concentration and focus. We lost that focus and concentration and became addicts to that connection. The connection becomes all.
It becomes our happiness and our sadness, our fears and our bravery. Either way, it becomes our comfort, because it is the thing we know.
Comfort makes us lazy.
The reason why I proposed 10 minutes is because 10 minutes is just long enough to get you antsy. It isn’t too short to not find it in your schedule, but ten minutes is long enough for you to really feel it. Just long enough for you to disconnect without missing anything.
It’s hard to find an excuse for 10 minutes, so in performing this challenge, any excuse gets magnified. Did you need to check twitter or was that text that important?
If you told me 10 years ago that the little thing in my pocket was going to create a habit, I would have laughed and said no way texting and calling is that interesting.
But here we are in 2016, attached to our phones, and its taking away our opportunities to connect to the world around us. So, take 10 minutes and disconnect.
A few notes having no cell phone.
Changes Proposed
The buzz.
I am a slave to the buzz.
The buzz, the ding, the whistle. Everything that has to do with the phone alerting you to something happening.
Sometimes, turning it off helps. But to get back into it, all you need is a reason – an argument on Facebook, something happening on twitter, or a great picture.
My risk this week – I am going to leave my phones at home for the next few days.
Describing things for the next few days – working on a different muscle.
The old-fashioned office phone. The phone line runs out the office into the door outside, lined across the bottom of the floor. It could be a tripping hazard, if not for the tremendous slack it has. The phone is black, and compared to mobile phones now, a relic. It is 6 inches by 8 inches, dusty from a lack of care. A monochrome screen is on the top center, and under it, white letters on black buttons noting important “features” like DIR (Directory) and CID (Caller ID). In the middle are the standard numbers, and to the right, some different looking buttons, clear that allow you to mute or put the phone on speaker. Different volume nobs sit at the side, adjusting the volume of the ringer and the phone. Scratches are on the top of the receiver, as if the phone has been around for a while. A short code connects it to the black base of the phone.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 