In effort to promote more
deep work
, I've started making my phone harder to use, and in a sense make it dumber. I recently stumbled across some actual products offering dumb or simple phones, but just setting up my phone to make it harder to get it seems good for me.
For me its also about doing things less out of boredom or just cause I can. Recently I look at my phone usage and its stable at like 3hrs a day. I thought this was also good, considering many friends are closer to 6. But its still so much, granted some is communication but the other half is just playing chess and scrolling in different ways. So the way to get around this, is make it harder to use these apps, or at least more annoying.
I also am trying to really hard to only check email at certain times. Recently I was reading about cal newports analysis on
email
, and he says it puts you in a weird state where you feel like you should respond. And then become in a sense stuck just reacting to things, and not really producing.
This reactionary mindset I had last cycle of experiments, and it didn't result in good outcomes, and it just leaves you more stressed.
My solution to that is only checking email at certain times. Of course this doesn't always work and sometimes I need email to tell me 20 people have looked at my
LinkedIn
profile today. But its a work in progress.
Today was the first hard trial of this, and my phone usage is down 1.5 hours.
We will see if it persists. But it is crazy how much time there is when not on phone.
I started by uninstalling certain apps from my phone, but over time just discovered that I didn't like using my phone as much. Even when I recently re-installed Instagram because people were trying to message me on there, I uninstalled it a couple of days later because it sucks so back that it's not worth the trouble just for the sake of seeing a couple of nonurgent messages. I check but rarely read email on my phone. I send more text messages from my laptop than from my phone. Typing without a keyboard is grotesque. Even with swipe text, it's swipe, swipe, swipe, hold backspace, swipe, repeat. I sometimes watch videos on my phone, but squinting at the small screen makes me feel old and I have enough things in this world making me feel old. Phones have become like cars. A necessary evil that I mostly resent.
i also like texting via my laptop vs the phone screen.