There are times when I leave the house, and five minutes into my drive I realize my cell phone is still at home. Like an addict separated from crack, the heart palpitations set in.
It’s absurd, but true. And you can likely relate. I constantly wonder what I would do without that thing. It’s almost debilitating to be without it. And frankly, I think we’re all getting so attached that we're losing the one thing we truly value the most--a connection to the living, breathing world around us.
When’s the last time you took a walk, went to dinner, went to the grocery store, went to the living room, waited in line, filled up a tank of gas, went to the bathroom or laid in bed without checking your phone? Heck I don’t even take a bath without it standing by. Here’s a short video that illustrates the point pretty well and really hit home with me.
Think about it: if someone followed you around every second of every day to tell you what’s happening each moment, to spill their thoughts on everything, and to constantly entertain you and affirm that you’re loved and important--you’d file a restraining order.
But we love our little cellular sidekicks that essentially do the same thing, and truthfully, I’d like to start separating myself from it a bit more. So the other day when I was working in Miami, I decided to try it out, and I left my phone in the car when I ran into Kinkos.
On my way in, I saw the most amazing lizard I’ve ever seen, right on the sidewalk. Seriously! It had this crazy curled up tail, huge eyes--something you could only see in a zoo in Utah. So I walked up to it, and crouched down to get a better look. As I did, an old man was getting out of his car by the lizard, also in awe of the little guy. Together we sat and admired it, then looked at each other and smiled.
“Cool lizard,” I said.
“Sure is,” he chuckled.
I know it was a small thing, but it felt so good to connect with a perfect stranger over one of nature’s little gifts. I realized that it had been a while since i’d done that, because my phone has become the center of my attention. That realization made me sad, but it also motivated me to come up with five things I can do to try and change that. Perhaps you’ll find these 'phone rehab' ideas helpful, too.
START WEENING YOURSELF TODAY!!!
1.) Get out of the house, sans cell.
Go for a walk and leave your phone at home. You don’t need to snap photos of everything you see, and people can wait a whole 30 minutes to hear back from you. You can say hello to people you pass, perhaps make eye contact--you might even find yourself making small talk! Imagine the possibilities!!! You never know who you’ll meet.
2.) Try going phone-free an hour a day.
My best ideas come when I’m on an airplane. I can’t use my phone, and I don’t have any distractions, so I think, and I write, and I come up with great projects and concepts. If we had to switch to airplane mode for just an hour each day, think of what we could do. Try it. Perhaps in the morning or evening, when it’s not needed for work. You could meditate, write, exercise, create art, read, study, clean, play with your kids--the possibilities are endless, and your brain will thank you for the break.
3.) Don’t make yourself too available.
I know better than anyone that when it comes to work, sometimes you have to be attached to your cell phone. If you miss an email or a call, people will wonder why you’re not more on top of it. I get that. However, you are allowed to set boundaries. If it’s before 8am or after 5 or 6 pm, don’t respond. Let people know that you’re not available 24/7--if you do that, they will have healthy expectations of you. Also, if you’re going on vacation (or just taking a day-cation), put an automatic email reply that says so, and state that you will be without cell or email access. Do the same for your voicemail. Then turn your phone off. If you stick to the ‘i’m on vacation, so don’t even bother’ mentality, people won’t have expectations of hearing back from you until your designated return date. However, if you cave and start checking in on things and responding to people, it’s a slippery slope. You get reeled back in. And before you know it, vacation is really just working from a pretty place.
4.) Turn off unnecessary notifications.
It seems like we could focus a lot more on the things we need to if we weren’t constantly bombarded with alerts from every program on our phone. Why not try turning off notifications from apps like Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Tinder, Pinterest, Snapchat, Spotify, LinkedIn, etc.? While those apps can be utilized for work, most of us use them just for fun.
5) No-phone Friday.
This is an idea I suggested to some friends a few weeks ago (we have yet to try it). I asked if they would be interested in getting together on a Friday night where we plan in advance when and where we will meet, and leave our phones at home. As in, we go old school. They all agreed it would be a fun ‘experiment’, but one friend joked, “Well how will we Instagram about our night without our phones?” I think it would be even more fun if you did something like a progressive dinner, where you pick a place and time to start out, then ride bikes to different places for different courses of the meal. If you’re late, you miss out--just like the old days. It would be interesting to see if people become more punctual and present trying something like this.
So there they are, five things you can do to withdraw from your phone a bit. And if you have 15 minutes, you should check out Joe Kraus’s presentation on this issue titled ‘Slow Tech’, where he talks about the benefits of gap time and offers insight into the distracted culture we are creating.
All in all, it’s not an easy task to back off from our phone addictions. But little by little, I think we can get back to a place where it feels like the good ol’ days of being present, even if just for moments here and there.
This is the first of the Fab Five series, which will include write-ups from all kinds of people. The idea is to offer five tips for excelling or trying new things in various areas of life, which will ideally increase one's quality of life. Stay tuned for upcoming Fab Five’s on everything from dealing with loss, using flowers to improve your life, food that makes you happy, and more.
