Are You a Slave to Your Phone?

The smartphone is a fantastic invention.

• You can text anyone in an instant.
• You can snap pictures of a quality that professional photographers only dreamed of a few years ago.
• You can record video.

• You can get directions no matter where you’re going.
• You can search for information about anything you’re curious about.
• You can listen to audiobooks.
• You can play your favorite music the moment it’s released.
• You can log workouts and activities.
• You can maintain connections with friends and acquaintances despite demands for social distancing.

There lies enormous power in your smartphone.

But, as Spider-Man's uncle pointed out;

With great power comes great responsibility.

If you are not aware, this little thing can take over your life. It can hinder your progress on what matters most in life. It can give you FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) syndrome. It can ruin your relationships with those closest to you.

Take control of the power. Don't be a slave.

You Are Fighting Goliath

I didn’t watch many movies in 2020, but one film I did see was "The Social Dilemma." If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend you do. It gives a chilling insight into what the world’s sharpest engineers do to capture your attention on social media.

They exploit systems in your brain by giving stimuli that evolution hasn’t yet conditioned it to handle.

They use colors, notifications, likes, and large amounts of data to keep your attention.

Your attention is what they make money on.

By hacking your brain, they do everything they can to get you to scroll, click, post, and like as much as possible.

One of Facebook’s founders, Sean Parker, said at an event in 2017:

The thought process behind building these apps was focused on the question "How can we get you to spend as much time and attention on the app as possible?"

It’s a formidable opponent.

What Your Phone Wants to Steal

Your attention. But is that really so important?

How you spend your time determines how you spend your days.

How you spend your days determines how you spend your life.

You have a limited amount of attention available each day. By giving a large share of this to the little device in your pocket, you sacrifice other things you could devote your attention to.

Have you ever sat on the sofa with a friend or partner, both with your noses buried deep in your respective phones? What if your attention had instead been on each other's needs, goals, and dreams?

Have you ever scrolled and scrolled while your child feverishly tries to get your attention during playtime? What if you had been focused, engaged, and managed to be 100% present in all such interactions?

It’s hard. Damn hard.

Even if you’re not using your phone, it captures a certain amount of your attention just by lying there.

Like an alluring siren, it tempts you with dopamine, preventing you from being present in the moment.

When you try to work on important projects.

When you have the opportunity to create deep human relationships.

When you could be productive.

When you could contemplate the most important questions that exist.

As Ryan Holiday points out in "Stillness is the Key":

Stillness is the key to, well, pretty much everything.

Everything worth pursuing requires attention.

It requires us to control what gets our attention.

Take Back Your Freedom

If you weren’t aware of it before, I hope you are now convinced of the importance of taking up the fight. Of reclaiming your freedom.

Set aside time for what matters most to you.

What’s the most important thing you do? Where is 100% of your attention required?

The time for the most important activities should be phone-free time. Otherwise, you give it a few percentage points of your attention.

Set aside time where the phone is placed in another room.

For me, journaling, coding, important work tasks, dinner with family, dates with my wife, reading or playtime with the kids are examples of time blocks where the phone is put away.

These activities are important to me. I want to be 100% present. I want to be the best version of myself in these areas. I am not if I am not 100% present.

But, I don’t always succeed. But I will never give up. Too much is at stake.

Create rules for when you can check your phone.

I also find the phone useful in many areas. My children’s kindergarten sends important messages via the Schoollink app, the sports club posts information about practice times for ski play, my wife buys used children’s gear on finn.no or through Facebook groups. I’m a member of groups that provide me with much useful and valuable input.

The point is not to eliminate all use of the phone, but to be aware of when we want to use it and for what purpose.

By taking back control, you can reclaim your freedom.

One way to do this is to create algorithms for when you can check your phone, and perhaps also use social media. For me, I have such a block during lunch, or while I'm in the bathroom.

Just like "cheat days" are useful on a diet, scheduled periods of reward are a way to maintain motivation while keeping control.

Remove the Excess

How many apps do you have installed on your phone? How many of these do you use regularly? How many do you really need to use?

By decluttering the apps you have installed, you can reduce the number of apps competing for your attention while simultaneously making a conscious assessment of which apps actually provide you with value.

Try to create a list of the apps you want to keep first, and uninstall all that didn’t make it on the list. If you do it the other way around and go through everything you’ve installed, chances are you’ll keep apps that may hold some small value in some situation.

Cleaning up apps feels good, just like it feels good to remove clothes you don’t wear from your closet.

Turn Off Notifications and Sounds

The apps that are allowed to give notifications on your phone should pass through a particularly narrow needle’s eye.

These are apps you are willing to give a part of your freedom to. Then they should provide you with something important back.

How many apps are allowed to steal your attention?

Social media apps should fare poorly here. By getting notifications for every like or comment, you give them the opportunity to trigger dopamine production in your brain. This can be extremely addictive.

Leave Your Phone Behind

Certain activities lend themselves incredibly well to taking away the phone's power completely by leaving it behind.

This might be when you go for a walk in nature. Sure, you miss the opportunity to snap a nice picture, and your steps won’t count on the daily activity tracker your phone logs. But perhaps it’s worth it in exchange for silence? At least once in a while.

It can be when you set aside time to cultivate a relationship. Whether it’s with a friend, partner, or a new acquaintance. If you really want to be present, this is a very nice way to show it. I try to do it on dates with my wife. I try to do it if I’ve invited interesting people for coffee to get to know them. I will do it when I have performance reviews with employees.

Do you have a fixed time where you step back from the whirlwind of everyday life and think about the bigger questions in life? Where you ask yourself questions like "Who do I want to be?", "What do I want to achieve?", "How can I do something good for others?" If you don’t do this regularly, it may be something to consider. The problem is that the answers to such questions do not come easily. It’s difficult and painful to think about such large and complex questions. The escape is often the phone that lies just an arm's reach away. It removes the pain by delivering an instant dopamine injection in the form of the latest news from your social media feed or your emails.

The problem is that the short-term pain is replaced with a long-lasting one, which is much heavier to bear.

The pain of not living up to what you know you are really capable of.

Sources of Inspiration

• Cal Newport, "Digital Minimalism"
• Nir Eyal, "Indistractable"
• Ryan Holiday, "Stillness is the Key"