Control Your Phone, Or Your Phone Will Control You
Rebuilding your Attention Span
I am a high-functioning ADHD person. High-functioning is a rather broad umbrella term, so let me qualify that by saying that, in my individual case, I mitigate my ADHD challenges with a set of coping skills that I have spent decades honing. I am proud of achieving a state where 90% of the time, I can focus on demand. For a long time I've been sharing aspects of my approach with ADHD colleagues to help them, and more recently I've been sharing more broadly, as technology has come together to create an attention deficit norm.
The internet connected more of us. Wireless allowed those connections to happen in more places. Social media enriched our exchange. And then smart phones brought all of this together in one beautiful piece of technology that is always available to us at a moment's notice. But as Sophocles warned, "Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse." The curse of this magical device is that distraction is now part of every waking minute of our day. Smart phones have robbed the general population of its attention spans.
I would like to share how I have put my phone in its place, and how I keep it there.
My Phone Is a Tool
I have a pretty good amateur workshop. I have slowly built my tool collection over the last 40 years as I have learned new skills and found value in different tools. But all of these tools pale in comparison to the versatility and power of my phone. So it has the esteemed place at the top of my tool list. But it is still just a tool to me, which means that I use the phone entirely on my terms.
In The Social Dilemma1, Tristan Harris says, "If something is a tool, it genuinely is just sitting there, waiting patiently. If something is not a tool, it's demanding things from you. It's seducing you. It's manipulating you. It wants things from you." The Social Dilemma is a wonderfully constructed docu-drama that brings in big guns from the social media pioneer days to explain how intentionally this aggregate technology functions to draw you in. My favorite line in the documentary also comes from Tristan, "If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product."
The Social Dilemma provides a deep and vivid articulation of the smart phone curse. After viewing this, I said, "I need to control my phone so that my phone doesn't control me."
The Battle Is Not Fair
Tristan Harris is cofounder of the Center For Humane Technology, and he regularly dispenses great wisdom on the war between smart phones and users. In an interview in The Atlantic, Tristan said, "There's 1,000 people on the other side of the screen whose job is to break down whatever responsibility I can maintain." And as further proof of this, throughout The Social Dilemma the engineers behind this software describe how they also fell prey to their work, describing the addictions they developed and the lengths they went to to break their bad habits.
I'm supportive of Tristan's efforts to establish more ethical rules for providers of this software, and I think that's a needed "top-down" effort for the industry. But at the same time, there's also a need for "bottom-up" action, where you take control and develop your own coping skills. But as you embark on this journey, keep in mind what you're up against, and don't beat yourself up too much when you find it hard to keep a safe distance. We've all been there.
Ten Phone Tamers
In Life Of Focus2, Scott Young says, "Removing temptations is easier than resisting temptations." That mantra forms the basis of the coping skills I've collected and refined. In Mining for Gems3 fashion, I have found most of these from other sources. And in Grand Synthesis4 fashion, I've brought them together and added some of my own to create the ten specific rules that I follow to keep my phone (and tablet) from taking control.
You will no doubt recognize some of these. You may have even already attempted to implement some of these. But I bet there is at least one here that you haven't tried before. And what makes this work for me long term is all ten of these working together.
Vibrate my watch for phone calls from known people.
Turn off every single notification.
Make your bedroom a digital free sanctuary.
Don't check your phone in the morning until after you've completed your start-of-day habit.
At work, keep your phone in your backpack and out of reach.
Structure your home screen to have an Important page and a Fun page.
Return to the home screen after each use.
When you're with company, keep the phone in your pocket.
Don't use a smart watch.
Stay on the lookout for more Tamers.
1) Vibrate my watch for phone calls from known people.
Phone calls have become the rarest form of communication, so I'm okay with giving them the special status of, "If it's important enough to call, then it's important enough for me to answer." Phone calls are the one and only interruption that I allow from the phone, and this is only for phone calls coming from someone on my contacts list. This permitted interruption is never audible. It is a vibration on my watch, which I can then quickly glance at to see if I need to answer, without ever touching my phone. (more details on the watch in Tamer #9 below)
2) Turn off every single notification.
Yes, all of them. Yes, that one too. No popup banners. No notification feed. For your phone to be a tool, it has be to used only when you decide to use it, not when the phone tells you to use it. The red (or whatever color you choose) bubbles on app icons for unread count are fine because you only see them when you have your phone open to that page of your home screen. Reacting to your phone every time it dings is classic Pavlovian conditioning. Watch the Science Channel one-minute video Are We Pavlov's Dogs5 if you need an a-ha moment to be convinced that notifications are evil.
3) Make your bedroom a digital free sanctuary.
I'll begin this one with an important distinction: dedicated eReaders are allowed, but not phones or tablets using a reader app, because of all the other apps that are just a click away. At night, plug the phone in some place other than your nightstand. It can be in your closet or attached bathroom or face down on the other side of the room. Prioritize your rest and recharge by creating a very clear boundary that your phone doesn't violate.
4) Don't check your phone in the morning until after you've completed your start-of-day habit.
In my case, the first thing I do in the morning is stretch. Pick whatever daily habit (ideally 5 to 10 minutes long) you want that is both predictable and helps you ease into the day. Here's my analogy for why I don't reach for my phone first.
My wife was a wedding coordinator, and for several of the weddings, I would accompany her to help behind the scenes. One of the weddings that she did was on the San Juan Islands, requiring a ferry ride to and from the event site. The wedding ended at about 1am, and Charu and I got done in time to catch the 2am ferry back to Seattle. We were tired, obviously, and so immediately after pulling onto the ferry and parking, we both fell fast asleep. I was awoken an hour later to a hard banging on the window. Completely groggy, I turned to see a ferry worker pointing ahead for me to go. I looked and saw all the cars in front of me already off the ferry, and a line of cars behind me waiting. Still completely groggy, I turned the car on, put it in drive, and just started driving. Charu started to wake up next to me, as I was saying, "Where are we? Is this the right stop? I don't recognize any of this."
From fully asleep to operating a motor vehicle in less than 15 seconds. It is a horrible idea. Just like using a phone as soon as you open your eyes. Give yourself time to wake up and gently re-enter the world of the living.
5) At work, keep your phone in your backpack and out of reach.
If you work from home, then put the phone in another room. At lunch time -- and only at lunch time -- pull it out and catch up on mails and texts. Keep your brain in a work mindset by not having the tease of an immediate offramp to distraction. Nir Eyal, in Indistractable, cleverly breaks the word distraction down to dis-traction. This is a great visual reminder of how distraction keeps you from gaining traction. I am a firm believer in giving work my undivided attention, and then leaving work and giving life my undivided attention. Maintain traction at work.
6) Structure your home screen to have an Important page and a Fun page.
I only have two pages on my home screen, and I use folders copiously to make everything fit on these two pages (e.g. a Financial folder for all my banking and investing apps, and a House folder for all of my apps related to the house). These two pages prioritizes the Important, as I have to explicitly swipe to encounter Fun. For normal business, I can quickly "get in, get out, and get back to life."6
And in case it's not obvious, let me state that all social media apps belong on the Fun page. I actually go one step further and put all social media apps inside a folder named "Doom" (in reference to doom scrolling). 99.9% of my social media usage is on the desktop computer, and it all happens in one daily 20 minute time window.7
7) Return to the home screen after each use.
To prevent yourself from being distracted the next time you reach for your phone, get into the habit of returning to your home screen (and making sure it's on the Important page) before you put your phone back down. I would love it if Android or iPhone added this setting to the phone to automatically do that, but it's a relatively easy habit to adopt. Now your last activity won't be sitting around waiting to distract you.
A great way to illustrate the value of this habit is to ask yourself this question: how many times a day do you think of something you want to do, reach for your phone to do it, but then by the time you've unlocked your phone, you've forgotten what you were trying to do? The combination of Tamer #2 and Tamer #7 will contribute the most to reducing this phone-induced amnesia.
8) When you're with company, keep the phone in your pocket.
And only pull the phone out if there is an agreed upon need relevant to the current conversation. And, in that event, you announce to the group, e.g. "let's check that on the internet." In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker highlights the challenge and the reward with holding in-person time sacred:
"You may have everyone in one room, but how do you get people to be here?"
"We all carry with us the technical capacity to be anywhere, to check out of the present time or space. That means we always could be doing anything. So the active choice to do one thing and to do it with a fixed set of people is significant."
"I could go deeper into the experience. I could observe something around me my phone would have caused me to miss. I could interact with a person next to me instead of thousands of miles away. "
9) Don't use a smart watch.
As if having a smart phone in your pocket isn't distracting enough, now we can attach it right to your wrist. Do you feel embarrassed when you pull out your phone during a group conversation? Well, don't worry, because now you can just twist your wrist and get your fix. No! This is going the wrong direction. Just because the snack is called "Smart Puffs" doesn't mean I'm better off eating them.
Given my reference to a watch in Tamer #1, it bears mentioning that a semi-intelligent watch is usable without creating additional distraction. I got a Garmin Instinct watch to give me more data on my swimming exercise. I found out that the watch could Bluetooth pair to my phone, which I did. And then, every two seconds, my watch would vibrate. I quickly found the settings and turned off all notifications … except for calls that my phone was letting through. That's been a great win, because I used to have to keep my phone in my pocket so that I could feel the vibration. Now I can keep the phone in my backpack without worry.
10) Stay on the lookout for more Tamers.
Make taming your phone a topic of conversation with your friends and colleagues. Share your most effective tamers, and learn what their best tamers are. This technology space evolves quickly. There are always changes to apps, and new apps appearing, that your own phone tamers list needs to stay fresh.
And to the end, since I've just shared my 10, now I'd like to hear from you. What has worked best for you to keep your phone from owning you?
Footnotes
The Social Dilemma, which I also touched on in Nuance and Generosity
Life of Focus, a terrific course co-developed by Cal Newport and Scott Young
Science Channel Are We Pavlov's Dogs (YouTube)
A great tagline from the Windows Phone "Really" Ad back in 2010. Also referenced in Raising Your Own Awareness
I detailed this social media block in Nuance and Generosity