[2023-03-19] Managing smartphones
The smartphone: the great time saver and the great time suck.
With my phone always within reach, I can stay organized, accessible and informed. I can learn, play and share. I can fill every idle moment with activity. But with my phone always within reach, every scroll through social media, my email, my news feed can make me feel like Alice as she's falling down the rabbit hole.
This is not a new phenomenon. A dozen years ago, I quoted productivity expert Tony Schwartz, who wrote in the Harvard Business Review (The Power of Deceptive Simplicity) about the doubled-edged sword that is technology:
Technology, for example, has gotten way out ahead of our ability to manage it skillfully. Rather than opening up our worlds, or making us more efficient, our digital devices increasingly just distract and preoccupy us. As the polymath Herbert Simon put it so presciently way back in 1978, "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."
For me—and, no doubt, many others—it feels like it's getting harder to take the best from our devices and leave the rest.
Just a few weeks ago, Elissa Sanci wrote in The New York Times (Everything You Need to Break Up With Your Phone, From Free Tricks to Phone Safes):
Even once you’re aware of the all-consuming relationship you have with your phone, wrestling your focus back from the hypnotic glow of your screen is no easy feat. Because people need their phones for all kinds of communication and connection, it’s unrealistic to think that you can divorce yourself from your devices entirely—but you can strive for a better way to coexist with them.
Ay, there's the rub! Smartphones are incredibly helpful for connecting with others, keeping lists, answering questions, learning a language, remembering appointments and medication. At the same time, they can be incredibly distracting.
Sanci quotes Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up with Your Phone: "The ultimate goal isn’t to dump your phone. The goal is to create a healthier relationship with it."
With that in mind, Sanci provides a range of tips and tools from the simple to the extreme for achieving a healthier balance with our devices. I preferred her free habit-changing hacks to the more sophisticated (and costly) options outlined in her article. Among Sanci's first-line fixes are these:
- Put a rubber band around your phone when not in use. If you're in the habit of mindlessly reaching for your device, the rubber band will remind you of this (and take a tiny bit of effort to remove).
- Choose a lock screen background that will remind you of your desire to manage your phone use. You could add an inspirational quote or photo that reminds you of your goals regarding your phone use.
- Move time-sucking apps off your main screen. Reserve your home screen for essential and helpful apps, such as messaging, phone, map, camera, calendar and medication reminders. Move social, game and entertainment apps (including news aggregators) to your phone's second or third screen. Delete unused apps.
- Turn off non-essential notifications. "Notifications are notoriously effective at sucking us into our phones, so don’t give them the opportunity to steal your attention in the first place," writes Sanci. Keep notifications that are time sensitive, such as medication and appointment reminders, as well as messages from family members and calls. Remove other notifications.
- Use the "Do Not Disturb" option to limit distractions. When "Do Not Disturb" is turned on, notifications will be silenced, save for those you've identified as exceptions, such as texts or calls from family members.
Developing a healthier relationship with our phones (just like a healthier relationship with food, exercise, loved ones) is not about dramatic, but ultimately unsustainable, changes. It's about incremental improvements that help us get the most from our phones with the least number of downsides and that inspire us to do more of what we want and less of what we don't.
