Don’t panic.
Catherine Price isn’t telling you that your smartphone doesn’t have any place in a happy life, nor am I. A more accurate (but less catchy) title might have been “How to Re-establish Dominance In Your Relationship With Your Phone”.
Price has no problem with people using their phones… as long as that’s what they want to be doing.
But she makes a compelling argument that our phones have started to use us instead, and that app designers have harnessed neuroscience to keep us scrolling and checking far beyond what has become useful for us.
The goal of her book is to make us aware of how and when we use our smartphones, how it makes us feel, and to break the cycle of mindless app surfing, scrolling and checking by breaking our addiction to the dopamine cycle.
The book begins with a section explaining why the current relationship between many people and their phones is not a positive one, and some potential consequences which include reduced attention span, reduced memory, and depression.
The second half of the book is a 30 day plan for “breaking up with your phone” and then reforming your relationship so that it’s a healthy one where you’re actively deciding when, where, and how you use the phone.
I strongly recommend this book to everyone with a smartphone.
I’m on Day 6 of the 30 day process and it’s already changing my life. I’ve reclaimed time in my day by taking those minutes of scrolling and adding them together into blocks of time which I can use to actually sit and read a book for 30 minutes, or bake something, or tackle cleaning out a drawer.
I’ve also noticed an increased level of focus. Because I’m actively trying not to pick up my phone unless I want to initiate something (rather than consume something) I’m better able to empty the entire dishwasher without checking Instagram or Facebook or seeing an e-mail that I must deal with right this second.
I freaked out when reading the section of the book about how our attention span is suffering and our brains may actually be changing due to our phone use. Now I actively try to see tasks all the way through. Every time I completely finish a task without stopping and doing something else, I’m training myself to have more focus and patience.
An exercise you can do right now:
On day 2, Price has you assess your current relationship with your phone. What do you love about your phone? What don’t you love about your phone?
I love snapchatting and texting Greg little moments in my day and connecting with him when we’re not together. I love being able to reach my neighbors so our kids can play outside together or we can carpool. I love posting a photo of plant-based food on social media with a link to the recipe and then learning that someone I know made it and thinking about the environmental and animal welfare impact of them eating a meatless meal they might not have otherwise. I love adding appointments to my calendar and getting reminders on my phone for events. I love always having a camera with me so I can capture some of my kids’ special moments.
I don’t love wasting time.
I don’t like that I delay doing dreary, mundane household tasks by scrolling instead and then discovering that twenty minutes have passed and I still have to get everything done only now I don’t have time to do it. (And I wasn’t even having fun during my “break”.)
I don’t love when my children burst into the room excited to tell me something and I don’t hear the first half of it because I was absorbed in social media.
I don’t love that I’ll pick it up during meals with my kids because I’m bored instead of initiating conversation with them or working myself into their conversation.
I don’t love not being present in the moment, or the pressure I feel to photograph every moment instead of living it.
I don’t love getting on social media and seeing all the negativity or negative news stories and then dwelling on them.
I don’t love experiencing FOMO when I see friends doing things on social media.
I don’t love checking my email when I don’t have time to respond and then having the mental burden of that task infiltrate whatever real-life experience I was having.
I don’t love that when I hit a road-block in my writing I reach for my phone and check my e-mail or social media instead of thinking and working through the problem and making progress. Every time the going gets tough, I seem to reach for my phone and distract myself instead of pushing forward.
I don’t like that I’m missing moments with my children that I might have had without a phone, even little ones, like talking to them in waiting rooms at the orthodontist or doctor’s office. How many minutes of my life have I missed having a conversation with them, and for what?
Do you want to be doing this?
After that writing exercise, I started asking myself if my phone was what I want to be doing right then before I picked it up. Sometimes, it is. Sometimes I really do want to send off a photo of that homemade hummus, or snapchat Greg. Sometimes I’m in carline and it would be fun to spend ten minutes scrolling through Instagram for meal inspiration. But a lot of the time, the answer is no. I don’t want to be on my phone. I’m just reaching for it because I also don’t want to clean up from breakfast, or I’m bored.
It’s been less than a week since I’ve been working on Price’s plan, and I’ve already gotten much better at not mindlessly reaching for my phone when my children are present, at seeing tasks all the way through, and at using my leisure time all at once in larger blocks to do things I truly enjoy instead of wasting two minutes here and there throughout the entire day.
It takes time
I’m purposefully following Price’s 30 day plan because it takes time to change a habit. If you try to do it all at once, you might have a good week, but it may be harder for it to stick. Picking up her book every day and reading what “the plan” is for that day and journaling about my progress has helped me play the long game.
Verdict
I think everyone with a smartphone should read this book. Maybe you have a perfect relationship already… but I would be surprised if even the most technology savvy and mindful of us can’t learn something from Price’s straight forward tactics for being aware of your current relationship, forming goals for what you’d like it to be, and coming up with a plan to break your addiction and get back in control of your device.