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Started working on my debut blog post about giving up my cell phone during march. I'd like to publish this post by the end of the month, once I conclude the experiment. At that time, I'd like to change the voice of some the content to be past test. For now, I'm dumping ideas here while they're fresh in my mind. I will refine and prune the final post later.
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| title | date | draft |
|---|---|---|
| Cell Phone Experiment | 2020-03-09T22:02:07Z | true |
TL;DR
I will not use my cell phone during March to challenge myself and learn more about how much I depend on my device.
Background
Ever since I read Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit, I try to habituate as many aspects of my life that I can.
The exploit axis of the explore/exploit tradeoff endows habits with their power. If you are interested in learning more about the explore/exploit tradeoff, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths explain this concept more clearly than I could in Chapter 2 of their exceptional book, Algorithms to Live By.
One pitfall of overly exploiting an activity, however, is neglecting global optima in favor of local optima. Thus we must also explore. Is it possible to habituate exploration? I think so.
Every month since October 2018, I commit to a monthly challenge. In the past, monthly challenges have been things like:
- sign up and take Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lessons
- buy a guitar and learn Freight Train by Elizabeth Cotton
- study Italian
- attempt to learn a handstand
Typically for an activity to qualify as a challenge, I must spend at least fifteen minutes working on it at least five days each week. Oftentimes challenges have concrete deliverables (e.g. playing the "Freight Train" song from start-to-finish). Other times, with Jiu Jitsu, the challenge consists of attending classes five days a week without any absences.
This month I'm challenging myself to avoid using my cell phone for the entire month. I am interested in partially digitally detoxing.
My parents gave me a cell phone when when I was a freshman in High School; those days, I was fourteen years old. I am now twenty-eight years old, which means I have been using a cell phone semi-daily for over ten years.
While I enjoy the convenience that my cell phone provides me, I am curious to suspend my usage aiming to more clearly understand how much I depend on it.
What was different?
Things that I am missing:
- Alarm clock: I decided to avoid buying an alarm clock. I theorize that alarms and caffeine may distort my reality. An excuse to sleep in? Twist my arm...
- Waking Up with Sam Harris: Thankfully, Waking Up supports web browsers, so this was easy to replace.
- Banking with Monzo: Monzo has a web client for doing simple banking tasks. I needed to internationally transfer GBP to my USD account.
- Spotify: I either read while taking public transport, attempted to briefly meditate, or (most commonly) started blankly.
- Taking notes
- Timers
- Google Calendar for meeting room information
Things that I did miss:
- Phone calls: My birthday is March 5, and I wanted to talk to my family then since I'm currently living abroad in London; I'm originally from a suburb outside of Washington D.C.
Things that I thought I would miss but I didn't miss:
- Email: I prefer checking my emails minimally anyhow.
- Text messaging: Maybe I enjoyed this because I knew the whole time it was temporary. I'm unsure if I'd feel this way if it was permanent.
Exploits
- Telegram native client
- Instagram's web client
What was bad?
Not much.
Will I use a cell phone in April?
Probably. I think this exercise removed some of the long-standing barnacles, but some of the old habits and triggers exist. Also with web browser and native client alternatives to mobile apps, the partial digital detox felt even more partial.