019f8fd211
git-subtree-dir: users/wpcarro git-subtree-mainline:464bbcb15cgit-subtree-split:24f5a642afChange-Id: I6105b3762b79126b3488359c95978cadb3efa789
280 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
280 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Cell Phone Experiment"
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date: 2020-04-02T02:02:07Z
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draft: false
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---
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### TL;DR
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I will not use my cell phone during March to learn more about how much I depend
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on it.
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### Explore/Exploit
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Ever since I read Charles Duhigg's book, [The Power of Habit](poh), I try to
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habituate as many aspects of my life as I can.
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Making my bed every morning is an example of a habit -- so too is flossing at
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night before bed.
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The *exploit* axis of the [explore/exploit tradeoff](exp-exp) endows habits with
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their power. Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths explain this concept more clearly
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than I can in Chapter 2 of their exceptional book, [Algorithms to Live
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By](algos).
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Habits are powerful, but if I overly exploit an activity, I may settle on a
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local optimum in lieu of settling on a global optimum; these are the opportunity
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costs of exploiting (i.e. habits) versus exploring (i.e. spontaneity).
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But what if it was possible to habituate exploration?
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### Monthly challenges
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Every month since October 2018, I challenge myself to try something new. In the
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past, monthly challenges have been things like:
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- sign up and take Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes
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- buy a guitar and learn [Freight Train](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK8emiWabU)
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- study Italian
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- learn a handstand
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Typically for an activity to qualify as a challenge, I must spend *at least
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fifteen minutes* working on it *at least five days* each week.
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This month (i.e. March) I'm challenging myself to avoid using my cell phone.
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My parents gave me a cell phone when when I was a freshman in High School; I was
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14 years old. I am now 28, so I have been using a cell phone semi-daily for over
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a decade.
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While I enjoy the convenience that my cell phone provides me, I am curious to
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suspend my usage to more clearly understand how much I depend on it...
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### April
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Now it is early April, and I completed March's challenge. So how was it?
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Below I outline the parts of using a cell phone that I missed and the parts that
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I surprisingly did not miss. I will also mention the two times that I used my
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cell phone and why.
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The first three things that I missed all relate to time.
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#### Timekeeping
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On the first day I realized that unless I was near a computer, I did not know
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what time it was.
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I exclusively use my cell phone as my watch; I do not wear a watch. To adapt, I
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started looking for clocks around my office and while I was taking public
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transportation. Thankfully London posts the current time on the digital train
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schedules. This oriented me while I was traveling, which was also when I needed
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to know the time the most.
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Most of the month, however, I never precisely knew what time it was.
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#### Alarm clocks
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While I anticipated living without an alarm clock prior to the experiment, I
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decided against buying a substitute. Prior to this month, I theorized that
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morning alarms probably disrupt the quality of my sleep. If I'm tired, shouldn't
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I keep sleeping?
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As the month progressed and my 24 hour day morphed into a 25 hour day, I learned
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that I would prefer waking up at a set time every day and synchronize my
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schedule with the rest of my timezone.
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I am still unsure if alarm clocks are helpful in the long-term. I would have
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slept with the curtains drawn to allow the morning sun to wake me
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up. Unfortunately, I live on the ground floor nearby a brightly shining street
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lamp that spills into my bedroom.
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If I lived somewhere more remote (perhaps even a suburb would do) I would like
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to repeat an experiment where I live for a month without an alarm clock.
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For now, I must return to the Temple of Chronology and supplicate until Father
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Time restores my sanity.
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#### Timers
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Using timers motivates me to do a bunch of short tasks like cleaning my flat for
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fifteen minutes, stretching, or reading before bed. Thankfully, I already owned
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a physical timer that I keep in my kitchen. This replaced the timer on my phone
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without disrupting my routine.
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#### Maps
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Speaking of being disoriented, what about living without maps software? On the
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few occasions where I traveled somewhere that was unfamiliar to me, I had to
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memorize the directions from my computer before I departed.
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At least I didn't need to visit gas stations or museums to buy trifold tourist
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maps...
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I once left my office mistakenly assuming that I would download the directions
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to my destination while commuting. As I awaited the office elevator, I realized
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that I had no clue where I was heading.
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Thankfully I wasn't far from the safety, comfort, and familiarity of my desktop
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computer -- with its fatty WiFi connection. In no time I was studying Google
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Maps in my web browser and memorizing the directions.
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Overall this was hardly an inconvenience, and I think I even enjoyed
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stress-testing my memory: a job that I so often outsource to hardware.
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#### Rendezvouses
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A couple of times I met friends in various parts of the city. Organizing these
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particular rendezvouses was a novel (read: anachronistic) experience. For all
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you young whippersnappers reading, take out your stone tablets and chisels. I'm
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going to explain how this works:
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First I would tell my friends where and when to meet me. I emphasized that I
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would be quite helpless to any changes they might make to the plans once I began
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commuting, which made the commitments unusually more binding.
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On one occasion my friend -- who is characteristically prompt, and even chides
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me for when I'm late -- was twenty minutes late for our engagement. My friend is
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German, so I figured I should do my civic duty of alerting the German embassy
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that my friend had broken German code, is obscenely late, and should therefore
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hand-in his passport and renounce his citizenship. After awhile my conscience
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advised me to reconsider.
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It was fortunate for both of us that I did not fully understand how late he was.
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Remember: I didn't know what time it was.
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I decided this would be a useful opportunity to test my patience, so I loitered
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for twenty minutes outside of our meeting point. He couldn't text me to tell me
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that he was late. I couldn't listen to music, call family or friends, or partake
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in any of the other rituals that modern-day loiterers observe to pass the
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time. In the end he showed up, and it was scarcely a big deal.
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This experience made me wonder what the policy for abandoning plans is when
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someone is running late. Before smart phones, how long did people wait? Maybe
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the proper etiquette is to wait long enough for you to absolve yourself of the
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guilt of flaking in the unlikely event that your friend arrives shortly after
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you leave.
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So... thirty minutes? I'll call my grandma tomorrow and ask her.
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#### Boredom
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My phone couldn't entertain me while I queued at the grocery store. Same too
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when I commuted.
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I also found myself listening to less music than I usually do. I decided to read
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to occupy the void when I could; this helped me progress towards completing this
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year's [GoodReads challenge][gr-annual].
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### Cheating
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I used my phone twice during March.
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1. Once to use my bank's mobile app to internationally transfer money from my
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U.K. account to my U.S. account. I could have used [TransferWise's][tw]
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website, but I didn't.
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2. Another time I used my phone to take pictures of an item that I wanted to
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sell on [CraigsList][cl]. I could have and perhaps should have used my laptop's
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webcam, but at the time, I didn't want to. I am accustomed to using my phone
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to take pictures, and I wanted to sell something.
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In both of these cases, prior habits eroded my resolve to stay the course. These
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are useful reminders that habits don't distinguish between helpful and hurtful;
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they just exist.
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In total I would estimate that I spent somewhere around fifteen minutes using
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my phone in March. While not perfect:
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> Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without (Confucius)
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### Substitution = Dilution
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While the explicit goal of this challenge was to avoid using my cell phone for a
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month, the implicit goal was to disengage from many of the
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[nonessential][essentialism] activities that compete for my attention.
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There were some activities that I didn't miss while living without a cell
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phone. This wasn't because I don't value these activities, but rather because I
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can adequately replace them with alternatives.
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For texting and making phone calls, I used [Telegram][wtf-telegram]. Telegram
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helped me sustain a healthy relationship with my girlfriend while still honoring
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the constraints of the challenge.
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While I appreciated the convenience Telegram provided, I felt that I remained
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about as [available][wtf-availability] during March as I was in February. If I
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ever experiment with drastically reducing my availability, I will be more
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explicit about my objectives.
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### Distraction displacement (whack-a-mole)
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Because cell phones and other electronics have conditioned my behavior, I
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habitually avoid boredom and seek entertainment. On its face this may not sound
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like a harmful practice. My generation drills the aphorism "you only live once",
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suggesting that we may want to embrace a Hedonistic lifestyle.
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Hedonism may or may not be a wise way to play the game of Life. All I know is
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that living a life in which I am often stimulated but proportionately distracted
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appeals increasingly less to me as time progresses.
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During March I noticed that once I freed my attention from sending/receiving
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texts, my brain quickly reassigned my attention to maintaining a vigil over the
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other social media outposts that I maintain.
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I should also admit that I habitually checked Telegram now that it served as my
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new cell phone. Didn't see that coming...
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In another case, once I discovered that I could use Instagram in a web browser
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instead of on my phone, I filled my newfound time and attention on
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[Instagram.com][ig] (don't click!): displacing the time that I spent on an app
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on my phone to time that I spent on a website in a web browser.
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Holy whack-a-mole!
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Halfway through the month, I wrote a [program to block websites][url-blocker] on
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my computer. Surprisingly this worked and forced me to more deliberately fill
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this hard-fought, foreign time with other activities.
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### Easy come, easy go?
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As the saying for making friends goes, "easy come, easy go", implying that
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friendships that you easily form can just as easily be destroyed.
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Habits invert this creation/destruction relationship. In my experience "easy
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come" implies "difficult to go".
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For example, I could easily form the habit of eating chocolate around 15:00 at
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work; curbing this habit would require more effort. When I compare this to the
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difficulty I experienced habituating a meditation practice, and how easily I
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can dislodge my meditation practice, it seems to me that the laws of habits
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dictate "easy come, difficult go; difficult come, easy go".
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I suspect that while my cravings for using a cell phone have temporarily ceased,
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they will return shortly after I start using my cell phone. And as if nothing
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happened, I return to where I was at the end of February just before I decided
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to curb my cell phone usage.
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Because of this, I'm planning on keeping my cell phone in my closet where I
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stored it during the month of March. As noted, enough substitutes exist for me
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to live a mostly normal life: one where I am not unnecessarily straining the
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relationships of my friends and my family. After all these are the people who
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matter most to me and those who drive me to explore new ways to improve.
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I recognize that the "self" in self-experimentation is a misnomer. Can you truly
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conduct an [N of 1 trial][nof1]? My decisions impact the people in my life, and
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I want to thank everyone who tolerates my eccentric and oftentimes annoying
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experimentation.
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Thank you for reading.
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[pod]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-habit
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[exp-exp]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit
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[algos]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25666050-algorithms-to-live-by
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[gr-annual]: https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/19737920
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[cl]: http://craigslist.com
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[tw]: https://transferwise.com
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[url-blocker]: https://github.com/wpcarro/url-blocker
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[wtf-telegram]: https://telegram.org
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[wtf-availability]: https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/availability-table
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[essentialism]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077875-essentialism
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[ig]: https://instagram.com
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[nof1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_of_1_trial
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