(kinda) Digital Minimalism
I broke my phone. I'm gonna lay all the cards out on the table and say I used some force when putting my phone down to "prove" a point to my wife. Was this my best personal moment? Nah. Have I had worse? You betcha. I decided to sit with my wrong decision and go without a phone. What happened wasn't surprising. I kept doing what I usually do with more focus but not without a bit more effort. Then I thought about going back to a dumb phone. And I thought about this for days.
What I came to was using outdated tech just because I can't figure out how to op- erate in the world is just kind of ridiculous. That's not progress. We need people that are moving forward with tech as an asset and tool. Moving backward is very clearly not moving forward. So I decided to make a plan for my phone usage. First, I spent some time (because I didn't have a phone) thinking about the nature of the apps I use and the phone's intentional.
Observations:
Colors. We are drawn to specific colors. Marketing and design people know this. The red button notification on each app indicates an urgency. The blue welcomes and calms (not really) us. The overly playful, slightly bloated look of things reminds us of babies. Yes, babies are bloated, and they're cute as hell.
Apps are, like heroin, made to be addictive. This has been said a lot, but it's not untrue; apps like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok, basically any- thing with a feed, operate like a slot machine. "This thumb scroll is gonna bring me little dopamine hit I was looking for" It's designed to be addictive. That's fine. Capitalism. I get it. However, suppose I don't acknowledge the issue. In that case, I might become the 80-year-old woman playing the pen- ny slots and getting free Mi Thais. It's a life for sure but not necessarily where I want to end up.
Ease of Clutter I'm a reasonably clean person. When I'm working, I'm not. BUT 90% of the time, I clean up. With the digital space, it's so easy to just let stuff happen. Unless I'm super vigilant, I turn into a digital hoarder. I'm very organized on my computer, but it was like a 17-year-old's bedroom when it came to my phone. Sure, I had folders, but it was 4 pages of decomposing apps like Twitter (which I don't even have an account for).
Conclusion:
After being without my phone for a week, I came up with this game plan:
Step 1: Delete Everything. Just start fresh.
Step 2: Make a list, on an analog notebook, of the apps I want/need to carry and list out what kind of time limits I want to put on them.
Step 3: Download apps and put them all in one folder on the second page of my phone's screen. This eliminates my attention being grabbed by colors or design. If I need It, I'll just use the search function. The only exception is Spotify for easy access.
Step 4: Set the wallpaper for the lock and home screen as something boring but doesn't keep my attention there too long.
Step 5: Turn off all notifications and check email, messages, and social media one- two time a day. This may change based on whether I'm in a shoot or whatnot, but I'm going to give it a go.
Step 6: Set app time limits and have my wife set a password for them.
My hope is thoughtfully setting up my phone (like I set up my computer) will help me with distractions and increase focus.
P.s.
I recently stumbled across an internet browser called Brave. I've used Brave on my computer for about 2 weeks, and I'm so pleased with the platform. Brave is an open- source client that blocks trackers and ads while using it and gives you stats on how many ads and trackers it's blocked. This last week it blocked 8058 and saved me al- most 200MB of bandwidth (7mins). I'll take saving 7+mins a week. In 5 years, that's 30hrs of my time. Why not? They hope to put the power back in consumers' hands by paying us to view ads and allocating BAT (Basic Attention Token) to content providers based on the attention you give the site monthly. Thought you might care if you're reading this and looking to get more intentional with your digital life. Privacy matters.