So, I'm starting to realize that the smartphone in and of itself is not the cause of distraction. Rather, it is just another form of distraction. Distraction has always been with us. It just takes on different forms as human civilization advances.

The problem was/is distraction itself. The solution was/still seems to be the same — to set up an environment that is, as much as possible, devoid of distractions, so that you can do your best work.

Tags: #Reflection #DigitalMinimalism #Distraction #SmartphoneAddiction

If you are a parent of young kids and you are concerned about how distracted you are around them, then you will find a lot to relate to in this podcast.

Takeaways

As mentioned above, the whole podcast was a little over 2 hours long. Here are some of my takeaways from watching it. Note that most of these are not direct quotes. I tried to capture the idea as best as I can, but I would suggest watching the podcast to get the context and fully appreciate them.

When Matt, the podcast host, mentioned that he no longer gives out his phone number to everyone, and that he now only corresponds with people through email, which he can only do so with a laptop that stays at his office, John Lentz said this (not a direct quote):

What is more loving, giving 10% of your all to everyone? Or giving 80-100% of your all to the people you love?

You have to pick and choose who you want to be able to reach out to you 24/7. By opening yourself up to be interrupted by anyone, you stretch yourself out too thin. And so you can only give so much of your best to people.

By going the email route for correspondence, you actually give yourself time to disconnect. You're no longer expected to reply right away. Now the expectation is, you'll get to their message when you check your emails. You'll get to it when you get to it. People will need to learn to wait for a response, which can be hard in today's world of instant messaging.

Children are like arrows. It's our job to pull the string, point them hopefully in the right direction, then release and let go. ~ Chris Kaspar

A very good analogy of what it means to be a parent.

Most parents usually have a plan on how to introduce kids to the subject of money. We usually go about it slowly. And the lessons progress over time, going through a number of years until we deem them responsible enough to handle money. Why don't we have the same plan for the technology that we hand out to our kids?

Most parents, including me, will allow their kids to use an iPhone or an iPad and call it a day. I see now how that is reckless. We have to teach kids how to handle technology, just like how we teach them to handle money.

We use tech to escape God, but simultaneously, God uses tech to protect and reach out to us. ~ Chris Kaspar

They (your kids) will only be here for a short time. My wife is a gift to me and she will only be here for a short time. I will only be here for a short time. ~ John Lentz

That's a great reminder of what we are losing, when we spend our days distracted with social media or the phone in our hands — we are losing time with our loved ones.

Lastly, an interesting explanation of why the company is named “Techless”. I previously thought it meant “less technology”, which equates to “techless”, makes sense, right?

But actually, the company name alludes to what John the Baptist said in John 3:30, “He must become greater; I must become less.” With regards to the company name, it means “God must increase, technology must decrease.” It's a very paradoxical name for a technology company.

Tags: #Bookmarks #DigitalMinimalism #Parenthood #Parenting #SmartphoneAddiction #Spirituality

One of the best things about working from home, is being able to eat with my kids at the dinner table. When I'm working from home though, I'm always worried about time that I spend away from my desk. What if my boss wants me to join a call? What if I was supposed to join a meeting? This is why I've resorted to carrying my phone around whenever I'm eating with my kids, or helping Coney out with Baby Caleb.

Carrying my phone around the house has renewed my itch to use it. Like when I'm at the dinner table, or by the bathroom door while potty training Davin, or when I'm carrying Baby Caleb around to give Coney a breather. It's all too easy to just pull it out and fire up the Feedly, Micro.blog or DuckDuckGo app. As you can see, it is not ideal to have my phone with me around the house. Also, how I am supposed to tell Davin to not bring his iPad to the dinner table, when I'm always bringing my phone around for lunch?

Prior to this experiment, I've been using an old Fitbit Charge 2. Unfortunately, it is very unreliable as far as call and text notifications goes. I'll probably get notified 1 out of 5 text messages. Phone calls? Sometimes it notifies me, sometimes it doesn't. The only notification it delivers reliably, are calendar alerts. In other words, I can't trust it to deliver notifications. Which is why I've started looking into Apple Watches. Coney has one and I'm borrowing it for this experiment. The idea is to leave my phone at my desk all day and rely on the Apple Watch to deliver notifications. This should stop me from having to carry my phone around the house.

Timeline

I'll let this experiment run for at least a month. I'll check back in next month.

This post is Day 52 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Visit https://100daystooffload.com to get more info, or to get involved.

Tags: #ExperimentLog #DigitalMinimalism #SmartphoneAddiction #100DaysToOffload

The title of this video is kinda misleading. It almost sounds like the blame is being placed on millennials. It is not. It actually is a great video talking about smartphone addiction and how this is wreaking havoc on the younger generation. This was a really good watch. I even learned a thing or two about alcoholics.

There were so many good points that Simon discussed in this video. I'm kind of annoyed at myself at not having found this video sooner. If you have any interest in trying to get your attention back or have an interest in digital minimalism, you should definitely watch this video.

Some great quotes from the video:

Dopamine is the exact same chemical that makes us feel good when we smoke, when we drink, and when we gamble. In other words, It’s highly, highly addictive. Right? we have age restrictions on smoking, gambling and alcohol. And we have no age restrictions on social media and cell phones. ... You have an entire generation that has access to an addictive numbing chemical, called dopamine, through social media and cell phones as they’re going through the high stress of adolescence. ... So when significant stress starts to show up in their lives they’re not turning to a person, they’re turning to a device, they’re turning to social media, they’re turning to these things which offer temporary relief. We know, the science is clear, we know that people who spend more time on Facebook suffer higher rates of depression than people spend less time on Facebook. These things balanced. Alcohol is not bad, too much alcohol is bad. Gambling is fun, too much gambling is dangerous. There’s nothing wrong with social media and cell phones. It’s the imbalance.

At this point I'm almost tempted to quote everything that was said in the video. So here is a link to the video transcript instead.

#Technology #SmartphoneAddiction #SocialMedia

At one point I did own a Nokia Lumia 920 and I still miss it today. And yes Windows Phones had an app problem that was never really solved, which is why it would be perfect since there are less apps to distract you with.

Anyway the point being that smartphones are addicting. The apps on smartphones are addicting. The phone's very nature as a gateway device to the internet makes it really addicting. It is literally like having the internet in your hands. I was, maybe still am, addicted to my smartphone.

Jake Knapp in this post wrote:

My iPhone made me twitchy. It called to me from my pocket, the way the Ring called Bilbo Baggins.

I couldn't have said it any better. I had the same problem as him. I felt like my smartphone was calling to me, like the Ring did in LoTR. By the way, it was his post that helped me quit Facebook and helped curb down my smartphone addiction.

I won't go into all the details of what I did to try and curb my smartphone addiction, maybe it will be better to tackle that in another post, but I will tell you where I failed. I failed at not being able to remove the browser from my phone. And well the occasional use of Instagram, but really it is the browser that I spend the most time on.

The browser on my phone allows me to stay connected to the internet 24/7. That is something that is hard to resist. Whenever I have the itch to read about something, I fire up the browser on my phone. I mean just look at the screenshot below. You can see I spend the most time using the browser on my phone. I even have another browser on my phone, DuckDuckGo. Yeah I'm clearly not winning my battle against the browsers on my phone.

Lately I've even noticed that I am slowly becoming addicted to checking the read.write.as feed using the browser on my phone. The good thing is that I've already noticed it early on. Like my friend said, “knowing is half the battle.” I'll need to do something about that of course. It could be as easy as implementing a rule to not check the feed on my phone. Which would be really easy if I can keep browsers off my phone, but anyway I'll figure something out.

Tags: #SmartphoneAddiction #SelfImprovement