1st Update

Welcome back to my blog and thanks for joining me on my journey towards reclaiming time from my phone

This is supposed to be a review of my second week trying the experiment…but really it’s been a couple of weeks since my first post. This is my first time blogging and I realize both how time consuming and difficult this is to fit in my day to day life, and (b) how much perfection is really the enemy of good when it comes to ‘shipping’ out blog posts. But that’s actually kind of the impetus for my wanting to write this in a blog, to force a structure to help me create the space to reflect on my experiences and find ways to do better in the future. So as bumpy as my blog release schedule is (yea don’t think it’s really going to be weekly) I’m really glad for the way in pushing me to create space to reflect upon, and improve on my goals. Alright, let’s chat about how this experiment has been going.

Let’s start by looking at the numbers – my screen time log

By the numbers

Highest phone screentime:  Friday 10/7 |  5h:58m

Highest phone pick ups: Sat 10/1 | 158 pickups

Lowest screentime: Monday 10/3 | 1h 51m

Lowest pick ups: Sun 10/9 | 45 pickups

Trends?

• Sundays seem to be low phone use days.

Deeper Dive:

The power of fresh starts

Yikes, there was a big spike the day before i published and then a drop the next day. The night I published the first edition of this blog series felt like a fresh start. I was attempting this (IHMO) cool experiment and had committed to share the results of my progress on the world wide web. So even the day of my publishing I guess had been kinda of a ‘trash’ day when it comes to phone use, I think I experience something akin the power of fresh starts that Katy Milkman refers to in her book How to change. That is an effect I did not really expect to observe or experience, the fact that every time I publish a post on this experiment, I essentially feel like regardless of what the last week was or even the present day went, I’ll get a fresh shot at this. I’m super thankful for that.

The power of emotions

But even though the first day went fairly well – clearly the rest of the week did not necessarily follow suit, haha. As mentioned earlier, the first  day of the experiment , Monday,  and even Tuesday actually saw overall lower phone usage as I was able to better stick to this goal of putting my phone away upon coming home. However, slightly upsetting events occurring in our family derailed my wife and I emotionally starting around Tuesday. This in turn, lead my to overall spend more time on my phone, in part as a distraction. That combined with the fact that it is still not super natural for me to leave my phone with my key’s at my apartment’s entrance (and the slight mental and physical friction to bring my phone back at the entrance when I realize I did not put it away upon coming home) made it all the more easy for me to have access to my phone and to spend a lot of time on it. This was a huge reminder for me of the power that negative emotions carry to derail us from our goals. You start out with a goal to go to the gym, eat better, build a new healthy habit – and boom, life happens, an upsetting event affecting family or work, a disagreement with spouse brings a rift in your relationship, or whatever else it might be, life always finds a way to happen, negative emotions ensue and lay waste to the focus and enthusiasm you had for your goals. And so I run to my phone, for escape.

I’m not complaining about life happening – that’s just the human experience. What I do deplore, however, is my response to the negative emotions. A larger post could be written alone on that (how to respond to negative emotions), in the context of my experiment series on my phone, I find it quite sad how much my phone serves as an emotional pacifier. The thing that pains me the most is how visceral that desire for escape can be and how much growth I maybe forfeiting by not finding healthier, alternative ways of coping with the negative emotions than simply escaping via my phone. I suspect I’ll one day (maybe soon) in fact write a large post on this topic. But for now this will remain a thing to note, a piece of self-awareness when it comes to my response to negative emotions, if, but for the commitment to strive to not go to my phone even in emotionally challenging times.

Other things to note

There are contextual reasons for the variance in my daily phone use like my schedule on Sundays being busier and offering less opportunities for me to look at and spend time on my phone than on Saturdays (or the fact that I was at a wedding the second Saturday listed here, so again less opportunities to look at my phone). So I expect Sunday’s to be low phone usage days.

Also, I realized that my google maps usage to get places significantly jacks up the appearance of my phone use. Since I’m typically actually not really using my phone when driving I’ll be subtracting my google maps usage time from my daily screen time, in an effort to get a more accurate picture of how I’ve used my time.

What will I do differently to improve?

As mentioned above, one thing I’ll strive to do differently is to strive to not run to my phone when I experience negative emotions. Instead, I’d like to try journaling a paragraph on my feelings and thoughts, as a way to actually process my feelings and hopefully gain clarity.

Also, as I reflected on how difficult and somewhat unnatural it felt to put my phone away upon walking into my apartment, one major (may seem minor to you) improvement I’m starting, to increase the chances I’ll remember to put the phone away, is to add a little landing pad right above my house key drawer. This, I hope, will act as a daily visual cue to put the phone down (pictured below).

And that’s it for this week…aaanndd we’re off to a fresh start in 3..2..1…