{"id":436,"date":"2014-09-03T21:02:59","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T04:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/?p=436"},"modified":"2014-09-05T13:05:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T20:05:23","slug":"let-me-check-my-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/03\/let-me-check-my-phone\/","title":{"rendered":"Let me check my phone."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lately I am sick of my iPhone. It\u2019s become a crutch to help make sure my mind is constantly occupied and to keep me constantly \u201cdoing something.\u201d It seems that just waiting or sitting is socially awkward now, so at the first sign of nothing happening, out it comes. It&#8217;s\u00a0time, once again, to\u00a0apply some moderation and start using it in a more healthy way.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve been trying:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Disable almost all notifications. Especially email.<\/li>\n<li>Set times of the day for checking the phone and stick to them. E.g. no social media except for between 5 and 5:30 pm and 9 to 9:30 pm (or whatever).<\/li>\n<li>Keep a paper list of stuff to look up later. Who is the president of Azerbaijan? Why does the moon look so big tonight? Important questions, no doubt, but they can wait. Save them up, along with questions like \u201cI wonder where Jane is, haven\u2019t seen her in years?\u201d and take care of the list all at once. Doodle some while you\u2019ve got the pen out.<\/li>\n<li>Find small, useful things to do on the\u00a0phone. Sometimes, despite best intentions, the phone is going to come out. Rather than immediately going to a game, I like to have a book of short essays, that wasy I can turn on the phone, read something useful, then turn it back off. Here are a couple good books along these lines:\u00a0<a title=\"This Will Make You Smarter\" href=\"http:\/\/amzn.com\/0062109391\/?tag=besttoolforth-20\">This Will Make You Smarter<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; the title sounds a little pretentious but it\u2019s really good.\u00a0<a title=\"Daily Rituals\" href=\"http:\/\/amzn.com\/0307273601\/?tag=besttoolforth-20\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Rituals<\/a>: How Artists Work. Learning about what\u00a0creative people\u00a0do every day to keep their output high is strangely fascinating, even if you\u2019re not an artist. Another more productive technique is to find a good Spaced Repetition\u00a0(SRS) app and learn words in another language. There are tons of other useful, learning-oriented apps to help you, if you\u2019re going to be distracting yourself, do it in a more meaningful way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Admittedly, none of that is all that exciting, but there is some very interesting thought\u00a0going on around this:<\/p>\n<p>This\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/fourhourworkweek.com\/2014\/08\/29\/kevin-kelly\/\" target=\"_blank\">very good podcast with Tim Ferriss<\/a>\u00a0(who is a lot of the inspiration for re-starting this blog) interviewing Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of Wired, and all around fascinating and wise person who, among many other things, spends time with the Quakers and has some great insights there.<\/p>\n<p>This\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/secularbuddhism.org\/2014\/08\/30\/episode-207-alex-soojung-kim-pang-the-distraction-addiction\/\" target=\"_blank\">Secular Buddhist podcast with Alex Soojung-Kim Pang<\/a>\u00a0on The Distraction Addiction and this one with<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/secularbuddhism.org\/2014\/08\/17\/episode-206-andrew-holecek-meditation-in-the-igeneration-how-to-meditate-in-a-world-of-speed-and-stress\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0Andrew Holecek on Meditation in the iGeneration<\/a>\u00a0are great, and very related to the above. Pang has also written a really<a title=\"Mindful iPhone\" href=\"http:\/\/www.contemplativecomputing.org\/mindful-iphone\/\"> nice series of articles on &#8220;Mindful iPhone.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The book\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/amzn.com\/0393339750\/?tag=besttoolforth-20\">The Shallows<\/a>\u00a0by Nicholas Carr and\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/amzn.com\/0465031463\/?tag=besttoolforth-20\">Alone Together<\/a>\u00a0by Sherry Turkle.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a lot more to be said about this topic. Another day.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lately I am sick of my iPhone. It\u2019s become a crutch to help make sure my mind is constantly occupied and to keep me constantly \u201cdoing something.\u201d It seems that just waiting or sitting is socially awkward now, so at the first sign of nothing happening, out it comes. It&#8217;s\u00a0time, once again, to\u00a0apply some moderation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[90,71,70,72,69],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-books","tag-buddhism","tag-contemplative-computing","tag-quakers","tag-silence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/images\/contemplative-computing.png?fit=1798%2C976&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-72","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}