I read this material about a month ago. It changed my idea of what a phone should do and what it shouldn't do so much that I completely rebuilt working with it. Now he never distracts me from my work, and any contact with the phone is possible only if I consciously want to do it — I just take it in my hand and see what needs my attention there. So, the word is Jake Knapp, who came up with this technique.
When people see my iPhone, they say something like "God, dude, do you have some kind of virus in your phone?" Facebook Instagram* has no browser, no email, Twitter, Instagram* and, of course, no Facebook*. And it looks like this.
But no, the phone is not broken. I made him that way on purpose. It was supposed to be a week-long experiment, but months have passed and I'm not going back. It's very easy to try this yourself.
iPhones and Androids are wonderful phones. They're amazing. They give access to endless information lying in the palm of your hand. But there is a problem: I don't have enough attention for all this — constantly switching between browser tabs and answering emails on a small screen. The ability to check mail and do a million other things not only while sitting at the computer no longer seems so wonderful to me. I began to suspect that there were more interesting things around that I could do.
Perhaps your level of self-control is higher than mine, or you just found your own way to cohabit with all this. I decided not to rely on willpower.
I checked my email, checked Twitter, read the news. I thought about whether something interesting had happened in the world, whether someone had thought about me. Every time I took out my phone at the sound of notifications or just taking it out mechanically, I thought, "Damn, is there really nothing more interesting in the world than THIS?"
I began to realize that my attention, which had not been good before, just started to dissolve. There was a constant storm of thoughts in my head about things that were insignificant to me. And why would I do that? When I read about something on the Internet, there was a feeling of incompleteness and dissatisfaction, because I knew that there was even more information and it was not productive and not cool.
So I came to the experiment — for seven days I decided to turn off everything that somehow bothers me and distracts me.
Another important fact about me: I don't have the most glamorous life. I've eaten 100 meals in a restaurant and 97 of them were the same burrito from the same place. It's one block from my office. Boring, right?
So think about how I felt when I saw your fancy dishes on Instagram*? Think about what it was like for me to read your tweets from SXSW when I was changing diapers. This is not my finding, but a lot of people become more unhappy while reading all these streams. So I held my finger on the Twitter icon until it started twitching, and deleted it. Facebook Instagram* and Facebook* are also with it. The iPhone also asked me "Are you sure you want to delete the app and ALL ITS DATA?" Yes, I wanted to, and very much. And I also understand that you can install these applications in just 15 minutes and return ALL THIS DATA. It won't hurt me to enter logins and passwords if I really need it.
BAM! Nothing on my phone that had a news stream survived.
The next obvious problem was e-mail. When I check my mail, every time I remind myself of the tasks that need to be completed by answering an email, but I have never been able to type so fast to REALLY respond to these emails. I didn't like that I constantly saw unfulfilled tasks, but in fact I couldn't complete them from my phone.
Mountains of unfulfilled tasks did not give me joy and self-confidence, just like photos of cool food that I have not tasted in 16 years. But the case may be worse than a blockage in Inbox if you don't have completely new emails — does this mean that you are a loser?
Disabling email on an iPhone is a bit more difficult. I easily deleted the Gmail app, but the standard Mail app cannot be deleted. So I went to Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars → Gmail and deleted my account.
Then I realized that the biggest irritant has always been... the Internet itself. You can't delete Safari, but you can disable it. Go to Settings → General → Restrictions and turn on these bans. Install a code that you won't forget. This is the place where you need to disable the phone's functions when handing it over to people you don't believe. I don't believe myself!
I have disabled Safari.
Has it been difficult for me all these seven days? No, it was easier than I thought. To be honest, I didn't even notice how they passed. I finally fell in love with my disabled iPhone.
Sometimes, in idle moments, I grab to check the phone "What's new?" and do it months later, but when I don't see anything on the screen, I just put it back in my pocket.
Experiencing boredom has become a special and pleasant state. For example, nothing happened when I was on the playground with my son and there was no news and it was great. I could just stare at him or into the void and that also makes sense.
When I was on the bus, I didn't have a book in my phone (as well as Pocket, RSS, social media news feeds) and I was just looking at the passengers. Damn, I finally started listening to music and doing nothing at this moment. This is also very nice.
An astute reader has noticed that any of the elements disabled in the phone can be easily restored. You can install any application, configure mail and enable Mail or Safari. If some kind of fire accident happens (I need to check the ticket purchase code or find the phone number I need), then I can always turn on the application and get this data. But, since it's very tedious to activate the application, I won't do it just because I'm bored. When I'm done with the fire emergency, I'll turn off the apps again.
Okay, I wrote this post on Medium (approx. LH: an experimental blog platform from Twitter closed for registration), which means I'm a geek. I actually like things that I close from myself on the phone. I am probably the last person on Earth who will stop using e-mail. I love e-mail and use it in Gmail at work.
On my laptop I read Twitter, mail, news. But only on it. Some people ask me why I need an iPhone at all. Maybe someday I will give it up, but I find it hard to believe. The camera in it is excellent. Maps, geo-reminders, Weather forecast, Find Friends helps me know where my family members are. All these things give me the feeling that I'm living in the future. It's not that I don't like the iPhone, but I just need half of its capabilities.
Photo: Shutterstock
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