Making My Smart Phone Dumb Again . . .

I was pretty late to the smart phone party.  I resisted for a long time.  When I finally got an iPhone, I realized what I'd been missing.  I was able to do so much right from my phone!  I could check my emails, and do my banking, and schedule my appointments (even my haircuts!).  What an amazing tool!

But that didn't last long.  That tool quickly became a toy.  I spent more and more time on social media, and watching videos on YouTube.  Before I knew it, it wasn't a help anymore, and I spend more and more time staring at that phone and less and less time living in the real world.   

I've been fighting with this phone for the last 18 months.  I've had a difficult time being disciplined about how I use it.  Whenever I have a couple minutes, I have that out, and I'm looking at it.  I frustrates me, because it's become so habitual with me.  And many others.

So I've decided to make that phone dumb again.  One at a time, I've been taking apps off the phone that are simply recreational.  Or distracting.  Or that I wind up checking habitually. Or that sends me reminders, or buzzes, or beeps.  And there are times that I don't even take my phone with me. It's shocking, but it's true.  There are times I don't have my phone!  And each time I take this a little further, it causes me a great deal of short term pain and stress.  And then it passes.

And what I've learned is that I have a lot more time than I thought I did . . . in fact, I have many hours each day more than I thought I did (check how much time you're on your phone each day and you're probably going to be shocked).  

All the stress I have because I have so much to do and so little time has been a fiction.  I have the time.  I just haven't been spending it wisely.  And that's because my favorite tool over the last several years was never a tool.  It was a toy.

Sound familiar?

I have about three hours a day now that I didn't have a few months ago.  I've heard people say "if only I had another day every week I wouldn't be so far behind."  You might very well have another day every week you don't realize you have--if you just break the addiction you have with that little toy in your pocket.  

~Todd E. Creason