I used a Nokia for 6 months in 2019 and it was a relief, but wow, was navigation more difficult.
As with quitting anything addictive, the better mindset is: what do you get out of it, rather than what do you quit?
I quit Facebook many years ago and was recently confronted with a group of people who saw this as a great loss for me. But at this point, I can’t even say what gap it filled. Much how like sugar doesn’t really taste of anything after several months of no sugar.
I quit coffee for two months in 2021, and achieved a stable, wakeful state.
Quitting things for a while can be a fun experiment. Quitting things for a long time needs a positively phrased backstory to continuously buy into.
I would totally do this, but I have to have a smartphone for PagerDuty and Slack if I’m on-call. Which for me is basically 24/7 since I’m a SME in a few areas. I figure most of you are in a similar situation, I don’t see a way around that.
If your employer requires the use of a smartphone, your employer should supply the smartphone. Or any other piece of equipment you need. You shouldn't use your own devices for work purposes.
If you have to use smartphone for your work you have to. I don't use smartphone, if smartphone would be required for work , first they would have to get me smartphone, and buy me applications. And when I change job i just return it.
See, that kind of situation has me thinking owning a work phone and a personal phone could be beneficial. Obviously, don't browse social media on your work phone and you should be fine.
I uninstalled most apps from my phone, and turned notifications off on the rest. If it's not a DM, I don't want to see it. My quality of life has improved.
I'm using a GNU/Linux phone, which feels like it gives me the best of both worlds. I have a full blown capable PC in my pocket should I need it, but it doesn't do anything that I don't want it to. I use it mostly in a pull-only manner - the only notifications I get are phone calls, SMS and IM messages from closest contacts. I can also receive notifications on work e-mail and work IM, but only when I explicitly leave the clients open, which I rarely do since I'm usually in front of a PC when I work anyway.
I think the only app that ever bothered me with unwanted notification was a backup app reminding about backups, with a big fat "don't remind me anymore" button attached to it ;)
While I think smartphones absolutely do "hijack" our attention on a daily basis given arguments from Neil Postman & Nicolas Carr to name a couple, I think that removing it completely from life will just have your attention directed into something else. It is awareness and mindfulness that helps you direct your attention to meaning, regardless of technology.
The fun part about these conscious experiments is that they can be even more profound the second time around doing them. You realize it's not necessarily the device/tool, but rather the mindfulness you have now developed with it.
I tried to switch for a Nokia dumb phone a while back and I got burned by buying one that didn't support the right bands (definitely no LTE). It got borderline unusable service and I had to give it up.
Next phone I get will probably be a dumb phone, but it's just something to be wary about for other potential buyers. If anyone has good resources on understanding this stuff, I'd love it. Otherwise I'll have to write it up when I learn next time. It feels like it's hard to get good info on.
I sold my iPhone in May 2020 and bought a Nokia for €10. My life is much more peaceful now than it was before. I probably never go back to a smartphone.
I wish Apple could get the Screen Time feature to work properly. You can set up extremely restrictive parental controls on your own devices and then give the passcode to your sister. But unfortunately Screen Time is not ready for prime time yet. For instance, you can get around blacklisted sites just by changing the browser that you use. What a joke.
I did that too; it lasted until I needed to enter the names of a few new contacts. Ouch.
So when my mother-in-law asked what smartphone to buy a little later, I bought one and left it on my desk for several weeks before I gave it to her, and during those weeks I disabled notifications on every app that activated itself. That worked well.
Looks like the P may have been moved over to the start of the paragraph to simulate manuscript illumination. Maybe because the article starts with a quotation mark. But yeah, no one noticed.
As with quitting anything addictive, the better mindset is: what do you get out of it, rather than what do you quit?
I quit Facebook many years ago and was recently confronted with a group of people who saw this as a great loss for me. But at this point, I can’t even say what gap it filled. Much how like sugar doesn’t really taste of anything after several months of no sugar.
I quit coffee for two months in 2021, and achieved a stable, wakeful state.
Quitting things for a while can be a fun experiment. Quitting things for a long time needs a positively phrased backstory to continuously buy into.