This sounds crazy - Let me explain my Why!

I’m sure I would have thought this was not a practical experiment 2 years ago. Getting to the point of being interested in trying a flip phone didn’t happen overnight – it happened over about a year as I throttled back my smartphone usage.

The Journey to this point

About a year ago, one of the guests on the podcast specialized in children’s use of technology and we discussed digital addiction in children. This started my self-study into the topic and it expanded to adult digital addiction as well.

As I started to focus on the broader topic of how we all interact with phones, I started to become more aware of the excessive phone usage all around me and some of the tactics that smartphones/apps/social media use to hi-jack our brain.

I also read Cal Newport’s book “Deep Work” which highlights how all the different notifications interrupting us during work can diminish our ability to truly concentrate. He also highlights how willpower can be finite so by using willpower to not check a new notification; you may have less willpower for other tasks like exercise or dieting.

With all this in mind, I started to come up with some practical steps to dial back the number of times I touched my phone.