forgetting my phone in the other room
Since writing my very first blog, I’ve made a concerted effort to stay off my phone. I’ve especially made sure to try to stay off of social media as much as I can. I’ve noticed a couple of things have changed since. Firstly, I keep forgetting my phone in rooms. Sometimes I intentionally leave it there, but most other times I realize hours later that it’s not in my pocket or right next to me. This afternoon my wife and I went on a walk and a few hours after we got back, I realized that I had left my phone downstairs. I’ve even started leaving my phone in my office, which is on the other side of my apartment, when going to bed.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that my attention span has improved when doing other things. I tried watching a show, Slow Horses, a few times in the past because I had heard good things about it. Yet every time I would try to watch it, I’d get 20 minutes in and end up dropping it. We started watching this show again a few nights ago and now we are really into. My wife finally said to me, “it’s because you don’t have your phone” after I’d wondered aloud why this time I was able to get past the first episode. And it was such an obvious revelation but it still shocked me a little.
There are times I do get bored and I’m just not sure what to do with myself because I can’t just hop on TikTok or IG to drown out the silence. But maybe I need to be a little bored sometimes. I do have to watch my YouTube and Reddit usage though because I still tend to get sucked in. Those are difficult apps to try to use in a responsible way because they contain a lot of useful information but at the end of the day, they can be time vortexes too. For this reason, I have some apps that block my usage after a certain time on them has passed. Works pretty well.
It feels great not to constantly pick up my phone expecting something or to try to fill every waking moment of my day with some super stimulating thing. Hopefully I can keep this up.