Disconnecting from interruption

I sometimes need one of those in-your-face, no-holds-barred types of interventions or realisations that will compel me to change my behaviour.

On a recent long-haul flight back home, I got just that as I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work from start to finish. It was a good read, and I learnt new things about how the brain works (for example attention residue).

The single takeaway that made me stop and reconsider my behaviour was just how distracting my phone was (and how this wasn’t supporting me in doing good, deep work regularly).

About two months ago, I made a whole bunch of changes to the way I use my phone:

• My phone is permanently on silent, and I have the “Do Not Disturb” setting switched on as well.
• I have switched off 99% of notifications on my phone. Not even lock screen notifications. Nada. The only notifications I get are from WhatsApp (my primary messaging medium) and my bank.
• I moved all of my work-related apps on my phone to a second screen and folder. I’ve also (mostly) avoided them completely outside of general work hours.
• I also moved any social app to a third screen and into a folder with the aim of making it harder to get to them.
• Whenever I’ve been bored and felt a tendency to either check email or mindlessly scroll through Facebook or Twitter, I have instead opened my Kindle app and continued reading whatever book I was reading on my physical Kindle.

Doing this has felt great. I’ve felt less of a slave to my phone, and it’s been easier for me to schedule uninterrupted sections to do some deep work. That just sounds airy-fairy though, so here are some of the concrete results of these changes:

• I’ve managed to read 22 books (see here) since reading Cal Newport’s Deep Work. This partly, because I’ve replaced mindless browsing on my phone with the reading of Kindle books. But I also don’t feel like as jaded about screen time anymore, which means it’s easier for me to read for longer stretches of time before tiring.
• Without compromising on other work-related to do’s, I have found time to write more — and more consistently — than at any other stage of my life.
• I normally have a huge problem falling asleep. My challenge in falling asleep gets aggravated when I’m still screwing about on my phone in bed late at night. For the last couple of months though, I’ve been falling asleep like a healthy, happy baby.
• I now often don’t even have my phone with me. I used to walk around the house with my phone in my pocket, but now I often find myself looking for where I last left it.

Don’t get me wrong; my phone is f*cking amazing. It has so much power, and it can keep me entertained or engaged for hours. But I got sucked into its black hole without knowing, and it had a real effect on my productivity and happiness.

The worst was however that I didn’t even know of this negative impact until I cut the cord. Now — with greater and clearer boundaries in place — my phone and I have a much healthier relationship. My phone is there when I need it, and I don’t feel tethered to it anymore.

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Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash