A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

I employ a lightweight version: in my home is a "charging station" where it is easy to place a device and then forget about it. Some days I don't even see my phone until noon. If I drop my device at the charging station when I walk past it or when I get home, it's likely I won't pick it up for many hours. This practice has been a game changer for elongating my attention span and conducting myself with greater presence.

Notes:

- There's no downside to this strategy; I still have a 2-factor auth device, maps for travel, music for car rides, convenient contactless payment, etc.

- The charging station should be away from the main living areas and bedroom – mine is in a hallway's open cupboard near the main entrance.

- The "charging" part of the charging station is a misnomer, you don't have to charge anything, but the label serves as an enticement to drop off the device.

I use the phone as a 4G hotspot, Apple Music, plus apps such as Uber, Waze, wallet, etc. No social networks (LinkedIn and Reddit only on desktop browser), no messaging.

Apple Watch replaced with Casio GShock (solar powered and automatically adjusted via radio, expect it to last 20 years)

Palma has WhatsApp and telegram, outlook (closed most of the time) and reading apps.Podcasts too.

Most sites are consumed via RSS. PDF to Readwise for read later, notes on desktop Obsidian.

I can use Organic Maps in the Palma, and most tickets via QR. I try to force myself not to use the iPhone at all on the street except one of those cases (recharge public transport ticket, camera, payment, etc)

I’m in the age group that is just old enough to remember adult life before everyone had smartphones.

Honestly, it’s getting weird to read people’s unrealistically idealistic descriptions of life before smartphones. I don’t recall people striking up conversations in grocery lines before smart phones, nor would I have been interested in it.

I think people also downplay how much smartphones just replaced rampant TV consumption for people who like to be entertained constantly. The same people who can’t entertain themselves without their smartphone and who consume toxic content would probably be sitting in front of TVs and watching Jerry Springer type shows instead of scrolling /r/relationships or watching Fox News talking heads instead of whatever weird political thing they’re consuming.

Smartphones changed many things, but the idyllic offline-first fantasies I keep reading about weren’t reality before smartphones either.

If you find yourself unable to moderate consumption, then ditching the smartphone is a good idea for you. However, I reject the idea that all techies need to reject technology and smartphones and embrace an extremist anti-position on the matter. Personally, I handle smartphone usage just fine as do most of the adults around me.

People should recognize when they have a problem, but projecting their own solution on to everyone else is about as appealing as the person who had a problem with drinking too much trying to insist that nobody else should drink any alcohol at all either.

I also use my smartphone for important things like maps, taking photos, keeping lists, and even paying for groceries if I forget my wallet. The way some people talk about smartphones as if they were just social media scrolling devices and nothing more is entirely foreign to how I use my phone.

It's a flip phone that runs android, so can still use whatsapp, signal, email, maps, use rideshare apps, scan qr codes, and play music, but is limited enough that I'm not scrolling on it during free interstitial moments. The screen is too small to really be useful for reading the internet or using something like instagram, but I'm not totally cut off from friends and family.

I've used other dumbphones in the past, notably the Punkt MP01 and the Light Phone II and the Cat feels like one I could use indefinitely and not have to have another device handy. The only exception I would note is that I recently got back from traveling to a foreign country and a city I'd never been and I think I would have rather had a smart phone there.