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I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especial
by thesagan 9y ago
I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation-setting as a result.
This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to-moment mindfullness, and I think I'm going to keep this up for a while and see how long I can go without a smartphone before people start asking me questions at work. So far, so good.
It's like I've withdrawn from a drug and some of my attention is back under my control, where my mind can better keep its peace. I guess I didn't exercise proper discipline when I had the phone.
- throwawaycopy 9y agoTry keeping a sketch pad for quick illustrations or perhaps a notebook for poems. The world is filled with inspiration! Not only will you be more present, but you'll be turning your seemingly humdrum life into a work of art!
- thesagan 9y agoI did – I love it!!!! And a great suggestion. I already have three pocket-sized notebooks filled up already with tons of art and ideas from my fountain pen! (Love that pen. Now I write in a crude Spencerian script for extra fun points.)
- movedx 9y agoWhat a beautiful attitude :)
- jxramos 9y agoI love that interpretation of jotting down information as creating a mindfulness work of art. What a thought! I used to do the cliche "note to self" with a voice recorder, that I've recently been desiring again. My cell phone is too slow to respond to my inspirations having to log in past the keycode, launch the app, dump mental information. Stepping through those hoops seems to decay my inspiration. You make me think about reverting back to old technology like the pen and paper. Come to think of it I get the sense that the mental decay from fishing for those materials in my pocket is less than futzing with a cell phone.
- contingencies 9y agoI actually carry a cheap USB wacom tablet around with my laptop for such purposes... I swear by it, it gives you almost the full freedom of paper without the restrictions of manual media (undo, scaling, duplication, restyling, etc.)
- TranquilMarmot 9y agoHave you ever tried a boogie board? https://www.myboogieboard.com/ https://www.myboogieboard.com/ Writing on it is very natural/paper feeling, there's no erasing or anything. With the more expensive models, it can sync the notes to a computer/cloud service.
- jxramos 9y agowow, it's pretty affordable. How do you write multiple pages on it?
- TranquilMarmot 9y agoThe way the screen works, it can only erase the whole screen in one go. I think with the cloud-connected ones, you can save the page off before erasing it and then view them later.
- jxramos 9y agoI just installed Microsoft OneNote to my Android phone and it added a quick launch app to my lockscreen much like how the camera can be launched while the phone is locked. I'll see how much mileage I get with this solution.
- Buttons840 9y agoGreat suggestion. A notebook is primarily used for creating, a phone is primarily used for consuming and distracting ourselves.
- kowdermeister 9y agoMine simply died and I also skipped buying a new one, this was in last September. I didn't even have a cell phone for months :) Now I just use my dumbphone. I lasts a week on one charge. I didn't miss the calls, or anything. Only the possibility to take pictures on the spot.
- thesagan 9y agoI do miss the camera sometimes. :(
- sizzle 9y agoget a dedicated pocket cam
- throwanem 9y agoThis is good advice - point-and-shoot cameras are really good these days! For $90 you can get one [1] that's the equal of any smartphone camera ever made, and the better of the vast majority - you might find a >16MP sensor on a smartphone, but you'll have a very hard time finding a smartphone with a 5x optical zoom capability. Spend a few hundred dollars more and you can get one [2] with an almost absurdly broad range of capabilities, including a 20-megapixel sensor and a 35x optical zoom capability that'll cover a broader range of use cases than any smartphone camera could ever hope to manage. [1] http://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/compact-digital-cameras/coolpix-a10.html http://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/compact-di... [2] http://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/compact-digital-cameras/coolpix-a900.html http://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/compact-di...
- kowdermeister 9y agoPolaroid also launched Snap: http://www.polaroid.com/products/Z2300-instant-camera http://www.polaroid.com/products/Z2300-instant-camera I love the style and simplicity
- richardknop 9y agoHow do you deal with 2FA?
- ultimoo 9y agoNot OP, but I suppose one could set up SMS based 2FA on a cell phone that is not a smart phone for most major services out there.
- richardknop 9y agoI see. Well, the way I understood it he got rid of mobile phone altogether. So no smartphone, no dumb phone (like old Nokia). That's why I wondered how do you deal with 2FA.
- thesagan 9y agoI have a little widget similar to this hooked on my keychain for AWS: https://safenet.gemalto.com/multi-factor-authentication/authenticators/one-time-password-otp/ https://safenet.gemalto.com/multi-factor-authentication/auth...
- richardknop 9y agoAnd for other services? I need 2FA for couple dozen different logins. And not all of them support such hardware devices. Mobile phone is needed.
- AlexCoventry 9y agoGoogle Authenticator works fine with an offline device, and SMS-based 2FA is insecure.
- richardknop 9y agoRight, but you still need a device. So you can just switch your smartphone into airplane mode and only turn the airplane mode when you want to make a phone call / use wifi.
- quacker 9y agoDo you not have a phone now? Does it affect your relationships with people at all? I have family and friends in other cities and a girlfriend across town. Texts are just too convenient not to have when you need to coordinate. Just last week a friend passed through town looking for a new car and we met up for dinner - never would have happened without a phone. GF gets into a minor accident (not her fault, she would like to point out) and I can be over there in minutes thanks to a couple of texts. Father breaks his knee and I can follow how he's doing in real time, rather than finding out at the next family gathering. I could do without the "smart" part of the phone. I really just need texting/calling (mainly texting). But I don't want a land line, and I'm pretty sure my relationships with friends and family would quickly deteriorate without my cell phone.
- thesagan 9y agoI have a cheap-as-costanza dumb phone with texting which has served me very well. I definitely need a phone! Can't whistle that loudly.
- wutbrodo 9y ago> I could do without the "smart" part of the phone. I really just need texting/calling (mainly texting). But I don't want a land line, and I'm pretty sure my relationships with friends and family would quickly deteriorate without my cell phone. Why not just buy a "dumbphone"?
- shostack 9y agoI'd love to stop using my phone so much, but I can't break the habit. Short of losing it, any tips for dealing with the stress when it flares up from not having the ability to fill those gaps with refreshes of Reddit, news sites or playing games?
- damontal 9y agoyou can set it to black and white (iphone under accessibility). i've heard this makes it less attractive to stare at. you can disable apps under restrictions on iphone - like safari. i've tried all of this and i inevitably just roll these changes back after a while.
- tim333 9y agoI think it can help to have a hard intellectual problem you're working on. Your future startup idea or some talk you'll give or whatever. Then you can think about it when you have a gap.
- thesagan 9y agoMindfulness, and studying the little details of your immediate surroundings. Meditation on-the-spot. When I realized how dependent I became on the phone for my well-being I decided to go through a painful-ish withdrawal to get back my own sense of self. Definitely wasn't comfortable, which prompted me to continue the practice!
- shostack 9y agoHow long did that take you? Was was your low point?
- thesagan 9y agoFirst couple months I was the most impatient and impulsive. However, my whole life is an effort in staving off boredom and red traffic lights, so I try and practice mindful meditation every day to stay patient and "still" in my mind when there's no reason to be thinking furiously. Low point was feeling impatient to check for updates when a loved one was dying and I was visiting at the hospital. Where in the world was my head? I was there to spend quality time with someone while they were still in the here-and-now! And I was anxious to check notifications from some random social website that'd be there tomorrow? WTF. That's when I knew I had an Internet addiction, and that the phone enabled it.
- bbarn 9y agoI've often thought of going back to a dumb phone. The thing is, I want easy to use texting (only to reply with, I abhor texting but the rest of the world loves it), a phone, and this is the killer - good GPS. None of the dedicated GPS devices can hold a candle to what google maps has. I travel to new places too much not to have one.
- amiga-workbench 9y agoI'm using a Nokia Asha 210 at the moment, its got a proper keyboard, GPRS, Wifi but no GPS. Opera Mini is enough to browse most websites, and the lack of javascript support is a serious plus. Half the features on the phone are dead though, the Nokia servers are gone.
- Vinnl 9y agoI don't have a 4G contract. It's much better than a dumb phone because I can actually see the messages I'm replying to, and many other features also come in handy, but there's no constant distraction.