On breaking smartphone addiction.

Over the last few years, I've been addicted to my smartphone. It started with a Blackberry Torch in 2011, which wasn't very smart but let me keep up with the news in a nearly-constant fashion. I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S5 in 2014 and then a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge last April. For the last few years, I've almost always had a smartphone with me.

I've been grateful to have the smartphone for numerous reasons: I credit the smartphone, for example, with helping me lose weight, largely due to the calorie-estimated step-counter in Samsung Health. I would take walks, and then read the calorie counts of the packaged foods I would eat; when I compared the food to the amount of walking I'd have to o to work it off, it became much easier to resist eating it. In that case, it was a direct matter of time-usage. The same program helped me get back into running when I really have no self-motivation without the opportunity to make an interesting map. For the last few years, with no small credit to the smartphone, I've been able to keep my weight down at a more manageable level. This is good, since I really hated myself when I was up at 225 lbs.. It's good to feel more at ease in my own body, even to the point that I might take my only sport coat to a tailor for refitting.

I've been grateful for the connections I've made with people, for the ways I've been able to reconnect with some people in my life through the smartphone. It has become an essential part of my life for keeping connected with people, particularly my kids, who live 1200km away. I can use the smartphone to send video messages or text messages through Messenger or other apps, and that's all good.

However, I don't like how much I've let the smartphone take over my life. I am by no means a luddite, but I really don't like how I use my time with the smartphone. I miss the boredom, the times when I would sit down and read a book or write a song instead of scrolling through a series of news feeds. I miss the ways I used to choose between different options for time use instead of defaulting to a smartphone.

So I've been trying to find some ways to get the smartphone less prominent in my day-to-day life. Already, with my kids so far away, I find myself taking photos with my phone far less often. I've largely gone back to film, back to the more careful methods of photography that I was used to long before my family went digital. This feels good to me, and I'm enjoying taking photos again.

One thing I've done: a suggestion box.

My suggestion box is now my phone storage box so I can focus on reading, writing, and #creative activities. B/c I have no self-discipline. pic.twitter.com/D1ji8ptIxU

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) September 14, 2017

I haven't used the suggestion box much like I originally planned, since I haven't had any visitors since I started the system. But I hope that, once I do have visitors, I will remember to take my phone and put it in the box. I've also considered using it for meals when the kids come down to visit.

I've also got the kids' room in the apartment where I don't let myself bring my phone. That's a phone-free space, and it's the only place in the apartment with a comfy enough space for reading and whatnot. That's been a good step. But still, I end up in my sleeping space in the living room, scrolling through the phone. A phone-free space in the apartment simply isn't enough. I'm addicted. I don't like it, but I can't seem to stop.

However, over the last few months, a few things changed. I haven't had the kids. I only got to see them up in Smithers for a few days over Thanksgiving weekend, and I was rather stunned by how much they looked at screens. It made me think more about my own habits, since I knew it would be hypocritical to tell them to get off the screens if I couldn't do it myself. Even so, even with that conviction, I couldn't seem to break my own habits.

But I've been addicted, so just shutting off the phone wouldn't work. And it's my only phone. And it's the main way that I keep up with the kids. So I had to regroup my de-addiction plans, since I can't really just scrap the thing.

Then the play happened.

One of the best by-products of doing that play was that I stopped paying attention to my step counter. I stopped obsessing over it. I'm now trying to leave my phone at home for short trips out of the house.

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) December 3, 2017

During the A Flea In Her Ear run, I simply did not have the time to pay attention to my step counter. I couldn't have the phone on stage and needed to pay too much attention to everything that was going on to keep up with the phone. At the end of the run, despite rarely meeting my step count, I weighed the same as I started. I also felt a little less attached to the phone. I no longer panicked if I realized I forgot it plugged in at home when I left to get some groceries.

This inadvertent byproduct of being in a theatre production is much appreciated.

​Third of all, I've tried to reorganize some things at home:

I also rearranged some things in my home in order to make it easier to listen to records and CDs, in order to break out of the song-skipping habits that my phone encourages.

I want my pre-smartphone home life back. I want boredom, patience, and space.

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) December 3, 2017

By setting up my apartment in a way that more mimics a pre-smartphone space, I find myself turning to the smartphone less often. Now, it takes as much work for me to put on a record or a CD as it does for me to track down the portable Bluetooth speaker and set up a podcast. This gives me choice between mediums and media, and I'm more likely to pick things other than scrolling through a news feed, or other than listening to yet another episode of *insert podcast name here.*

So we'll see how it goes, but I feel good about it. I never wanted a smartphone or a cell phone in the first place; my family life just pushed me in that direction. And the smartphone,as amazing as it is, does not make me happy. I feel like, if I can find any way to put the smartphone down and choose to read a book, write a journal entry, listen to some music, or write a song, I should do it. Because as much as other people might have lots of willpower to crate immersive things on apps and whatnot, and enough self-discipline to finish a project before bouncing to a browser or app to take a break from the task at hand, I simply don't have those characteristics.

This week, I'm going to try something I haven't done since I got the Blackberry Torch in 2011: I'm going to leave my phone at home instead of taking it to work. I'll report on that later. Wish me luck.