I Made My Daughter Cry, Now I Wear High Vis

How I learned the phone was my nemesis, fought it, lost - and finally snapped.

Here I am, standing on the platform of Surbiton station wearing a homemade Phone Free Commute high vis jacket and looking like an idiot.

I’ve made a commitment to use no phones, no books, no podcasts and no music whatsoever for the two hours I spend commuting. This is the story of how I got here.

The embarrassing truth is that this all started because I am a very crappy dad.

Five years ago I went to my (then) seven year old daughter’s ballet recital. But rather than watch her performance I fiddled on my phone… Just a few feet away from her. It made her cry.

She quickly moved on but I didn’t. For everyone else, it became a funny story in our family. But it stayed with me - why did I do that?

Truth be told, it wasn’t exactly the first time. A few months before I had gone to my (toddler) son’s football class. When a three year old mis-kicked it (or kicked it, hard to tell the difference) and the ball dribbled over to me, the coach shouted for me to return it. “Oi, Phone Dad!” was the quickest way of getting my attention.

I wasn’t really supposed to be watching my son’s football (how can you exactly pay attention while toddlers play football… it’s terrible).

But I was supposed to be watching the ballet.

And, as I reflected on that, I remembered millions of moments when I probably shouldn’t have been checking what Trump was up to. Or whether a new appliance was properly charging. Or the latest conversation about whether tomorrow is indeed a mufti day on the class Whatsapp group.

Far too often my kids were on the losing side of internal debates. Should I listen to my son talking about Ender Dragon something piglin something something?

OR see if AI can shed any light on the heat pump debate… Ooo, AI.

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USING THE PHONE TOO MUCH DOES MORE DAMAGE THAN WE THINK

You couldn’t possibly be as crappy as me. But perhaps you have let someone down because you were stuck in your phone.

And you might have noticed how phones create an omnipresent feeling of unease - even if you manage not to look at them.

Or how they allow our work worries to seep into our precious evenings and weekends, both directly through messages, and indirectly through generating a suffocating fog of bad feeling.

We need our phones. I need mine - I can’t get rid of it and it’s not practical for me to get a dumbphone (and what’s more, I don’t want to).

I just want it to be a tool. To have it, but to be free of it. To own it, rather than the other way round.

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DAD V PHONE

After the ballet disaster, I spent YEARS systematically trying every tip and trick out there to keep the positives and cut back the negatives.

I read a tonne about neuroscience, psychology, mindfulness, habit formation, even philosophy. Sooo much self-help.

Along the way, I began practising meditation. I did it daily for eighteen months, and got very good at it (if I do say so myself). I learned how to sit in silence for long stretches of time.

It was the first thing I found that started to work against my phone addiction. But even so I still couldn’t get the balance I wanted.

Whatever I put in place, I soon undid it again. I failed so often that I started to believe that Phone Dad was my natural state.

But then I remembered the ballet, and I picked myself up and tried again. And again.

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LIFE IS SHORT

While I was figuring this all out, my kids grew up a lot. We are all very happy, but I’m now at the time of life when it’s dawning on me that one day soon there will be no ballet recitals to go to. So it goes.

And then, the other day, I experienced one of those moments we all get that reminded me life is short.

And I thought, one more big try at this phone thing. So I can make sure the rest of my life is as happy as possible, and I can devote my attention to whatever I choose. When I go on holiday, I want to be present. When I am with my family, I want to be present. I want to be able to choose where my mind goes. Me. Not the rectangle.

By this time I had become convinced that my phone pickups were entirely automatic - the fight couldn’t be won in the moments before I picked it up. (More on how my years of phone addiction taught me about automatic pickups here).

The more I read books on neuroscience, the more I watched my mind, the more I became convinced the battleground had shifted.

And then it clicked.

I needed to carve out time to do anti-phone training.

I didn’t just need to “stop using my phone”. I needed to actively train my mind in the opposite direction, using the meditation techniques I’d learnt.

And to make an irreversible commitment to doing so.

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PHONE FREE COMMUTE

I’ve got a full time job and a family. It’s a busy life.

So the only free time I’ve really got to give to this is the commute.

But I think we all know New Year Resolutions don’t work. My early experiments in going phone free were all failures.

So I thought… what I wear a high vis vest telling everyone I am not using my phone? If I used the power of social commitment in a packed train carriage. Well that just might work.

What if the tool I need… is looking like a tool?

The idea wouldn’t leave.

So here I am. Making a stand. In high vis. Call it a mid-life crisis, call it a bet, call it a new year resolution gone badly wrong.

Will I be able to do it? What will happen? What will I learn?

Will it help me cut my phone use at other times? And will that make me feel better?

And how many announcements can I take?

Wish me luck.

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Thanks for reading! In the weeks and months since I wrote many more weekly dispatches.

They are a mix of my experiences doing this, the benefits, what goes on in my head, a dab of philosophy and a tonne of funny phone addiction stories.

At the bottom you can sign up to receive weekly emails - it’s totally free, this is a hobby.

If you know of anyone who’s tired of their phone use (or if you know anyone whose phone use you are tired of), please share with them.

It can all be viewed at www.phonefreecommute.com

A few of my favourite posts -

This my most popular post - it’s about work worries (though hopefully funnier than that sounds) and how time spent in silence can help them go away.

This my all time favourite post - it’s about how the phone fills all the little gaps in family life.

This post is about what happened after 30 days of this - I found that commuting without a phone combined with my previous training really helped (and very poignant it was too).

This one, written after I’d clocked 80 hours of doing this - is why I think phones make us depressed and anxious, and why I believe a daily dose of doing nothing makes us happier.

And this one is a kind of Frequently Asked Questions - and also advice on how best to start this if you are interested.

Thanks again!