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 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 story about Ender Dragon something piglin something something? OR see if AI can shed any light on the heat pump debate… Ooo, AI.
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 tool. To have it, but to be free of it. To own it, rather than the other way round.
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 found a meditation habit, and it really helped a lot. It’s a strange and difficult to understand world, but in time it really helped.
But even so I still couldn’t get the balance with my phone 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.
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.
What if I devote myself to full-on cognitive re-wiring? (More on how I decided this was right for me in later posts).
And what if I made an irreversible commitment to doing so?
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 by now, after years of failing, I knew not to underestimate the phone. I think we all know New Year Resolutions don’t work.
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.
Thanks for reading! This is part of a series written in the early days of my Phone Free Commute. If you want to skip to the 30 day report and read about the (surprising) results of all this, click here.
[Images by AI, words all human]