Anti-Phone Training: The Jumble Method
Why training your mind to be present is a weapon against scrolling
Our dog, Jumble, is a naughty dog.
When the doorbell rings, he barks. The Sainsbury’s delivery guy gets the worst of it.
The answer of course is training. The fashionable approach right now isn’t to punish. Negatives aren’t going to work - if I shout at Jumble, he’s just going to think I’m joining in the barking.
Instead we need to reward the positive here. All the dog books point to how dog brains are rewired most effectively by positive feelings.
For Jumble, the greatest positive of all is cheese.
But in order to know when to give the cheese, we need to answer a crucial question: what is the OPPOSITE of barking we are going to reward?
In this case, it’s not just “not barking” because we’d be giving him cheese all day and all night. The true opposite here is “staying quiet when the doorbell is rung”.
So we constantly rang the doorbell. When through sheer repetition of the act, Jumble gave up barking, we gave him cheese.
Then came the day when someone did ring the doorbell for real, and Jumble didn’t bark!
We had done it!
I celebrated in the way I know best. I reached for my phone and checked whether some connected appliances were charging correctly. No great surprise there, because terrible use of the phone was - and is - my most popular activity.
But it was clear that I needed training more than Jumble.
THE CONDITIONED RESPONSE
By this point I had been at war with my phone for years. I described Jumble as naughty, but he’s not the one who sat in his daughter’s ballet recital looking at his phone. I was the one who needed to take a long hard look at themselves.
I had tried a lot of creative ideas to cut phone use - “I know, I’ll put my phone in this room, and fill it with anacondas.” Then I head to the kitchen. “Oo, what was that recipe again? Right, better get it back. Ouch!”
And, by now, I had noticed that my phone pick-ups were as disconcertingly automatic as Jumble’s barking.
Doorbell rings → Jumble barks
Phone makes a noise → I pick up my phone
I feel a bit low → I pick up my phone
Gap in family activity → I pick up my phone
I wake up → I pick up my phone
DESIGNING THE TRAINING REGIME
So training could be the answer for me. But how exactly?
Fortunately, I too like cheese a great deal. My family have noticed that I am prone to going to the fridge and taking a bite out of it. As if it were an apple.
Maybe I could eat cheese every time I wasn’t using a phone? Maybe. But we would need another fridge.
No, just as with Jumble, I needed to work out what the TRUE OPPOSITE of using a phone is. What is the specific desirable behaviour we are looking for?
And, after a lot of thought, I came to believe that the true opposite of using a phone is being present. Being genuinely with the people around me, rather than mentally being in a newsroom in DC or a Surbiton parents Whatsapp group. Being in the moment, whatever that moment may be. That is what we desire when we talk about cutting out the phone.
If I boil it down, being present is the opposite of using a phone.
What then is my training strategy?
I cannot choose to “be present” just as surely as Jumble doesn’t know when the doorbell is being rung. My mind often gets occupied with thoughts of the stupid thing I said to Clive at work (Ooof why did I say that?!) and then bounces back into the present moment unpredictably. I don’t choose what my mind does sadly.
So perhaps the right move here is to set aside a fixed period of time, just like we did with Jumble. And then try and focus on an element of the present moment, maybe my breath, maybe the sounds around me. In those occasional moments I do find myself in the present, I reward my mind (not with cheese) but a smile to myself and a mental pat on the back.
I was thrilled with my invention. I named it Jumble’s Anti-Phone Training. I felt pretty sure that Jumble (and to a lesser extent myself) would be lauded the world over, having solved this phone business that everyone seemed to be grappling with. With our new invention and our love of cheese, we were set to be the Wallace and Gromit of the mental health world.
Imagine my disappointment when I learned that I had just discovered meditation, by the most circuitous route imaginable.
Ah well. At least I knew how to train. Embarrassed but undaunted, I tried my best.
But it was hard - really hard. What was worse, I couldn’t find a regular time to do it. People in my house kept talking to me, or asking me to do things.
I looked around for a chunk of free time. The commute.
TRAINING ON A TRAIN
So back to me on the train sitting in silence. It isn’t always easy. I sit with work worries, incessant mental whispering to pick up the phone and even loneliness.
But it is good training.
Those moments I notice that I am present, that I am noticing a sight or sound around me, I give myself a mental pat on the back. I hear a fuffle from a coat sitting down, or chunka chunka from the train, I notice it. I see that poster for the umpteenth time for that film with Paul Mescal. I give myself a warm inner smile.
I do this training every day. In the hope that when I get home, my mind is more and more likely to default to the present moment. If I can train my mind to pay close attention to “See It Say It Sorted” announcements, maybe my mind will pay better attention to my family when they tell me about their day.
So even though the present on a train isn’t a woodland walk, it’s worth a mental pat on the back.
Cheese would be nice too. But standing on a train, wearing a high vis, imagining myself a spaceman and occasionally taking a bite out of a block of Cathedral City? There are limits.
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.
P.S. Meet the real Jumble. The perfect dog. But 2,500 years behind the Buddha.
