I Spent 30 Days Phone Free Commuting: Here's How It Changed Me

You feel great - but you must pay a terrible price

Don’t ever read The House on Pooh Corner to your kids. Ever.

I read it to my young son as a bedtime story. My daughter, who in the years since the ballet disaster had become suspiciously tall, was hovering nearby.

For much of the book, Christopher Robin is happily playing with Pooh, Piglet and Tigger - and less happily with Eeyore - in the Hundred Acre Wood.

But there are subtle signs that things are changing. Pooh and his friends notice Christopher Robin is around less to play with them. He is having to go to school. He is growing up.

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And then in the final chapter, Christopher Robin has to explain what it all will mean to his closest companion. Pooh is a Bear Of Very Little Brain and he only dimly perceives how things will change.

“... Pooh,”

“Yes, Christopher Robin?”

“I’m not going to do Nothing any more.”

“Never again?”

“Well, not so much. They don’t let you.”

Reading it, I was suddenly confronted with all the moments that passed while my children were growing up. And I knew that I had never - could never - have been present enough.

Out of nowhere, I began to cry. Thankfully, my young son wasn’t fazed by this. I kept on reading, relieved that I hadn’t traumatised him.

But then I noticed his sister in floods of tears.

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BACK TO PHONE FREE COMMUTING

I have now commuted phone free for 30 days. An hour each way, with near-total adherence.

Good news first:

• My phone pickups have reduced sharply. At home, I feel I am offered a choice whether to use the phone or not. I am pulled to the rectangle far less during time with my family. This is a beautiful thing.

• Work worries invade my family life far less. Sunday Blues have diminished dramatically, and evenings feel like life rather than a respite from the office. The Phone Free Commute is a work/home airlock. It is like the lift in Severance.

• I occasionally notice increased optimism. This is harder for me to pin down. I feel like I’ve drunk that lucky potion that Harry Potter got from Professor Slughorn.

These effects are not subtle - they are very noticeable indeed. And they are wonderful.

I have slogged through being taunted by my phone, haunted by work worries and a weird loneliness, but to say it has been worth it is an understatement.

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THE SCIENCE

I wanted to know what might be happening in my brain. So I did what anyone in 2026 would do and I asked AI. Here’s some short excerpts from its guesses:

• Phone use becoming more intentional

  • By Day 30, the subject will have physically weakened the neural pathways in the basal ganglia—the brain's habit centre—that trigger the automatic reach for the phone.

• Invasive work worries

  • The DMN vs. Task-Positive Network: In a typical commuter, the Default Mode Network (DMN) is hyper-active but fragmented, leading to “work-looping”. By enforcing 60 minutes of stimulus fasting at 18:00, the subject is triggering the resetting of the DMN.

• Optimism

  • Tonic vs. Phasic Dopamine: Constant phone use creates high “phasic” spikes that leave “tonic” (baseline) levels low, leading to irritability and anhedonia.

I’ll get to what all this might mean in later posts.

For now, the key question: am I unusual in feeling these massive benefits?

I asked AI to draw on its understanding of neuroscience and estimate the chances of someone starting cold getting these gains too. I asked it to guess both for the 30 days I have completed, and then the 60 days I intend to do.

• More Intentional Phone Use - 85% / 95%

• Fewer Intrusive Work Worries - 70% / 80%

• Increased Optimism - 40% / 70%

Wow.

(I should add, for full transparency, that I have been doing 15 minutes of meditation (or Jumble The Dog training, if you will) on the weekend. The AI suggests that without this, the benefits are still huge, but drop by about 10%. I’ll come back to this.)

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THE BAD NEWS

As so often when we are playing with AI, I got carried away. I asked it to estimate the chances someone could actually stick to this:

10%

Ouch. I don’t know if anyone ever noticed this before, but phones are addictive.

I have written many times that I believe the Phone Free Commute high vis jacket helped me do this. It’s a huge social commitment on a crowded train.

I asked AI for the chances of success for someone starting cold who did this wearing the high vis.

99.5%

I did mention there was a dilemma.

I have stumbled upon one of the greatest self-help strategies known to humanity. It makes you feel more positive, helps you reclaim your attention and to devote your whole self to your loved ones.

And unlike almost any other new habit, it takes place in totally dead time.

But it extracts a very heavy price: you have to look like a massive idiot.

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STUPID V STUPID

Back to my kids. For the years in which we have been playing in our very own Hundred Acre Wood, there have been consistently two things that have stopped me doing Nothing with them.

Worrying about work outside of work, and of course, my phone.

I treated them as separate problems. But increasingly I’m convinced that the phone is the one that shattered my attention to the extent that it wandered onto my weak spot, which for me was work. It was you all along, Fredo.

So for me, rewiring my brain is a no-brainer. I’m wearing the vest.

Though I’ve called this an idiot vest, really it’s not about human weakness. It’s about silent rebellion against the trillion dollar war. About dedication to my family.

The terrible price I’m paying now isn’t feeling like an idiot. It’s the realisation that I should have done this sooner.

Yes I look stupid.

But so does an hour spent endlessly refreshing apps.

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I have a phone. I need a phone. In many ways, I love my phone.

But these things are poisoning us. Just as surely as if we were cheerfully handling plutonium on the 9.17. We might worry about the burns, but it’s the dosage we need to keep under control. And we are spreading the radiation to our family.

If you want to learn more about the science behind phone use, read the real expert, Catherine Price. Find the strategy that works for you.

This is what’s working for me. I’m done with just “trying harder” to be present with my loved ones. I’m training to do it in my dead time. Training on a train. Habit-stacking a regular, daily digital rest.

Get in touch, let’s support each other.

Meanwhile I’m pushing on, as fast as South West Trains allows.

I want to understand this new optimism I’m feeling.

And to see if AI is right about the next 30 days.

[Image by AI, words all human (except the bits where AI did the science bit for me)]