Ever had a phone pickup that was so nonsensical that it changed the way you think about yourself?
This was years ago. It was extremely late at night, I think past midnight. I was going to bed. I picked up my phone and I checked how the tube was running. Whether the underground lines had delays.
They did not. Indeed they had stopped for the night.
I clearly didn’t need this information on my way to bed.
This was a clue. It was telling me something important about myself. Listen closely, because a voice deep inside was whispering something.
It was:
“You are a phone-addicted idiot.”
True. But listen harder. There’s more.
I was never really interested in my mind until it kept picking up the phone all the stupid time.
In trying to work out what was going on I turned to meditation - by which really I just mean sitting in silence and watching my thoughts.
I did a lot of it. Countless hours. I have used techniques both ancient and modern (all secular). Eventually I saw my mind so clearly that I experienced a life-changing moment of awakening.
I am very sorry to say the reaction in my household has been muted - at best.
I am even more sorry to say my son made fun of me, somewhat disrespectfully asking if I could make a fireball like Ryu from Street Fighter.
Later, we were watching Star Wars, and he asked if - like the Jedi - I had a master.
I thought about it. I’ve learnt a lot from books by Joseph Goldstein and John Yates, but never met a teacher in person. I’ve only ever listened to teachers like Jeff Warren and Sam Harris on apps.
So I joked it was my phone.
I realised, not for the first or last time, that I had spoken with unwitting profundity.
Yes. My phone. It has taught me more about my own mind than anything else. My phone is my master.
Most phone use is unremarkable of course. I need to order more Compeed. I need to message another parent to see if I can avoid driving an hour round trip just to pick up my kid from paintballing.
The most telling moments are the desperately stupid ones, when phone use shorn of any practicality points to deep cravings.
That moment when I refreshed the tube status after midnight taught me that my mind needs to check everything, and to seek certainty.
Since then, other idiotic phone pickups have suggested other psychological needs.
Years later, I was pushing one of my children on a swing, and while doing so (and saying “Yay!” with each push) I checked LinkedIn.
In that moment, I knew what I was really doing was indulging a craving to check my status in my tribe. I learnt that status was very low. And after having ascertained that, I returned to pushing my child on the swing. Yay!
Another of my cravings took years to discern. When I began commuting without a phone (or book or podcast or anything) earlier this year, I began to feel a weird kind of loneliness. At the time I thought it was the effects of being surrounded by other phone users and feeling ignored.
But from talking to a friend who is also trying to cut down screen time, I figured out the loneliness was the loss of ambient company I got from the phone. For years I had been using a busy scroll to reassure me that there are other people in the world.
Certainty, comparison and company. Three reasons to pick up the phone amid countless others.
I’m aware I’m not alone in identifying these cravings, and there’s all sorts of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology speculation as to the cause. It’s interesting to read about, but I don’t feel I need it - I can detect them pretty clearly.
I can certainly detect - indeed was hit like a truck by - the effects of denying these cravings when I attempted to put the phone down. I was flooded with unease, anxiety about what others thought, and loneliness.
There’s lots out there suggesting putting down the phone is relaxing. For me it was the polar opposite - I felt awful. The worst moments were directly after having used the phone for a long period. It felt like I had just given a mosquito bite a scratch, and I had to grit my teeth through the urge to reach again.
Earlier this year I waded through this for weeks. I was fortunate in having some confidence it would end. I could also, thanks to my months of practice in sitting, break this anxious boredom into its predictable component parts.
These cravings seem likely part of the human condition. We have historically come up with all sorts of ways to sate them. We read newspapers for certainty, gossiped for comparison and used the TV for company (I’m sure our family watches The Office over and over again because we too want to work at Dunder Mifflin). No problem with any of that of course.
Then what’s the problem with the phone? I suspect its 24/7 nature. Phones can be anything at any time, and if we can’t look at its screen then it’s got a podcast for us. Phones have eliminated any moments in our own company. I don’t want to sound woo woo (I do want to sound woo woo) but maybe as a result we fail to practise sitting with these discomforts.
If we scroll them away, the cravings build horribly as a background drumbeat. As it gets louder, it can be heard during the quieter moments of family life, causing us to reach for our phone more and more throughout the day. Then, during the quiet of the night, the drumbeat becomes deafening.
And all the time the phone continually becomes more and more irresistible as a dummy. Now all three cravings can be indulged simultaneously - we just need to chat to AI.
Awful as it may be, perhaps putting it down and sitting with these cravings is work that’s worth doing. We can practise hearing the impulse, politely declining it, and watching it fade.
Many people who schedule a break from their phone choose knitting, wild swimming or gardening. With no wild swimming opportunities within my busy routine, I chose to use my commute.
And though I’m sure reading would have helped, for me these cravings tore through the page of even the most distracting of books. I found I could make progress when I gave the challenge my full attention.
As I did it regularly - day in, day out - it became much easier. The cravings became quieter and quieter. Not just during the sitting itself, but at all times - and especially late at night.
Rather than bringing me down, these impulses became interesting. The phone was a piece of putty that I had imprinted myself on, and my stupid usage of it was a matter of curiosity rather than anything to feel bad about.
And, best of all, I was able to get to bed in blissful ignorance of the tube status.
Thank you for reading! What’s your most pointless phone check? Please share in the comments and make me feel better.
In seven years of phone fighting, I’ve tried everything. Nearly all of it helped a bit… except one piece of advice that never ever worked, not even once. Which one? Come back next week for your certainty hit.
This is part of a series of articles following 1,000 hours of nothing on the London commute. My free archive is available at phonefreewill.com, sorted into sections ranging from practical through to humiliating.
If you know anyone who’s tired of their phone use (or if there’s anyone whose phone use you are tired of) please share this with them.
This is so insightful and really made me think. At the beginning of the summer holidays I ‘bricked’ Instagram and LinkedIn from my phone. I hated how snappy I was to my 5 year old if he dared to interrupt me scrolling and tutting at a trad wife making home made plastic. I knew I couldn’t trust myself to just not look. So I needed for it not to be there. Yes I could have deleted the apps but that felt like such an enormous step! I told myself I would check in the evenings when my son was in bed. I ended up not checking the apps at all for the whole summer. I ‘need’ LinkedIn for some work stuff but I access that now from my laptop and I have not looked at the other one for over 3 months. I now need to address the general use of my phone (reading Substack! - which I love but I need to probably compartmentalize that into a part of the day) and also get away from idly googling instead of actually using my brain to work something out!!! Great article Will, thank you
Your writing brings into focus what I think a lot of us already know deep down - we all have the ‘urge to reach’ for a variety of reasons. For me it’s probably because I want the feeling of ‘being on top of things’ of anticipating what’s next and making sure we’re safe as a family - all by doing our food shop ahead of time or by ordering something on Amazon. Ridiculous.