It’s nearly the final episode of Phone Free Will’s summer shorts. Reader questions and other bits.
Soon after I started documenting my phone free commute, an established writerly writer told me, in a slightly lofty way - “You should just read a book”.
And yes, there’s definitely a strong case for that.
I wrote a post earlier this year, the Boredom Line, in which I suggested that phones are so interesting that they have made everything else in life more boring. And that deliberately spending time doing boring things reverses this, making normal life (like talking to your kids) more interesting again.
I listed a load of activities, sorted from Boring to Interesting. Listening to Chappell Roan is fairly interesting, while one time I watched an opera and was so bored I nearly chewed my arm off. (And that’s how I knew it was good for me.)
Books are in the middle - way less stimulating than phones. Accordingly, I don’t disagree that swapping phones for books would be very beneficial.
But of course doing nothing is even further down the Boredom League Table than books, so according to my logic, even more beneficial.
What makes it so special?
There’s a war on. A war in the gaps. Every moment life pauses. Between the conversations. Waiting for a bus. While waiting for the kettle to boil. In those moments we likely have two choices - do nothing or use the phone.
I believe that the “do nothing” choice has to be seen as valuable. It was what we did before the phone was invented, and it was likely good for us in a way we are only now learning. Some speculate that this action helps us by allowing a part of the brain called the Default Mode Network to come online. That neuroscience is contested, but we don’t need it - I’d argue we can deduce the benefit of nothing time from our own felt experience.
If we agree that nothing can help, we can fight the war each gap one at a time, choosing nothing over the phone as often as we can. But more often than we’d like, the phone will win out. For two reasons: we just pick it up automatically without any conscious choice, and the decision to do nothing feels unappealing.
And here’s where I personally find my scheduled doing nothing time to be invaluable. It meaningfully trains me for those moments.
In my doing nothing time, I hear my brain coming up with a thousand reasons to pick up the phone. I believe I train my mind to hear that clearly and to resist it, reducing automatic pickups.
And in my doing nothing time, I get used to my inner world. Some like to pretend that putting down the phone will be in some way pleasant. Unfortunately, that’s not the case - we get besieged by worries about all sorts. The phone displaced them, but when we put it down we are tacking our little boat into that gale.
This is the patient work of sitting with worries and accepting them, the work that the phone tells us to put off to another day. But it’s a sham promise, because these worries will always find a way to be heard - in the dead of night, or as a background drumbeat of anxiety. I’d rather hear them in daytime, thanks, at a time of my choosing.
And then, over time, when viewed from a distance, they can become as interesting as any novel.
But at first, doing nothing is much harder than reading. And getting the best of it involves a little technique (More on this next week, in the last of these before the break).
So if that’s not for you, and fair enough, reading is likely a better way for you to get daily mental rest.
Mind you - while reading is definitely an easier choice, it’s not always a cinch.
There is a small pocket of book readers on the train. Sometimes I see one huffing and puffing over a page. Then they reach for their phone very quickly, check nothing and quickly put it away.
I imagine their phone reach might have been automatic. Or it might be that they were overcome by a worry, and they reached for a more powerful anaesthetic than a page could offer.
I know that feeling. This was me trying to read on the commute a few years back. My mind was going too fast for a book, as if I was glimpsing it from the window of a speeding train.
Reading is supposed to be fun. We get told that all the time. With doing nothing, I say nothing of the sort. It’s patient training.
But I’d argue that training is worth it. Our minds are racing at the speed of the phone. If we slow it down we can enjoy books. We can enjoy sunsets. We can enjoy life.
Thanks so much for reading! 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 part of a series of articles following 1,000 hours of silence on the London commute. The very strange story of how that started is here.
All my posts, both new and archive, are free and are neatly categorised at phonefreewill.com.
Photo by Furkan Elveren on Unsplash
That "phones are so interesting that they have made everything else in life more boring" and that your solution isn't to it isn't to read more books (or do other things) is a solid insight. It's a happy coincidence you published this because a couple days ago I was asking if anyone's found practices to help manage attention that aren’t about restriction or tactical control. "Reading a book" instead is a redirection tactic. Things like access control apps, devices, rewards, etc. all try to block or separate you from the stimulus.
I'm realizing after reading your piece that even my question was poorly structured because I was asking about how to "manage" attention. That assumes it's a thing that can and should be managed. Your point, that just doing nothing, being bored, is a good alternative; it's allowing both discomfort and space to just be. It's not about substituting one stimulus for another, or even trying to decide which is "good" or "bad" but just allowing boredom to sort of reset you, or as you say to do the "patient training."
I think people don't promote this as much because there's no app to sell, no course, no device. But it's simple and free. Thank you!
Yes! When I find it difficult to read, it’s because I haven’t first spent time doing nothing and quieting my mind. It’s completely futile to try and read in those moments (for me, in my experience) because there is just NO WAY I can process what I’m reading and pay attention to it, so I keep having to read and reread the same sentence and page until I have to give up disappointed. Alternatively, when I’m feeling calm and truly ready to read, I can enjoy it, be fully there, invested in my book, and have a great time.