Your Phone is Not the Problem
In fact, your phone is magic.
Lent will be upon us next week. It’s a time of repentance, fasting and reminding ourselves of the New Year’s Resolutions we’ve already forgotten. Our attempts at self-improvement tend not to go well. I wrote about this back in January.
The month of January is named after Janus, the god of self-help books. I’m joking, of course. That’s my job. But how do I joke better, faster and for more money? Or for the same amount of money, but taking less time and in a way that is less stressful?
To find out, Barry Cooper and I talked about Deep Work by Cal Newport in a recent Cooper and Cary Have Words podcast on productivity. It’s one of many books that warns of the dangers of distraction.
At this point, it’s common to lay the blame for the constant interruptions at the feet of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and frankly anyone who has played a part in the technical revolution.
But a bad worker blames their tools. Especially when the tools are incredibly powerful, affordable and basically magic. A stressed-out, ungrateful worker blames a good tool. Your phone is not the problem. In fact, your phone is magic.
The Wonder of Smartphones
Your mobile phone is a blessing. In fact, it’s a Wonder of the Modern World, in that it’s a Wonder of the Ancient World – the Great Library of Alexandria - except a 1000 times better, constantly updated, pocket-sized and less liable to be burned to the ground. Mind you, no-one ever dropped the Great Library of Alexandria down the toilet.
What’s more, this library of information comes with a free GPS system, video camera and movie player. All of these individually would have cost thousands of pounds only twenty five years ago.
This device is even more powerful than the one found in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on which you can’t even order a delivery from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. We live in a world of science fiction.
On our smartphones, anyone we’ve ever met or known can probably track us down and contact us instantly. In a moment, we can be having a face-to-face conversation with them from virtually anywhere in the world.
In a fantasy novel, that would require a long journey up a mountain to visit a powerful wizard for access to some kind of scrying pool, or magic mirror. We just call it the world wide web.
Thanks, Jobs[1]
What do we do with this device of scarcely comprehensible power?
Complain. We huff and puff that the phone needs to be recharged slightly more frequently than is convenient. We would do well to rejoice and give thanks to God for the astonishing combination of smartphones, 4G, undersea cables and the internet.
You Have (Lots of) Mail
But here’s the real problem that has sparked the backlash: notifications. These constant interruptions plague our modern existence and we feel besieged by information overload.
This is not the fault of the phone.
Phones don’t send you any emails. People do.
You can tell the phone not to notify you when you get mail or a message. You can turn the sound off. You can turn off notifications. You can turn the phone off. Except you can’t, can you?
The phone is not the problem here. You are.
All the self-help books and productivity gurus will tell you that you need to stop being available to everyone at all times. Take control of your phone and your messages. Otherwise, your phone and your inbox is controlling you. For most of us, that is the default setting. Change it. For Lent. And maybe for ever.
But you know this.
I don’t need to quote the horrifying statistics about how many times you look at your phone during the day. (It’s hundreds. Maybe thousands.) I don’t need to tell you how to find out how long you spend looking at your phone by checking your screen time. Your phone can tell you that. You just refuse to listen when it tells you.
And you know that your kids hate it when you’re with them but on your phone. It shows that everyone else, including people you’ve never met, are more interesting or important than they are. Why do you think they want a phone? So they’ve got something to do while you’re incessantly fiddling with yours. And apparently the phone is always way more interesting than anything they’re doing.
So here’s the headline: take control of your phone.
If you know you’re addicted to your phone, turn off notifications. That should include Email, WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger. If there’s someone who needs to reach you right away, like a close relative, agree that they should text you or call your landline, or use Signal, or whatever. And leave that one App on. But turn off the notifications others.
If you think you’re not addicted to your phone, first come to the realisation that you almost certainly are addicted to your phone, and then turn off notifications. See 1.
Subscribe to this newsletter because next week, there will be at least eleven more suggestions on how to take control of your devices, your messages and your life. And, being an emailed newsletter, you can, of course, view that email, which will arrive quietly in your inbox, at your leisure.
Water into Wine is coming to town…
24th March 7.30pm St John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead BOOK HERE
26th March 7.30pm St Giles’ Church, Derby BOOK HERE
31st March 7.30pm Anchor Anglican Church, Fowey, Cornwall
1st April 7.30pm Emmanuel Church, Bristol
8th April 7.30pm St Andrew’s Church, Wimbledon BOOK HERE
30th April 7.30pm Belmont Chapel, Exeter
13th May 7.30pm Christ Church, Balham BOOK HERE
20th May All Saints Church, Eastbourne
21st May 7.30pm St Mary Bredin Church, Canterbury
25th May 7.30pm St George’s Beckington, Nr Frome
More dates still to come. And if want to book the show for your church, let me know.
[1] Thobs