When boundaries aren't enough to keep you from picking up your phone, you might need this.
Here's why you probably "just check" your phone 200+ times a day, even when you have better things to do. Or do you?
Given I no longer promote my work via any social media algorithms (including Substack Notes), I now choose to rely on word-of-mouth support from generous readers like you. If this article brings even a little clarity to your otherwise chaotic day, consider sharing with those who could use a little more analog in their digital lives.
Full disclosure: I meant to begin writing this essay 90 minutes ago, but I just wasn’t feeling it. So I instead chose to procrastinate by cleaning my garage. And by “procrastinate,” what I really mean is avoid the fear of the blank page, avoid the fear that this next essay won’t be absolutely perfect (spoiler alert: It’s not), and avoid the fear that I’ll never become an author, so what’s the point???
There is clearly a lifetime of limiting beliefs underneath my choice to organize my garage instead of write, but for the sake of this essay here’s the relevant point:
→ I knew that cleaning my garage was a distraction before I even began.
In the pantheon of shiny objects that distract us from what actually matters, messy garages are near the bottom of that list.
Our smartphones, however, reign supreme.
I realize you don’t need yet another ‘Old man yells at cloud’ lecture about how detrimental smart phones are to your focus, your productivity, and even your mental health. And you certainly don’t need to be told that the apps are intentionally designed to maximize your enragement engagement and monetize your attention.
If you do need a reminder (and a few helpful tips to take back your attention), I suggest you begin with my previous two essays in this series about my quest to become a ‘Digital Essentialist’:
So then why the hell do we keep reaching for our damn phones?!
Entire books have been written on this subject, but here are just a few reasons you’re probably “just checking” your phone upwards of 205 times per day1 when you probably should be doing something else:
You’re bored
You’re tired
You’re stuck on a problem you don’t know how to solve
You’re avoiding something you’re afraid of
Your dopamine receptors need their fix!
You’re going to miss out on the next comment, the next like, the next text, the next conversation, or the next opportunity
You absolutely MUST know what’s happening in the news RIGHT NOW
While all of the above are common reasons to mindlessly grab your phone, I would argue there could be an even deeper motivation:
The unexpected reason you might be subconsciously reaching for your phone is because you have no idea what to be doing with your time instead.
Having spent the last decade building The Arnold Academy where I coach successful, ambitious creatives who require high levels of concentration to solve difficult creative challenges (for extremely long hours), I’ve learned that our smartphone addiction often has less to do with the apps themselves and more to do with our fear of using our time poorly.
Five years ago when the pandemic lockdowns hit, I had countless students, friends, and colleagues reach out to me in an existential panic. Having been forced to hit the pause button on their endlessly “busy” lives, they suddenly became hyperaware of how they were spending their time, their energy, and their attention.
Upon further reflection, let’s just say they didn’t like what they saw.
Now that life has equalized to our new dystopian version of “normal,” we once again have the luxury of being “CrAAAAAAAAAAzy busy!!!!!” all the time so we have a valid excuse to not confront the hard questions like:
How do I want to spend my time?
What do I value in my life?
What goals am I excited to work towards?
What kind of a person do I want to become?
What am I not willing to sacrifice along the journey?
Yet we somehow find multiple hours every day to ask questions like:
What nonsense is trending on Tiktok?
What are my favorite influencers peddling on Instagram?
Who disagrees with me on Facebook?
Whose life is better than mine on LinkedIn?
What crazy shit is happening on Twitter? (I refuse to call that toxic hell-scape ‘X’.)
Avoiding the black hole of your smartphone and living as a digital essentialist is about more than rules, boundaries, and guardrails that help you avoid unnecessary distractions.
Living as a digital essentialist is about having more meaningful things to spend your time on than whatever is distracting you on your smartphone.
In reality, cleaning my garage this morning was neither a distraction nor was I procrastinating. It was the trigger that began my entire “writing day,” a day I look forward to each week far more than whatever the hell is happening on Instagram. I’ve intentionally designed the flow of my writing day to begin with light activity that’s somewhat mindless. This combination of physical motion combined with monotonous busy work helps to activate the “default mode network” of my brain, the place where creativity flourishes, aka “The Imagination Network” as coined by Dr. .
While cleaning the garage I began to mentally outline today’s essay and think about the core themes and the basic structure. Then I spent about 2 hours doing my first “deep work” writing session where the only thing I did was write (on a separate laptop, no less, with only my writing app installed). I wasn’t also checking emails, popping into Facebook, quickly scrolling Substack, or doing any other multitasking (except petting my puppy...gotta pet the puppy).
After 90-120 minutes the human brain is tapped out and can no longer efficiently be creative, so rather than “power through” I instead stepped away from the page, switched gears by eating a long lunch watching a relaxing video about hiking Mt. Whitney, and then I took a nap.
Distractions, you say? A waste of time? Oh...I’m a lazy POS?
I should just power through because the grind never ends?
Yeah, that might be what so many of the time management “experts” suggest to optimize every moment of your day, but that’s not how we as humans were designed. Sure it might sound logical to work consistently for 8-12 hours per day (or 20 if you work in Hollywood) for the sake of maximum “productivity.” But there’s only one problem with this outdated approach.
We are not logical beings designed to live in a digital world, we are emotional beings designed to live in an analog world.
I’ve travelled down Burnout Road more times than I care to admit, so I now intentionally design my days around sustainability and effectivity, not productivity.
Upon waking from said nap (where my brain was still problem-solving the structure for this essay even while I was sleeping) I dove right back into writing with infinitely more focus and clarity than at the end of my first deep work session. And now less than 90 minutes and another 600 words later, we have arrived here.
Playing back the game tape, since waking at 5am this morning I’ve spent exactly 17 unproductive minutes on my phone, and I’ve only picked it up 30 times (roughly 75% less pickups than most people by 4:30pm).
It’s been easy to avoid mindlessly picking up my phone 205 times because I know exactly how I should be spending my time today. And moreover, I’m excited about solving the problems in front of me. Writing this Substack essay is a very strategic choice that aligns with my larger goal of becoming an author and public speaker hellbent on convincing the world that the pursuit of work-life “balance” is not only futile, it’s meaningless.
Moreover, becoming an author and public speaker is a key piece of the larger vision for the next phase of my work and life because I want to be intentional about connecting with people on a more analog level, whether online or in person, to help them find meaning and purpose in their work, without burning out themselves.
And most importantly, I’m 100% confident writing these words at this very moment is the best use of my time because what I’m doing is in alignment with my core values of being creative, being authentic, and being present. Because as I was writing the previous paragraph my 13 year old daughter happened to come home from school, and I was able to learn all about her day today (and why her English teacher drives her crazy!). That’s a conversation I couldn’t have been present for if I were still working like a dog for the man as a widget on the assembly line of someone else’s dreams.
There is no guarantee that spending a good portion of my day writing this essay will lead to me achieving my goals. But I guarantee that mindlessly scrolling my phone would not.
You may think your smartphone is just a mindless distraction, but in reality it may instead be filling a void that you’re too afraid to fill. A void with no purpose, no direction, no goals, and no meaningful problems to solve.
As so eloquently put by bestselling author and time management expert Nir Eyal:
“You can only call something a distraction if you know what it’s distracting you from.” - Nir Eyal
If rules, boundaries, and even guardrails aren’t enough to keep you from picking up your phone, you might be lacking something more meaningful in your life to spend your time, energy, and attention on instead.
I’m curious...do you know why you reach for your phone, and what those distractions might be distraction you from?
Another great essay Zack! I’m going to attempt to document my “phone pick ups” next week and then decrease it by 30% the following week. I’m inspired to procrastinate the difficult items on my to-do list with easier, mindless items on my to-do list instead of checking my phone, now that’s a Pro Tip!!
Your story really makes me want to track my phone-checking. I think I've been conditioned to take my phone everyone from past jobs-- to the garage, to the mailbox, to every room in the house. My phone is seldom more than 10 feet away from me. And I have a Apple Watch so I don't loose track of my phone! (It's often in one of my pockets when I do the search "ping.") How did I get this way? I think conditioning to be ever faster at response time. (and don't we all have a friend or relative we think is awful at responding to texts or emails.) More recently, I check my phone constantly to see if I have gotten a response to inquiries -- outreach letters, follow-ups on projects I'm working on, responses to social posts, etc. I'm not sure how to break the cycle, except perhaps to be more forgiving to myself and allowing down-time away from my phone. You make a great point that time away from our devices actually helps us get more focus to accomplish our goals.