Making It Your Own With Your Phone

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PSA- to cultivate deeper presence and figure out what a Good Life looks like for you with a group of people committed to the same (which may involve less phone use), consider the next cohort of Writing The Good Life. Tell them I sent you for a sweet discount!

What's your relationship with your phone like? With screens? Screen based apps? Your 'digital life'?

I've been more dialed in than most people I know, but still not feeling great about it and recently resumed an audit of my relationship with tech.

We'll dive into how you can do the same, sharing resources along the way, focusing not on one method or another, but on finding what works best for you.

Peter Limberg created a term called "The Pull" which describes the phenomenology well.

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First Efforts Escaping The Pull

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In 2017 I started my first conscious relationship with The Pull, taking a break from facebook when I moved to California.

At that time, I was more interested in revamping my relationship with facebook specifically. After realizing I was happier without facebook after a monthlong break, I got rid of it.

Around 2019 I got into more of the biohacking aspects of The Pull- concerned about blue light and its impact on circadian rhythms. I got software like Flux, Iris, messed with my iPhone's settings to make the screen grayscale or red, putting night shift on 24/7 and using dark mode.

I bought blue-blocking Swannies glasses and wore them at work, earning the nickname Cyclops. These type of glasses are more socially acceptable now but normies still may shun you. Certain brands are more stylish than others if you're not ready to go full-on, Dave Asprey, biohacker-as-identity vibes.

If you're not comfortable being a deviant for your health, consider rejection therapy to increase your comfort and willingness to break unhealthy social norms.

For the EMF side of biohacking, I became and still am a religious user of airplane mode. My current living space has no wifi. We use ethernet. I use biogeometry harmonizers and other tech as well. See below pic of my knowledge worker setup. I put the coffee on the charging plate, then after a few minutes put the laptop atop the charging plate and keep the coffee aside. The laminated charging plate doubles as a placemat for food, too.

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I read and implemented articles like How to Configure Your Cell Phone for Productivity and Focus from Tony at Better Humans (more on these limitations later).

When I got deeper into writing and coaching, I downloaded social media as a necessary evil and rekindled a toxic relationship with it.

I need this "for work," I told myself.

Strangers on the internet paid for my writing, this justified the relationship.

I didn't know, and still don't know, anybody who has a healthy relationship with their phone. Healthy meaning using it as much as you want to use it, and no more, without blocking tech, widgets, and deliberate willpower overcoming hacks.

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The War With The Pull Continues...

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3ish years ago, more influencers talked about phone use from the lens of productivity. These people tend to have assistants, teams, marketing agencies that post for them, creating aforementioned blockers and buffers. Their intent is to use internet mega platforms as advertising channels, not primarily as means of entertainment or staying in touch. If you're a robot automaton, these productivity systems work. If you have friends you wish to stay in touch with who also use smartphones for that, they won't. This phone-as-productivity widget is great if you have a singular focus. But...

The Pull enables many things, in one device, quickly and simply.

Your phone is a tool.

Your phone is entertainment.

Your phone is a way to stay in touch with your friends.

Your phone is a way to do banking.

Your phone is a way to do your job.

Your phone is a jack of all trades, not a master of any. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

I tried separating out some of these features. Minimizing. Consolidating. I noticed a plethora of messaging apps and thought life would get better if I truncated them down to one. For a while this looked like going on a crusade- trying to get people onto telegram and off other messaging apps.

I still think telegram has the best UI of any messaging app, and its not close. This is a hill I'm willing to fight on, but am open to convincing.

The Pull won in this case. I told myself, "if some of my contacts only use certain apps, then I will keep those apps to maintain those relationships." After all, relationships are important! Notice the people pleaser in there and "all or nothing" thinking. Ex- if I don't keep the Signal App, I will lose all the psychedelic facilitator contacts! If I get rid of WhatsApp, that wipes out anybody I know from Brazil! If I wipe out telegram, I can't be in the fasting groups!

note to self- THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MADE UP, SEEMINGLY LEGIT REASONS TO KEEP THE STUPID FUCKING APPS!

Deleting apps doesn't mean deleting people nor does it mean deleting the relationships you have with them. But boy have the developers made it seem like that at times.

The fight with The Pull continued...

I setup app limits on my phone. I had my girlfriend at the time keep the passcode so I couldn't use it. One instance of needing to post something "important" broke that. This strategy actually works fairly well, I just had poor marketing systems at that time.

I worked on the Health Team doing R&D at Daylight Computer.

I stored a friend's OnlyFans password to help the brother out, keeping him locked out practicing a sort of team against The Pull (no pun intended) effort.

My friend Gus showed me his Light Phone, part of an emerging ecosystem of 21st century dumb and semi-smart phones-- this market will keep growing, by the way.

I deleted and redownloaded social media apps a variety of times. I let them rot and go dormant-- my X account still shows that I'm a podcast host even though I haven't recorded since 2021. This strategy somewhat helps as well--letting yourself realize that life goes on after social media.

A sort of internet ego-death may be good for us.

All these tools, trials and tribulations may have been better solved by a single question...

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How's your relationship with The Pull?

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Surprisingly, this hadn't come to me sooner! When I support people with mushrooms for example, I ask, "what's your relationship with mushrooms?"

This question when related to The Pull simultaneously frightened and liberated me.

I read Peter's series. I bought August Lamm's "You Don't Need A Smartphone." August is neat because she's young and fighting against tech. Its easier for boomers to fight, because they have memories of the pre-phone era. Tell that to the young adults who grew up on iPads and smartphones- they don't have those memory banks to draw from.

I read the AIR method.​

All this said, none of these recipes felt exactly right.

But I will happily share with you the mashup of these methods that works for me and why.

If there's any "one method" I recommend for you, its to create one and Make It Your Own. For example, I'm writing from the AppleBro POV. Android has equivalents for each of these. I don't have one of those devices and getting one for the sake of this piece would be a cosmic irony.

Method Summaries and Drawbacks:

• August Lamm- monotask and monodevice a la Cal Newport. Phone for calls, paper map for navigation, camera for photos only, credit cards and cash as wallet, etc. Going from swiss army knife to tool sets. Drawbacks- this is like a rehab for your digital life, but it is self imposed, without the rigorous support team like a traditional rehab facility. This requires massive change and investment across a variety of areas.
• AIR method- titrate down your usage over time. Keep your phone, but slowly wean off and change habits. Drawbacks- may not be strong enough for severe addicts. Part of the sinister addiction to screens is that they are like Pringles- once you pop, the fun don't stop. I feel pretty addicted and my screentime is ~3 hours/day on my phone. Friends have told me that's quite low. Yikes!
• Tony's Better Humans Guide- setup your phone for productivity. Drawbacks- doesn't account for human relationships and how our phones can assist them. Mostly useless for people who have a specific work phone separate from their personal device (this method suffers from the "occupation as summation of identity" fallacy), and also forgets people who don't use their phones to earn money but remain afflicted by The Pull.
• Biohacking- reduce blue light, reduce EMFs. Drawbacks- doesn't account for the recurring behavior modification aspects. Ex- even with a super duper AiresTech harmonizer on your phone, you still shouldn't use the thing for 8 hours a day.

Method Mash Up:

• August's diagnostic kit is quite good, even if her implementation methods are extreme. On the other hand, the AIR method's implementation is more gentle, but the diagnostic is not as good- they leave out the beautiful imagining about what you'll do with all your newfound time. If you just focus on cutting back, you may find yourself getting caught in the cognitive bias of loss aversion. Its crucial to imagine, and practice, the new joys of your changed lifestyle. For example, if I cut back from my 3hrs/day to 1hr/day and replace those 2 hours with an hour of reading and an hour of meditation, its nearly impossible to decrease quality of life. You pick how you use the hours.
• Get EMF mitigating tech. Think of this more like one-time, set it and forget it behavior, with perhaps an audit or checkup every 6 months. Hit me up if this is new to you.
• Combine AIR and August with new device accrual, and old device removal. Buy new devices as your budget allows, and get rid of old ones as things make sense. Think of this like titration plus milestones. Here's what this looks like for me at present:
  • Replacing my starbucks app with a card-- I still go to starbucks, but leave my phone at home.
  • Replacing gym phone checkin with keycard or paper print out-- still go to the gym, but leave the phone at home.
  • I was gifted a kindle, this cuts out the phone reading that morphs into doom scrolling.
  • One day per week digital sabbath, in the usual living space. Bump this incrementally to more time, and use it to make easing into a dumb phone smoother.
  • Broadcasting lifestyle in photos- Practice savoring the moment- I see stunning sunsets regularly and enjoy them just as much without telling y'all every time.
• Tell others! We're a bunch of digital addicts. The real taboo is in pretending you aren't. I'll show you my screen time if you show me yours 😉 but be compassionate. See how you can help each other. Plan phoneless events with each other. Carpool. Keep everybody's phone in a single bag when you hangout. If you need to take a group photo, take it on one person's phone only.
• Use the PTR system- plan, track, review. Plan what an ideal relationship with The Pull looks like. Track what your actual relationship is like. Do a diagnostic, check in every so often. See where you can adjust little by little. Apple's ScreenTime app is limited- it tracks one weekly then wipes history. If your longterm goal is to go from 8hrs/day to 1, you can't dial down little by little each week using ScreenTime.

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If you want more personalized help with your relationship with your phone, reply.

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Peace,

Drew

PS- to cultivate deeper presence and figure out what a Good Life looks like for you with a group of people committed to the same (which may involve less phone use), consider the next cohort of Writing The Good Life. Tell them I sent you for a sweet discount!

PPS- its good to be back writing. I'll update you on the tour soon.

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