Phones are Like Cigarettes
It’s a dopamine addiction that needs to be managed.
The hard part is in today’s society, going cold turkey on quitting phone has too many implications. I’m not sure I could continue to hold the job that I have without a phone, let alone a smart phone.
But damn are the consequences really starting to be apparent, both in my personal life and in society.
When I wake up, my instant and overwhelming urge is to check my phone. I wanna see what messages came in over night. I want to check the news to see what happened in the world, especially in these turbulent times.
Coupled with coffee and a cozy blanket and this first-thing-in-the-AM phone use fills up my dopamine cup so damn well. And then correspondingly derails my gratitude practice, my journaling and meditation practice, and my path to a full exercise workout.
That workout really needs to be non-negotiable so I end up skipping things, doing 5 mins of pushups, and telling myself ‘at least I kept the habit alive‘.
Bottom line – I think it boils down to the phone. Smoking cigarettes used to be a cornerstone habit for me that would inform all other habits – good and bad.
Since quitting smoking, I think the phone is the new cigarette for me.
It’s not just on the weekday mornings. I can find myself spending all weekend buried in my phone. Feels like it’s okay because it’s a rest day and that’s what I want. But I wake up at the end of the weekend not feeling rested. I have the anxiety of what was in my phone that I’ve been steeped in all weekend. And I’ve simultaneously neglected all other forms of relaxation and presence like nature, sports, listening to music and much more.
I’m not quite sure the answer here. If I can’t get rid of my phone, how do I improve my relationship to it? I think my first step is to hide it somewhere at night, so that it requires effort to retrieve in the morning. It should take enough time to uncover that my brain can derail that addictive action and refocus to one of my desired pursuits.
I also need to think about playing with the ‘digital wellbeing’ settings a little better to make sure I can’t really access news / twitter / crap before the day starts, while I’m supposed to be working, and then close to bedtime.
How to get myself to a stage in my career where I can forgo at least the smartphone for the bulk of my existence? No clue, but I’ll keep the world posted if I figure it out.
