The history
Almost a month ago I created a blog about my smartphone addiction and the way I wanted to get this under control.
In short; I deleted a lot of the distracting apps from my phone just before going on a three week holiday.
Last weekend we came back home and started working again. With this post an I want to give you an update on how things went in the past weeks.
What went well?
As I mentioned in the first blog about this subject I took some rather drastic measures (at least, it was for me 😃). I deleted all distracting apps from my phone including News app, LinkedIn, Youtube and even PeakD. I really wanted to have a digital detox during this holiday.
The first challenge was the ride to our destination. We went to Spain which is a 1,5 day trip by car for us. My wife also drives, but at least half of I was riding shotgun, so I had to entertain myself without my apps.
In the beginning it was kind of awkward since I normally would take my phone when I'm bored. To kill the time I read a lot. I loaded a lot of books onto my e-reader before the trip. Apart from that I've spent time sleeping and looking out of the window doing nothing.
I've already noticed it in my first post, but doing nothing is really good sometimes.
All images in this post are from Pixabay!
The amount of time I spent on my phone decreased enormously. Also in the first couple of days of the holiday I didn't use my phone a lot. Where I always used to take my phone with me (even to the toilet) I now often left it somewhere in our mobile home.
It gave a lot of peace of mind not to have easy access. I did have access to news via the web browser, but I never had the urge to do so.
I used the 'extra time' to read my books and even used the adult coloring books my kids brought with them.
Sometimes in the evening I started up the laptop and did some updates on Hive and posted a blog.
A slight fallback
In the second week we moved from the campsite in Spain to another campsite in France. The wifi on this campsite was really bad and I wasn't able to use the internet on my laptop at all. I knew I needed to claim my HDB, so I reïnstalled PeakD on my phone. I also checked some reactions and even used it to upload some photo's (when I was in a supermarked with good wifi) so I could create another blog. I noticed that I started checking my phone more frequently again.
Not only the Hive app was the culprit, but also the olympics. I really like sports and liked to stay on top of the results on the news websites.
After a few days I decided to uninstall the PeakD app again and leave my Hive account for what it was for the rest of the holiday.
Mindfulness
Unfortunately the holiday has come to and I had to go back to work.
I had the habit to check my phone right after I woke up and check the news, Hive and other apps during my breakfast, but since all these apps were removed I just have my breakfast.
During the holiday I read books about meditation, the Dalai Lama and mindfulness. One of the things I've learned from that is that it can be good to do things mindfully. I didn't knew how to do this, but it is actually very simple. You only have to pay attention to the things you do.
It really helps when you don't have any distractions like a phone or music around you. When you do thinks mindfully you'll experience things differently.
For instance when eating your breakfast you really taste more of it.
Another example is mindful walking. I often go for a walk in the neighborhood. What I used to do was checking my phone or listening to music or a podcast, but now I often go out without my headphones and without my distracting apps and I experience more sounds, scents and things around me.
Meditation
As I mentioned before I read some books about meditation. I did give it a try during my holiday. I've found out that my smartwatch has an option for meditation. I've also installed a meditation app on my phone. I tried it for a couple of times during the holiday, but it was quite difficult.
The most difficult is not thinking about anything. It was quite confronting to see how many times your mind gets distracted when you try to stop thinking about anything for just 10 minutes.
Although it wasn't a bad experience, it also didn't really caught me yet. And now I'm back home I see it's even harder to take the time for it (despite it's only 10 minutes).
But I do want to give it another try.
Thanks for reading my blog if you have come this far.
If you have any tips or want to share your own experiences; feel free to reach out to me in the comments!
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And I decided on my vacation to disconnect 100% from the official mobile phone, which is normally available 24/7 every day except when I am on summer annual leave.
I wasn't available for calls, I wasn't checking email....
And as for my private mobile phone, it remained switched on for me. I spent more time on it than usual... But that was my plan.
When I wasn't driving, swimming, walking, hanging out, napping on the beach, sunbathing.... I was using it for gaming and Hive 🙂
👍
I don't have a work phone (luckily). I do have access to my work email, but I didn't open that. I hardly do that when I'm not working.
I try to spend less time on Hive, but try to spend the time here better. When I take my laptop like I do now I try to do all the communications and updates and then put the laptop away again until tomorrow.