Day 131: Airplane Mode

For a long time, I wondered if I’d ever get to a point where I felt happy with my relationship with technology. I lamented how modern tech endowed us with god-like powers yet also sucked people into its black holes of distraction and mindlessness. Was there a way to use my devices and services in a way that served my well-being rather than the tech companies competing for our attention? In the past year, I’ve found that the answer is yes.

Let’s start with the phone, because that’s where many of us struggle the most. At this point, this is a typical week of usage for me:

I’ve learned to limit my usage only to the things that phones are best suited for and simply avoid the rest. This didn’t happen overnight; it’s the product of many experiments. And one of the most impactful ones was one I started two and a half years ago in a video titled How to Break a Bad Habit.

I made a commitment to stop using my phone in bed, and if I broke it, I’d have to donate $100 to an anti-charity. (I got a lot of pushback on the prospect of donating money to a terrible organization so I changed the punishment to eating a burger, which was also highly undesirable since I care about animals. There was no pushback there because supporting a system that tortures animals is still somehow totally normal.)

Anyway, I didn’t end up eating cow flesh because I kept that commitment for the whole year, and breaking that habit was honestly life-changing. For me, combining the warm embrace of my bed with the infinite pit of entertainment available on my phone was a guaranteed recipe for eviscerating my self-control. It’s the ultimate vulnerability zone. “A few minutes” almost always turned into hours of going down rabbit-holes that I inevitably ended up regretting the next morning afternoon.

I’d consider this step 1 of breaking a phone addiction because the practice of falling asleep with your phone casting a soft glow on your face only to reach for it the moment you regain consciousness is entirely unhelpful to cultivating a life of well-being.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Before you go to bed, put your phone in airplane mode
• After you wake up, take your phone off airplane mode only after you’ve left the bed

The use of airplane mode is to prevent you from “accidentally” seeing notifications, especially if you use your phone as an alarm. (You’ll eventually want to try disabling notifications entirely, but that comes later — this is step 1.)

Once you’ve gotten used to this, you can start delaying when you turn off airplane mode as you build a morning routine that doesn’t involve tech companies and other people deciding what you pay attention to. Maybe you can stay disconnected until after you brush your teeth. After journaling. After exercising. After breakfast. After lunch.

Try it. You’ll be amazed by how much more spacious and focused you feel without these devices filling your mind with sweet little nothings.