Leave Your Phone Behind

Lets take advantage of the slowness of August. Lets start the month a bit more simply.

This is a simple proposal to take back our in-between moments. Those once-solitary — or at least unmediated — moments that have been taken over completely by our phone, our texts, our e-mail, our social feeds, and our apps. This is hopefully a tiny but permanent dent against the casual tyranny of pervasive connectedness, constant virtual stimuli and hyper distractedness. We owe it to our discombobulated selves.

Here’s my effort towards the balance: leaving my phone behind, if only for short periods at a time, when:

— Going to work meetings within walking distance of my office. New York City makes that particularly easy, especially depending on where you work and where your business meetings are (most of mine are around midtown area). If you know where you're going, you hardly need Google Maps, admit it.

— Regular grocery run: Easy if you don’t make lists, but slightly more difficult if you do on the phone/list apps. One way to be disconnected on this would be to turn the airplane mode on. I have done it and it even saves time with fewer distractions, believe me.

— Going to the gym: You need to focus on your regimen anyway, don’t you? Like above, best to use your phone in airplane mode if you’re using it as a music player there.

— Going to my local prayer hall, a 15-20 minute affair at best. And you need silence inside the hall anyway. Leave the phone behind.

— If you want to take it up a notch: Buy a small watch, or use your old one lying around. You don’t wear one these days, and use your phone more as a watch than anything else. On these short trips, you don’t need your phone for the time keeping.

— While you're at it, get the simplest $69 Kindle, sans 3G. It is a lot more peaceful book reading device than your iPhone/iPad or any other more user-friendly connected device. The basic Kindle makes it lot easier with its clunkiness.