Reducing phone addiction and going monochrome

I've really been trying to dial back my phone usage, which, I mean, if you went on to YouTube right now, you could probably find 100 videos of people talking about this. It's something I've been struggling with for a long time, but what drives it is not a distaste for my phone, which I think for a long time I mistook this feeling as a desire to get rid of my phone or get rid of my Apple Watch, which about a month ago I took off and I didn't wear for like three weeks in some sort of revolt. But what it turns out is it's not that I don't like these tools. I do like having maps on my phone and being able to find myself places and not getting lost. That's pretty awesome. I don't want to get rid of that. I like being able to make a phone call in a situation where I have to make a phone call, like maybe I don't have a ride. I like the fact that on the fly I could download Lyft or Uber and get a ride. I like the fact that I can have AI on my phone so that when I have a weird question in my head, instead of it driving me crazy, I can just ask the AI and get an answer. Even better, I love the fact that when I read, I can have my phone there and when something in a book, like the book that I've been reading recently, doesn't make sense because there's no such thing as a perfect author. In this case, the author was making a statement and then just blowing past it without explaining it. I like the fact that I can ask and get an answer to that so that I can actually read without this thing stuck in my head.

In fact, it reminds me of something I learned back when I was a younger man, probably in my teen years, that when you're reading a book, if you ever find a word and you don't know what that word means, don't keep reading. Go look it up. Because if you keep reading, in the back of your head, you're always going to be wondering what that word meant. It's the same thing. So I like these devices. I like my watch. I like the fact that, you know, I've got this strap thing that I put over my shoulder that I connect the dog's leash to when I walk so I don't have to, like, hold the leash. And on that, I have, like, a little holster where I put my phone. So I walk listening to podcasts. If I don't have the Apple Watch, then I have to reach into this holster in my, basically, in my armpit area, swing it forward, take the Velcro off, take the phone out, open the phone, and do whatever I need to do, like, to rewind to hear something that I just heard. Like, wait, what did they just say? What book did they just mention? But with my watch, I just lift my wrist and hit the back button. I like those things.

What I don't like is the 80 to 90% of other stuff that come with those. The phone addiction. The getting stuck looking at something that means nothing. The tendency that I've had in the past to download a game and play some stupid game just to give myself an excuse to listen to a podcast longer. I don't like all these things. But what I dislike the most is not feeling present. Not feeling like I'm living in the moment. That the day is always something that I have to rush through. That I'm always rushing towards something, but there's, like, no, there's nothing there. You know, the ever-receding horizon. You keep moving towards it, but you never get any closer. The feeling that the day goes by and I don't know where it went. The fact that I don't have any good ideas on certain days because I'm spending my day organizing something in an app on my phone. I don't like those things.

So I've been carrying around my pocket notebook again because, I don't know, I've always loved pocket notebooks. That was my first step. Has it changed things dramatically? No. So all those YouTube videos? Bullshit. That one thing is not going to change that much. But speaking of YouTube, which by the way, now I only watch on the television. I treat it like a television channel. I don't even have the app on my phone. I deleted all the other apps that were distracting on my phone. I even like hid some, you know, you can hide on the iPhone, you can hide some apps from yourself. And then you have to like use face recognition to unlock the folder that they're in. So it just creates a little bit of friction. All these things are really cool. It's a great place for things where you're like, I don't wanna use that app very often, but I wanna have it on my phone.

Anyways, while watching YouTube, I saw a video about, you know, one of these other videos that are almost as popular as the This Notebook Stopped Me From Doomscrolling videos. And these videos are the How I Dumbed My Smartphone Down. I've seen these videos before. You've seen them before. I've downloaded the app before and I've tried it. I decided to do it again. And I don't know if it's just, I downloaded a different one. I think I did. I think, what is this one called? I think it's Dumb Phone Launcher or something like that. And all it does is you take all the icons off your home screen. It gives you a background color that hides the dock. And then you get a widget that matches the background and you put words on the screen instead of icons. And you know, you pick, I think I picked six apps. And basically the way I set the phone up is I have the apps like camera, phone, messages, settings. What else is on there? Podcasts, this voice notes app and maps. That's everything on my home screen. And it's just words for those.

Now, obviously I can still get to all the other apps. All I have to do is pull down and search or swipe to the side view, you know, where you see the app library. But that initial screen is where most of the problems would come from for me. So having that, just making it basic, I figured I'd give a shot. And then there's other apps that I want things from, but I don't necessarily need to go into the app. So I use that widget screen, you know, like weather. I don't need to go into the weather app. I just want to see like, you know, the forecast for the next four hours. Cool, I can put that in a widget. Email, I just want to see, is there a new email? Cool, look over, nothing in the inbox, put it away. All these little, all these little things, like my grocery list is there. So I need to add something to my grocery list. I can just go right into it. I don't have to do any of that stuff.

I did all that stuff. And then for some reason, I got really annoyed by how beautiful the phone looked in the black background and just the white text. And then having colored icons, it drove me crazy. So I put my phone in monochrome, which I've done before as well. I don't know what it is about this time, but I love it. I haven't taken my phone out of monochrome for like three days. I don't care about color anymore. I'm not watching videos on my phone anymore. I don't care about any of that shit. I just got rid of it. And it's so much nicer when I do pick up my phone, it does feel more like a device. It doesn't feel like a form of entertainment anymore. They talk about the slot machine mechanics that they work in. It doesn't feel like a slot machine anymore. It feels like something I pick up, and I'm like, I need this. And then I go to it. And since most of the things that I need when I pick up my phone are those words on that home screen, I don't get distracted by anything else.

And there's a weird thing that happens in your brain when it's words instead of icons. You have to process it differently. So you go in and you actually have to read things. I don't know how to explain it. It just, it triggers a different part of your brain. So the monochrome, I've been loving so much that I put my Apple Watch in a monochrome. I haven't taken it out either. I love it. And then I figured out how to put my iMac in a monochrome. Yeah, you think I'm getting crazy now. I love it too. You know why? Because it used to burn my eyes and it doesn't burn my eyes anymore. It's, I don't, I can't explain it. Do I watch YouTube on my computer? Yeah. And you know what? I have hotkey to switch it in and out of black and white if I want. Most of the time, I don't care. I watch it in black and white. I don't care. I don't know if it's because when I was younger, the first TV I got, small little TV that somebody bought me, I think it was my grandparents bought me for like eighth grade graduation, it was black and white. It's just a little TV I had in my room. You know, I used to play Atari on a black and white TV because black and white TVs were cheaper than color TVs. I don't know why years and years ago when I did YouTube, I did all my videos in black and white. So I guess I'm just returning to my roots. And you know what? It's all so much better. Has it made me feel more present? Not yet. But you know what it has done is produce a lot of the annoyance that I had with the devices and something about putting them in monochrome makes them feel more tangible. I don't know how to explain that. They feel more analog. Maybe it's because watches until basically until the Apple Watch, if they were, you know, electronic digital watches, they were black and white. And maybe that clicks the same thing with me. It's the same reason that actually I've been using my SuperNote again recently. Just kind of out of the blue, not to read with, but just to doodle on. And that's great. And it's just black and white because it's e-ink. So I guess I'm just, I'm going monochrome on everything.