This is a real problem. I was traveling last year in South America and suddenly found that I was looking at my phone while on a wonderful trek or while climbing a pretty amazing mountain. I started doing 'no phone days' or 'no phone outings'.
I still do them because when I have my phone, I feel the need to check my email or reddit or hackernews. Logically, there's no reason to do it while I'm out - it feels almost like a disorder! I do regret no phone days sometimes because I don't end up having a camera on me.
After doing no phone days for a while I managed to get better at not looking at my phone when out. Nowadays I manage to not look at it while out for dinner with friends and stuff like that. But I certainly wish my friends wouldn't look at their phones either.
Unfortunately, not everyone realizes what this habit is doing to us. Certainly not the programmer nerds I usually work with, or the business types who are always looking at their blackberries. I also took down a lot of notification services on my phone (twitter, facebook, etc.) because I DO NOT NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS STUFF ALL THE TIME. I need notifications for the really important stuff (someone died, server went down, my best friend got engaged etc.), when did a picture of a cat on facebook become that ?
As someone who uses technology a lot I think I'm getting better and better at filtering this stuff out and focusing on stuff that matters. I feel like most people aren't even aware though of how distracted they've truly become.
I'm happy there's a video about it. This one's pretty good.
I still do them because when I have my phone, I feel the need to check my email or reddit or hackernews. Logically, there's no reason to do it while I'm out - it feels almost like a disorder! I do regret no phone days sometimes because I don't end up having a camera on me.
After doing no phone days for a while I managed to get better at not looking at my phone when out. Nowadays I manage to not look at it while out for dinner with friends and stuff like that. But I certainly wish my friends wouldn't look at their phones either.
Unfortunately, not everyone realizes what this habit is doing to us. Certainly not the programmer nerds I usually work with, or the business types who are always looking at their blackberries. I also took down a lot of notification services on my phone (twitter, facebook, etc.) because I DO NOT NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS STUFF ALL THE TIME. I need notifications for the really important stuff (someone died, server went down, my best friend got engaged etc.), when did a picture of a cat on facebook become that ?
As someone who uses technology a lot I think I'm getting better and better at filtering this stuff out and focusing on stuff that matters. I feel like most people aren't even aware though of how distracted they've truly become.
I'm happy there's a video about it. This one's pretty good.