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- 📱 How to Check Your Phone Less
Today at a glance:
📱 Method: How to Check Your Phone Less
A method for repatterning the addictive tendency to check the ‘slot machine’
👩🏽⚕️ Tool: Sidecar Health
This & That: Understanding Artistic Inspirations, Shiftwave, Quote
4 MINUTE READ
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📱 How to Check Your Phone Less
Refraining from my phone checking (pocket slot machine) habit is one of the most impactful things for my ability to be deeply present, create, reflect, and engage with life.
Most of us have known this for a decade.
Yet, it’s been a real challenge to implement and exercise willpower to do so continually.
There’s so many justifications that lead me to the action: I’m being productive, I’m socializing, I’m cultivating with new relationships, I’m learning, etc.
Ultimately, I know these are justifications.
The reality 90% of the time is — I’m restless. My present moment reality is not good enough. I need something that’s more stimulating. This leaves me in a dopamine-craving cycle that dries my well of creative and productive energy.
Most productive people I know don’t scroll endlessly. But they still hit the slot machine often.
This action tends to make us less engaged with life, less productive, more restless, less happy, and less creative.
Having to exercise the willpower to not check is also draining.
Last year, I devised a method to keep me accountable to staying on top of this unhelpful habit, and optimize my ability to engage in life with deeply, and create more meaningfully.
The Method
The things behind the checking — connecting with loved ones, consuming others’ creations, connecting with new internet friends, learning — are legitimately valuable.
It’s the compulsive action that messes with our baseline dopamine that we’re aiming to curb — the aversion to now, causing ordinary life to be not enough. It’s like being high on cocaine all the time, and then the rest of life feels like a comedown.
Create your optimal slot machine checkin
What would feel right, to allow you to properly engage with your day to day life?
For me:
~1PM, after I’ve done my creative practice, deep work, exercise, and lunch
~5PM, after I’ve completed my work for the day
~8PM, after my evening flow — bonus points if I skip this and decide to utilize this dopamine store to focus on unwinding in my own space instead
Create consequences
If I check more than my alotted amount in a day, I abstain from my positive vices the next day: caffeine, cacao, cannabis + have to do a 40 minute seated meditation (a lot of resistance to this).
Accountability
Add this as a checkin with other practices with an accountability buddy, peer coaching, therapy, etc.
Why I think this works
This may feel extreme. But, we live in an extreme age of overstimulation, with brains that are maladapted. If we’re after contentment, fulfillment, and peak expression — it takes somewhat extreme measures to get there.
After realizing and engaging with the optimal relationship with the slot machine for a period, I periodically fell into a pattern of postponement —
‘it’s fine if I go off the rails today, I know what’s optimal and I’ll get back to it at some point’
‘I don’t care, I need this to cope today, because I’m stressed or tired’
‘this is being productive + social by connecting with new friends on instagram/twitter’
This method removes the postponement. There’s immediate consequences and results from your actions.
Over time, we’re repatterning the brain and investing more into our daily life experience, our ability to more fully engaged human beings, better creators,
And the immediate consequences and results help get us there.
It also removes the need for endless willpower, to not check the slot machine. By creating frameworks and consequences, it’s not an endless question of ‘should I check?’ We know when to check, and why not to.
It removes the possibility — just the thought of the potential to check the slot machine, I’ve found alters my presence.
And finally, it encourages reflection and radical self-honesty with the daily checkin. Be honest with what happened, understand why, exercise self-compassion; this will help repattern the behavior from a healthy, balanced place.
Other Tools
Grayscale your phone to remove the addictive colorful stimulation that apps specifically design to keep you using them. Add accessibility shortcut so you can switch it between color and gray by triple tapping the power button (iPhone)
One Sec app — confirmed in a clinical study to make addictive apps less addictive
👩🏽⚕️ Tool: Sidecar Health
Sidecar Health is the best health insurance I’ve come across for healthy entrepreneurs that want to be protected from emergencies + when they need western medicine, and have access to some wellness modalities.
The lowdown:
Choose how much you want to be covered for — annual max spend
Choose your deductible amount (I have a $0 deductible)
They give you a Sidecar debit card to use for any medical services — no in-network or out-of-network, doesn’t matter
Before you go to get medical services, you can look up ahead of time how much of that service Sidecar will cover
Swipe the card when you get the service, then upload the superbill receipt — Sidecar will then let you know how much was covered, and you pay the difference
It covers up to 48 sessions of therapy per year (!!) at a rate of ~$130/session. This alone has made it worth it to me - allowing me to choose the right therapist without worrying so much about out of pocket cost.
It also covers chiro and acupuncture, although I think you need a physician’s reference.
I pay $300/month for coverage up to $2MM, with $0 deductible. It’s truly such a great service.
this & that
Quote
→ “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?” — ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Shiftwave
→ Update on the Shiftwave — tried a session here in Austin last week. It’s an absolute game-changer. Trains your nervous system how to self-regulate. I’m eager to see wellness centers start making this modality available.
Using GPT To Understand Your Inspirations
→ Identifying your personal heroes and artistic inspirations, can provide insight into your own values, aspirations, and styles
→ Gather a list of your heroes — some reasons of why you like them, input into GPT. Ask this series of questions:
Can you summarize the vibes of these people? (expands upon what you’ve said)
Can you help synthesize these? I want to find the underlying overlaps and commonalities between these people.
Limit one paragraph.
Then share the core four bullet points.
Then summarize in one sentence.
I added in my artistic inspirations and got this:
Across the diverse spectrum of artists and poets like Mac Miller, James Blake, Frank Ocean, Fred Again, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, John Mayer, and King Krule, there's a shared exploration of the human condition, characterized by a deep emotional depth, introspection, and the quest for authenticity. They navigate personal growth, existential musings, love, and societal reflections through their unique, innovative artistry, often blurring genre boundaries. Their work resonates on a universal level, reflecting the complexities of human emotions and the search for meaning and connection in a rapidly changing world.
Core Bullet Points:
Exploration of the Human Condition: A universal journey towards understanding self and existence.
Emotional Depth and Introspection: Deep dives into vulnerability, love, and the intricacies of human relationships.
Artistic Innovation and Genre Defiance: Blending genres and traditions to create unique, resonant works.
Reflections on Society and the Individual: Commentary on the individual’s place within and against societal norms.
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