As someone who owns a dumb flip phone, it's funny to read someone's enthusiastic account of their life-changing experience of... living exactly the way I do.
But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad for me, no way around it, but the amusing little bits keep pulling me back. imgur is the worst one for me... the community is unmoderated and uncoordinated, it's a pile of least-common-denominator bs that's as bad as anything on reddit ever was, and yet the only way I've been able to break away from it is to block myself from viewing it.
I've rightgraded from smartphone to flipphone, and am mostly happier for it. There are a few exceptions, the principle one of which is transit apps -- NextBus and its kin are life changers when it comes to using and really being able to rely on public transit (and that's even though the apps and their interfaces still suck in many, many ways).
It turns out that there is a minimal Web interface to the one transit app I've used to date that works with my flip-phone's very minimal Web browser. I'm not sure if that's sufficient for me or not (I'm starting to think that it would be really cool for local stores and such to post pending arrival times for nearby stops).
I've also still got my old Android device which as a WiFi mini-tablet is still somewhat useful. Though I'm strongly favoring replacing that with a Nexus tablet. The ability to carry around the several thousand texts I'm currently researching would be a bit of a bonus.
A stripped-down smartphone has quite a few advantages over a dumbphone. Notice which apps are installed: Google Maps, subway maps, Rdio, Uber, Instacart. As he says, these things are like living in the future.
Dumbphone plus a GPS device, mp3 player could so the same. I still prefer my Sansa clip to my phone for music (I never even set the phone up for music). Small, battery lasts a while, and I basically don't need to worry about it. I even put one through the washing machine and it worked after a couple of weeks.
As a side note, I find my Android phone a serious step back in usability. I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Can't I just get a physical green answer button back, rather than stupid swipe gestures.
"Do the same" - if you're now using 3 devices to do something that 1 can do, you're not doing the same. This is important to some.
Also, the Sansa doesn't stream, so it's not really "doing the same". Some like their own curated music and for that an on-device music player is fine. Some others (me, for example), want a radio style stream where I don't know what's coming.
> I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls.
I get you might not like gestures, but HALF of the time you mess it up? Let's not resort to hyperbole.
There are other callers/dialers on the market too that might have controls that work better for you also.
So, yeah, you might be able to make do with your use case and tolerances, but your needs are not everyones.
How do you know how many times I have pulled the phone out of my pocket and fat fingered a hang up? Lets not resort to speculation because it doesn't happen to you.
That's terribly awkward to carry around. Also, a GPS device doesn't tell me when my next bus is due (there's about 45 minutes between my buses). I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. I can also look at cat pictures on the bus.
The Sansa Clip is a great mp3 player. All it does is play music (which is a big plus in my book), it's really small so it's great for running or other similar things, and the physical buttons make it really easy to use one-handed without looking at the screen.
When I got my first good-quality smartphone, I had planned on moving all my music over to it, but stopped when I found that the Clip was really a better device for music.
> I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls.
Then you're an outlier. Through common sense, it should be obvious that the vast majority of people don't run into such problems, or it would be a much more widely talked about problem. Hell, people made a huge fuss about "antennagate" when it was really only encountered by a fraction of iPhone 4 users.
Interesting sidenote that while 2 sibling comments praised their Sansa music player, we had one from audible for audio books and it's been so frustrating that I think of it as the worst mp3 player I ever used.
It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS and for which I can completely control the OS and environment. CyanogenMod seems to be as close as I'm likely to get to that at present.
Richard Stallman, as usual, was quite ahead of the curve on this topic when he noted that he didn't carry a cell phone of any kind because of the privacy considerations associated with logging your location, accurately with triangulation, against cell towers.
The instant you start using a cell phone consistently, you've effectively handed over a log of your location history to whoever can convince the sysadmin in your cellular carriers NOC to to give them the data. And that's a pretty big list.
- When people want to point out that "Stallman predicted this X years ago," they phase it as, "Richard Stallman was right, as usual." Richard Stallman is not infallible. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends.
- There are many of Stallman's "followers" that are very aggressive at promoting the GPLv3 over all other open source licenses. While this might not be Stallman's personal position on the matter, if definitely doesn't win many people over (and probably pushes many away).
- Richard Stallman isn't necessarily the most lovable and charismatic figure. While people shouldn't factor that in to things when evaluating his message, they do.
But in a corner of the world where predictions are a dime a gross, Stallman's made many, and his record of hits is considerable.
Adding to his credibility and significance are the fact that:
⚫ He's not commercially vested in his predictions. Unlike virtually everyone else in the space, whose "technology forecaster" title is followed by some company name.
⚫ His logic is Talmudic in its rigor. If Stallman has a position on something, it's virtually always because he's thought it through very thoroughly. Even if you don't agree with the conclusions (or if it turns out he was wrong), you're almost always better off knowing why he came to that conclusion.
⚫ He gores sacred cows. Much of the antipathy toward Stallman comes from those whose business model he's just invalidated. Or worse, proven to be utterly and completely socially and morally indefensible.
When people take the phrase: " Stallman was right, as usual." and suggest that this is a claim of infallibility. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends.
The claim is that on these issues Stallman is more usually right than wrong. Do you have anything that suggests otherwise?
'As usual' is unnecessary unless you're trying to passively aggressively say "I told you so," or imply that people should blindly accept everything that Stallman says.
I would hardly tell anyone to blindly accept everything or anything Stallman (or for the matter, any charismatic leader) says.
However, "I told you so" is a phrase much needed these days... specially directed towards people that insist on making the same kind of mistakes that drove us to the mess we're right now.
If you wonder why people don't listen to you, phrasing like this comes across as condescending, and that you have some sort of belief that Richard Stallman is infallible.
It's a trope (Richard Stallman was right, as usual), that I was intentionally paying homage to. Genuinely sorry if it annoyed you that much, certainly wasn't my attention. I really have no feelings one way or another towards Stallman, other than being amused at his hit rate on these type of predictions that people mock him for.
If the phone's off, that's going to be less useful. And the tower-tracking location granularity's much lower than GPS Though I don't know what the reporting intervals are. Some smartphones (or their apps) were reporting location data every 10 seconds, with accuracy measured within a few feet.
Can't find that article at the moment, though another reports that location information is logged "at least several times an hour":
Here: "In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times."
Except in certain situations when you're probably pretty lucky to have it on.
I had a friend who ran off the side of a mountain in Colorado. He called 911, but had no idea where he was (he was from the Midwest). Within about 40 minutes, they had triangulated his location and had a tow truck and emergency vehicles routed to get him out.
Without his phone and the ability to locate him, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have made.
If he's called 911 then ipso facto 1) his phone is on and 2) all location features are activated (on pretty much any phone of recent memory), as dialing 911 enables just this.
The fact that the exception proves useful doesn't mean my phone should transmit and the telco provider, app manufacturers, and others record, possibly indefinitely my location data every few seconds.
If you haven't read Maciej Cegłowski "The Internet with a Human Face", do. It's quite simply one of the best and most completely cogent arguments against the advertising-supported services model I've seen ever and anywhere. He's "idlewords" here on HN.
While it is obvious that turning off the phone helps, it's good that you make that point as I cannot remove the battery from my smartphone, a problem most "dumb" phones don't have.
>It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS...
I have only ever wished for the opposite, an app/feature that will log my location, frequently. I don't particularly care if it's stored in the cloud, as long as it's also stored on something of mine in a portable format (CSV, etc). I am thinking of this in terms of potentially catastrophic events where proving my location at some given time would be incredibly helpful, say, when the spouse/boss/police need to know, and the stakes are risking my marriage/job/freedom. Even more helpful would be if the app integrated with the fingerprint reader, to help prove that not only was my phone at this location, but with very high probability, so was I.
Why are people so interested in destroying this information about themselves? Is it "because freedom"? Or is there a real, practical threat that we open ourselves to when this information is out there? I am genuinely interested in knowing.
Regarding maps: is there an app that lets you save out Google Map info offline? I'd like to be able to type in a city and have it save all the data.
I was thinking of having my setup just be a dumbphone plus a wifi-only tablet. The tablet would have utility apps, including this offline-map app. I'd just need it when I'm lost or need to find something nice to eat. It should also have Yelp data on it, and have the ability to update the map and Yelp data when I'm wifi connected.
If I'm travelling to somewhere, I can preload the tablet with the new city info at home.
To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world. At least, hacker news is informative and the comments are of high-quality. However, I wish I was able to read some articles more thoroughly rather that passively browse.
> To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world
This is known as Mean World Syndrome, and it's a real thing[0].
Agreed, I'm actually grateful that I stumbled upon HN last year. At first, I thought the content posted here would not suite my taste and then I checked HN comments on each post and I knew immediately that this would be my homepage.
What I like about HN is the built in procrastination tool.The fact that the community knows that HN can be a distraction and they actually built a procrastination tool is awesome. You won't see Facebook, Instagram or Twitter give you an option to stop procrastinating.
I stopped reading regular news and the comments, at most I will read articles from well informed media websites. Also over the years, the quality of articles from news sites has dropped massively. I feel like they are writing just to get hits on their websites. Add a misleading, controversial heading in the mix and it just makes the whole experience worse.
I am glad you're spending time on HN to discuss this. For me it's about finding the right balance between isolation and being part of communities. Take for example phinished.org. It is a completely anonymous community for stressed out phd students, that seem to be perfect for those day when you're just to stressed out or to damn bored to do anything really useful. Sometimes it can be extremely useful to be part of a community like that. Sometimes you need distraction free days.
Smartphones, like iPhone, are only 7 years old. It will take more years for people to learn how to live with it. Smartphones have already been coined "the new cigarette", used by stressed out people to calm down on café's and public places. In the future we'll probably have professional help for people who want to quit fiddling with their phone all the time.
I am on a computer all day long, I still have a flip phone, and people look at me like I am crazy. They all know I am a tech type guy, but question why I have a flip phone. Thing is, when I am off the computer. I dont want to think about more computer things. Glad others are finally realizing how terrible this is. You go out in public and everyone is sitting down at dinner with their friends surfing the biggest social media site at the moment.
The common factor in all these time-sinks is not the phone, but it's the internet. I have a smartphone and although I could definitely live without it, the only thing I've done is disable data. Rather, I'm too cheap to pay for data. What difference does that make, you ask?
One, on messaging, people would use text to contact me or each other if they notice that WhatsApp/Talk message hasn't reached for a couple of minutes. And a call is very helpful to transmit high density info in short time.
Two, I can still use my very nice phone with a large screen to watch videos, read ebooks on the go like if I'm in a bus or something. The difference here is that these things are not infinity-sinks in my experience - I can go 1 hour or so reading a book on a cellphone but then need to take a break which is when you look up and around. Also, subconsciously, the permanence of the book/video prioritizes real world interrupts (in an embedded programming context) rather than blocking them.
Then, you always have music that you can copy to the phone and listen to if you don't want to put your face to the screen. This enables you to move your head around everywhere and still not be all that bored because you still have that music going on.
If I absolutely want, which is almost never, I play games but I find that mobile games are not something that I like so it never comes up at all.
But a lot of time, I've just noticed myself looking around, just absorbing the world around me and being in my own thoughts rather than a forced stimulus and I find that relaxing unless I'm stuck in a very noisy environment in which case the earphone doubles up as a noise blocker.
And the general trend I've heard here is that you need to be on email. But work already has wifi and if you're at work your computer is right in front of you. Secondly, aren't you making a big mistake by configuring work email on your phone?
Maybe I'm the second coming of RMS but I do not install Facebook and Twitter apps on my phone for privacy reasons. Checking at most once everyday seems to be enough for me but I know that's not the case with everyone. It seems a lot of plans are made over fb for you guys, which is understandable - we use hangouts and whatsapp over here, but primarily whatsapp. But more importantly, for immediate plans we generally use SMS and phone calls which might be why we're not as reliant on facebook. FB is considered more of a public 'show-off' billboard than a private friend group.
So yeah, maybe this was worthy of its own blog-post but my gist here is that turning off the data does wonders. You still get to retain those handy unit converters, two factor authenticators, password wallets and other things that are yours without the Skinner box annoyances of the infinity-sinks.
Of course, before someone rants "You don't know how important it is to have internet on my phone", I'd say you're obviously right. However, maybe after reading my post, you realize that it isn't all that important then kudos to you. You should atleast try it once before knocking it right? A lot of times we think "It's impossible to get through without X" but humans are surprisingly adaptive and can cope without X just fine.
I'm just sharing my experience, hoping that it's useful to you.
So I've gone the other way: everything that is distracting (fb, twitter, reddit, ideally HN but android apps suck for this) is on my phone.
Then, my computer is for work, and my phone is for being bored. That way (in theory) there is no reason to be logged into timesinks on my computer, so I can use it without distraction.
I think this also makes a great use case for an iPad. I have hosts-blocked all time sinks on my Mac, and unlike on my iPhone, I don't even have much time to use my iPad.
I do miss the convenience of a physical keyboard in FB discussions, though...
This is the best thing I ever did. On my work PC there are precisely zero 'leisure surf' items in my browser history. If I am working with someone then that autocomplete is never going to suggest anything other than work related. Switch to any tab, same again - work.
I go for a walk at lunchtime rather than read clickbait. Even if I work s-l-o-w-l-y, at least I am working rather than brazenly procrastinating. I never take my work home, I just get in early and get it done.
This 'regime' is like freedom, it does not require any discipline, now that I am set into it I see no reason to change. The news will still be there when I get home, as will sports results, HN and anything else. I have no need to read any of this trivia at work. If I want to read I have plenty of time for that outside of work where I can read something more substantial on my own clock.
We had a bright intern with us recently, he needed little help, however, I was most keen to stress to him how liberating it was to not recreationally surf at work and to have a phone for personal emails.
I take a harder tract - I used to force myself stay away from my cellphone and put social interactions first. I also stay away from installing many apps intentionally. My phone is always on silent out of politeness - no call/email/etc. is important enough to mandate my attention if I am already preoccupied.
I think it's a good way to live. Your friends/acquaintances/etc. that you are with should be the most important people in your life at that moment. When at work, your work is your most important point of focus (unless it's your wife/kids/etc. - family or friends of great significance). It also is generally good to try to control addictions.
In a way, it's about controlling your life, and not letting the phone control you.
I have a now 4 year old iPhone 4. It is incredibly slow, crippled by ios 7.1, so slow that Facebook is useless and I only use safari when I really need to look up something. I call it my Comm, because that is what I use it for, communication. iMessages, Whatsapp, FB messenger, hangouts all work relatively well. My iPhone is essential distraction free because it is too slow to distract me, ill look up while waiting, talk to someone, even meditate while waiting for my iPhone to load.
I have a iPhone 4 too that is all I use. Also running 7.1.2. No real problems. It isn't super fast but it works well enough for a four year old phone that is running the OS that runs on phones sold today.
Heh, same bucket - I don't even try and have FB load on the phone anymore.
My primary use case is email, Twitter (When I'm bored), WhatsApp / SMS / Snapchat / Google Maps (spending summer in a new city) and listening to podcasts (plus a brief, unrequited fling with 2048 this summer). Its amazing how much Facebook drags on it, to the point that its utterly pointless to even have on the phone.
How is your battery? I figure at four years it's got to be pretty bad. I have an old iPhone 5 and my biggest blocker is the fact that the battery can only last a few hours at most with minimal usage, which makes it an absolutely pain to travel as one is away from charger most of the time. In fact, the only reason why I'd upgrade to a new phone is because I can't stand having it die so easily.
No clue about the iPhone 5. But I replaced the battery in my 4 and it was ten bucks for a new battery and about as many minutes. Pretty much two screws and my key to my apartment.
(Posting using a throwaway as I changed my noprocrast settings in HN as mentioned in these comments and ironically blocked my account for the day!)
Somewhat related, I've come to a similar conclusion myself recently but via app fatigue instead. I've been running a Windows Phone for over a year now, and although I loved the OS, constant remarks regarding the app gap made me wonder if I was missing out on the full smartphone experience.
Thus I obtained a Samsung Galaxy and logged into my old Android account, eagerly anticipating all those exciting apps I'd soon have access to at my fingertips. Going thought the Play Store was a great experience - Instagram, SnapChat, Yo, etc. - I installed every hyped app like I was on a crazed shopping spree. This included apps that simply replicated a web experience, e.g. Amazon Shopping, Quora, and even Go Daddy (in case I ever wanted to check my domain renewal status while out and about!)
The first week or so was exciting, I was in thrall of all the things I could potentially do with my phone and how (by some unknown means) these apps would help me live my life. However as the weeks went on I found that even though I had all these apps, I simply didn't use them. I realised that just having the technology available isn't enough, you have to have a want and need for it.
From this experience I've recognised what I personally need from a smartphone. For me it's about a good camera, music player, calendar, and a way to directly and privately communicate with my friends and family. Add to this a few key apps, covering transport/maps, gym, ebooks, podcasts, etc., and I'm good to go.
I now have a Nokia Lumia on its way to me in the post. I won't have the latest hot apps, but that's okay. And when the next big app does come around, hopefully at some point it will come to my platform, and if not I'll happily just get on with my work.
That's an interesting idea. I'd never considered Windows Mobile before, but since I, too, don't really need much in the way of apps (just the ones you mention), maybe I should look into it.
Any idea how well a Windows mobile phone can integrate with a household that's predominantly Mac?
I guess most integration would be fine - email, calendar and so on. There are WP alternatives for most services, i.e. OneDrive for cloud syncing, etc. - however iTunes, iCloud and so on could be an issue.
It could be MS's new marketing angle - "come to Windows Phone, we don't have any apps, and that's a good thing" :)
In a similar vein, I almost always have my phone set to silent without vibrate. This small change has made a huge difference in my interaction with my phone. I reach for it less and just generally think about it less.
The downside is people are sometimes annoyed at me not reacting to calls/messages immediately. I should probably experiment with the iOS Do Not Disturb feature, but it hasn't been too big of an issue so I've put it on the back burner.
Same here. I set my main ringtone to silence and only a few contacts can actually ring my phone. I disable almost all notifications and my phone's on do-not-disturb from 10-7 every night.
Maybe my laptop needs a hosts file to block "infinite" sites. Of course, I'm on one right now...
The inability to selectively enable (rather than individually blacklist) contacts, and specify a do-not-disturb block, are two of the most significant disadvantages of going to a flip phone I've encountered.
My compromise is to simply leave it off much of the time.
Why turn the ringer completely off? Surely it's worth getting "distracted" by communication from friends and family. The only reason I can see this as a good idea is if you get a lot of bogus calls, or you know people who call/text you a ton.
I remember a time when people were reachable by location. You could call me at home and reach me early mornings (but that's rude), evenings, or weekends. Or at work at my desk.
This was a time when toll charges were high enough that unsolicited calls were something of a rarity. That's definitely changed (and lack of caller-ID on landlines is all but unbearable now).
There was even a time when answering machines didn't exist -- can't reach someone? Try later or send a letter. Not email, a letter.
Amazingly, we got by.
The conceit that I've got to be reachable by every unintelligibly accented stranger on a crap VOIP line anywhere on the planet at any time has gotten old.
And yes, if I don't aggressively guard my access, I do get a lot of crap phone calls.
Perhaps I've just gotten lucky with sales calls, and either have few friends or courteous friends. I get one sales call a month, from my university alumni association, which I ignore. I talk on the phone or FaceTime with family approximately weekly, but that's on the weekend, and planned casually through email or SMS before hand. The vast majority of my communication with friends is asynchronous through email/Facebook/Twitter or semi-asynchronous through instant messaging, neither of which provide real-time distraction.
If you've signed on to the Do Not Call registry and/or have a cell phone, it's not so bad.
An established residence over time (a few decades) and various other marketing-database-entry events, and it's a pretty constant annoyance, in my experience.
Problem I've got with chat over phones is that the keyboards stink.
Totally agree. The most egregious violators of such calls are recruiters. Put your phone number on a resume and submit it to a few sites, assuming you work in IT, and they will call non-stop. Sometimes, I refuse the call and they keep calling back a few more times. Nowadays, I only pick up calls from people I recognize. Google has started to provide "caller ID" for many businesses that don't have it now, which helps also.
Worst was the guy who called, I dismissed him with "not interested <click>". He called back. And chewed me out.
SRSLY?!!!
I patiently (?) explained that his first call was a waste of both our time. And the second far worse than that. But I'd be more than happy to spread his and his employer's name over teh Intarnets.
I used Do Not Disturb a lot during the peak hours of my dissertation writing. It was pretty helpful. That of course means I would miss new emails and phone calls but those could be responded to later
A tip I got from Perry Marshall was to put productive apps on your home screen, and throw apps like Facebook, Instagram etc at the back of your phone.
For example, by only leaving apps like Kindle, Audible, or Bible on my home screen, I'm much more likely to do something productive when I'm looking to fill in a few minutes waiting somewhere, rather than checking Facebook which will be a waste of time.
My strategy is to disable notifications. Thus, I only open the apps when I choose to (WhatsApp, Twitter, etc.). Apps that are specially addictive belong to the second screen, in a folder (Twitter, etc.). This way I have much more control over my phone habits.
I haven't gone as far as this guy, but I recently removed Facebook and Twitter from my Android phone and it's been a breath of fresh air.
I still use both apps via their websites when I've got my laptop out, but not having them in my pocket all the time is really freeing. You don't realise how much of a slave you are to these things until you force yourself to let them go. I waste a lot less time on my phone now. Wouldn't go back.
One of the reasons I refused to get a smartphone a few years back, was because all I saw people do was use them as a distraction. Facebook at the bus stop. Facebook in a seminar.
I now own a smartphone. Refused to put Facebook on it. I also make a point when going on holiday not to use internet, unless I need to. I have been to some stunning places in the Hymalayas, with scenery like nowhere else, and you see the internet cafes full of westerners, updating their facebook status. Did you really need to pay for the flight to do that?
Maybe not. But having maps in unfamiliar territory (like Bangkok Chinatown) which also works as a camera and can replace sketchy internet cafes for booking tickets and contact people home ...
As with fire, smartphone is a great servant but terrible master.
I have some eye complications like dry eyes and due to this my doctor advised me cut down use of smartphone as much as I can. My first thought was to just get a feature phone and dump smartphone altogether. But there are few things about smartphone that I can not really give up now.
1. Maps - maps come in very handy at times when you are stuck in some unknown area and want to find way home.
2. Browser - to be able to check anything on the web is also very important to me.
3. Access to online storage and email.
Basically I gave up all social media, all smartphone gaming and other unwanted apps and use smartphone for basic internet access device. I have cut down my smartphone usage from 3 hours a day to about half an hour a day.
HN does have the cryptic 'noprocrast/minaway/maxaway' settings in your profile that can help with this. I haven't tried them yet, though maybe I should.
My issue lies with the content weight on hacker news - a lot of posts require 3 mins+ to read and grok, potentially explore related concepts/sites, and maybe even try out a product. I'd say about 50% of the posts on HN interest me enough to warrant this kind of attention. Then of course you have to read the comments ;) This can eat away a serious amount of time!
It also doesn't help that this time can be labelled as "productive" in my mind (as opposed to Facebook etc), when in reality there are more productive things to be doing in these moments.
Up until 6 months ago, I used a flip-phone because I didn't want the distractions that I noticed with friends (constantly checking Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
I finally gave in when I moved and would constantly get lost (I needed maps).
I really like this article, but I see opportunity in short digital breaks. The truth is that the majority of people won't delete infinity apps. They don't have the self-control to do it.
That's why I'm building an app (Android-only) to temporarily disable distracting apps.
Looks great! Will we be able to choose which applications we are allowed to use? For example, everybody I know uses whatsapp exclusively for messaging so my phone would be pretty useless with SMS only.
For the first version, it only allows calling/texting - however, I'm going to have WhatsApp whitelisted because I know it's a popular messenger replacement :)
In the future, I'd love to give people different "packages" (ie. - Uber, Lyft, Instacard, etc) as not all apps are distracting.
Today I went to lunch by myself and forgot my phone at home. It was very boring and I really didn't know what to do with myself. It made me realize how terribly addicted to my phone that I am.
"Over the last 12 months I’ve learned to enjoy (or at least, be OK with) moments of boredom. I reach for my phone a lot less often. It’s probably just my imagination, but it feels like it’s easier to concentrate when I need to get things done or tackle a big project.
Times on the bus when I would’ve checked email, I listen to music or just look around. I even started meditating on the bus (yes, really! And, uh… please don’t mug me) using an app called Calm."
Is this satire? Meditating using an app, the conquest of boredom, the gain in productivity/focus.
Tried this, and one of the big difficulties is that I send email to my todo list manager to create todos ("pick up milk", "Email person about important_thing").
I don't want to give this up, but can't find an app that only sends email. So when I opened Mail to send a todo email, I'd see all the new emails that were begging to be read. I could create a new email account that I use for sending only, but that seems like a pain.
Anybody seen an iOS app that sends email, but doesn't check it?
I use Goodtodo but emailing in todos is faster than using the native app.
Couldn't find any apps that worked so ended up creating a receive-only account that gets no email and using that as my incoming account. My outgoing account is my normal Gmail account. Will be interesting to see how things go without email on my phone.
During my visit to South Africa and Zimbabwe, I realised that we take internet for granted In Europe and America. All my colleagues who work there generally have 3 to 4 (maximum) applications on their smartphone and they never constantly look at their phone all the time. Data is ridiculously expensive there and watching Youtube videos regularly is a non starter. Unlimited internet is pricy because its still new so everybody purchases bundles. Just using you smartphone there teaches if you really want to spend x amount of data on a short video clip.
It made me realise that I had to make a change. I depend on the internet/technology and I personally think that's scary. I'm gradually cutting out applications, I think the big shift from being connected to not being connected would just cause a relapse. Right now Twitter,Facebook, HN are not on my smartphone anymore and I feel much better already.
I have a lot more time now and its quite shocking how people are still productive these days with the insert next trending application coming out every week.
I think going so far as to disable Safari outright and deleting email accounts is too extreme but I definitely agree that most Apps are counterproductive.
It's important to moderate use of addictive services that provide a stream of instant gratification like facebook, twitter, reddit, 9gag, pinterest, etc. The first step is being conscious of excessive use.
It doesn't work for me - I've tried. Self-control works really well for me when the task at hand is really interesting and I want to give my everything to it. I don't know about you but so far those tasks haven't come to me at a regular pace. And I tend to seek out these online distractions as a diversion tactic when the task I'm supposed to be working on is really boring or uninteresting. So it's all about one's personality.
It sounds like even if you removed these distractions, you'd simply seek out others. As in replace one addiction with another, a very common behavioural characteristic.
The only way to deal with this is to better understand your own personality and try to learn how to get self control. There are lots of cognitive therapy based behavioural modification techniques. Self control only when it's interesting isn't really self control.
2) At work, I silent my phone as well. No need to get Facebook notifications during thinking time.
This leaves my phone with a few hours each day to yell at me. The mornings, and the early evening (but I put my phone away for dinner anyways). It gives me a few moments each day to check notifications from services like Facebook, see Google Now reminders, and that's about it. When friends need to contact me, they text, call, or chat me. If my phone is silent when they do, such is life.
I was away at a friends cabin about a month ago. Sitting on a lawn chair on their dock I shifted and my Nexus 4 fell out of my pocket, bounced off the dock, and into the lake.
When I got back home I popped the SIM card into my old iPhone 3GS and have been experiencing a similar smartphone underload. I updated the apps I needed to, mostly 2-factor software tokens for VPN and my Google account, and realized that I wasn't missing much of my Nexus 4.
I did try to save the phone with a couple handfuls of dessicant packets but it never successfully got past the bootloader screen. But that's fine with me, I am in no hurry to replace it.
I acquired a Nexus 4 from a friend after it had fallen into a (clean) toilet. She sent it to me to attempt to fix, and I too started with silica gel, moved onto placing it near the boiler, and eventually set it beside a dehumidifier. After a couple of weeks the phone appeared bone dry, but I couldn't get past the boot screen.
Fast forward six months of the Nexus 4 sitting in a drawer forgotten about. I took it out and charged it. Amazingly, the phone now works 100%.
I sometimes post about my company working on the next big "social platform". And we are trying to do things RIGHT - open source, fully distributed (while respecting CAP theorem), people own their own data, etc.
So when it comes to notifications, like in every other area we want to encourage the apps to use "best practices" and only notify people of what they really WOULD want to know about. That means turning down the "slot machine" factor and handing over control over notifications to the people. To do this, we needed to design a standard, expressive interface and "language" that people could use in any app across the platform to quickly indicate what they want.
And here's an overview of how it works withte rest of the system:
Every piece of data in Q (http://platform.qbix.com) is typically stored in a Stream. Which means things like access control (privacy), real time updates (like chat), offline notifications (delivered to any endpoints), etc. are all implemented by the system and available to the app for free.
The user can fine tune notifications settings for any stream or type of stream, and each app can provide Rules with configurable settings and thresholds. For example, a "Groups/activity" published by a user who is in my contacts under a "Friends" or "Family" label and matching my interests would accumulate enough weight to bust through my notification threshhold for sending me an in-app notification, or an email, or an sms. At certain hours of night, my notificaion threshold goes up. When I get into my car, and start moving fast, my notification threshhold goes up until I get out of the car, so only the most urgent things distract me.
And that red badge on the icon? It should earn your trust, like all interface elements it represents a relationship and shouldn't cry wolf. It should NOT show the number of messages waiting for you, but rather show the number of streams with "important" messages posted since you last checked that stream on ANY device.
In short - there are lots of things to solve but they only have to be solved once. That's what we have been working on for over 3 years.
I had my iPad replaced recently, had some issues restoring it as my backup state was inconsistent and ended up going for a full 'clean' device. It was interesting, for the first 4 weeks I had barely any apps on there outside of Kindle, Instapaper and Tweetbot. I used it about the same amount of time, but generally I'd focus on one thing for longer periods of time. I'm tempted to go down that route when I get a new iPhone this month, sounds like it's worked well for other people.
I have a feature phone that comes with a crappy enough Java ME based Google Maps that is just enough to save me from trouble when I really do need directions yet none of the things on the phone is something I could just play with.
Thus, I just use it for calls and texting, and for Google Maps if really needed. I need to charge it once a week and for all I care it just works.
My employer provides me with a smartphone as a work benefit but I mostly use it as a small tablet for reading stuff in bed. The battery is often out of juice, too.
I'm usually at my desk at home or the office, or in bed, or some other place with a real computer, or doing something I actually want to be doing, or driving. In none of those situations do I want my phone.
In the remaining cases of "waiting for something but not equipped with a full sized computer", I'm quite happy to use the phone.
The greater problem is "spending time doing less-productive stuff on the Internet" -- I just prefer doing so with a real computer.
This world of having a computer in your pocket with an always on Internet connection is still new to us, even 5 years in. I wonder what our culture will choose as an acceptable and healthy way to deal with this new world. As it stands now people are way too hooked to theirs phones, and cannot even concentrate without them.
I don't Facebook, Instagram, twitter, or any of that nonsense, but I'm still hooked to my phone and need a break. I might give this a shot.
“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
-- by social scientist, Herbert A. Simon.
Keeping our phone distraction free will definitely make us attention rich and free us from the information pollution that we're getting used to. If not a distraction free smartphone, we should probably make better decisions about what information we choose to spend our attention on.
Bloggings like these come up semi-regularly, and I sometimes wonder if they're just designed to troll people into deleting all the apps from their phone.
I rather think they are from people who finally realized living for your phone is a worse living experience than just living and using it when needed - or in other words, don't stretch the meaning of 'needed'
I've done the same thing with my Android but I didn't consider it all that revolutionary. I just like a clean looking phone. Using Atom Launcher I can adjust the 'dock' (around the launcher icon) to slide left and right rather than the home pages. It's a much less distracting experience.
I wanted to try a similar experiment, but more extreme in that I'd get rid of my iPhone in favour of a pager. I decided this was probably too much of a hassle and would cause me more problems than it solved. (I use my phone to gain access to accounts on my computer, etc. using two factor authentication so quitting smart phones cold turkey isn't really an option for me after all.)
Seems oddly backwards to me, but I'm sure I'm not the only one. If I've bought and am paying for a phone that costs a significant fraction of my computer, it seems like a waste not to use it for that purpose. You can make the argument that disconnecting to a point, or for a period of time, is a good thing, but intentionally crippling your hardware because you can't resist the temptation of having it there seems like it would be better solved by forming better habits in the first place.
It just seems like it would be on par with buying a brand new computer to get your writing done, then installing DOS because the web browser was just too alluring.
All that said, I ended up taking this to the opposite extreme: I've set up my phone to be cross-linked into as many work-related systems as possible, so that I can take better advantage of those little "in-between" moments during my work days. Build's compiling? Get an alert when it's done. Waiting for a coworker to get out of a meeting? Get an alert when they ping your name in IRC/Skype/GChat. Not having to sit in front of my computer waiting for asynchronous blockers to resolve means I can retreat to the porch, or the living room, or the park up the street, without having to worry about coming back to find something's on fire. Additional apps allow for limited on-the-go debugging, interfacing with systems and the like, so that I can continue being away from my computer if the situation isn't severe enough to require my actual physical presence at a keyboard and larger screen.
Just go with OmniROM (Android community build) and don't install the Google Apps. BAM. Useful phone, as free as reasonable doable, useful stuff from F-Droid, but no ginormous bunch of every latest gizmo and you get more freedom and privacy.
I wonder if people keep a gazillion time sinks on their home screens is that they've paid $500 to be part of the smartphone club, and reducing its "use" would cause buyer's regret. I think I am somewhat guilty of that on my iPad.
Maybe, it would explain why people spend $500 - $1000 on an phone and use it almost solely as camera, gaming, Facebook platform. Honestly, as useful as smartphones are, you'll have a hard time justifing the price, unless you have so special use case.
Luckily my iPad was a gift, otherwise I would feel cheated. I often try to browse the web, but after a few minutes I get frustrated and switch to a laptop. In my mind the iPad is a useability nightmare, it's only good for a few well designed casual games (and may reading, if you don't have a Kindle). For anything else, including browsing and email, it's quicker and more comfortable to just get out the laptop.
I probably should do this. I keep on coming up with strategies for deciding which apps to keep on my phone and which I should delete, but I can't ever stick to one.
I actually have mail, firefox, etc on my android phone. and data.
but i turn off notifications for almost everything.
i rarely ever check mail on my phone unless i really need it (which is like 10 times a year). Same for the rest.
What I use most of the time:
- texting (specially for meeting/bar/etc)
- maps (directions, traffic...)
- booking (plane/train/etc while on the go)
- making pictures
- listening to music (sometimes)
yeah.. thats it. I use the other apps less than once a month...
I do use email, web, etc on the laptop tho (which i do not carry with me unless its work hours)
I find it a lot better this way, and in fact, past the initial experience of having a smartphone some years ago, i never really used it any other way.
i dont get the addiction ppl get with the phone games (they're fucking terrible) and non-stop checking notifications (its horrible)
after my samsung galaxy S3 died (DOA) I reverted to an old sony ericsson W810i. Back to when a phone was just a phone. I am absolutely loving it. My next phone will probably be an iPhone 5s, but seriously, having a phone that is just a phone is so great.
Why doesn't this guy (or anyone else like him) get a non-smartphone. I have a BlackBerry10 device and rarely use apps. Partly because the platform was missing many big name apps, but mostly because I don't want or need such things. I really don't understand why this guy has an iPhone.
As another commenter said, look at the apps he has Google Maps, Uber, Rdio etc... The only thing I'd be completely lost without would be Google Maps, but I had that on S60.
Sometimes I end up completely lost because of Google Maps. Or like the other night, the phone decides to run so frustratingly slow its hardly worth using.
Now there was a time in the distant past where we didn't have smartphones for directions. People used maps. Here in Barcelona, every bus stop has a big map of the whole city on it.
i dont have an iphone, but have an andriod one. i generally turn off internet. so, i can't browse, and i can't install new apps. i mostly use it for attending calls.
I used to work for a mobile company, I used to get new phone every other week, it drove me crazy... Now I carry no phone with me at all. But I don't go around telling people that I am better than them, because I have no phone or that I have a "distraction" free iPhone, an iPhone is still a hell of a distracting gadget.
The guy just bought the wrong phone. Nokia 1100 could save him a lot of money and bring a life changing experience - the monochrome screen! I kid you not. And it has superior battery life.
If you want an elegant feature phone, I'd recommend the Nokia 515. It's sleek, has 1 month standby time, 5 MP camera, decent antenna/speakerphone, send/receive texts, basic email functionality and ultra-basic web access. It's the perfect "sensible" phone and was designed to fill that need:
It wasn't his aim to have no apps, just apps that are distracting and time-wasting. For example, he says that he likes having useful apps like Google and Uber installed.
This is the same view that I have towards my smartphone, although I still have FB installed because sometimes I really need it to communicate with friends on messenger.
I would have commented on this but I made my iPad distration free and now its only good for serving coffe anymore! So I am not really using it right now for reading this blogpost and I am not really commenting on this right now, sorry :(
What? this is forth in hacker news, that is the most over rated accomplishment i ever heard.
So you bought an iPhone instead of the old ones, to have the additional features that it provides, and then you don't use it, and call it an accomplishment. That is non sense.
But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad for me, no way around it, but the amusing little bits keep pulling me back. imgur is the worst one for me... the community is unmoderated and uncoordinated, it's a pile of least-common-denominator bs that's as bad as anything on reddit ever was, and yet the only way I've been able to break away from it is to block myself from viewing it.