If you follow my reading list, or you’ve talked to me in the last few weeks, you know I’ve been a little obsessed over a book by Catherine Price called How to Break Up with Your Phone. In the interest of full disclosure, and admitting my very type A personality, I was recommended her other book, the Power of Fun, but had to read this first, because, well, it came first ;). My brain was like, “dude, you kind of have to break up with your phone before you have the time to do more fun things, and then you can start thinking about what fun things you want to do with all your free, non-phone, time!” So that’s what I did.
The book is broken up into two halves: the first where she goes into her “why” behind breaking up with her phone and the second part where she gives you a 30 day plan for how to break up with your phone, that you can loosely follow or not.
I found the first part of the book very interesting. One of the most compelling points she made was how reading a paper book or ebook is different than reading content on a computing device (website, app, etc.) because of the inherent distractions on that medium, and the work our brain has to do to process, decide what’s important versus distraction, and retain the information it has just received. I’ve been trying to articulate this exact point, and the reasons I’ve been having issues reading long form content, for some time. According to Price’s book and her research, the more distraction we have while reading content, the more we train ourselves to skim, and the more we skim, the less we actually are able to process deeply. Mind blown. I used to be able to read textbooks or fiction for hours, and until recently, I was barely able to consume a few pages before getting distracted.
I very loosely followed some of the steps (about 10) in the second half of the book and then just returned it to the library. I’d mostly done much of these things already like unplugging from social media. I’ve found her analysis of notifications very interesting, and I’m currently exploring the settings for text messages. Do I really need to get a ding every time someone texts me? I’m thinking the answer is no, and so far, I’m feeling pretty good about this change.
But don’t take my word for it – check it out yourself, and maybe you’ll find some value in it. If not, it’s a very small book, and well structured, so you can pick out the good bits and leave the others. One small suggestion, I’d recommend getting the paper book versus an e-book for this one (unless you have a color e-reader), because it was nice to have the small size to throw in my bag, and some of the fonts and inserts were not as easy to read on my e-ink e-reader.
What are you reading these days? Have you read “How to Break up with your Phone”? What takeaways did you have? Have you tried to make any changes with how you use your phone, and if so, what did you change and how did it impact your days?
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