I watched a YouTube video that talked about the amount of time it takes to pay attention to something deeply and then get into a flow state. That is the change for our brain to think deeply about something. It said we need 20 minutes. The average amount of time before someone is interrupted because of something on their phone is 42 seconds.
I noticed this years ago with my first iPhone. Since it could do other things that calls/texts the notifications were annoying. I turned them off. Then there was vibrating for various reasons. I couldn’t turn that off completely. Finally I realized that the only way to focus was to ignore my phone and I have been that way since.
What are the downsides of ignoring your iPhone? You miss calls that otherwise you might have gotten. I turn the mute on so I don’t hear it ring. Then I might look later and see I have missed a call and see the vm and decide if I want to respond to it. The other downside is that there might be someone in an emergency but since I have few people close to me and the ones I know WFH it is less likely to have real emergencies.
What are the upsides of ignoring your iPhone? You can focus and achieve more and not be bothered with being a slave to your phone. You are healthier. Instead of looking to the phone for everything, you actually think and consider things outside what the phone can offer. You achieve states of flow in your work. You can focus and single task on a project and make great progress on it. You can not feel a victim of technology and that you have to respond to every digital thing that someone does to you. You ignore spammers very efficiently and just delete texts whenever you want to.
I love technology but I think we may have given up things that we didn’t realize. We need the right to be analog and the right to be forgotten. We need the right to be able to focus, and the right to not be tracked. Those are just as important as any benefit technology gives us. I wonder if we have given too much up for technology. I don’t wish to go back in time, but I do think we over apply the technology that we have and we are worse because of it.
Everything needs a balance, including the impact technology has on us.