Whenever I’m playing with my phone I am only shortening my life. A smartphone is useful if you have a specific thing you want to do, but ninety per cent of the time the thing I want to do is avoid doing something harder than surfing Reddit. During those minutes or hours, all I’m doing is dying.

~ David Cain, from https://www.raptitude.com/2013/12/16-things-i-know-are-true-but-havent-quite-learned-yet/

The whole article is full of great truths, many of which I feel comfortable saying I’ve learned. But on this one in particular I was guilty, until very recently.

About a year ago, I picked up the idea of clearing my phone’s home screen and re-learning to always use the search to explicitly launch the app I wanted. I also disabled all notifications and converted the phone into a tool which I use—the phone never uses me.

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