The Five Phone Rules I Actually Keep
I’ve deleted the apps and reinstalled them. I’ve set the screen to grey, used the timers, tried the box you lock it in. Most of it worked for a fortnight. What’s lasted for years are five rules I could explain to a child, and the reason they last is that they’re about location, not willpower.
1. It doesn’t sleep in the bedroom
The phone charges in the kitchen. A cheap alarm clock does the waking. This one rule fixed the two worst hours of my day: the last one, which used to be scrolling in the dark, and the first one, which used to be reading other people’s problems before my feet hit the floor. Both hours are mine now, and they’re the two best ones.
2. It isn’t in the room where I work
Not face down. Not in the drawer. Not in the room. Research says a phone on the desk costs attention even when it’s off, and my own experience says that’s generous. If someone needs me urgently, they can call, and I’ll hear it from the hallway. Nobody has ever needed me more urgently than that.
3. No notifications except from humans
Calls and texts from actual people come through. Everything else is silent, with no badge, no banner, nothing. Apps don’t get to interrupt me. I visit them when I choose, which turns out to be far less often than they’d have chosen for me. This took ten minutes to set up and I’ve never once missed anything that mattered.
4. Not at the table, not in the queue
Meals with other people, the phone stays in a pocket or a bag. Waiting in line, waiting for a meeting, the phone stays put and I just wait. This one felt almost physically uncomfortable for the first month. Then the discomfort turned out to be where ideas live. Most of what I’ve written started in a queue I didn’t fill with a screen.
5. One check, scheduled, for the things that pull
There’s always something: the news, a social feed, a forum. I don’t pretend I’ll never look. I look once a day, at a fixed time, for a fixed length, usually after lunch with a timer running. That’s enough to stay informed and nowhere near enough to lose an afternoon. Scheduled is the opposite of compulsive.
What I notice now
Boredom came back, and it’s useful. Conversations got longer. My kids stopped having to say my name twice. And the strange one: I’m less anxious, and I think it’s because I’m no longer carrying a device engineered to make me feel I’m missing something, in my hand, all day.
What didn’t work
Anything that relied on me deciding in the moment. Apps that ask “are you sure?” get an automatic yes. Rules that live in willpower lose to a tool designed by very smart people to beat willpower. Rules that live in physical distance win, because the phone can’t follow me into a room it isn’t in.
Tonight
Buy an alarm clock. Charge the phone in the kitchen. See what the first hour of tomorrow feels like when it belongs to you.
Launch list
Be there on day one.
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The book itself — 40 laws in ten parts, 320 pages, each ending with The Work — is funded first on Kickstarter.