Goodbye Siri

One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a while is live without a cell phone. I have felt the magnetic tug of my iphone for the last 8 years. Every dull moment of the day is filled with me looking at the same 3–4 apps…

1. Google Now which is a personalized news feed. My feed was full of news about Jeff Bezos, Product Management/User Experience/Customer Experience articles, Trump and other garbage (I did somehow find this amazing story about how “This Is America” may have been a rip off of “American Pharoah” through this app which made me feel hip when I brought it up at work the next day and no one had heard of it).
2. E-Trade. My account has $900 in it. There’s really not much to look at.
3. Email. Mostly spam.
4. And Zillow. My sweet, sweet Zillow. I could look at you all day long but for what? My dream of owning acreage in the country where I could take my family for them to live in misery. Finding another property that would put us more into debt.

I used that screen time monitor that iOS added with the latest round of OS updates and saw that I was spending 2 hours a day on my phone. What the fuck? 2 of my waking hours. That’s like 15% of my day with this shit and that’s after I deleted all my social media apps to make it harder for me to access that crack.

This transition from the office to the family was a great opportunity to try this out so we’ve given it a shot. Sarah and I are sharing a cell phone right now that also has a pretty lousy battery life. Since you asked, here are some initial thoughts about life with one phone shared between two people…

1. This isn’t for everyone. It’s weird having full access to Sarah’s communication and her having access to mine. If we had any personal lines of communication going on that we didn’t share with one another those are now exposed. So far it appears that we’re pretty boring or really great at deception.
2. I also recognize there could be discomfort that others might feel when texting our phone and not knowing if it’s me or Sarah on the other end.
3. I’m inaccessible. If you’re reading this and are annoyed let me know. I’m guessing that people want to get in touch with me urgently a lot less than I expect.
4. Little things are harder. When I told my friend Josh about this his response was, “What will you do if you’re at the grocery store and Sarah realizes that she didn’t put something on the list?”. These types of things are tougher.
5. I’m more present. It doesn’t take 4–5 requests for my kids to get a response. I’m in the moment more.
6. My mind feels clearer. When I have downtime I’m forced to stay in my own head and think things through or recognize other humans in the room (weird). I don’t have that crutch of checking my 4 apps or email when I have nothing else to do. I can either think or talk.
7. There is some risk to added inconvenience. My car battery died when I went to get an emissions test the other day. Fortunately, Sarah was following me up there to get her car tested too and she had jumpers. I would have been fine either way and the emissions guy ended up helping me anyway. Worst case, I would have had to figure something else out and it could have been a cheap adventure. I could see other scenarios pop up that could lead to inconvenience but maybe the adventures and connections that we make along the way will net out more positive than negative.

In summary, I’m loving it so far and will try to hold out on getting a phone as long as I can.