I Survived Without A Phone For 5 Days. This Is What I Learned.

On Saturday morning, after a great night out clubbing in San Francisco, I woke up to my iPhone 6 Plus stuck at 54% battery ?? level, yet it was plugged into it’s charging cable.

Weird? ??

Yes. It was broken. ??

The phone wouldn’t charge with any cable I tried. The local Apple Store cleaned the charging port for me but that didn’t fix it. After trying everything, it eventually died. ??

Habits

I went for a hike with some friends that day. We planned to explore the Lands End trail in the North West of San Francisco. ??

As we arrived at Sea Cliff, the starting point of the hike, I immediately began to feel stressed. The view was amazing and I desperately wanted to capture it and post it on my Snapchat, partly to show my 300 daily viewers what I was up to, and partly to capture a short 10 second memory of my life, for me to look back on. But I couldn’t - my phone was dead. ??

Normally, I would have taken 6 - 8 Snapchats, 2 selfies, a few panoramic photos and maybe a couple videos of the beautiful view. I had to accept that I couldn’t do that.

So I did. And it taught me a lot. ??

Create, Not Capture

I remember laughing at one point as my 3 friends each took an individual selfie at the same time, and I just stood there trying to pry a conversation out of them. But they were putting all of their concentration into getting the right angle and lighting for their money shot. ??

As frustrating as this was, it soon changed. As the hike went on, we did less capturing of the moment on our devices, and more creating of the moment in real life. We naturally freed ourselves from our phones because exploring the paths, admiring the views, and talking and joking were much more important to us as humans. ??

At one point, we saw a great place for a photo, and so we asked a friendly American to take a photo of us. That was it: phone out, photo taken, phone away again.

We were now doing what we wanted to do: exploring new places; socializing; keeping fit; seeing the Pacific Ocean and Golden Gate bridge from their best angles; and inevitably (being an Englishman in America) taking stick for the Brexit… ??????

We took only a couple more photos between us for the rest of the hike. We were enjoying the moment too much.

I learned something. I learned that the phone is simply a device for assistance, as opposed to an essential part of ourselves (unless you’re a Pokémon Go player - but let's not get into that).

I think that a lot of humans have a relationship with their phone as if it is actually part of themselves as a person. But Tom without a phone, was definitely more of a real person, than Tom with a phone. ??????

Reflection

It took 5 days until I was able to get my phone fixed. But those 5 days without a phone were so valuable. ??

I became less distracted and less stressed. My phone wasn’t buzzing constantly with friends texting, new emails, Tweet notifications etc. I was being more of a person again. ??

It also helped me realize something else important. If I wasn’t missing something when I didn’t have my phone, then is that thing even important? Probably not.

This motivated me to do something to re-imagine the way I use my phone. You can read about that here.

Don’t get me wrong, I think permanently living without a phone would be a terrible decision. Phones are so useful for many, many things. ???

But we have to remember that our phones are just a tool. They are simply an interface that we can use to help us achieve the things we want to do as a human. I think that letting a phone become part of yourself as a person, is dangerous. And in my next post, I'll detail a strategy I created to detach anyone from their phone.

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