bite sized: phoning it in

Foreign. Hey loggers. Welcome back to another episode, another bite sized episode of the Backlog Breakdown. How you doing? I'm Josh. I'm your. I'm your host here, here today. And these bite sized episodes are episodes where we take one thought that we had and kind of throw it out there. It's not as well researched as our typical episodes are, if you even want to say that. But anyways, so this is not a fully formed thought, but it is kind of an update. Sort of just a look into my life. Welcome to my life. That's not how it goes. Anyways, doesn't matter how that goes. But on today's episode I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about how I use my phone. What? Josh, why do you want to talk about your phone? Well, I think we've started on the wrong foot. I'm Josh, by the way. Hi. How's it going? So at the beginning of this year we started something. We introduced the Locked and loaded bonus two to our Beatdown metagame that we've had going on in an effort to be more intentional with what we play throughout the year. So you pick your games that you want to play throughout the year and then you focus in on those games and you get a bonus if you're playing along with us at home. Now, whether whether you joined that metagame or. Or if you've just stalled out on those games that you've chosen, I found that this theme, theme of being more intentional with my time and with my life in general, that it's been repeating itself throughout the year in different ways as my responsibilities have grown as a husband, as a father, as a pastor and things like this. So one of the things that brought this to the forefront recently for me was a book that I read through that I listened to called Scrolling Ourselves to Death. It's a take on Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. And in fact, it's a number of different articles. Essays. Yeah, essays, let's put it that way, a number of. It's a compilation of different essays based on some of the thoughts that Neil Postman had about television. I believe that was back in the 80s and now applying those same ideas to the landscape we find ourselves in, where a lot of our lives are digital. So it's particularly about phone usage. And so reading through that, it has me thinking about the way that I use my phone now. I'm not one that's on my phone all the time. Like if you take a look at the. I think on iPhones, it's called screen time. But for me it's digital. Well, being on my Samsung device, my time on my phone every day, it's not hovering around 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours, it's not. But what I do notice is that at pretty much any tinge of boredom throughout the day, I pull out my phone just to check something. Not really having any intention as to why I'm pulling out my phone just because, hey, I'm slightly bored and maybe there's something more interesting on my phone. And I notice this when I try to set my phone aside for like an hour and just not even touch it. I noticed that. Oh, I wanna instinctually just pull out my phone and check it, right? Just to see what's going on. I've also experienced those phantom vibrations where you get a notification and so you get a vibration. And sometimes my phone's in my pocket and there was no notification, there was no vibration, but I thought I felt something. Which tells me that, hey, part of my brain is dedicated to focusing on whether or not I notice my phone. And that is probably not altogether healthy. Also, counterintuitively, I feel like I don't actually keep up with the things that I want to use my phone for, which is primarily like if you were to ask me, why do you have a cell phone? Well, in general, it's for keeping in touch with people, right? Usually through different kinds of messaging apps. Like that's usually the primary reason that we have a phone right now. They're the supercomputers. And so we have a number of different reasons to use them and, and lots of good things that you can do on your phone. But often the reason that it's a phone even is so that you can keep in touch with people. And I found that I haven't been doing that super well. I'll let notifications and messages go unread for a little bit because I don't really want to deal with it. I'm fine checking it and seeing that it's there, but I don't actually want to take the time to respond to it. And this came to a head for me. I mean, one is reading through this book, but also just noticing it in my own life came to a head for me. It was kind of a kicker here that unfortunately, actually this story has happened a couple of times now where I. I'm doing something on my phone and it feels like it's important in the moment, even though it isn't really that urgent. And one of my kids comes up and asks me for Something or asks if I can help them with something or if I can see what they're doing, something along those lines. And I'll just tell them, okay, give me a minute, I'm doing something. And before I know it, another five minutes goes by and my child has moved on. Either they've asked mom to help them with whatever they're doing, or maybe just whatever they were doing. Whatever they wanted me to help them with or to see has just passed and I'm ready to help. But I've squandered that time that I could have spent with my kid. And that hits me pretty hard when I think about it, because I don't want my kids to think of me to remember me as. As a guy who's buried in the screen, right, that their dad was constantly scrolling through his phone. Especially in those moments when they actually want my attention, which admittedly, they're still young, still plenty of the time they want my attention, but especially as they get older, that's going to be harder and harder to come by. So if not even for my own sake, I need to get my phone usage under control for their sakes, right? So that they can have a dad who's present whenever they need him. Or at least as much as I can be, you know, or at least be very intentional about the times where I'm not present. Or, no, I can't help you right now anyways, when it comes to using the phone and being intentional about these things, if you start looking into how to combat it, often I found I come across this term of being addicted to our phones. And I get it. I understand what it's talking about. About that it's hard for us to break the habit that we've created for ourselves in general. I'm not a fan of the term addiction when it comes to phone usage because that makes it sound like we don't actually have any part to play in it. Like we don't have the will to fight against it. Also, the way that addiction makes it sound like is that, oh, no, you never should be using your phone, which I don't think is true. The phone is not some unclean thing that. That you absolutely can't be a part of, or else you're gonna get addicted to it. I don't think that's true either. So, in general, I get what it's. I think this term addiction is hyperbole, even though I understand what it's talking about. But I also recognize that the people who make apps, app manufacturers especially, kind of the big companies that are going for the big bucks in terms of creating their apps, they specifically design them to keep you on them as long as possible. So they do things like infinite scrolling feeds so that you will always find something interesting to keep you on it as long as possible. And so with that in mind, knowing that it is intentionally attention hogging, I am currently using a two pronged attack strategy to be more intentional with the way that I'm using my phone. The first way is by making my phone as boring as possible so that I don't check it as often. And so this consists of turning off most of my notifications on my phone so I don't feel like I have to be checking apps and refreshing things in order to get the latest updates or something. Oh, there was a message here, something I might be interested in. If I just turn off those notifications, then it helps me to even recalibrate so that I can actually take care of the things that do give me notifications, like messages, so I can know, you know, mentally I know, oh, if I've gotten a notification, it's actually important and it's actually something I should take care of, not just something I can gloss over. Also different reminders that I set myself set for myself throughout the day or alarms or things like that. It leaves room for the most important things to notify me and everything else can just shut up in the background. And if I need to check it to set aside a time to do that later. But I'll talk about that in just a second. So anyways, under this heading of keeping of making my phone as boring as possible. Okay, take off most 90% of notifications. Also what I'm doing is I'm limiting my phone's home screen. Okay. So to create a little bit of friction between me and accessing the things that I can waste time in is tuck those apps away. If I even still leave them on my phone, don't have them readily accessible. This helps to create, like I said, that friction there that will help me that, oh, do I really want to do this thing? Do I really want to, you know, get. Pull up the browser and log into Facebook? Like, is it really. Am I really looking to see what's on Facebook? Do I really want to? If it's going to take me a minute or two to even log in and I've gone so far on my own phone as to install a launcher. It's an Android phone so you can install different launchers. That actually makes it look more like a dumb phone. Where it has a list of apps of things that I want to be using my phone for. So tracking my meals and my calories and things like that. So those things are readily accessible, but it sets them in a list so I see words, I don't see icons and widgets and things like that. Lastly, the thing that I've done to make my phone more boring is to turn it into grayscale. So it's not as appealing to look at when I pull it up. So some of these things at least help me to kind of slow down, that when I pull out my phone, I'm not just aimlessly wandering around in phone land, but actually being intentional with, okay, what did I pull up my phone to do? Is it really worth doing? Okay, let's do it, or no, let's put it away, let's not use it right now. So I said, I've got a two pronged strategy. The first one is make my phone boring. The second one is to actually determine, and maybe this should have gone first, but it's to actually determine what I want to use my phone for. What are those things that are the most useful things to me? So in a book by Cal Newport called Digital Minimalism, one of the things that, that, that he puts forward, he uses two terms. He's, he says digital minimalism, and the other side of that is digital maximalism. Okay, so maximalism would say that if there is an app out there that provides me any use, any convenience, anything at all, like, oh, I could see myself using this, then it's actually, it's worth having, it's worth putting on my phone. But Digital Minimalism, according to Newport, says that you should only use the apps that help you to accomplish your goals in the best way and to stop caring about any others. It's a way of acknowledging that everything you put on your phone has a cost. Even if it's a free app. The, the, the time that it takes to set it up and to start using it, and the way that that app does things has a cost on you. And sometimes that cost is, oh, if it's super convenient, then I'm going to do it all the time, as opposed to being more intentional about these things. So it's not even necessarily a bad cost, but it's something that you have to wrestle with. And so I'm trying to become more of a digital minimalist in the way that I use my phone. In asking, okay, what are the actual things that I want to use this phone for? Like I said earlier, it's connecting with other people. So messaging and things like that, that's a high priority for me. I already mentioned I want to track calories because I'm trying to lose weight, track my workouts. That's important to me. And I think that's best done through my phone, not through another device. So those things are important. Audiobooks, podcasts, things like that are important to me as well. And then some note taking in my to do list and things like that. So I've identified some of the key things that I want to use my phone for, and I'm getting rid of the things that I that don't fit into those categories because I can do things better on other devices. So. So I have to ask myself questions like, why do I even have my email on my phone? Why am I going to respond to emails on my phone? Or do I just use it to cull some of my emails? Okay, well, then maybe I should just be unsubscribing from stuff if it. If it's just there so that I can delete stuff. Okay, so is it really worth keeping discord on my phone, or should I only use it on my laptop because it's a better interface, it's a little easier to use. You know, questions like this help me to identify what really do I need my phone for and what's best on my phone. And here's one that really opened my eyes is why do I. Why do I even have a Facebook account? Why? And again, like I mentioned with my phone earlier, I would say it's to keep in touch with people, especially as I've moved away from my hometown, to keep in touch with people and see what they're up to. But if I'm being honest, my feed is so bloated by recommended accounts that I don't really see much of what my real friends are doing. Like, yeah, those things float to the top, but once I've seen them, then it's all other recommended things and videos and just dumb stuff, right? That can be fun in small bursts, don't get me wrong. But, like, that's not the purpose. Like, entertainment isn't the reason that I go to Facebook, right? Or at least it shouldn't. That's not my value. I don't have a Facebook account for entertainment. I have it to connect with people. And so if it's not helping me connect with people, then I need to severely limit it so that I'm actually doing what I want to do the most with it. I could easily keep up with my friends digitally by checking Facebook once a week instead of multiple times a day. So do I really like. Is Facebook really the place that I want to go for entertainment or for news? Right. Breaking news and things like that? Like really, Facebook is the place that I want to see that. Why not be more intentional about checking a news site? If I want to see news, I don't want to see news. But I'm saying that that's kind of some of the things that pop up on my feedback. Okay. And also part of this is that you want to as you're cutting things out, right? As you're going through. As I have asked myself, what do I want to use my phone for and is this the best place to do the things that I want to do? Is my phone really the best place? I also am trying to be more intentional about setting aside time to do the things that I actually want to do. So in my case, I noticed I've been really bad about keeping up with discord, particularly with the podcast, and I want to get better with it. So rather than having notifications kind of blow up my phone and then just ignoring those notifications, I set aside a chunk of time in the day to go through discord on my laptop because it's easier for me to reply there and I can actually give a decent response. So that has helped me be more intentional with the way that I'm using my phone because I've found that even if I'm not spending a ton of time on it, it is taking up mental bandwidth and I don't want it to anymore. I want to be more intentional. So I found too that as I've been more intentional, particularly with my cell phone, that I'm reaping benefits in other areas of my life. I'm more present when I'm not on my phone and I'm not as distracted. I can also set aside time to play video games, to do the things that I want to do. Now there are other systems that I've set in place to keep up with other things. Like this is just part of my own kind of personal productivity system. So I keep a to do list. I have weekly planning sessions, I try and do some time blocking, and I keep a calendar and things like that with reminders. But that's part of a bigger conversation and I'm not sure that you're interested in that and the bite sized episode of this podcast. But for right now, what's come to the forefront for me has been this issue of how I use my phone. But becoming more intentional in this has helped me. It's allowed me to, hey, play some more video games and do some more things that I want to do. So hopefully this was helpful. If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to reach out. Or, hey, if you have any tips, any rules that you've set for yourself or anything that you've seen in yourself, I would love to hear them, send them my way. Tons of ways that you can reach out. Go to linktree.com thebacklogbreakdown to see all those ways. But hopefully this has been helpful for you. Hopefully it's been encouraging for you to be intentional and to play the games that you want to and to go beat down your backlogs. Right? You keep breaking, we'll keep breaking down the benefits. Right? And you keep breaking down your backlogs. All right, take care, guys. Till next time.