Happy Mistletoe Boughs Drip from Branches
And a warm welcome from the inside of a named weather system that I didn’t know was coming when I left my house yesterday afternoon.
Despite absorbing an entire storm cloud’s worth of rain with my inappropriate evening wear, I only got physically spun round once on my cycle home.
But cycling home from where, I hear you ask?
Only from the best night of adventure storytelling on the whole PLANET.
The P.A.S.T adventure series spotlights the amateur. The person who already won by getting to the starting line. The person who got out of the rut and went on an adventure. The person who had 9 hours without the kids so went to the forest for a camp out before being back for the school run in the morning.
We’re not doing anything the best, or for the first time. We’re not the fastest and we’re not being sponsored. There’s no medal at the end. We’re powered by optimism a curious spirit and we’re just f*****g doing it.
The next one is on 3 January. Don’t miss it.
For those of you new around these parts, welcome 👋 My name is David and I’m a writer, outdoor instructor, cyclist-at-large with Thighs of Steel and Expeditions Manager at British Exploring Society.
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I get a bit damp, but it’s always worth it.
🐈 Phone
In my continuing pursuit of digital nirvana, I bought a CAT phone. The 🐈 phone is a fully featured Android smartphone squashed into an almost unusable little flip box.
Technically, it can do all of the things that modern social gravity demands — I can even scan my girlfriend’s Nectar card on the tiny 2.8” screen — but bloody hell I don’t want to have to use the damn thing unless I really have to.
And that is exactly why I bought it: to make the designed for addiction smartphone as unappealing as possible, and so shift my brain away from shiny distraction and toward earthy connection.
Reader: the 🐈 is an absolute joy. But has it made any impression on my screen time?
More importantly, why should anyone care anyway?
In short: society is a bit fucked and anything we can do to get off our screens and into the sunshine (if applicable) can only be a good thing.
And, for that, I desperately need your help.
But more on that later.
A Whole Lot of Nothing?
I’ve only been using the 🐈 as my main phone for the past 11 days and, as you’ll see, my definition of ‘main phone’ is debatable, but without any more ratting about, a graph:
As you can see, the data is mixed.
(FYI 1: The total time on this chart excludes use of Google Maps, which I only use as a GPS for driving and thus distorts phone usage significantly.)
(FYI 2: My recent smartphone use is broadly in line with historical data collected since 2021, which varies between 1.5 and 2 hours per day. However, this includes use of Google Maps.)
On the one hand, time spent on my ‘main’ 🐈 phone has crashed through the floor, to barely 20 minutes per day. Not only that, but time spent on my smartphone has also dropped significantly.
However, the total time spent on both devices combined is pretty much the same as before. As the kids say: LOL.
But wait — there’s devil in the detail and goblins in the graph.
Three Whole Days?!
The decrease from 23 minutes per day on Whatsapp to 19 minutes per day is statistically significant. As is the reduction from 15 minutes per day on my Firefox Focus browser to only 8 minutes per day across both devices.
That 12 minute difference might not sound like much, but it’s something — nearly an hour and a half per week. Sustained over a year, that’s three whole days of non-stop, no-sleep phone use that I’m getting back.
But is there any evidence at all that I can sustain (or even increase) this time saving over the course of a year? That’s the question and we can find clues in the data.
Unlocking Behaviour Change?
When it comes to how often I unlock and then how I use my phones, the data is even more topsy-turvy.
On the one hand, since getting the 🐈, I’ve unlocked my smartphone more than I usually would. Huh?!
But, significantly, I’ve opened my most time-sucky distractor apps, Whatsapp and Firefox, less often. From 46 launches per day to only 33. Big wow and, again, as the kids say: LOL.
Nevertheless, the reductions are significant and allow me to hypothesise what’s going on and where I might end up with this experiment.
What’s Going On?
Despite all the murkiness, I think the data is promising. How dare I draw that conclusion? Well, I hypothesise two future directions:
1. I’m still in transition and my future phone use will trend 📉
This transitional phase may partly explain why I unlocked my smartphone more often in the past 11 days: I was figuring out which apps I need on which device.
My intention is to steadily reduce the number of apps that I use on my smartphone and increase the number that I only use on the 🐈 and on my computer.
As my confidence in and reliance on the 🐈 grows, I anticipate using my smartphone less and less. We’ll see.
2. Some apps I’ll use MORE on the 🐈 — and that’s a GOOD thing
The most used app on my 🐈 over the past 11 days is, believe it or not, the Phone app. You know, the one that makes phone calls to other humans?
In the two weeks before this experiment began, the Phone app was my fourteenth most used app.
If using the 🐈 means I make more phone calls and connect more deeply and more frequently with other humans, then that’s a GOOD thing in my book. If that’s part of my future direction of travel, then I’m in.
Data is all well and good, but you could say pretty narcissistic, so…
Why Should Anyone Care Anyway?
Well. There are two approaches to this question:
1. Hard evidence
There is a shit tonne of evidence out there that smartphones are bad for our brains and our bodies.
The bad news is that, science being science, it’s almost impossible to boil down to a palatably simple message. To summarise the evidence in a reasonably scientific manner on only one research question, you need a 397-page collaborative Google Doc.
Who the heck is reading that?
This is how Big Tech can get away with the kind of disingenuous fudging so familiar from Big Oil’s response to climate change or Big Tobacco’s response to cancer research.
Because the message from Big Tech is simple. To paraphrase:
Gosh, well. All we can say is that the evidence isn’t clear one way or another. Maybe bad things can happen, but that’s down to how you use your smartphone. It’s not really our fault. We’re doing what we can. In the meantime, isn’t this new feature cool?! 🙃
Reading a blog post or listening to a podcast will probably not convince you to ditch your phone when there is so much social gravity going the other way. I already know this newsletter story won’t work.
Which is why I can only rely on…
2. Vibes
I’d really like everyone to notice how they feel, body and mind, when they do different things.
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How does it feel when you scroll the internet on your phone?
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How does it feel when you go for a walk on the beach?
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How does it feel when you text a friend for half an hour?
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How does it feel when you see a friend in person for half an hour?
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How does it feel when you talk to a stranger on the bus?
Humans are really bad at ‘affective forecasting’, estimating how we will feel about doing different activities in the future. But, if we take a second to notice, we are accurate at judging how we do feel during (or just after) the activity.
This backfires horribly. We think we will feel good about scrolling the internet — It’ll be relaxing! It’ll be educational! It’ll be entertaining!
We think we will not feel good about talking to a stranger on the bus — It’ll be scary! They’ll think I’m crazy! It’ll annoy them!
And we’re usually wrong on all counts. But we’ll never know, we’ll never change, unless we notice. Unless we actually pick up on our vibe.
I Need You Right Now
There’s not much point in me getting my 🐈 if no one else is going the same way.
Yes, I’ll reclaim parts of my brain that I didn’t have before and, yes, I’ll have a bit more time to connect with the real world.
But that could actually be quite a lonely place if everyone else is sucked in their phones.
⚠Confession⚠
I’m actually pretty boring compared to the whole of the internet and your entire Whatsapp contacts list. I don’t blame you for scrolling Instagram instead of striking up a conversation with a random bald man.
It’s intimidating. How can I compete? So maybe I stay closed off and shut down too.
That’s why this email is a very personal ask. I need you to take action as much as you might need me to. We both need each other to put down our phones and open up.
Thank you for reading. 💚
We need each other. More than ever. As new technologies crush and replace everything that’s real and intimate, we should protect our relationships as much as possible.
Three Tiny Big Things
1. Audit the rich
It’s not often that The Quarterly Journal of Economics has me fist pumping, but A Welfare Analysis of Tax Audits Across the Income Distribution had me doing just that:
We estimate the returns to IRS audits of taxpayers across the income distribution. We find an additional 1 spent auditing taxpayers above the 90th income percentile yields more than 12 in revenue.
This isn’t eat the rich; this isn’t even tax the rich. A simple audit will do.
Thanks DRL (👋) for sharing.
2. Keep an Idiot Diary
Every organisation should have an ‘Our Mistakes’ page on their website. Credit to Give Well for actually doing it.
Credit to the godfather of self help, Dale Carnegie, for keeping a (private) folder titled ‘Damned Fool Things I Have Done’:
Carnegie’s “D.F.T” folder contained records of the times he stuck his foot in his mouth, committed a faux pas, made someone feel awkward, gave into laziness, arrived somewhere late, bungled a conversation, procrastinated, lost his temper or patience, and so on.
One of its entries said: “Wasted ten minutes in an unnecessary harangue with the phone company about their shortcomings.”
And credit to Dan Schreiber, comedian and host of podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, who keeps what he calls — poetically — his ‘Idiot Diary’.
Aside: It took me over half an hour to research and reference this tiny big thing. I’m not sure whether that should be the first entry in my idiot diary.
3. Bumblebee population increases 116 times over in ‘remarkable’ Scotland rewilding project
Thank You
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this one, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
If you’re not into the whole Substack subscription thing, then you can also make a one-off, choose-your-own-contribution via PayPal. That’d make my day.
As always, thank you for your eyeballs and thanks for your support.
diwyc,
dc:
