Comment by Brajeshwar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Brajeshwar | Hacker News Reader

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I have meant to write out my approach to distraction-free device life. Unfortunately, it is always a work in progress, and I keep finding more straightforward, essentialistic, and lesser ways of getting things done while being extra-device-free.

So, here are the titbits that come to my mind right now. Of course, the shameless plug that I throw at anyone starts with a No Voice Call[1] rule, except the list of people on my earmarked “!DND” group.

A smartwatch (Apple Watch) helped me further my lifestyle. I have not taken my phone on my morning and evening walks. I usually don’t look at text messages, and notifications, so it works for me.

I do not have most of the standard apps, no social media apps, and no notifications except for the health app, which is mirrored on the watch to ping me if I need to walk around, breathe, etc. I wrote an article in 2014 to answer a common recurring question that I fielded, and it still holds to this day - disable all notifications[2].

The other thing I find helpful and am used to these days is that my phone is the most boring. The only thing I use most often is a Camera (this is where I realize that the best-sized iPhone 13 Mini lacks a good Camera). Here is my Phone Home[3] evolution, and you can see the onset of boredom as we progress by the year and versions.

I want my phone to behave as that tool that does its job, then gets out of the way. No, I do not reject new technology innovations; instead, I refuse the ways of the people how they engage with these tools.

1. https://phone.wtf

2. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...

3. https://brajeshwar.com/etc/phone-home/

See, this is another issues with phones, we all have vastly different use cases. The "No Voice Call" rules is stupid, in my world. That's like one of the two primary functions of my phone. I use text messages way more than calls, but it is the second most important feature. I get maybe three to five calls a week, but those are pretty much always for things that either need immediate action, or it's coordinating something that would take hours via text message.

Outside of work, do people honestly get that many calls that it's overwhelming? I get that the US have an issue with robo-calls, but outside that while would you even get that many call. If anything smartphones have reduce the need for calls, so you should be getting fewer than you would have 20 years ago.

Some good tips, thanks for sharing.

> No, I do not reject new technology innovations; instead, I refuse the ways of the people how they engage with these tools.

Absolutely. This is a key attitude. It's mature and strong to be discerning, not to "throw out the baby with the bath-water".

But it's also the friction point, because culture and use is inseparable from affordance/utility [1]. In different words, how other people use technology also impacts it's relation to you. Especially networked technology. So dash2's response to my earlier comment is spot-on, we need collectively organised "spaces" and groups to challenge digital imposition.

[1] Not wishing to bore with lots of tech critique literature and references but Jacques Ellul (New Demons, Empire of Non-Sense), Ivan Illich (Tools for Conviviality) and Neil Postman (particularly Technopoly and Amusing Ourselves to death) - all good materials to understand the difficulty of neatly distinguishing individual choice/freedoms from context of culture and practice.

> A smartwatch (Apple Watch) helped me further my lifestyle. I have not taken my phone on my morning and evening walks.

I don't understand, are you saying that having a smart watch allows you to leave your phone at home? How so?

Whenever I see a friend with a smart watch I'm under the impression that they look at their notifications more rather than less than when they didn't have one.

In my case it really helped me too.

When using the Apple Watch, I can happily keep my iPhone in my bedroom the whole day. I don’t feel the need to get my phone cause my watch will notify any calendar appointment or important messages (I block or mute most apps/messages).

Before that, I was always with my phone and was always checking it all the time. Either because I got a notification, was worried I missed a notification, was just bored, or just trying to procrastinate others activities.

The Apple Watch is fortunately still really limit device. I think of it as an old dumb phone. So there isn’t much you can do in it. There isn’t even a whatsapp app for example. So it doesn’t grab my attention for long.

I talk about this elsewhere in the thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33139416), but for me, looking at more notifications is still net positive if it leads to less total time spent on the phone.

Without a smart watch, the flow for all my notifications is "notification -> take out phone -> (probably) use phone". With a smartwatch, the flow for the majority of notifications becomes "notifications -> decide it's not urgent -> leave phone in pocket".

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