Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

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I do something similar, and highly recommend it. Here's what I did:

  1. I don't have data on my iphone 4
  2. I removed Safari, and blocked the icon using Jailbreak
  3. Ditto for youtube, gmail. I  have none of those apps.

I use my phone for the following: calls, text, calendar, occasional notes, Facebook messenger

The calendar syncs with gcal when I am on a wi-fi network at home. FB messenger is because a lot of friends message me this way and it avoids my having to check Facebook online.

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Before talking about the benefits, I'll address the three major objections:

  1. What about google maps?!

Without a map on my phone, I'm forced to learn how to get around my city. If I'm in a new city, I'm forced to learn that street map.

Doesn't take long. I was just in Victoria BC and NYC. Within a day or two I knew my way around both cities. I have mental maps of a couple dozen cities sitting in my head.

  2. What about important email?

I can safely say I have ZERO emails that can't wait 2-6 hours for me to get home. If something is truly urgent, I'll get a text.

Maybe your situation is different, but for most of you it probably isn't.

  3. What about reading stuff on your phone?

I don't like reading stuff on my tiny phone screen. I'd rather read things on my full screen at home.

When I am out and about, I either bring a book, observe things mindfully, or talk to people.

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I feel much more calm when out and about. There's no need to use willpower to avoid checking my phone, because my phone doesn't do anything.

I've been doing this for three years, and have had zero problems. Whatever use case you're thinking of, I can assure you that either there's a trivial workaround, or it doesn't actually provide much benefit (for someone in MY situation – perhaps yours is truly different).

Why would you even purchase an iPhone then? Why not just use a dumbphone/featurephone?

It's like buying a sports car and putting a governor on it that won't let you go over 35mph because you don't have the willpower to not push the pedal. Why not just buy a golf cart and save the money?

I already had an iphone when I started this. But even if I didn't have one, a used old iphone works really well and looks nice without costing much.

It's sad that you need to do this to feel calm. Technology is an every day part of the 21st century and learning to live with it , not running away from it is a far healthier approach.

Not sure how yo removed Safari since it's not one of the removable apps, but if you really want this why not replace that old iPhone 4 with an actual dumb phone, wouldn't that be the smarter thing to do?

All of your points are kind of sad, if you don't like reading stuff on a small screen, either don't, or get a phone with a bigger screen - removing the email app was the wrong solution. As for the comment about "forced to get around the city", well.. again just the dumbest thing I've heard in a long while.

I have the youtube app but I seldom use it. I seem to manage just fine with it on my phone and not opening it.

No reason to believe technology is at all conducive to calm, or that we'll be able to live with it in a healthy relationship. That's Pollyanna thinking. Nobody is measuring or planning what media saturation point is compatible with a healthy Homo Sapiens. Companies make ever-more-frantic devices and apps; people buy them. Nobody figuring out if its good for us.

>It's sad that you need to do this to feel calm. Technology is an every day part of the 21st century and learning to live with it , not running away from it is a far healthier approach.

That's what I'm doing, I think. I run an online business – I'm not a Luddite. I found email and other notifications too distracting if they were with me constantly.

I'm hardly the first person to use batch processing for email. It's simply not efficient to deal with it all over the place, as it comes in.

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/12/how-batch-proc...

While I'm not to the same level as you, I agree with your larger point. Being constantly interrupted leads to a state of unease and inability to think clearly.

My limited approach to this is to put my email icon on my 5th screen of my phone, and remove all vibrations from my phone that aren't phone calls. Texts don't vibrate, and e-mails only increment the badge counter on the icon.

>Without a map on my phone, I'm forced to learn how to get around my city.

To each his own, but I feel like that's kind of overkill. I use maps to find new destinations, but it really only takes a small number of drives to that place (often relative to the distance traveled and how often I go to that area) to memorize it. Eventually, it's more work to open the app than it is to go by memory. For me, using Google Maps is indispensable for learning new areas. I see no reason to make it harder for myself. Not ever getting lost is nice too -- what if you end up in an area you'd rather not be?

If your goal is to challenge yourself, then it would seem like a worthwhile pursuit.

Reminds of an interesting debate around using the mini-map in games like GTA that ruin gameplay vs learning the city itself to enjoy the game more. You're forced to remember landmarks and know your war around a bustling sity. See: http://kotaku.com/5828760/youve-been-playing-gta-iv-wrong

Google maps is also really great for public transport in new cities.

Rather then try to figure out if I need a bus or train, or if there's no public transport where I need to go, I can just punch in an address, say when I need to arrive and it tells me what to do.

Personally I use Google Maps to learn the layout of a place and then navigate as much as possible by memory.

I am interested in why you decided to do this originally?

As an aside to my question, I find the cycles/fads that society goes through fascinating.

I read the four hour workweek, where he talked about batch processing, and realized that it was inefficient to check things constantly.

I run an online business, so there's lots of things I could check. But none of them depend on timely input. So it didn't make sense to look at things as they came in.

> iphone 4

so all the drawbacks with no benefits? brilliant!

You should get a Nokia feature phone.

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