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Comment by fjk | Hacker News Reader

In a similar vein, I almost always have my phone set to silent without vibrate. This small change has made a huge difference in my interaction with my phone. I reach for it less and just generally think about it less.

The downside is people are sometimes annoyed at me not reacting to calls/messages immediately. I should probably experiment with the iOS Do Not Disturb feature, but it hasn't been too big of an issue so I've put it on the back burner.

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Same here. I set my main ringtone to silence and only a few contacts can actually ring my phone. I disable almost all notifications and my phone's on do-not-disturb from 10-7 every night.

Maybe my laptop needs a hosts file to block "infinite" sites. Of course, I'm on one right now...

The inability to selectively enable (rather than individually blacklist) contacts, and specify a do-not-disturb block, are two of the most significant disadvantages of going to a flip phone I've encountered.

My compromise is to simply leave it off much of the time.

Why turn the ringer completely off? Surely it's worth getting "distracted" by communication from friends and family. The only reason I can see this as a good idea is if you get a lot of bogus calls, or you know people who call/text you a ton.

I remember a time when people were reachable by location. You could call me at home and reach me early mornings (but that's rude), evenings, or weekends. Or at work at my desk.

This was a time when toll charges were high enough that unsolicited calls were something of a rarity. That's definitely changed (and lack of caller-ID on landlines is all but unbearable now).

There was even a time when answering machines didn't exist -- can't reach someone? Try later or send a letter. Not email, a letter.

Amazingly, we got by.

The conceit that I've got to be reachable by every unintelligibly accented stranger on a crap VOIP line anywhere on the planet at any time has gotten old.

And yes, if I don't aggressively guard my access, I do get a lot of crap phone calls.

Perhaps I've just gotten lucky with sales calls, and either have few friends or courteous friends. I get one sales call a month, from my university alumni association, which I ignore. I talk on the phone or FaceTime with family approximately weekly, but that's on the weekend, and planned casually through email or SMS before hand. The vast majority of my communication with friends is asynchronous through email/Facebook/Twitter or semi-asynchronous through instant messaging, neither of which provide real-time distraction.

If you've signed on to the Do Not Call registry and/or have a cell phone, it's not so bad.

An established residence over time (a few decades) and various other marketing-database-entry events, and it's a pretty constant annoyance, in my experience.

Problem I've got with chat over phones is that the keyboards stink.

Totally agree. The most egregious violators of such calls are recruiters. Put your phone number on a resume and submit it to a few sites, assuming you work in IT, and they will call non-stop. Sometimes, I refuse the call and they keep calling back a few more times. Nowadays, I only pick up calls from people I recognize. Google has started to provide "caller ID" for many businesses that don't have it now, which helps also.

Worst was the guy who called, I dismissed him with "not interested <click>". He called back. And chewed me out.

SRSLY?!!!

I patiently (?) explained that his first call was a waste of both our time. And the second far worse than that. But I'd be more than happy to spread his and his employer's name over teh Intarnets.

He didn't call back.

A disposable phone number and a fake resume would gather plenty of data for a blog post - especially if there were some particularly bad recruiters.

I used Do Not Disturb a lot during the peak hours of my dissertation writing. It was pretty helpful. That of course means I would miss new emails and phone calls but those could be responded to later

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