It’s 5:25 a.m., and my watch gently starts buzzing against my wrist . I hit the stop button, lean across the bed, and grab my phone.
I open the Health app to check my sleep. I feel pretty decent, and the data backs it up—a full seven with almost two hours of REM and an hour of deep sleep.
I open Reddit to check the news and then my email to catch up on a few newsletters that have been lingering in my inbox.
For the next 30 minutes or so, I slowly wake up in the warm glow of a thousand-nit screen.
I start to feel that low-level background anxiety intensify. With my last bit of self-discipline, I force myself out of bed and onto a meditation cushion. I light some palo santo and sit, eyes softly closed.
For the next 15 minutes, I listen to the birds, already well into their day, and feel the glow of the sun peeling across the horizon. I try desperately to re-regulate my nervous system.
We know screens are bad, and we’re all hopelessly addicted to them.
Yet, even knowing that, I try and keep healthy boundaries.
I long ago deleted social media apps from my phone.
I block time-consuming websites and run ad-blocking software on our home network.
I intentionally consume long-form podcasts.
I read physical books over digital formats and ruthlessly disable all non-essential notifications.
Still, I’m fighting a losing battle, and I suspect many of us feel the same.
These things are just too fucking addictive.
Yes, phones and technology are immensely beneficial and a daily driver in most of our lives. Still, there has to be a better way.
To be clear, I do not have anything against phones or technology. Quite the opposite—I consider myself a technologist and often an early adopter.
Never in the history of humanity has the barrier to starting a business or side hustle been so trivial.
We’re able to take an idea over drinks and turn it into an income-producing side hustle or business in just days or weeks, often with little to no money. It has never been this easy to carve out your own destiny.
This reduced friction has made it easier for entrepreneurs and artists from diverse backgrounds to play.
Similarly, our phones have helped us to learn new things quickly. We can instantly access reliable information and stay better connected with family and friends across the globe.
And all of this has been enabled by technology, with mobile phones at the center of it all.
It’s pretty clear that our relationship with mobile devices is non-dualistic in nature. It’s not simply good or bad but part of a larger, more holistic system.
Likewise, we need to stop judging ourselves by how much restraint we practiced or how productive our devices made us on a given day.
Instead, what if we defined our relationship by how they make us feel?
Consider these everyday moments - both positive and negative.
Catching up on emails while waiting at the doctor’s office — how does it feel to turn an otherwise tedious wait into something productive?
Late-night doom scrolling on r/politics to see where the latest polls are landing—is this anxiety inducing or relieving?
Watching my eight-year-old extend his Duolingo Spanish streak to 263 days — No podría estar más orgulloso!
Handling a 45-minute meltdown from a two-year-old upset after losing her access to ‘TubeTube’ — well, you get the idea.
Last weekend, I visited a nearby county park with my family to enjoy one of the first crisp fall days of the season here on the East Coast. The park, with its wide trails and thick woods, provided the perfect backdrop for an outdoor adventure with 3 young kids in tow.
An old WWII-era battery was tucked into the 800-acre coastal forest overlooking Sandy Hook Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Originally built to protect New York City from German U-Boat attacks, the underground bunker now serves as a makeshift museum.
In reality, it’s just a dark, mysterious tunnel with a few adjacent rooms and some basic information about daily life there over 80 years ago.
I wondered what a soldier stationed here would have done in their free time, without the modern tools of distraction we have today.
We ventured in.
My eight-year-old grabbed my wife Justine’s phone and began shooting some ad hoc video. It was very reminiscent of a movie from my teenage years, The Blair Witch Project.
On his instructions, I dialed up demonic whispers and other situationally appropriate sounds on my phone.
Over the next 20 minutes we all filled in as production assistants as he “filmed a movie.”
Eventually, we ventured back outside onto the nature trails to collect leaves and acorns, just beginning to change color.
We made our way down a long, steep path to the water.
The late afternoon winds danced across the trees and out into the bay.
In the distance, the NYC skyline loomed. Just a few miles away, millions of people raced to jobs or early dinners.
How many of their faces were lost in an addictive glow?
Sitting on a picnic table near the river bank, I took a deep breath of the crisp fall air.
Watching my young kids try to skip rocks across the Navesink, I paused to reflect on how this moment made me feel.
