Year-long experiment: a smartphone without distracting programs

Translator’s note: In 2013, Jake Knapp published on his Medium blog a story about how he came to the decision to remove all programs from the iPhone that could somehow distract and adversely affect productivity. The post received a great response from the audience and a year later, Knapp published a new text describing the results of a year of life with a “non-distracting iPhone” (distraction-free iPhone).

In 2012, I realized that I had a problem. My iPhone made me nervous — he lay in his pocket and called out to me like the One Ring beckoning Bilbo Baggins. I was constantly distracted by a smartphone - wasting time on it, and not on children and my wife. He diverted my attention anytime, anywhere. My willpower was simply not enough to be able to ignore incoming letters, not to check Twitter or Instagram tapes, and simply not to see what happened in the world. The phone became a real "infinity in my pocket", with which I could not help it.
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I wanted to have more control over my time, but at the same time, I didn’t want to give up the various advantages of a smartphone. I liked Google maps, apps for calling Uber taxi or finding friends of Find Friends. However, it was definitely necessary to do something, so I decided to conduct an experiment. I turned off Safari, deleted my email account and all the applications I could reach. In this mode, I decided to exist to start the week.

Then a month passed, a second, and I began to get more and more pleasure from the newfound freedom. I wrote a blog post about “not distracting the iPhone,” and it was reprinted by major online media (as a result, he collected hundreds of thousands of views). Of course, most of the readers wanted to discuss only the question of what kind of an idiot I am, because I thought it was in a situation where I just had to buy a simple phone without unnecessary functions.

On the other hand, many people liked my idea - people began to try to conduct a similar experiment themselves. Even some of my friends tried, and most of all I was surprised when my wife followed my example (this is after 6 months of statements that I was doing nonsense). I was just in shock!

Nevertheless, even a year later, many people keep asking me if the experiment is going on. It continues, and it's time to bring some results.

Changes

During this year I had to learn to live in boring moments - now my smartphone is a bad helper, for example, if I have to kill time on the road. I basically became much less likely to get it out of my pocket. Maybe I’ll make things up, but it seems that it’s even easier for me to concentrate on specific tasks during the day.

If earlier, for example, on a bus, I would check mail completely, now I listen to music and just look around. I even began to meditate (although I use for this ... the Calm application). It looks strange - an adult man is meditating on the bus using a special application, but I like it more than the desire to constantly update the Twitter feed.

At home, a smartphone turns into an interior detail and nothing more. At work, being fascinated by business, I generally forget where the phone is lying - before the start of my experiment, I cannot recall situations so that I do not know where my iPhone is.

A surprise was the fact that the experiment did not become a constant struggle with itself. There was no breaking, on the contrary, everything turned out surprisingly easy. Now it seems to me that my past style of using a smartphone required much more strength than the way I treat it now - just imagine how many things you had to keep track of! All of these alerts, updates, and alerts added a lot of work every day.

24 hour experiment

For those who want to try the “non-distracting iPhone” experiment, I would recommend starting with a duration of one day. Setting up is pretty simple, here's what you need to do:

Remove Safari

For me, Safari was a problem because it was a window into the world of infinite possibilities of the Internet. At any time in the network there is something mega-interesting and unprecedented earlier. Naturally, you need to go and look at this miracle. And business ... five minutes of a break still harmed no one.



Of course, Safari cannot be physically removed from the iPhone, but you can deactivate it if you enable restrictions (Settings-Basic-Restrictions menu). It feels strange, as if you don’t trust yourself on your own phone.

Delete email client

My other big problem is email. The human brain is designed so that he wants to constantly receive some random rewards. It always seems that you will look into the mail, and TAM something interesting or at least important (in fact all interestingness is usually limited to a letter from the boss).

It’s basically impossible to refuse email, but for my specific work there is no need to have an email client on the smartphone. Over the past year, I have taught people to write me messages or immediately call if I for some reason need them and need a quick response. Bonus - many people call or write an SMS is much more difficult than composing a letter, so that they start to worry less about trifles.

You cannot delete the Mail application from the iPhone, the easiest way to act in this situation is to disable the mail account in the settings.

Get rid of the "endless" applications

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, your favorite newspaper application (I have this New York Times) - they all open the door to infinity, consisting of interesting content that can be accessed at any time. That is why this should not be on the phone.

What pleases, in the case of such third-party applications, they are easy and simple to remove in the usual way.

All weigh and decide what to leave.

Having decided on a cardinal sweep of the home screen of a smartphone, then you do not want to litter it again. Each remaining application fails for any reason - there is a good habit of asking oneself and why there should be one or another application on the phone. If a particular tool helps to somehow make life easier, it is worth saving it, and if it is just another “time killer”, then it’s better to leave now.



Total I left applications:

• Phone;
• Messages;
• Camera;
• Applications that help me imagine that I live in the future. I created a special folder called “Future” (Future) and put Dropbox, Google Maps, Uber, Rdio, Instacart and similar things there (even an application with a weather forecast is actually very cool, if you think for a second that then a couple of decades ago, everyone went with cassette players and thought it was a breakthrough in technology, and now the weather forecast is always in your pocket);
• Useful things that I rarely use (such as the New York subway map);
• Useless things that do not remove (like the Passbook or Game Center).

Convenient, not smart phone

This whole experiment left me with the feeling that I had let the iPhone into my life, without really understanding what kind of sacrifice and effort it would take on my part. I agreed to the connection to the network at any time, to constantly updated great games, the ability to shoot and share photos. It's like being in a buffet restaurant with delicious dishes - just great, but you can't stop and not eat more than you need.

Since my job is to help companies create software and "iron" products, I have to think about such things. When we invest our time and energy in some technologies - as their creators or consumers - time should be spent only on those products and services that fall into the category of “Future”, and not on those that help us spend the time of our lives faster than it should.

Personally, my life and so flies at the speed of light, but over the past year, she has a little bit, but slowed down.

PS If you notice a typo, mistake or inaccuracy of the translation - please write a personal message and I will correct everything promptly.