Let Your Phone Fly

Your phone has wings.  Did you know that?  Ok bad joke.  I’m referring to airplane mode and why we should use it more and let our phones ‘take flight’ more often.  

When I was living in San Francisco, my good friend David Zamir, founder of Nana, would take all of our phones when a group of friends got together and hide them from us.  Intellectually we understood the purpose of the exercise and said we can handle our phones but the truth is that we couldn’t.  When they were gone we were all more present and had a much better time together.    

Use your phone as little as possible.  It is an amazing tool and has transformed our world massively.  It has increased the quality of our lives in so many ways.  You can do pretty much anything from your phone,  It is such a blessing and I am so grateful for it.  

We also overuse it.  Like most tools we tend to overuse it.  Be intentional about when you use your phone.  Don’t just pick it up for the sake of doing so to pass time or distract yourself when you have ‘nothing to do’.  

Think of it as the modern day equivalent of a samurai’s sword.  Does a samurai just take out his sword when he’s bored and start playing with it?  No he honors it, takes care of it, respects its power and uses it only when necessary.  

If you habituate yourself to use your phone out of boredom, frustration etc. you will build up that loop more and more.

How can you become a better samurai with your phone?

Check your screen time every day.  Do it in the afternoon and at the end of the day.  Look at the amount of time you have been on each different app.  Which ones are you investing most of your time with?  Are they aligned with your values?

Look at how many times you picked up your phone that day.  Developing the awareness of how much, how often and in what ways you are using your phone is huge progress.  

That by itself will start changing your habits.  It will also give you a great insight into yourself as to where you are actually investing your time, energy and focus.  It will explain a lot about the results you are currently producing in your life.  

So try it out and make it a game.  Limit your phone time.  Try to get more done by using your phone less.  Our phones are weighing us down.  Take flight.  

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