So this is a little update of what I did and discovered after I blogged about this last week.

• I deleted all the notifications off my phone and ipad
• I left my phone and iPad downstairs at bedtime and set an alarm on my watch instead
• I deleted the social media apps off my iPhone and ipad and I’ve limited 12 apps to my home screen which are the ones I really need (and put the others on second home screen in folders)
• I re-installed the Moment app which immediately put me onto bootcamp and a series of actions every day….
• I’ve not taken my phone with me when I’ve left the house unless I knew I needed it.
• I made Mum promise to call the landline if things were urgent overnight.

ALSO:

A brilliant friend wrote me a LETTER and it was incredible….

What I’ve discovered in my experiment so far:

• It’s extraordinary the difference it makes not having notifications on your phone or the little red badges that tell you how many unread emails etc. It makes the action of checking a deliberate moment, rather than an urge.
• I’ve read most of a novel this week which I wouldn’t have done if I’d had my phone or iPad in the bedroom. I feel wonderfully engaged in the imaginative world and excited for bedtime so I can go back and read more again. (Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls if you’re interested)
• Nobody contacted me over night with anything urgent.
• It was extraordinary to have a disconnected hour before I went to bed and not to check my phone until I went downstairs in the morning. I really, really felt the calm of that disconnection and I realised that that downtime was crucial to my resilience when problems arose. It felt odd, but good.
• The Moment Bootcamp is brilliant and I really recommend it – it’s very very simple, easy, non-scary actions every day to wake up your sense of boundaries on your phone. https://inthemoment.io
• The sense that I needed my phone “in case” was contributing to a sense of anxiety that something could happen any moment. That’s true, but real emergencies will elicit a phone call.
• Regarding news: I read a really good article by the people of The Correspondent which I’ll speak about another time. What’s stuck with me is this though, news matters if it changes your behaviour or leads to an action on your own part: how much of the news we digest does that? How accurate is the picture of the world we live in as described by 24 hour news outlets?
• I feel as connected as I have always done…
• I feel a little freed of something I hadn’t realised was so constricting: like when you suddenly realise your bra is a bit too tight.

But this hasn’t been total abstinence:

I’ve been on email.

I’ve been on Facebook.

I’ve been on Twitter.

I’ve begun to notice when I’m time wasting.

And… last night I did break one of the experiments and ended up on a Twitter wormhole late in the night due to Trump’s parade outside the hospital. I was really aware in my head that this was a huge example of how my attention was being caught – instead of reading my delicious novel, I was randomly searching for more details about whether the President was really ill or not. I’m not saying that this isn’t interesting on a political level. But why did it warrant so much of my time? And my anxiety? Could it change my behaviour or lead to an action? Not really: it’s just left me feeling manipulated, confused and disempowered.

What do I need my relationship with that kind of news to be?

I’m going to keep experimenting this week and see what comes up next. Today’s bootcamp is to call someone rather than text them and listen to their voice…. I’ve already done that a couple of times this morning and yesterday I baked a whole fish pie with my Mum on the phone like I used to do in the old days… it was lovely.

When I was a teenager I used to write quotes from books and things in brown ink on scraps of paper and stick them on my wall which was also covered in black and white photos and Impressionist postcard. My favourite was always this from Forster:

And on.