📱my top 5 and bottom 5 things about the low phone diet (LPD) 📱

I cut back my phone usage to 10% and now I feel amazing! Its been a great experience and I am trying to spread the word to convince other people to use their phones less.

You can find the basic low phone diet protocol over here.

In this post I am going to elaborate on some of the specifics -- the "nuts & bolts" -- of the low phone process. How will it change your life? What are the best things? What are the worst things?

Here's my quick list of good and bad things from using my phone just 10% as often as usual:

Top 5 Good Things About Using My Phone A Lot Less 🤪

• Notice a lot more about my immediate surroundings
• More “mental rest” time
• More gratitude for serendipity
• More of a sense of self-reliance
• Not Carrying Around a Tracking Device

Bottom 5 Bad Things From Not Being Able to Use My Phone 😭

• Really Easy to Let Small Responsibilities Slip Away
• Lose Touch With People
• Lack of Access to Useful Apps
• Can’t Take Photos/Videos Anytime
• Kind of disorienting

If you feel like doing the "deep dive" then keep reading -- I am going to elaborate on all of these points in the rest of this post.

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Top 5 Very Good Things From Cutting Back on Phone Use

It’s mostly good! Here are some of the many improvements in my life thanks to getting away from my phone:

Pro 1: Noticing more of my immediate surroundings

The human body is capable of processing an incredible amount of data in every moment. Our phones sap that attention away from us.

When you get rid of the phone, you get your attention back.

Having significantly more attention available for non-digital experiences feels like getting a brain upgrade. It’s like a pair of glasses for your brain. You will notice more sights, smells, sounds, etc than ever before.

Pro 2: More “Mental Rest” Time

You are sitting with a to-go coffee in a comfortable chair at the coffeeshop. In 5 minutes, you will go to work. What do you do with these 5 minutes?

Most humans in 2019 will pull out their phones and scroll through as many headlines as they can, checking twitter and instagram and more apps besides. How many posts can you skim thru in 5 minutes? Maybe hundreds?

When the phone isn’t there, what I tend to do instead is to sit quietly staring into space. A bit of mental rest. These moments are distributed throughout the day, seeding my life experience with calm relaxation.

It adds up. Lots of little restful moments throughout the day can feel as good as getting an hour long nap.

Pro 3: More gratitude for serendipity

Serendipity is when a good thing happens to you thanks to luck.

Good things are happening to us all day. We are so bull-headed that we often fail to notice.

Without the phone to distract me, I feel a lot luckier. All of these small moments of good fortune that used to slip thru my experience unnoticed, now are easy for me to spot. I’m not distracted, so I realize how much good stuff is happening.

Pro 4: More feelings of self-determination

The internet is full of “Walled Gardens” and algorithmic recommendations.

When you turn off the phone you step out of that cage. The app store is not all encompassing. Real life beyond the phone is more rich in choice and opportunity.

Interacting with people and situations directly, not thru the phone, gives me a feeling of being more in control of my destiny.

Pro 5: Not carrying around a tracking device

If you carry a phone with you all the time, you are being tracked. This isn’t a secret, most people just accept it because they can’t imagine the alternative: Not taking your phone with you everywhere you go.

A wonderful side-effect of breaking one’s phone addiction is that you stop opting into this self-tracking system that smart phones make possible.

The oligarchy of government and major corporations want to know what you are doing at all times. They can then influence your actions on a moment-to-moment basis thru the phone. Escape the phone addiction and you can break free.

It’s a big way to de-program yourself from conditioned feelings and responses you did not choose for yourself. The phone is how we are conditioned to do a lot of things we do not want to do.

Bottom 5 Very Bad Things About Not Using The Phone

It’s not all good. Here are the biggest problems I am struggling with as I pursue the LPD.

Con 1: Easy to forget small responsibilities

A lot of people use the “Oh Yeah!” method of getting things done.

Here’s the method: You walk around with your phone in your pocket all day. Whenever you think of something you need to do - texts, social media, calendar, etc - you grab your phone and do it.

This isn’t a good method but it works.

With the phone off, all the “oh yeah” stuff stops getting done.

It’s not great b/c I never want to “leave someone hanging” - but I do suspect that this “con” might actually be a “pro” in disguise. When you ignore the small stuff, it just goes away.

Con 2: Lose touch with people/less communication

No more lazy text conversations that last for days, talking endlessly about life with your best friends.

If you meet a Babe, you’ll have to flirt with them in real life. There’s no point in trying to be coy with texting or whatever — you’ll be unable to respond most of the time anyway.

The weird part is that once your friends realize you are serious about turning your phone off most days, they’ll stop texting you. Your phone stops being a social tool and becomes more about logistics and work stuff.

This is by far the most unsettling part of the LPD. You may fear you are falling out of the loop, losing touch with your homies.

Fear not — it’s a temporary dip. Growing pains. It only takes one or two serendipitous conversations with new friends, Babes, etc, to realize that you’re trading low-quality interactions (text) for high-quality ones like IRL conversations and adventures.

I will talk about this subject at greater length in a future post.

Con 3: Lack of access to useful apps

The phone has many useful apps. Photography, fitness tracking, mindfulness tools, social networks, and beyond.

This is another dip — it sucks for a little while, but once you replace all those apps with other stuff, like pen + paper, you stop thinking about it.

The truth is that apps are overhyped. You don’t need em.

Con 4: Photography/Videography

Letting go of constant access to photography is the hardest pill to swallow w/r/t the LPD.

If you are passionate about photography, you could use your phone in airplane mode for photo excursions… even that is risky, though. Any time spent on the phone for any reason is dangerous.

The real answer here is that a world of photography exists beyond the phone, and if you have a lot of passion for it, you can start learning about cameras and other photo gear.

Con 5: Sense of Boredom/Disorientation

Many people look at their phones 100s of times per day. My screen time app told me I was averaging over 3 hours of screen time per day at one point — thats about 18% of my waking hours. (!!!)

We even spend time thinking about “phone stuff” when we aren’t looking at the screen.

It is normal to experience neurological “withdrawal” symptoms when one first makes a big reduction in phone time.

Cutting down to an hour or less per day (still an amazing ~6% of waking time) will be a shock to the system. You aren’t crazy and it won’t last forever, but it will be unpleasant.

You may feel bored or even disoriented for a month or two. This happens as you learn to adjust your lifestyle to not center around then phone. If I am correct, after this adjustment period, things will go back to a new “normal” that is much better than the old way.

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That sums up my LPD experience as of 3 weeks in. Most of the good stuff will last a lifetime, and the bad stuff is merely temporary.

It’s worth it.