On Cell Phones

[A Dangerous Dichotomy, Emotional Slavery, Touch Grass, Waiting For Godot, An Agentic Life, A Challenge for You]

2025.05.18

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Thesis: Developing a cellphone allergy is one of the best things you can do for your quality of life.

[A Dangerous Dichotomy]

Nearly every day, I refuse to look at my cellphone until at least half an hour after I wake up, sometimes longer. 

And, on most nights, I’ll put my phone down about 30 minutes before I go to bed, too.

Even when making exceptions like last night, where I was emailing back and forth with a client until 15 minutes before bed, when I put my phone down, it’s down, & it’s silenced. I will not reach over and check it as I’m going to sleep.

The dangerous dichotomy of the cellphone and the internet age is that while you have easy access to massive amounts of people and information systems, those same people and information systems have easy access to you.

Being always open to the whims of someone or something on the other end of your phone puts you in a slavish, reactive state.

While 30 minutes of constraint in the morning and at night don’t seem that long, the habit of protecting your attention before you go to sleep and when you wake up is a phenomenal building block that helps you live a more agentic, focused, and present life.

[Emotional Slavery]

I don’t want whatever notifications happen to be on my phone to be the first thing I think of in the morning. If they are, I am immediately giving my attention & emotional state to literally anyone or anything who asks for it. 

It may seem subtle, but looking at notifications the first thing in the morning is a step towards shifting your locust of control away from yourself into the digital world.

In the negative case, the notifications could be something bad that happened or a message received from someone who I don’t like getting messages from. Or, maybe something really good that I wanted to happen didn’t happen, like a contract getting signed or a payment going through or someone particular messaging me back.

Why would I let myself start my day thinking about any of those things?

In the positive case, if the person did message me back or the contract did go through, I don’t want my good mood in the morning to depend on external factors like that.

In the more likely case that the notifications are simple and seemingly harmless, like someone following me or getting likes on a post, I’m still allowing myself to be swayed by an external hit of dopamine before I even get my bearings.

And, while in theory, it’s possible to resist whatever feelings the notifications give rise to, if I look at my phone the very first thing in the morning, I have to either:

a. Maintain control by exerting unnecessary force over my emotions and mental state

b. Relinquish control to whoever or whatever happened to send me a notification over night

Why would I put yourself in such a position every morning immediately when I wake up?

[Touch Grass]

When I contrast what it’s like to wake up to push notifications to what it’s like to wake up and simply being with myself, the right path seems to be a no brainer.

When I wake up without checking my phone first thing, I slowly stretch and take stock of my body and where I am. Then, after I brush my teeth, I will literally go outside and walk around barefoot in the grass.

If I had dreams, I reflect on them. Or, I can think about what I want to get done that day or maybe reflect again on something from yesterday. And if I have negative or impassioned emotions, they’re my own, and I’m forced to deal with them.

Most of the time, I’ll end up deeply engrossed in some problem I am trying to solve that day before I even open my computer.

Regardless, I have much more control over setting the tone for the day. This is in sharp contrast to opening myself to the randomness of the information my phone brings me.

Overall, I seriously believe not checking my phone first thing in the morning has massively increased my emotional stability over the years I have been doing it.

It’s not like this is some inaccessible startup founder nonsense, either. I am still at my computer and getting to work between 7 - 7:10 nearly every weekday morning.

And, even if I couldn’t afford 30 minutes of wandering, I would still give myself 10 and stay off my phone for as long as possible while working on something that didn’t require me to interact with the digital ocean.

[Waiting For Godot]

More broadly than just in the morning, we have a culture that “defaults” to spending time on cellphones or the internet. 

The most insidious thing about the digital default is that you’re usually not using your phone or the internet to do a particular thing–rather, you’re just using it to do something.

Even if you’re waiting some message you really want to receive from someone in particular, it’s easily drowned out by the sea of messages and notifications and “events” that are sufficient to take your mind off of the one you’re waiting for and everything else.

It’s a digital cornucopia of bombastic distractions. You can open your phone and find yourself doom scrolling, mindlessly clicking buttons and bouncing between apps. 

You don’t make up your mind and say, “I am going to spend 60 minutes jumping between apps now.” It just happens.

That’s a big reason I put it down for good before I go to sleep. If, instead, I look at it again if it buzzes as I’m drifting off, not only am I forced into a reactive state and messing up my sleep schedule, but I’m also inviting the death spiral of being dragged into a vortex of cheap distractions.

So, I’m shutting down the onslaught at it’s source.

More than just silencing it & turning off vibrations before I go to sleep, one thing that’s helped me fight the urge to mindlessly use a device is to silence notifications for most of the apps on my phone, as well as deleting most social media off of it, too.

[An Agentic Life]

By giving yourself a buffer to the digital onslaught in the morning and at night, you’re really steeling yourself against this relentless information flow that will try to come at you throughout the day. 

Developing a phone allergy helps you live a life on your terms and spend your time engrossed in things that are meaningful to you, not whatever your phone happens to tell you it’s time to focus on now.

Some things I love to do without my phone:

• Bike rides & runs - A silent bike ride or run with no cellphone is heavenly.

• Watching Movies or Television - I rarely have my phone in the same room as me when I’m watching something. And if I am on standby to respond to an important message, I will literally pause the movie to respond.

• Jiu Jitsu - Even on breaks, I won’t check my phone

• Reading - I’ll put it on silent, set a timer, throw it across the room, and get engrossed in the book until it buzzes.

• Making Coffee / Grabbing a snack - It’s easier to enjoy the first sip when I’m not texting as I’m having it.

• Being with People - Whether its dinner with a friend, a date, or a business meeting, I make a very strong effort to focus on the people I am with, especially when it’s a finite time, like an hour or two. I’ll often times set an alarm in such cases so I don’t even have to look at my phone until we’re done.

Everything above has an exception. Yes, there are times in any of those cases where I do bring my phone with me. And, in an attempt to maintain the BirdDog 60 minute rule, in many situations, I will check my phone every hour, but that’s usually much more intentional–is there anything important? If yes, address, if no, close. 

I want my default to be presence, not being pulled every which why by digital currents. It’s hard, given that my business in online. It can be a battle every day, especially with 20 minute slots between otherwise back to back meetings. But, having plenty of phone & computer free moments really does help to balance it out.

All of this is without mentioning that cell phone free experience really does help with deep work, too. I coded with all notifications off for 8 hours yesterday in bouts of 30-75 minutes. When I say ‘coded,’ I really do mean either coding or staring off into space when I got distracted, not doing something else. While I certainly went on my phone in between the bouts, I only had two illicit phone pickups during the coding, both of which resulted in me throwing my phone across the room after 5 seconds.

[A Challenge for You]

Very rarely am I prescriptive in this blog. Today, I’m going to be so bold as to break form.

I’m going to ask you to try, even for just a week, truly silencing your phone before you go to bed and ignoring it for at least 10 minutes after you wake up.

If you don’t have 10 minutes in the morning to do that… well, wake up 10 minutes earlier.

Don’t get me wrong, this habit hasn’t made me some monk who is in a constant meditative state. I’m a human, and emotional, and vulnerable to many vices.

Regardless, having 30 minutes to myself in the morning really has made it much easier for me to be present, focus, and control my emotions.

Give it a go for yourself, and see what happens.

Live Deeply,