How to Do Digital Detox Without Removing Your Smartphone
Most of us want to spend less time looking at screens and more time interacting with the world around us – all very well, until you realize that you cannot navigate this world without a map, and you cannot. meet. with someone without contacting them in advance in any way and it is much easier to use an app to pay for parking than trying to find enough space to power a meter and so on.
Whether you like it or not, “interacting with the outside world” often requires a digital interface.
But this does not mean that you cannot switch off. You can continue to use your smartphone to solve everyday problems while uninstalling apps and features that turn your phone into a device with a screen.
Cal Newport, professor of computer science and author of Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World , recently shared a piece of advice he gave his students :
Use your smart phone only for the following purposes: phone calls, text messages, maps and audio (song / podcast / books).
In other words: don’t let your smartphone connect you to the giant Internet funnel. Get rid of your browser, social media apps and, if possible, email. (If you can’t bring yourself to completely disconnect from your email, at least turn off notifications so that you only check when you want.)
Newport suggests that digital minimalism with smartphones is possible if we want to turn a device that can do anything into a tool with three functions: phone, map / GPS and – if you’re old enough to remember that. link – Walkman.
If I offered similar advice, I would allow a few more apps on my smartphone. A weather app can be useful, as can apps that allow you to pay for parking and public transport, call taxis and car rides, or rent cars and bicycles. I’d also let you keep e-book apps like Kindle and Libby, mainly because my smartphone has much better e-book functionality than my Kindle, which is a few years old, and of course you can keep your camera. …
But digital detox with smartphones doesn’t really have to do with which apps you keep. It’s all about which apps you get rid of. If you are brave enough to remove your web browser, social networking applications, reader RSS-channels, and all other applications that want you to test, test, pulled, checked laykali, shared, and another, you end the end result is a device that can do a lot, but can’t pull you in.
This is what most of us really want when we talk about spending less time on the phone. We don’t want to give up apps that make our life easier. We want to stay away from apps that are taking our lives every minute.
So why not remove these apps from your smartphone and see how long you can add them back?