I only realised how addicted I was to my phone after I spent three days in a row without it. My smartphone fell from a 3m-high widow and, due to the impact, the screen developed a major fault. I was confined for 3 days to my “boring” Nokia torch, which can only do phone calls and SMS.

Below is my 3-day ordeal without my smartphone:

Experience from Day 1
It felt like I was cut off from the rest of the world. I couldn’t check Nairaland news, watch YouTube and WhatsApp with friends. I suddenly (and strangely) had ample spare time and didn’t know what to with it. It was indeed a long day.
The good part: I made more phone calls than usual and went out with some friends that were living close by. My Amazon Kindle became a companion when I was alone. Before this saga, I was spending, on the average, 30 minutes daily reading on Kindle, but on this day, I did about 2.5 hours reading[b] Deep Work by Carl Newport.
[/b]

Experience from Day 2
It wasn’t as bad as day 1, but I still missed being online. It felt better because I was beginning to accept my new reality of zero online presence. I spent more time with my kindle and started conversations with people I would have normally ignored or not noticed.
I had time to plan my day, set goals and review my progress. I completed the book I was reading the previous day and started another one As a man thinketh by James Allen.

Experience from Day 3[b][/b]
By the morning of day 3, I got my phone back. Sadly, as if I were a programmed robot, I rushed online to catch-up on all the things I had missed during the last two days, and I have been in a state of connectedness ever since. All the little victories I achieved on Day 1 and 2 were lost.

Over time, I have become conscious of my online habits and I observe how people around me make use of their smartphones. The following are some of my observations:

1. Most of us are hardened phone addicts (teenagers are worst hit), just like smokers and people who do hard drugs. Unfortunately, we do not realise it. Quick question: can you spend one full day offline For most of us, the answer is No.

2. To curb my phone addictions, I practice staying for at least three consecutive hours without touching my phone (except to answer incoming calls). If you cannot do this, then you’ve lost a precious virtue, which is the ability to concentrate on any given task for an extended period with zero distraction.

3. Most of us have lost our ability to read intelligent and lengthy write-ups because we are already used to consuming information in piecemeals like we do when chatting. We quickly scan through articles with little regards for details.

4. We use your phone far more often than we realise it. I recently installed an App called YourHour to help curb my phone addiction. What I discovered was troubling: I spend more than 7 hours on a weekend on my phone doing very shallow activities like chatting, checking online news and watching YouTube. This leaves me with very little time to do productive works. (see attached picture for stats).

I am not against any form of tech, but I believe we should apply restraints in the way we use them. I also believe apps are nothing more than tools which are created to make our daily routines of communication and access to information seamless. We should note, however, that, since these apps have been designed by behavioural scientists to make us addicted to them, there is need minimise usage to prevent a huge decline in our productivity on deep tasks.

Just take a look at the rubbish China phone his using, lazy youth

kestolove95:
Just take a look at the rubbish China phone his using, lazy youth

Hahaha. you've started this year!