Once you’re done checking your phone for the millionth time today (I’ll wait . . .), I’d love to get on with this book. You’re officially past the halfway mark, and well on your way to becoming a Super Woman. Now let’s get a handle on how much time you spend on your phone—because nothing will give your Emotional Wellness an immediate boost like powering down (or damage it by not).
Does the idea of putting your phone away make your palms sweat? If so, that’s okay: Head back to Step 1 for a bit to admit you have a problem, and it’s a phone addiction. Most of us have one (I sure did!). And it’s easy to see why: mobile devices have replaced our calendars, our cameras, our calculators, and pretty much every other helpful tool that used to operate on its own.
The average adult touches her or his phone eighty times per day. I can’t think of anything else you do voluntarily eighty times per day. Not eat. Not hug. Not even smile (the average number of smiles per day for adults is twenty). In this step, I’m going to teach you how to make sure your phone doesn’t replace your life—and sabotage your career.
Before we get started, here’s a challenge for you: Check your phone now, one last time, and don’t check it again until you’ve finished this step. I won’t say “don’t check it at all for the rest of the book” because then you’ll just put me away. I’ll give you one last peek just to make sure you didn’t miss anything major, and, in return, you’ll give me 28 pages of your tech-free attention. Deal? Deal.
WHO IS IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE . . . YOU OR YOUR SMARTPHONE?
We’ve worked so hard up to this point to draw boundaries and make plans so that no one controls you or your time but you. But we’ve all gotten into pretty serious, often controlling relationships with our devices. Would you ever let another person control you or your time like they do? No. So let’s cut the cord on their control, too.
CONFESSIONS
OF A SUPER WOMAN
The Road to Tech Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions
I had just started my job anchoring a business show on Bloomberg, and I immediately set off planning segments and booking guests. In news (and life in general), it’s all about relationships, so I needed to dig in right away to prepare for going on the air two weeks later.
I was relentless in my mission to find the best interviews for the show. The show’s focus was technology and new media, so I made a list of every public tech company (from Apple to Qualcomm) and every unicorn (private companies worth $1 billion or more). I listed their founders and CEOs in a spreadsheet and committed to keeping at it until every single one of them was booked on the show. I became a smartphone machine, on my phone talking and emailing all day long. In other words, I was exactly the breathless, unbalanced woman I’ve been talking about not being throughout this book.
A few days before we started, my boss (who had recruited me for this position and really wanted me to succeed) set up a video conference with the rest of the team in San Francisco.
“Thank you so much for being on the call, guys,” he said, as he introduced me to the team.
“Yeah, I’m so thrilled that I’ve already gotten going,” I said, scrolling through my phone with one hand.
“We are, too,” said my colleague on the other line, “and here’s what we are thinking and how we work.” I began frantically typing an email on my phone. I’m sure I did have some actual messages to respond to. But I also wanted the team to see just how hard I was working and how seriously I was taking this job. “Blah blah does this and blah blah is where . . . ,” I heard as I typed away.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my boss get on his phone. See! We know what we need to do to get ahead. He gets me! I thought.
. . . And just then, another email came through! I tapped on it immediately.
It was a one-line message—from my boss. “Pay attention, Lapin. Get off your phone.”
Shit.
My intention wasn’t to come across as a bad team player or disrespectful. Quite the contrary, I was working for the team—and wanted them to know it. But what I would come to realize is that working for the team and working with the team are two different things. Being distracted and unprofessional is only one of the ways your phone saps your superpowers. If you want others to value your valuable time, you must pay them the same respect. That means being present in meetings and actively listening to those around you—not mindlessly nodding over the top of your screen.
Funny enough, in that job at Bloomberg, I was anchoring a technology-focused show that reported a lot on how profitability drove our tech obsession. Much of the revenue generated by technology companies—from hardware makers to game developers to social networks—focuses on “eye time.” So it’s in the best interest of their bottom line to keep us hooked. And it’s worked.
The average adult refreshes her or his phone 150 times per day. We are awake for an average of sixteen hours a day, so if you do the math, we are checking them every six and a half minutes. We look at our phone before our feet hit the floor. We look at it on the way to the bathroom. We look at it in the bathroom.
There’s a spot-on cartoon that depicts a man walking into the gates of heaven where God says, “Actually, you had a pretty great life, but you were looking down at your phone and missed it.” It’s biting commentary but it’s true. Our devices used to serve us. Now we serve our devices.
TALK SCIENCE TO ME
Let’s talk about our big, beautiful brains. Now, obviously, I am no neuroscientist, but while researching for this book, I learned some pretty important things about how our brains work. And to understand why I am pushing you to unlatch the phone from your palm, we should get less heady and more brainy.
You might think that some of the advice I’m giving you to boost your Emotional Wellness is fugazi (origin unknown, but it basically means “fake”—and it’s part of one of my favorite Matthew McConaughey lines in The Wolf of Wall Street: “Fugayzi, fugazi. It’s a whazy. It’s a woosie. It’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist.”). But it’s all rooted in science. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I decided to write this book in the first place: to explore what about Emotional Wellness is for real and what’s, well, fugazi.
DOPAMINE IS DOPE
I’m sure you’ve heard of dopamine. You might think of it as the “happy juice” in your brain. We’ve long known that dopamine controls the pleasure systems of the brain, causing you to feel enjoyment from things like sex, drugs, food, and, yes, technology. That is true, but more recent research has revised our understanding of dopamine ever so slightly, but importantly. Dopamine is now believed to cause you to want, seek, and search for those things that make you happy. We now know that we gain pleasure through the search for enjoyment, not simply having it.
We’ve seen this play out in the online dating world: Despite 26 million matches made each day on Tinder alone, fewer than 10 percent of matches are consummated with an actual exchange; the rest of the time, users opt to keep swiping instead of messaging the matches they’ve already made. For the vast majority of users, the game itself proves to be more arousing than the other players. Case in point: nearly half of the millennials in this survey admitted to using dating apps as “ego-boosting procrastination” rather than to meet people.
Biochemically, we are becoming addicted to the search. It’s easy to get into a dopamine-induced endless loop of seeking information. Do these scenarios sound familiar?
Scenario 1
Desire: You want to look up Coco Chanel’s birthday.
Action: Google it.
Scenario 2
Desire: You want to see what your former boss is doing these days.
Action: Look her up on LinkedIn.
Scenario 3
Desire: You want to tell your friend that you ran into
your ex-boyfriend at Starbucks.
Action: Text her.
These seem like totally normal responses. They provide instant gratification. Chanel’s birthday is August 19, 1883. Your former boss is unemployed (ouch). And your friend texts you back right away asking you for the lowdown on your ex.
But what happens next?
Scenario 1
Action 2: You start perusing Chanel’s most famous quotes for use in future Instagram captions.
Scenario 2
Action 2: You start searching for where other people you’ve worked with in the past are now working.
Scenario 3
Action 2: You start gossiping about how your ex looked, what he was wearing, and whether or not he’s seeing anyone.
Again, pretty normal sounding, right? But you just got yourself into a dopamine-technology cage match. The dopamine makes you start searching for what you want. You then get rewarded right away with what you want. So you search more to get more rewards. You go back and forth. You can’t stop Googling, checking LinkedIn, and texting. Our dopamine receptors are never satiated; they keep saying, “gimme more, gimme more.” So you keep searching long after you’ve found what you were looking for in the first place. You end up in a never-ending battle with your own brain.
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON TECHNOLOGY, ANY QUESTIONS?
Nomophobia. That’s the actual real word for technology addiction or the fear of being off your phone. Might you have it?
I did. I used to be the woman who would boast about being on her phone 24/7/365. I remember saying to colleagues, “If I don’t respond within three minutes, then I’m probably dead.” But it is precisely because I was always available, and responded so often and so quickly for so many years, that I burnt out completely. The very thing I bragged about almost killed me. That joke about being dead is no longer funny to me.
Of course, technology isn’t going anywhere—no one is going back to conducting business over snail mail any time soon—so we have to be able to use it but not abuse it, or let it abuse us. I can tell you anecdotally that my technology use played a big role in pushing me to my breaking point. But if my confessions and personal stories don’t resonate with you, hey, that’s cool, but the research should. Facts are facts, and not putting down your f-ing phone is just plain bad for you and your career. As if leaving a bad impression on those around you isn’t enough, your phone addiction also affects the way your brain processes information—for the worse, stymieing your ability to handle new information as it comes in and limiting your capacity to retain that information for the long haul. Your brain is a living, evolving thing, which means that it’s changing all the time. It’s shaped by your daily life and experiences. And the word “shape,” here, is not used in the “having influence” way, as in, “My grandma really shaped my views on politics.” Nope. Your brain is actually changing shape. Here’s how it plays out:
Conclusion 1: If a technology disorder can lead to poor executive functioning, and poor executive functioning means you have a hard time with work-critical skills like planning, prioritizing, and organization, then if you want to succeed at work . . . get off your f-ing phone.
Conclusion 2: If limiting technology use has been proven to positively affect Emotional Wellness by improving mood, relationships, and creativity, and Emotional Wellness helps you succeed at work, then if you want to succeed at work . . . get off your f-ing phone.
Susan Greenfield, a scientific researcher in behavioral psychiatry at Oxford (who, along with being a total badass, also happens to be a baroness), warns that, as our daily lives are lived through smartphones, tablets, and laptops, we’re losing our ability to connect with other people, resulting in more and more social isolation. In fact, she warns that technology addiction is “an issue as important and unprecedented as climate change.” Preach, baroness, preach.
YOUR DIGITAL DIET
By now, you may be thinking: “Okay, okay, Lapin. I have a problem; I get it. No more science class . . . just tell me what to do to fix it.”
If you were trying to lose weight or kick a sugar habit, you might start with a restricted diet or detox, then come up with a long-term maintenance plan that you can stick to over time. You can’t—and shouldn’t—eliminate fun from your life and live in austerity forever; you’ll inevitably binge and return to old habits. To stick to your diet, you might treat yourself to a little piece of chocolate every night, so you don’t end up chowing down on a huge hunk of chocolate cake and blowing all the hard work you’ve put in. When it comes to your digital life, the strategy is the same: we’re going to start with a seven-day detox, then set up a realistic “technology plan” like you would a realistic “eating plan.”
After all, technology can be a-mazing. It enables us to do things and connect with people in a way that’s faster and easier than ever before. Who doesn’t love catching up with family on the other side of the country over FaceTime or connecting with a friend over Words with Friends? But however a-mazing, it’s just a tool. And just like any superpower, you can use it for good or you can use it for evil. Just make sure you’re using it—not the other way around.
CONFESSIONS
OF A SUPER WOMAN
My Phone-Free Week
When people heard that I was going on a complete digital detox, many of them laughed and thought I was punking them. Of course, I was not. But, luckily, the people who supported me through it are the ones who matter to me; the ones who didn’t, don’t.
Knowing that I would never be able to fully disconnect if I remained in the city, with all of its easy distractions and endless barrage of screens, I opted for a full-on wilderness retreat. So there I was, in a cabin. With a shared bathroom. Basically glamping. With no phone. No emails to check. No texts. No camera. No apps. Nada. And even if I had managed to sneak in a phone, there was no cell service.
The first day was like coming off drugs—withdrawal to the max. Total separation anxiety. I was going on hikes with beautiful views that were just begging to be Instagrammed, and I had no way of even taking a photo. I was waiting in line for lunch with the other people on the retreat and had no phone to scroll idly through. I was alone in my room with books and paper, no social media to keep me company. And I was freaking the fuck out.
But each day, it got a little easier. And by the end, it was downright liberating. As I came down from my digital high, I observed some big changes in myself.
The first thing I noticed was that I was more conscious of the world around me, which I would have missed with a phone basically sutured to my hand. As I walked through the woods, I took in the various plants and shrubs and the differences in the texture of their leaves. I marveled at the different shades of wood in the paneling that lined my room. My senses were heightened in everything I did, from tying my shoes to watching a sunset that could only be captured with my eyes and memory.
The next thing I noticed was that I felt more alert at 6 AM than I usually did at 8 AM after two cups of coffee. Waking up to watch the sunrise was a) glorious and b) easy because I had less trouble falling asleep. There was no phone light beaming into my eyeballs before bed, ruining the natural darkness (and my eyes). Instead, I read, or simply fell right to sleep after a full, rich, adventurous day.
Finally, I noticed how present I was with everyone I talked to. I was more engaged in the stories they told. I remembered little details about each person I met and what we’d talked about in a way I never had before. I was even able to confront a few tough conversations, straight-on and in person (like with one, um, married guy who would not take a hint that I was not interested in a romp in the woods), squashing conflict way faster than a barrage of texts would have.
Sure, these were all simple things I could have worked on before taking a digital time-out, but I never thought I needed to. I didn’t even think to think about it. It took a week without my phone for me to really start looking outward at the world with fresh eyes and inward at the things about myself that I’d completely lost sight of.
YOUR SEVEN-DAY DIGITAL DETOX
A digital detox is a great way to jump-start your long-term digital plan. But you don’t have to go on a dedicated digital detox program like I did to kick your habit; I’ll give you a framework for a week-long boot camp you can put in place while still going to work, school, and just generally getting on with your everyday life.
Granted, any sort of boot camp or crash diet is not sustainable in the long run; the maintenance required to stay in the fabulous shape you’ve gotten yourself into is where the real work is. But old habits die hard, so let’s kick your digital booty with a seven-day plan:
Day 1
Take little time-outs. Don’t look at your phone for a time frame that includes two meals, either from breakfast through lunch or from lunch through dinner. For extra credit, turn it off completely. If you’re traveling, on a juice cleanse, or anything else that messes with a regular meal schedule, then take four (consecutive) hours off your phone.
Day 2
Clean out the online riffraff. Go through the people you follow on Instagram and Twitter and remove anyone you aren’t friends with anymore or don’t have an interest in following. Apply the same principle that Marie Kondo talks about in her popular book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, only this time for your online life instead of your home life: Anyone you follow must spark joy, or at least interest. Unfriend Facebook “friends” who aren’t actually friends, and set your timeline settings to only see twenty or so people’s updates at a time. (Like, seriously, do you really need to be wasting any brain cells on what your seventh-grade music teacher’s daughter is eating for dinner? Um, no.)
Day 3
Master your settings. Go into the settings section of your phone and take control. First, turn off “video autoplay” so you only watch videos when you want to and don’t get sucked into playlists or random videos you stumbled upon. Then, do an audit of the push notifications you have on your phone. Which do you really need? (I choose to receive only human notifications, like phone calls, and turn off any nonhuman notifications, like updates from apps or alerts from retailers.)
Do you need to know when Nordstrom is having an anniversary sale?
Do you need to know the very second someone comments on your photo?
Do you need to see every time someone on Tinder messages you? (I know, you must be getting lots of messages. But remember, if you become on demand, you won’t be in demand.)
Finally, do you need to know when everyone texts you in real time? I know, this one is the scariest of them all. But if you are bold enough, turn off text notifications. It’s empowering as fuck to just look at texts when and only when you want to look at texts. If someone needs to get ahold of you for something legit, they will call you (yes, the phone works that way, too).
Day 4
Clear the app barnacles off your phone and untether from subscriptions. Honestly, this is gonna be a multiple-hour time investment—but it will save your sanity for much longer.
Step 1: Look at the apps you have. The average person has sixty to ninety apps on their phone but only uses nine. It’s like your closet is stuffed with clothes, but you pretty much stick to two pairs of jeans, one hoodie, a black shirt, and yoga pants. To get a sense of your personal app usage, check the battery settings on your phone, which show the percentage of time you spend on each app. Keep those with crazy high percentages and delete the ones with little to no use. I’ll bet you can delete about half of your apps right there. Now, look at the ones remaining. Has the app company shut down since you installed it? Did you only install the app to get a one-time discount? If so, delete.
Step 2: Why do you use them? Classify your apps into categories that don’t sugarcoat what they are and how they are affecting you, and consider cutting some more loose. Researchers clump apps into these categories:
• Apps that waste your time. Remember that Tinder guy? Well, he’s probably one of, what, fifteen Bumble guys you’re talking to? Are you seriously going to meet all of them, or just have witty-ish chats that go on and on and on forever? If you’re single, go ahead and get app-y, but get a grip on the time you spend on those dating apps. Try limiting yourself to just one app for a few weeks, and focus on developing a few good conversations with people you’ve actually matched with rather than “window shopping.” The other big-time suckers are games like Candy Crush. Playing games is fun, I get it, but . . . get over it. The average person spends twenty-three days a year and almost four (!!) years of their lives looking at their smartphone. Do you really want to spend almost a month out of every year on Pokémon Go and Clash of Clans? Please say “no.”
• Apps that keep you on the clock 24/7. Yes, yes, you’re super-duper important. But do you really need a Google Drive app on your phone? Sure, writing a book on your phone is possible via Google Docs, but even as fast as you can text, I’ll bet you can type faster. So, Ms. Austen, perhaps save your polished prose for proper computer time—or good ol’ pen and paper.
• Apps that may depress you. Studies have shown that while social media might make you happy in the short term (by giving you that sweet hit of dopamine), it makes frequent users depressed in the long run, by contributing to low self-esteem. Think about what most of your friends are posting on social media: big life updates, photos from their travel adventures, selfies when they’re in full makeup and have a million filters at their disposal. It’s a curated view of their lives, not representative of who they actually are but who they want to be perceived as, and geared toward instant “liking” gratification. And, instead of avoiding this onslaught of staged fabulosity, research has shown that teens with poor mental health are actually greater users of social media, suggesting that they are seeking out interactions in order to feel less crappy and alone . . . which, in turn, only makes them feel more crappy and alone. I’ll be the first to say that it’s not just teens: in my less than super (adult) years, I deleted photos that didn’t get a lot of likes. WTF is that all about? I was addicted to seeking admiration and obsessing over if and when I got it while being jealous of others who had more. That’s not super—it’s lame. If you find you’re comparing yourself to others excessively, maybe it’s time to delete.
Looking at your apps with these categories in mind, I hope you deleted another half of those left.
Step 3: Take stock of which apps you pay a subscription for; I’d bet there are quite a few on your phone that you don’t even know about. When you sign up for the “free trial,” you probably think, yeah yeah, I’ll delete it after a month and scam the system. Welp, the app companies bank on you forgetting to do just that, and the system scams you, instead. Rethink the apps you are paying for—how much are they really worth to you? (And don’t forget to cancel autopay for any apps you’ve already deleted in the previous steps!)
SUPER WOMAN
TIP
In-Box Detox
While you’re app cleansing, hit your in-box as well. Unroll.Me pulls all of your email subscriptions into one list and then lets you check the ones you still want to get, versus the ones you want to kick out of your (newly organized) in-box. You can also adjust your Gmail settings to catch daily newsletters and push them into a special folder—this way, you can choose when to read them without losing them to spam. Just apply a filter looking for these oft-used phrases: “opt-out,” “unsubscribe,” “viewing the newsletter,” “email notifications” or “update profile,” and you’ll catch 99 percent of the newsletters out there. Fewer daily emails means less need to compulsively refresh (plus fewer opportunities to get sucked into marketing ploys and makeup tutorials).
Step 4: Organize your remaining apps. Try to get them all onto the first screen; your phone will feel less cluttered and you’ll spend less time swiping between screen pages. Divide them into buckets by category to get them all to fit on that first page. For instance, I have Delta and Hotels.com in my “travel” category and my bank, investment, and credit card apps under the “personal finance” category. There may be a few mandatory ones your phone manufacturer doesn’t let you delete (see how they get ya!?), but the rest of the real estate is up to you.
Day 5
Leave your phone in another room to charge while you sleep. Don’t look at it for an hour before bed and for the first hour after you wake up. We’ve already talked about it being a serious knock on your productivity, but it is also detrimental to your health. The blue light emitted from your cell phone screen is a wavelength that boosts our attention, reaction times, and mood during the day. But it has been shown to throw off your body’s natural melatonin levels, making it more difficult for you to fall asleep at night, get that good REM sleep, and wake up rested in the morning. So ban the blue around bedtime. (If you really prefer to read on a device before bed, try the Kindle Paperwhite or another app or e-reader that doesn’t put out blue light.) People have monetized this already, of course, so you can get cute little “beds” for your phone and everything. If putting a little 500-thread-count duvet on your iPhone means you’ll feel comfortable leaving it in another room, then I fully endorse that expenditure.
Day 6
Take a social media fast. No social media use for one full day. You’re probably on social media sites that I’m not cool enough to know about, so I’ll trust that you are thinking of all the ones you use, from Snapchat to LinkedIn to YouTube to Pinterest (and, yes, other apps like Venmo are technically social media sites, which you might not realize). I no longer have social apps on my phone and log in with a browser when I use social media. Not having such constant easy access to them makes me happier. What about you? When you’re off social apps, do you feel happier? You’ll never know until you try it. Super Women like Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence don’t even use social media . . . and they are doing just fine.
Day 7
Unplug for a whole entire day. Like, no phone, no internet, #nofilter. Nada. And I don’t mean keep your phone with you but put it in a pocket on vibrate or face it down as that creates the same effect of being distracted because you know it’s there. So the only way to actually not be distracted is to not have it with you. You can do eeet! This is your final exam, but also the beginning of a new chapter in your digital life.
Ironically enough, there are apps out there that help you track the time you spend on your phone, and others that help with digital detox by sending you notifications when you’ve been sitting on one screen for too long. If you check your phone’s settings and preferences, you might also have a way to manage screen time and schedule shutdown time. This idea might seem a little backward, but if you want to try these apps as part of your commitment to technology moderation, be my guest. Just keep it real with yourself and be aware of the temptation to check out other apps after a minute on these.
Regardless of how and where you accomplish it, I promise you will make it out of this detox alive. It’s not as serious as some of the actual “digital detox” programs out there, which charge thousands of dollars to basically take your phone away. I tried some of them, so you don’t have to. Some of them came with dieting plans and a bunch of chanting meditation things that I’m not into, and I don’t think you’d be, either. So, don’t have FOMO (fear of missing out)—have JOMO (joy of missing out) because you’re saving your time, your money, and your mood. So, DIY your digital detox, mindfully, remembering how being a technojunkie affects your life, from the prefrontal cortex to the corner office.
YOUR DIGITAL DIET MAINTENANCE PLAN
Now that you’ve made it through your seven-day detox (woohoo!), it’s time to put your long-term “technology plan” in place. This is all about deciding how much, and how often, you want devices in your day-to-day life. The details are up to you. But to get you going, here are the strategies and boundaries I’ve come up with to find my digital balance.
Phone-Free Zones
First, I made a list of places not to use the phone, or at least to limit my phone use. Adding a spot to the list didn’t mean I can never use my phone there, but it gives me the self-awareness to at least consider whether I really need to have it in my hand:
• The bathroom (because . . . really?!)
• The elevator (because I love breaking the awkwardness by actually saying “Hi!” to people)
• In a cab or ride share (because there are some pretty interesting drivers to talk to if you get your face out of whatever you are scrolling through long enough to make conversation)
• Walking in the city (because it’s dangerous)
• Driving (because it’s illegal and dangerous)
Old-School Tools
I also brought back some of the traditional tools that smartphones have replaced to help me kick the final stages of my phone habit. We often ask, “What did we do before [iPhones, Amazon, mobile banking, etc.]??” Well, the short answer is . . . pretty much the same things we do now, only slower. Faster is great, but while technology can connect you to the world, it can also disconnect you. It should improve your life, not become your life. The good news is that you probably don’t need to use your phone for lots of the things you’re using it for now. I’m not suggesting you dust off your DVD player and Walkman, but here are my top old-school tricks to stay on track with your “technology plan”:
1. Read a real newspaper once a week. The news cycle is all the same stuff repeated all day long for the entire week, anyway. And for a former network news anchor, rationing my breaking-news consumption is . . . breaking news. If I can do it, you definitely can.
2. Invest in a watch you love. Believe it or not, a watch is actually more than a fashion statement. It also tells time so you don’t have to wake up your phone screen to see if you’re running late.
3. Buy an actual alarm clock. I have one at home, and on the road I use an iPod, which still has an alarm but nothing else to tempt me. I also use my iPod while running, so I can listen to music without annoying text notifications giving me the temptation to write back while I’m running (don’t be that girl!).
4. Get a planner. They make actual planners that you can write in. I know. I have one. I don’t use mine for everything—sometimes, especially at work, you can’t beat digital reminders and notifications—but it’s especially nice for weekend stuff. I love writing down and being mindful of plans to look forward to.
5. Make lists on paper. I use two notepads every day. Why two, Lapin? Well, one has my to-do list on it and the other has my “have-done” list. Try it. If you start to feel stressed-out looking at your to-do list, then look at all the stuff you’ve accomplished on the “have-done” list.
6. Invest in a sound system that isn’t just your phone and some earbuds. It doesn’t need to be a record player (although bonus hipster points for using one of those), but listening to music at home, letting the sound fill your space, and taking the time to enjoy it is so much better than listening to it in one ear while you’re ordering a sandwich. (My go-to chillout song is “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison. It always calms me down, even though I’ve probably played it a thousand times. But it just doesn’t sound the same hearing it while I’m asking for spicy mustard.)
7. Buy a basic calculator. You don’t need some intricate graphing model that does calculus, just something that you can use when paying your bills or figuring out that raise you’re gonna ask for—without getting distracted by your phone. Don’t make a silly mistake because you’re flipping back and forth between the calculator app and incoming texts.
Research has shown that a majority of people would rather go without food and other daily staples than be without their mobile devices. Was that study done in Crazytown, USA?! You know what’s also old-school? Priorities. Let’s bring those back, too.
A pretty good thinker named Albert Einstein once said, “I fear the day when technology will surpass our human interaction; the world will have a generation of idiots.” Super Women are a lot of things but idiotic is not one of them. So, it’s time to bring back some of these time-honored tools that do the job just as well as (and sometimes better than!) the phone.
KEEPING IT BASIC DOESN’T MAKE YOU A BASIC BITCH
I know: you just have to snag the latest and greatest phone. But, what if . . . you kept the phone you already have, which still works just fine? The new model obviously comes with lots of new, cool features, but more cool features means more time you’ll waste test-driving them.
FYI
Some Super Women like Tyra Banks, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Rihanna have reportedly opted to buy “dumb phones” instead of smartphones, or those that only act as a phone.
I’ve interviewed a lot of amazing people who have started or run huge companies. And this might surprise you (it sure surprised me), but many of them use flip phones. I met Sir Philip Green, who runs Topshop, and he showed me his device; he’s used the same model for years. In fact, he bought like twenty of them so he would never run out (like you might stock up on your favorite lipstick color in case it gets discontinued). Sir Philip is a smart dude. He could figure out an iPhone if he wanted. But he doesn’t. He takes all of his calls on his OG flip phone and then moves on to the next thing without getting sucked into an email or checking up on social media.
Another person I admire for her technology awareness is Wendy Williams. I’ve been a regular on her show for years and recently learned that she doesn’t use email. Her assistant reads or prints out the important emails for her, and that’s that. Total in-box Zen. Now, we can’t all have an assistant to screen our email, but we can all learn something from the way Wendy—one of the hardest-working women on TV—optimizes her time. I’d say it’s worked out pretty well for her. Cue: “How you doin’?!”
YOUR SOBER ADVANTAGE
It’s easy for me to tell you to put down your f-ing phone, but it’s not so easy to actually put the f-ing thing down—and leave it there. I get it. I’ve relapsed—and come back from it—multiple times. Eventually it became easier, because each time I returned to the screens I realized that the digital life I was missing was nowhere near as fun as my memory made it out to be. That’s when I started focusing instead on what I gained rather than what I missed by being offline, and so can you:
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WHAT YOU’LL MISS |
WHAT YOU’LL GAIN |
News |
Yep, you’ll miss out on “8 tricks to create a smoky eye,” National Donut Day, and the tantalizing details of the latest celebrity trial proceedings. You’ll also miss out on the quick-hit headlines and listicles, distilling important world news into a single, colorful infographic. How will you possibly go on with your day?? |
In-depth, substantive coverage on the most important news stories of the week, which you’ve read in an actual, physical newspaper and will give you way more to talk about at your next cocktail party than the best listicle out there. |
Friends |
You’ll miss out on your bestie sharing her crazy stories, which waste an hour of your time on text but would be a four-minute conversation if you had a real one instead. And, you’ll think you have way more “friends” than you actually do by obsessing over how many followers you have instead of focusing on being a leader. IRL. |
Thoughtful, in-person conversations and memories that you actually remember—in your brain, not through a series of snaps. Connecting with a friend in an intimate way boosts more than just your mood; research has shown that social interactions change the circuit activity in your brain, boosting your dopamine, too. |
Social Media |
You’re missing an entire photo album of the new car a friend of your mom’s daughter got for her birthday and what some Kardashian girl is eating for breakfast. And you’re missing out on the opportunity to obsess over which pictures you should post from events you weren’t present at, taking the perfect picture that you still edit fifty times with another fifty filters. Oh, and you’re definitely missing trolling your ex-boyfriend’s feeds for which of your mutual friends are following his new girlfriend. |
Awareness of everything happening around you, from the smell of fresh-cut grass to the way the wind ruffles your dress to how delicious your coconut ice cream tastes. You’ll also gain perspective: that your life is the one worth living, not the many other lives you happen to follow on social media. |
Romantic Relationships |
You are definitely missing out on obsessing over text messages from a new guy you’re into, or an old flame you wish would come back around. You’re also missing out on being at a party, event, or bar full of hot bachelors and not paying any attention to them because you are swiping through your phone. |
The opportunity to meet someone great, in person, by striking up conversation—in person. And you might even gain a partner. |
Work |
You’ll miss writing quick, impulsive emails instead of being thoughtful and professional about your approach. You’ll also miss out on having actual phone calls and meetings with the people you work with because you are using one-sentence or even one-word emails as a proxy for conversation. |
Greater focus at work, which will improve your overall performance. “But, people expect me to respond within a few minutes, Lapin!” Oh, really? Why do they expect that? Because you’ve always responded within a few minutes before. You train people to adapt to your email habits just by doing them. Stepping away from the email treadmill you are running on in order to really think a situation through will give you the biggest edge yet. |
When it comes right down to it, you’re just not missing out on that much valuable stuff by sticking to a reasonable relationship with your phone. The most important thing you can do to wean off the smartphone security blanket is focus on rebooting and nurturing a rich offline life. If you relapse as you try to implement a sustainable “technology plan,” try an abridged detox or do a little quick rehab by:
1. Setting up “do not disturb” functionality that lets you hear from, say, your son but no one else
2. Creating “digital free zones” at work and home where Wi-Fi is literally blocked in certain rooms
3. Separating your personal and business accounts or numbers
SUPER WOMAN
TIP
Lead the (Un)Charge
Errors at work increase by 28 percent after getting a phone call and 23 percent after getting a text, according to a study from Florida State University. That means that if you limit calls and texts while at work, then you already have a 28 percent and 23 percent advantage, respectively, over colleagues who don’t. One trick for holding yourself accountable is just not bringing a charger with you to the office. (Sure, you can borrow one, but . . . don’t.) The battery doesn’t die on your phone while it’s just sitting there minding its own business. The more you use it, the more your battery dies. So, live a little and it will live, too.
Now, lest you think I’m a downer on all things smartphone, let me just say: It’s all about being mindful of your usage (we have a whole step on that coming up next). Our phones can be some of the best tools out there, as we discussed earlier, but only if we keep them solidly in that “tools” category of our lives and not make them an obsession. It’s pretty incredible that you can Skype with a relative halfway around the world. Getting a Lyft when it’s raining is awesome (for you and your hair). Managing your personal finances, checking in with your monthly budget, and making credit card payments is way more laborious (not to mention, unfriendly to trees) without that banking app on your phone. The list could go on for the rest of this book. My point is that using your phone for specific tasks and then being done with it gives you an A in efficiency—and Super Women are nothing if not efficient AF.
CHECK IN AND CHECK OUT
So did you manage it? The “one check” challenge for the entirety of this chapter? If so, are you up for another?
If you don’t check your phone at all until you finish this book, email me at nicole@becomingsuperwomanbook.com. As a reward, I will send a friend of your choice an e-book so that she, too, can become a Super Woman.
Oh, and if you don’t have her email address, do me a favor—just pick up the phone and call her to ask for it. Catch up, tell her about the book (and how much you love it, obviously), and then tell her about this little challenge. You might also find out something about her life . . . before she posts about it on social media.
BOTTOM LINE
Conventional Wisdom: Smartphones are how we stay connected in today’s world.
Seventy percent of people with smartphones keep them “within eye distance” at work. What else do you keep within eye distance at all times at work? Maybe a picture of your family or your dog? One of these items is worthwhile, and one isn’t. Studies have shown that we gain more brain power and achieve more success from making actual connections with our colleagues, friends, and family than virtual ones.
Conventional Wisdom: I don’t need to do a full digital detox, as long as I keep the idea of using my phone less in mind.
Mmmkay . . . keep that “in mind.” That’s like saying you’re going to get in shape by “keeping it in mind” to go to the gym. Solid plans keep you accountable and aware of your behaviors. You may get to a point where putting your phone away is totally normal for you. But if that day is not today (and let’s be honest, for most of us it’s not) then you should really consider the full digital detox shebang.
Conventional Wisdom: Advantages at work come from . . . hard work. So, if I do all my work, who cares if I take a break to look at my phone?
Well, you should care, that’s who. How often does that five-minute break actually stop at five minutes? Doing good work is a baseline. It’s not something unique to you, it’s expected (as an employer, I know that). What sets you apart and gets you ahead are the advantages others don’t have. The advantage of working with both hands (like, without your smartphone in one of them) is a smart place to start.