You know as well as I. It is no good trying to tell yourself “I am disciplined, I can control my device use. I can resist that game on my phone, that website I want to reload for the millionth time even though it has not changed. I won’t be tempted by that social media app…I can focus”.
No…you can’t! Stop lying to yourself.
Just because your iPad is great for a myriad of uses doesn’t mean it should be used for a variety of things. Maybe there is something to be said for specialised devices. Specialised as opposed to generalised. Thats what we are going for here.
I propose an experiment. You may wish to try something similar, this is obviously specific to me and my devices. You may not be as Apple-centric. Thats fine, no judgements here! Hopefully this will give a sense of what I am trying to achieve, something that can be replicated by anyone who wishes.
How are we going to do this?
I have defined three broad areas my device use falls into and have divided specific tasks between each device :
1) iPad, productivity – writing, reading, studying, research, calendar & task management, web browsing.
2) AppleTV, entertainment – games, social media, podcasts, Youtube, movies and TV.
3) iPhone, communication – Email, messaging, phone calls, music, camera, audiobooks.
There is a little crossover, audiobooks for example do not strictly speaking come under the ‘communication’ categorisation. Forgive me, but that is how I am choosing to arrange my device use.
The plan then is simple, only perform each task on that specific device. If I want to play a game, I don’t play on my iPad as I have in the past (I have removed all games from my iPad and iPhone), I go to my AppleTV and play there. This is not an ‘ideal’ scenario, I cannot just play whenever I want. My wife may want us to watch something together. In which case the game takes second place. This is not a pain point, it’s a constraint, and constraints are liberating!
Maybe I am out at work, away from my iPad and want to browse the web, nah ah! Not so fast, safari has been removed from my iPhone so it will have to wait till I get home. Again not a pain point, a liberating constraint.
The goal here is to train my mind to recognise that I only perform certain functions on certain devices, under certain conditions. To train my mind that its not ok to just flit mindlessly from one task to the next without thought or consideration. To develop patience, and recognise that its ok if I forget the webpage I wanted to check out by the time I get home because it wasn’t that important to begin with. To have relaxing entertainment that refreshes because it has defined limits and value.
In the past I have tried to generalise my devices, albeit without realising. It was nice to have access to a podcast on all my devices, I could sit on the couch and turn on the TV to continue listening to an episode I’m halfway through after starting on my iPad or iPhone. But that decision is not as simple as it first seems. I’m not just deciding to listen to a podcast on the TV, I am choosing from a host of things I could be doing on the TV. Choices like this contribute to decision fatigue, without us even realising it.
By specialising my devices I am making deliberate choices as to what I am not going to do. This may be more important than deciding what I am going to do in that moment.
Now, I already know that I’m not going to turn the TV on unless it’s for one of the above, pre-defined, functions. Same goes for my phone. I could browse the web on my phone, but if I do, it distracts me from other things I want to be doing at that time. If I am using my phone, I’m generally out of the house. If I am out of the house, I want to be taking in my surroundings, engaging with the people I meet, making memories. I don’t want anything to take away from that experience. If I allowed safari back to my phone, the first queue I am in, I will end up mindlessly browsing the handful of webpages in my favourites. I am making a statement to myself that this will not be allowed to happen and I am making that statement ahead of time, before I find myself in that position facing the temptation.
I plan on spending the whole of July with my devices setup like this and will report back on how it’s gone. No doubt there will be lessons learned and tweaks to be made so subscribe if you like topics like this and you will be able to read more like this soon!
Thanks for reading!
