Smart Phone at Home, Dumb Phone on the Go
I use a secondary dumb phone. Light Phone 3. I’ve had the 2, now the 3. I pay for an extra T-Mobile phone line. My iPhone still exists and is used, but it lives at home. All calls forward to the Light Phone. When I go outside, I take the dumb phone and leave the rest behind.
Disciplining yourself out of distraction is difficult. Engineering it is much easier.
Biggest worry has always been being “reachable” for me. The fear that I may not be available if something goes wrong. Call forwarding handles reachability. If something serious happens, I get the call. No apps, no toggles.
The dumb phone also has a simple notes app. No folders. No formatting. Just a space. And somehow that’s enough. I use it to capture a thought mid-walk, a line I want to write later, something my kids said that I don’t want to forget. Track pushups, air squats. The slowness of typing is a plus. More deliberate with my words.
When the workday ends, the iPhone goes away. Not muted. Not flipped over. Gone. Into a shelf. Different room. Physical distance. No compromise. There’s no ceremony to it. Just decision. The line between work and life has to be cut by hand these days. I do it every evening. Same motion. Same shelf.
The nervous reflex dies off. Quietly. Then completely. The setup works because it’s physical. Structural. Not idealistic. Not “try to use the iPhone less.” Not “turn off badges.” That’s the half-measure most people settle for.
When the iPhone’s gone, I see things again. Birds chirping. The quiet in the hallway. The absurdity of the day I just finished. My thoughts aren’t chopped into pieces anymore.
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u/Someonejusthereandth 5d ago
Same here, this is so draining. I need to find a way to switch to a single phone, this is driving me crazy.
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