I usually begin my mornings with a look on my smartphone. I check for server alerts, what the weather is like, important mails I might have missed and swipe around to snooze my alarms. If the kids are already awake I make the older one a quick breakfast. While she eats I make myself coffee and listen to internet radio on my smartphone, with an occasional glimpse on the stock market, bank account and once again mails. Countless checks later I end my day by catching up with blogs and twitter I hadn’t had time to read during the day. My eye lids usually shut down while still holding my phone.
When I have my phone at hand I constantly slip it out of my pocket: during short breaks, while waiting for the elevator, in the elevator, exiting the elevator, waiting in line at the fast food restaurant, … I lost count of the endless occasions.
This friday evening and the weekend were different. I forgot my phone charger in the office.
Wtf is wrong with this dude? What is he looking at? The world? pic.twitter.com/lTpCF5Y5QW
— Cameron Power (@cap0w) February 5, 2014
My phone’s battery was dead Friday 8 PM. At first worried and eager to buy a charger the following morning, or, driving to the office to get mine back, the weekend turned out pretty good. Actually it was one of the more relaxing weekends I didn’t have in a long time. It’s not that there is usually urgent stuff going on during the weekends, it is more of a “mindset thing”. I was calm, relaxed and fully concentrated on the stuff going on around me. I had time to think about things, spend more quality time with my family, didn’t find out about possible obligations, and, came up with this blog post. Basically how I envisage a weekend should be.
Furthermore I came to the conclusion this is life I want to live: focused and with less stress. Spending time without constantly getting distracted by push notifications, emails, newsletters, sms, whatsapp messages and phone calls. It is so refreshing and purely energizes yourself. Now that I have my charger again I’ll try to find the mental switch to turn the phone off. You should try too.
Everything else makes you a slave of your device.
Good for you! I love your tagline: “business is like bondage sometimes”. It is actually like bondage A LOT of the time! When we take on projects we are very excited about, it’s very tempting to become obsessed with checking things faster than they could possibly progress. It’s a waste of time and takes away from our enjoyment of the project. If only more people would forget their phone chargers–maybe because of people like you they’ll start doing it on purpose!