I spent ten minutes this evening without my phone. Yes, ten great minutes. And it was extremely difficult to do that. With the mind wandering back to looking for the phone. Again and yet again. It was pure agony.
I came upstairs where my daughter was feeding the dog and watching TV. So, I sat down with her to give her company. I had left my phone in the family room while I came upstairs, so I did not have it with me.
My brain wandered. Usually, I have my iPad on the bedroom console and I started looking for it. But now, the iPad was down in my basement den. I took it down to do a whiteboarding work session and realized it was more valuable there than here. So, it seems like that might be an appropriate permanent location to keep it.
Apart from the iPad, my spouse and I share a MacBook Pro which normally again is in my bedroom. And today, it was with my spouse. Downstairs.
All electronics options were ruled out - no phone, no iPad, no Macbook, no TV (as my daughter was watching it) - and there I was in deep misery and agony from my device withdrawal. For all of 10 minutes.
So, I closed my eyes and deeply breathed for the next 5 minutes. Just focusing on my breath. And bringing my monkey brain back to the focus on breathing rather than keep thinking about retrieving my phone which is kept going back to. The additional detail is that if I had the phone on me, I might not have been using it and it would have been lying around near me. But more of the fact that it wasn’t with me, which was causing all this harm.
This is the plight of a modern human. No wonder we are doomed. As a race. Climate challenges or not. Asteroids hitting the Earth or not. Giant Tsunami’s or not. We are quite capable of making sure we bring ourselves down, one way or another… we are extremely good at it.