I hate my phone, the only reason I have it is because I need it for things like authenticating to the government and banks that I am indeed myself. In this experiment Thomas and I have put away our phones. This means that my phone is turned off for the whole day. I personally wanted to do this for a while, but after seeing this interesting youtube video and finding out that I can disable microsoft authenticator and using a normal one instead that I can commit to it. cause I needed the Microsoft authenticator for my school, and I need 2fa.
Specifics
will only use them under these conditions:
- I need to make a call and there is no one to ask.
- To check my voicemail once a day for like max 10m
- If I need my phone for any 2fa.
- In case of an emergency
The reason that I need to listen to my voicemail instead of just, buying a landline is because I do not live on my own.
For a while I will also take my phone with me to school since I have to travel 1 hour, but it will be off at the bottom of my bag. In case of emergencies.
(Thomas is not this strict)
My goal here is to not need my phone anymore. This doesnāt mean I go without internet though, I still have my computer and I still have a job and school. I donāt want to be internet less, I want to not have a pocket sized computer with me that I unconsciously start using whenever I carry it. I believe that using the internet is a good thing, just not every moment of the day. I believe that Gaming is acceptable when you do it on a dedicated device.
Preparations
I knew for a while that I had wanted to do this so I already had a lot of notepads ready to be used. I never used my phone to wake me up so I didnāt need to replace that. The only real preparation I did was telling my girlfriend about it and that is about it.
Journal
I am writing about my experiences in this section. Things I notice about life that changes.
3. 2025-07-08
I officially am using my smartphone again, after about 3 months.
2. 2025-04-18
It is quite a different experience to eat breakfast without watching a YouTube video. I started noticing that I kept wanting to grab my phone, so now I am keeping count of this in my notepad. I turned on my phone to see whether I had voicemails, I did not.
1. 2025-04-17
It is the start of the experiment. At 2:37PM We started it. I havenāt noticed many problems, I have turned it off and put it away so that I donāt see it laying around. After dinner I was able to do the dishes before even eating dessert, we were done with the food and I instantly started doing the dishes. Normally Iād first wait 10m on my phone if not more just like the others. So that was interesting.
At this point only 5 people know about this, Thomas, my girlfriend, Emiel and my parents.