a phone boundaries experiment

finding extra space when time feels like a finite resource

When listening to a recent episode of Amy Poehler’s podcast, I learned that some of film’s creative giants don’t own smartphones. It’s no surprise phones prevent the art of boredom and zap creativity, so I set out to do a mini experiment. The original goal was no more than 2 hours per day on my phone, with the exception of listening to music and using my phone for patient care (note writing tool, apps to guide clinical decision making, etc).

The hope was having better awareness of how much free time I actually have. With work responsibilities ramping up, time has felt like a very finite and limited resource. But if I spend all my in between moments scrolling, rather than taking a few moments to reset, all energy to make the most of extra time is anemic or extinguished.

Typically in a season of feeling like I have no time, I need a rearrangement of daily task in order to re-examine where I’m spending my time. To therefore better allocate time in alignment with values.

If I want to carve out more time for things like learning a language, I have to clear the muddy waters. Figure out where time is slowly leaking out unnoticed, and where brain bandwidth is wasted. So that even if I do actually have time, I have the energy and attention span to use it wisely.

A few of my biggest guidelines were: checking email in more concentrated times rather than 100x per day, avoiding phones in the in-between moments (work commute, in between patients, and *ahem* the bathroom), and putting my phone in another room before bed.

Here are some things I discovered.