Author: spdave

It was an interesting experience for me overall since I realised how little my phone is of use to me and how much I've spent on purchasing this device in the past five to seven years. I had planned a list of activities that I will be doing on this day without my phone, from cleaning my room, doing laundry to finishing class assignments. But most importantly, I had to come up with unusual ways of communicating with my long distance family and partner. Planning being my forte helps me get through things smoothly and so, I was well prepared and geared up to take on this challenge of experiencing phone detox for twenty-four hours.

Throughout the day, I spoke to my partner through Skype and that turned out to be a much better experience than WhatsApp or Google Duo. On Skype, we could share screens and hence we worked, critiqued each other's assignments and watched a movie together. It was an enjoyable date that I never saw coming. I felt like we could connect at a deeper level with respect to the kind of work we put into our assignments. The power of screen sharing proved to be magical for us. I could do everything on my laptop other than WhatsApp, and the people who mattered to me the most (who I talk to on a daily basis) were already informed about my little detox activity. This helped me resolve my anxiety.

While a phone is definitely a conveninvent device and since it was a 1 day thing I didn't mind not using it. But on the hindsight, playing music on the laptop while cooking, or even talking to my partner on Skype while cooking was a bit difficult because of the size of it. I was struggling with placing the laptop right without damaging it. Sound matters to me a lot and I had feared initially that my laptop wouldn't give me that level of music experience as my phone, but to my surprise, it was pretty good. So, I was happy to discover something new about my laptop on this day. Even though I watch movies on it at full volume I never got to compare the sound quality until now. This was a happy feeling and just when I thought I could get by the day easily, it was laundry time. 

My phone is what gets me by when I'm doing laundry and not having it by my side did scare me. I had carried a book to read, to pass twenty-eight whole minutes while my clothes were getting washed. But, I just wasn't able to read in that environment, it was noisy and made me feel uncomfortable. Time suddenly stopped for me and I started thinking about how I would've been sitting here with my phone and watching some Shazeb Sheikh (dance) videos instead. To get over those thoughts I started walking around the area just to curb my boredom. It was tough but I made it. This is when I realized the need to be entertained all the time and how my phone would assist me with that. Eventually, my mind started overthinking and it led to depressing thoughts. Fortunately, it didn't last long since the laundry was done by then.

The day was going as planned and connecting with my partner differently spiced things up in our relationship. Moreover, since I've stopped using social media, it was a relaxing experience for me overall. Besides, I'm not a techno savvy person, hence this phone detox day helped me understand the differences and importances of the gadgets I own. I also took the day to organize my thoughts and saw that I could spend time with myself and it wasn't as scary as I had thought it would be. 

I had planned activities for the day, but had completely forgotten about the night when I set an alarm to wake me up. Since I didn't have my phone to rely on, I felt incomplete and uncertain. But then I somehow liked the thrill element attached to this. This would test how much I am in routine if I sleep at the same time that I do every night. Next morning, when I woke up, I was very anxious to check the time on the analog clock. To my excitement and relief, I found that I had woken up at the exact same time that I do every day even without the alarm. So I decided to delete my alarm and try waking up on my own for the coming week to see if I could eliminate the need for it completely. This was one of the most empowered feelings I've had lately. 

To sum up my experience, I would like to conclude by saying that while it freaked me out by just thinking about the fact that I won't be able to speak to my loved ones,  I realized that alternatives are always there and to my luck even better! Also, I overcame my fear of losing touch with my loved ones and came out feeling strong and energetic.