The other day, on the local college campus, I noticed that people who are walking by themselves are way more likely to be looking at their phone (or wearing headphones) than people who are walking with someone else. Specifically, about three times as likely: ~71% (n=80) vs 25% (n=40).

This sounds extremely obvious, but there’s something there: People are more likely to turn to their phones when they’re not engaged in something else. (In this case, talking to their friends.)

Okay, that also sounds obvious. But! Maybe this isn’t:

It follows that if you want to spend less time sucked into your devices, you should spend more time engaged in other things.

Great, you say. But what other things!! What is engaging besides phones!?

Fair question. Well, it’ll be things that you find engaging, and I don’t know what those are. Do you?

Some people really know what they want, somehow — my sister, for example, just wants to write books and take care of her family. If you’re like her, great, you already know what you value, so just do more of that.

But I am not like that, and maybe you aren’t either.

So, here are a few prompts that I think are good at surfacing things that you value, or that excite you.

I asked a friend to describe his ideal day, and his answer was “spend all day climbing with my friends, and all night dancing with my friends”. That sounds unsustainable for more than like one day, but it certainly points in the direction of some concrete activities: climbing, dancing, and spending time with friends.

What would an ideal day look like for you?

I got my first phone when I went to college, and I quickly became embroiled in fraught messaging with a terrible boy who I was obsessed with. (Ah, youth.) That year for Thanksgiving, my sweet little cousins visited from Asia for the first time in three years. I loved those cousins and I only had a few days with them, but I spent most of the holiday standing in the corner, checking my phone for messages from a terrible boy.

It’s been over a decade, but I still remember my cousin coming and tugging on my leg and saying in her plaintive little voice, “Oh, please won’t you come and play with us?” And I still regret spending that time on my phone instead of with her.

What do you want to pay attention to?

I had this dress I really loved, but it was broken in a way that needed a sewing machine to fix, and I didn’t know how to use a sewing machine. So my beloved dress lay in a sad pile for more than two years. Then, one day, a friend came over and showed me how to set up my sewing machine. I looked up how to use it, and practiced, and I made tons of rookie mistakes, but I got better. And eventually I felt ready to fix the dress, and now I can wear it again.

Or, like everyone, I had a lot of books on my shelf that I always meant to read, but never found the time. Now I’ve read a lot of them, and it turns out some of them are bangers.

What do you always mean to do but never get around to?

When I was in college I doodled all the time, expressing my overflowing angst with dark ballpoint pen and tasteful splashes of red. I’ve never thought of myself as someone who knew how to draw, because the only real-world objects I can vaguely reproduce are trees and single eyes. But I really liked this doodling.

What did you used to love to do that you never do anymore?

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So, now you’ve thought about things to do that might be exciting / rewarding / interesting / engaging / better than your phone! Will you suddenly find the time and motivation to just go do them? Maybe! Probably not. But at least you know what they are now. That will be useful going forward. Stick with me.