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 m...

Digital Intentionality