A couple of days ago, I checked into my hotel, I’d been on the road all morning and my phone had been drained.  It was down to 25% battery life which is a literal translation to I will leave you within the hour.

I was hungry and wanted to eat, so I plugged my phone in and I seriously stared at if for the next 30 seconds and contemplated – “Do I go to lunch without my phone?  What if an email comes in and I miss it?  What if there is a text and I don’t get it?”

How about instead…

“When did I become so tied to this thing that it had the power to overrule my grumbling stomach?”

Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?  Well, it looks like my phone just joined the base level of Physiological needs right beside air, food, shelter, warmth, sex and sleep.

That’s right, my phone just entered the same category as finding food and later sleep (which is slightly funny because last night I was woken up a few times by my phone buzzing so there is a contraction there).

I try to put my phone down as often as I can and sometimes I succeed, other times I don’t, but in that moment I realized how much of a fifth appendage it had now become to me.  If I don’t have it, I’d be looking for it, worried someone would not be able to get a hold of me.  Somehow I survived when I was a kid of telling my parents a few hours after the fact that something had happened at school and not the instant it happened when I was at my lowest point, so we can do it and wait.

I left my phone there to charge while I went out to eat.  It was a great lunch, very quiet, uninterrupted, I had 3 new ideas for blogs, no place to write them down (I use Trello on my phone) so I had to work hard to remember them all… and I did (but it was one of those focussed, constantly repeating endeavours).

And who knows, if I don’t have it with me as much, perhaps I could solve the problem of the ever decreasing battery!

 

Want more? Check out my book Code Your Way Up – available as an eBook or Paperback on Amazon (CAN and US).  I’m also the co-host of the Remotely Prepared podcast.

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1 Comment

  1. I now make a point of not taking my iPhone with me to work once a week. That day is very easily more productive than any two other days, completely stress free, and

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