Ep. 396: Can I Learn To Love My Phone Again?

Do you remember when the iPhone was first introduced? It was an exciting moment. Like, I wanna play you a clip here from Steve Jobs' keynote address at the two thousand and seven Macworld where he first introduced this device. I want you to listen to the enthusiasm of the assembled crowd. Three things. A wide screen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. An iPod, a phone. Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it iPhone. Wow. Those were the days. And then when we finally got our hands on those devices for the first time, they're everything we had hoped they would be. They were slick and easy to use, and they were super useful, and they were fun. But then, of course, over the years that followed, our relationship with the phones began to sour. Now a big part of this is the attention economy platforms that realize there's money to be made in making us look at these screens longer and longer. So they built their contrived addictive apps and soon we felt obsessed with our phones. But also, it's just clutter. Over the years, we've added more and more different types of apps and services, some useful, some that we've forgotten, some that become habits, and some we wish we could get rid of. And now just the whole screen when we turn on that device is a multicolored, garish, distracting pile of exhaustion. Wouldn't it be nice if we could go back to the way we looked at our phones in 2007? Well, here's the thing. I think we can. In recent years, there's been a lot of interest in both the app space and the sort of strategy space in figuring out how to transform the the the actual setup of your phone so that it is much simpler and more fun. Like the phones used to be when we first got them. And to do this without having to give up major functionality that still makes smartphones useful. I call this effort putting your phone into 2,007 mode, and it's what I wanna talk about today. So I have five big ideas I wanna share, five practical ideas for transforming your existing phone into 2,007 mode. The first four come from very popular videos online and the fifth idea will be my own. Collectively, these present a possibility for a much healthier and more enjoyable relationship with your device, and let's be honest, we could all use that in our current moment. Alright. So let's get into it. As always, I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show for people seeking depth in a distracted world. And we'll get started right after the music. Alright. So let's get into it with my first piece of advice for putting your phone into 2,007 mode. This …