Speaker 1: Hi is Brian Thomas. I'd like to welcome to the
Speaker 1: fifty five Catssey Morning Show author Richard Simon. He directs
Speaker 1: the website strategy at Georgetown Law and Washington d C.
Speaker 1: As a former reporter and webmaster at Baltimore's The Daily
Speaker 1: Record that he is now an author Unplug How to
Speaker 1: Break up with your Phone and Reclaim your life. Conceptually,
Speaker 1: it sounds great, Richard, Welcome to the Morning Show. It sounds,
Speaker 1: though very difficult in practice these days. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: what you did and of what I actually start by
Speaker 1: asking you what drew you to want to write this
Speaker 1: particular book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the journey definitely starts with me as a
Speaker 2: thirty three year old father of two at the time
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, my smartphone was putting a strain on
Speaker 2: pretty much all facets of life, from professional to personal,
Speaker 2: and I knew I had to do something about it.
Speaker 2: So I decided to turn off my phone for an
Speaker 2: entire year, and it was one of the most transformative
Speaker 2: periods of my life. And what I realized is that
Speaker 2: pretty much all the self help articles out there and
Speaker 2: books suggest hacks. Hacks are noble, like deleting social media apps,
Speaker 2: turning your phone to gray scale digital sabbaths. All those
Speaker 2: things are nice, but for something as addictive as a
Speaker 2: phone as a phone, it doesn't go far enough. So
Speaker 2: I ended up seeking out dozens of people who had
Speaker 2: gone through similar phone breakups, and believe or not, I'm
Speaker 2: so glad phone released. It can be on a Cincinnati
Speaker 2: show because my book opens up with Nick Costianos when
Speaker 2: he was a Cincinnati Red so I profile and interview
Speaker 2: him for the introduction because he turned off his smartphone,
Speaker 2: and just like me, it was incredibly transformative for him.
Speaker 1: Well, some people just stare constantly at their phones. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I do with a segment each
Speaker 1: week on the program Tech Friday with Dave Hatter, he
Speaker 1: and I are anti app. We don't do apps. All
Speaker 1: they are is data harvesters. YadA, YadA, YadA. I was
Speaker 1: able to live my entire life up till the time
Speaker 1: smartphones existed. I'm coming up on sixty years old. I
Speaker 1: never had an app, didn't need them, and I don't
Speaker 1: need them now. That's kind of my view and my
Speaker 1: take on it. But insofar as to having this smart phone,
Speaker 1: this is how we all generally commit unicate. So the
Speaker 1: idea of dealing without this. I don't even have a
Speaker 1: landline anymore. So what about people that it still needs
Speaker 1: to make a phone calls. I mean cutting it off
Speaker 1: completely seems literally impossible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely is not. I go through four different breakup
Speaker 2: styles in the book, and one of the things I
Speaker 2: realized for my dozens of interviews is that something like
Speaker 2: this is for everyone. I profile one call anesthesiologists at
Speaker 2: Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the top research hospitals in
Speaker 2: the country, a law partner, a social media person, a
Speaker 2: software engineer, a school principle, all people who turn off
Speaker 2: their phones. Now, the one I think that will have
Speaker 2: four different breakup styles in the book, and the one
Speaker 2: that I think that will resonate most for your listeners
Speaker 2: is switching from a smartphone to a basic phone. And
Speaker 2: when you switch to a basic phone, it touches on
Speaker 2: that piece you're talking about where you can still make
Speaker 2: calls and text, but essentially with the most basic of
Speaker 2: basic phones, that's it. And one of the biggest problems
Speaker 2: for people is the time suck with a smartphone. The
Speaker 2: average can spend more than five hours a day on
Speaker 2: a smartphone. It's time you simply don't get back. And
Speaker 2: with a basic phone, it's so terrible to use that
Speaker 2: you won't want to use it that much. So all
Speaker 2: of a sudden you regain time.
Speaker 1: Perfect idea. And see, that's basically what my smartphone is.
Speaker 1: It is an intentionally dumb phone because I don't use
Speaker 1: any of the apps on it. Now, how about the
Speaker 1: you have an off by default recommendation as well, And
Speaker 1: this is something that I embrace. Every night, go to bed,
Speaker 1: my phone is off, and that's the way again, I
Speaker 1: live my life that way. Growing up, you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have phone calls in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: you didn't take them if you did. My dad was
Speaker 1: got up early like I did, so he would insist
Speaker 1: the phones would be off. So I can handle that.
Speaker 1: If there's a phone message on, I'll listen to on
Speaker 1: a wake up in the morning.
Speaker 2: Brian, that is that is fantastic. Yeah, So the off
Speaker 2: by default approach, I recommend sixty days of at least
Speaker 2: sixty days of having your smartphone off to recalibrate, throw
Speaker 2: a word pathways in your brain. And with the off
Speaker 2: by default approach, for those sixty days, you would have
Speaker 2: your smartphone off and own turn it on to complete
Speaker 2: a critical task. Then after you finish those sixty days,
Speaker 2: you can alter the definition of off by default too.
Speaker 2: You only turn your smartphone on if you want to
Speaker 2: enhance your life. That way, you have control of your
Speaker 2: smartphone rather than it being control of you.
Speaker 1: What about relationships? I understand the toughest. So and you're
Speaker 1: going down this path of off by default or not
Speaker 1: or going cell phone free? Was your wife?
Speaker 2: That's correct. My wife is a pediatrician. Like any good pediatrician,
Speaker 2: she thought through all the various scenarios of what could
Speaker 2: go what could go wrong, and we realized that if
Speaker 2: I do this, we're really have to set expectations, especially
Speaker 2: with kids in terms of coordinating. But one of the
Speaker 2: things we realized right away was that on an average day,
Speaker 2: we would be texting throughout the day. So by the
Speaker 2: time we got home and had dinner together as a family,
Speaker 2: we knew what was going on, like there was nothing
Speaker 2: to catch up one because we were texting throughout the day.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, a smartphone is removed from our
Speaker 2: environment and there's no texting throughout the day. So when
Speaker 2: we get back home together, we actually enjoy catching up
Speaker 2: with each other because there's stuff to catch up.
Speaker 1: One that's awesome. I understand you got to run. Richard
Speaker 1: Simon has been great talking to me this morning. Unplug
Speaker 1: How to break up with your phone and reclaim your life.
Speaker 1: It's on my blog page. People can easily get a
Speaker 1: copy of it. It's a great spending time with you today, Richard.
Speaker 1: Thanks for writing the book.