how not having a phone impacted my day-to-day, in case anyone's considered having a retro-style no-phone/flip phone summer:
social obligations:
less pressure to constantly respond to texts
unable to respond to texts sent on imessage
missing a lot of the cool apple features (gamepigeon, reacts, animations, stickers, etc)
need to keep several tabs open on the computer to monitor any urgent messages that might be sent over discord, Instagram, or email
can't use the Remind app or a lot of productivity apps because they're not available as a desktop version on locked Chromebooks
productivity:
I can't bring my phone to bed, I've started sleeping much earlier
my headaches have reduced since text on my laptop tends to be larger than text on my phone (and I can't read documents on my laptop in moving vehicles, which was also causing pretty bad headaches)
I don't think it's made TOO much of an impact on how I spend my time, but I have found myself scrolling on TikTok less because the swipe feature is so laggy on my Chromebook
quality of work:
as you might have noticed, the image quality on my blog tends to be very skewed. this is because I take half of my pictures through my desktop camera, and the other half through my DSLR.
a lot more intention behind everything I do (for example, when I post a picture on Tumblr, I need to pull out the DSLR, frame the picture nicely, transfer everything onto an old laptop with an SD reader, download to drive, then upload onto the app. I find myself planning my shots a lot more carefully and like to take several photos in one session)
overall state of mind
it definitely increased my personal satisfaction with my work and made me feel more accomplished
added workload for a lot of things I didn't even think about when I had a phone (again, taking pictures, transferring files, sharing things with people on the go)
I find myself unable to check the time or do tasks while walking across my school campus, which is frustrating when I need to write a note to myself
in a similar vein, I find myself thinking a lot more about how I will organize my time in the future or trying to recall concepts during short breaks where it doesn't make sense to pull out my laptop. this gets me into a productive mindset and I usually have a better time working on myself and having a positive outlook
people are constantly shocked that I don't have a phone. Many of my teachers have a "phone in the bin" policy for their classes, so they checked my bag pretty regularly in the early days because they were skeptical about the validity of my claim of not having a phone at all
i feel like I definitely had an addiction, and being able to get off of it was really helpful for my self-confidence and ability to overcome challenges
overall, I would really recommend at least trying to get off of your phone for like a week or two if you can! if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. If it works, it works. Giving it a shot probably wouldn't hurt imo. I'm honestly planning to just get myself a flip phone for emergencies because I really like the feeling of not having a guaranteed way to pass time and instead having to come up with things to do myself :D
