Phones Stole Our Lives. We Investigated How to Reclaim Them.

Cal Newport 0:00 So there's an article that's been on my mind recently. It actually came out in August in The Wall Street Journal, and it was titled, I have it here, "I Didn't Realize How Addicted I Was to My Phone Until I Went to Prison." Now, it was written by a, a Cincinnati politician who went to jail for some white-collar crimes. And what he talks about in the article is that when he was in prison, where he obviously couldn't have a phone, many things in his life actually became richer. He talked about noticing with detail the changing of the seasons. He talked about having deep conversations with his cellmate. He even began writing poetry, which is something he had never done before. Okay, then he gets released from prison, you know, yay, but what happens between him and his phone? Well, perhaps this is predictable, but let me read to you from the article what happened once he got home from prison. As he writes, "Within just a few months, I'd reverted to my old habits, immediately glancing at and engaging with every ping and alert and reflexively picking up my phone to scroll through my rotation of go-to websites. It's an irony I'm still grappling li- with that a kind of freedom I learned in prison I couldn't manage to bring back home with me." Let's think about that for a second. He's basically saying, "Look, there's kind of a balance, a wash here between all of the deprivations of prisons, but also the joys I got from not being on my phone," that being on his phone, in some sense, was almost as bad as being in prison. This article stuck with me because it, it matches a thought. It helped inspire, I should say, a thought that I can't quite shake. I think we are lying to ourselves about just how serious our negative relationship with our phones actually has become. We're saying, "Oh, it's not so bad. Like, you know, I probably should use it a little bit less." But I think we are lying to ourselves. That's what this article sort of helped me understand. I think we've got a real problem with our phones that's worse than we thought, and if this is true, it means that we have to move past the sort of friendly, not so hard to implement tips and hacks that we talk about so often for how to use your phone less, put it in grayscale, have an app you use to reduce some of your screen time, and we have to begin considering more serious interventions, interventions that take the problem of our negative relationship with our phones as seriously as the problem actually is. But what would that look like to take much more serious interventions in terms of our relationship with our phones? Well, I wasn't quite sure, so I decided we should go find out, and so I dispatched our correspondent, friend of mine and friend of the show, Dale Davidson, to go find out. Uh, he's went around the world from the emerging internet AA movement to a remote farm in Denmark to talk to people who had gone to extremes to change their relationship with their phones and therefore to change their lives. I wanted to understand what radical interventions actually look like. And so this is what we're gonna do in today's show. It's gonna unfold in three acts, and in each act, Dale is going to re- bring us, uh, his reporting on a different person or place he went to learn about extreme measures people take to change their relationships with their phone. Once we've got through those three acts, I will then distill the core lessons from Dale's reports. What does it mean for you and I? What can we pull away from these stories we're about to hear and apply them to taking, uh, making our own lives better by becoming much, much more serious about how we fix our relationship with our phones? So if you've had this sort of inkling as well that maybe the issue you have with this device is something that, uh, a listicle of suggestions is not gonna fix, then you need to listen to today's episode because I do actually end up with a very clear answer, and I gotta tell you, I did not know this was gonna be the answer when I went into this, before I heard Dale's reporting, but when I got to the end of that reporting, I think this answer was clear as day, and it's an answer that you can actually act on. It's a great episode. Glad to have Dale. Excited about the work he did. So let's get into it.

Speaker 4:27 I remember there was a time I had gotten a scholarship to go to New York and work on an independent project. It was like my

Speaker 4:36 dream, um, sort of scenario, and I couldn't stop watching YouTube videos, and I remember one night being like, staring at the screen on my phone, like begging myself in my head to stop 'cause I was tired and I wasn't enjoying these videos, and watching my hand click on the next video anyways, and like seeing my body moving and having no control over it, and that was very scary, and that's when I started to think, like, maybe this is sort of like what an alcoholic experiences when they take a drink of alcohol and kind of lose control to stop.

Cal Newport 5:15 All right, so that voice you just heard was from someone who we're gonna call Jack, who is a self-proclaimed technology addict and one of the founding members of the Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous, or ITAA group. Dale reached out to Jack to better understand what it means to think about excessive internet use through the lens of addiction. All right, so Dale, first of all, what did you discover about how prevalent this idea is of people seeing their technology use as an addiction?

Dale Davidson 5:52 Yeah, it is kind of a new concept and has only recently been, been studied. Uh, but I pulled up a recent meta-analysis that showed the following. Approximately 14%, uh, are considered to be internet addicted. Uh, just under 27% are addicted to smartphones, which rose to around 31%, uh, during COVID. And 6% are considered to have a gaming addiction. And because it's so new, people don't really understand, uh, that they are addicted. And in fact, uh, Jack was one of those cases where he didn't think he was addicted at all, uh, until he discovered, uh, a group of gamers who were having problems just going down this rabbit hole of gaming more than they wanted to.

Cal Newport 6:41 Interesting. So 30, 30%. And so this is a meta-analysis, right? So that means-

Dale Davidson 6:46 Yeah

Cal Newport 6:46 ... uh, it's looking at multiple different analyses that are trying to get at how many people are addicted to technology. And in COVID, you said by various measures, 30%.

Dale Davidson 6:56 Yeah.

Cal Newport 6:56 That's a lot of people.

Dale Davidson 6:58 Yeah. That's one out of, you know, almost a third, and that probably doesn't capture everyone who has a problem with smartphone addiction. Uh, so I suspect that number may be higher, uh, than the meta-analysis revealed.

Cal Newport 7:14 Okay. So J- Jack helped found this ITAA. Um, so what did you find out about that group, uh, before you found your way to Jack?

Dale Davidson 7:25 It's pretty impressive. So it was founded in 2017 based on the principles of the 12-step program. Uh, currently, it conducts 100 weekly online meetings worldwide and roughly 30 in-person, uh, meetings per week. Um-

Cal Newport 7:42 But there's some, there's some irony here that [laughs]

Dale Davidson 7:44 Yeah. [laughs]

Cal Newport 7:45 I get it because there's not enough density to all meet in person, but the... I'm sure this is a, a comment that's brought up jokingly at every one of those online meetings, is that internet addicts have to go online.

Dale Davidson 7:56 It's just one of many tabs they have up on the screen. Uh, you know-

Cal Newport 8:01 Exactly

Dale Davidson 8:01 ... another has a YouTube video. Um, but it, I... They actually post the transcripts of a lot of their meetings on their website. So it's pretty interesting. You can listen to them, and they, and they follow the format, um, kind of of a 12 steps program thing, and people talk about their experiences. So it's, it, it's, it's really fascinating and, and still impressive they can do it online despite, you know, the fundamental problem they all have.

Cal Newport 8:22 So it was... You, you reached out to the organization, and it was them-

Dale Davidson 8:25 Yeah

Cal Newport 8:25 ... who put you in-- They put you in touch with a couple members, including Jack. Is that the way it went?

Dale Davidson 8:30 Yep, that's the way it went down. Uh, I ca- I basically said, "Hey, uh, I'm looking for members to talk to." They have a-- They even have a whole, uh, kinda like a press or public relations, um, arm to screen for interviews 'cause they still wanna protect anonymity.

Cal Newport 8:43 Of course.

Dale Davidson 8:44 Uh, so they, so they put out a call to see if anyone wanted to, uh, be spoken to. They knew they were gonna be mentioned on this podcast. And yeah, they, and, and Tom and Jack, uh, reached out.

Cal Newport 8:54 And okay, so tell us a little bit more. Uh, they're both men. Um-

Dale Davidson 8:59 Yep

Cal Newport 8:59 ... and, like, roughly what age, what age are we talking about here?

Dale Davidson 9:02 They're both in their, in their 30s, and they both have professional type jobs that require them to use, uh, a computer, um, and phones. They're not, they're not working on some, uh, remote outdoorsy type job. So just any normal, the kind of normal people you would see every day at the office.

Cal Newport 9:21 And they use the term technology sober. I mean, so what does that mean? 'Cause again, it's, it's a little bit different if you were, um, like alcohol sober-

Dale Davidson 9:29 Yeah

Cal Newport 9:29 ... but you worked at a job-

Dale Davidson 9:29 That's right

Cal Newport 9:30 ... where you were taste testing whiskey.

Dale Davidson 9:32 That's right.

Cal Newport 9:32 You wouldn't really be sober. But, but so what do they mean by-- Is that the right term, first of all, and what do they mean by it?

Dale Davidson 9:38 Yeah. So that's how they describe it. They describe it like, uh, any other addiction. But, uh, they do acknowledge that what it means to be sober may change, uh, based on what their particular addiction is. Um, so, uh, i- but basically, it means something like uncontrollable, and they describe, like, binging, uh, as an example, and that was a pretty common term between the two interviews and what I saw in other, other reports, um, for addicts. So when I spoke to Tom, who, uh, the other interviewee, he described a technology binge as entering a, like, a black hole.

Cal Newport 10:12 Hmm.

Dale Davidson 10:12 You may start doing something, like, enjoyable. Uh, you're watching a YouTube video and say, "Oh, this is fun," or you're playing a game, but then the black hole grows and grows and swallows you, and you lose all sense of time and yourself, which is different than you just watching one video or two videos and, and that's it. It's this fully encompassing, uh, effect it has, and I, and I think that's pretty common. That, that was not quite the language everyone used, but the effect was similar.

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Dale Davidson 14:24 Yeah

Cal Newport 14:24 ... you know, memoirs of people becoming sober from drugs or alcohol, they, they often talk about that, that the binging is-

Dale Davidson 14:31 Yeah

Cal Newport 14:31 ... was like the characteristic sign of, like, the serious alcoholic is it's not, "Oh, I have a few too many drinks," it's, "Once I start, I'll ha-" you know, it'll be two days later. And I'll-

Dale Davidson 14:41 Yeah

Cal Newport 14:41 ... and I'll say, "Oh my God," like I can't stop when I, once I get going, which is what sort of differentiates-

Dale Davidson 14:46 Yeah

Cal Newport 14:46 ... alcoholics from problem drinkers from social drinkers. It's kind of degrees, like the problem drinkers probably drink too often or-

Dale Davidson 14:54 Yeah

Cal Newport 14:54 ... maybe they'll have one or two too many at the party. The alcoholics will binge and be like, "Okay, I'm gonna all night long. I'm gonna lose days," and then the social drinker is like, "Oh, we had a glass of wine at dinner." So it sounds like what makes Tom and Jack tip over into them describing themselves as real addicts is, like, once they got going on the right thing, they would just go, like to the great-

Dale Davidson 15:14 Yeah

Cal Newport 15:14 ... detriment of anything else.

Dale Davidson 15:16 Yeah. That's absolutely right. And o-one of the differentiators between, uh, like a technology addict and a smartphone addict is that-- or sorry, and a, like a, an alcoholic-

Cal Newport 15:27 Yeah

Dale Davidson 15:27 ... um, is that it's probably less obvious. I mean, everyone's always on their phones all day. Uh, so if you go on a binge, yes, you may, like, not sleep all night, but they may-- you may still be somewhat functional going into work. You don't reek of alcohol or anything like that. So for both of them, they-- I asked them if anyone noticed, and they said no. Like, actually, um, Jack described himself as a pretty high-functioning addict. He did well in college and had some early, uh, professional success, and for a long time, he just thought it was an annoying habit he couldn't kick, um, which turned out not to be the case.

Cal Newport 16:04 Uh, they talked about something like the cycling, which I've heard again with other types of addicts, where they will stop for a while-

Dale Davidson 16:11 Yeah

Cal Newport 16:11 ... which you hear from substance addicts too.

Dale Davidson 16:12 Yeah.

Cal Newport 16:12 You're like, "I, I'm done."

Dale Davidson 16:14 Yeah.

Cal Newport 16:14 And then you come back full force.

Dale Davidson 16:16 Yeah.

Cal Newport 16:16 So this, this seems like it was a big part of their experience.

Dale Davidson 16:18 Yep. Uh, Tom told me an interesting story. He, you know, he's the one who had, had the experience with the black hole. He said, "Hey, I'm done with this. I'm gonna go, uh, detox." And so he went to Sweden-

Cal Newport 16:30 Hmm

Dale Davidson 16:30 ... and, you know, rented a, you know, stayed out somewhere nice and had a hotel room and kind of did this, uh, you know, experience where he'd go outdoors and not use computers or devices, and he did it for a few months, and so he was successful in the sense that a detox can be successful temporarily. But as soon as he got back home, as soon as he, soon as he returned, you know, to his house where he had access to all this, uh, he rewarded himself with a binge. You know, it was at that point he couldn't-- he realized, "Hey, uh, can't really do this on my own, or at least not forever. It's, it's a very temporary thing." Uh, Jack similarly, um, would go through these cycles of white-knuckling it for a few days and then, you know, some- he would slip up, and then he'd feel disgusted and then say, "Ugh, never gonna do that again." Uh, so then he would just go again, and then, you know, the cycle continues. It yo-yos. Um, I think anyone familiar with dieting, uh, or, or has tried it may, you know, have gone for a month or two and lost a bunch of weight, and then all of a sudden they eat a cookie, and it's like, "Ugh, I can't stop," and then, uh, eventually get back to the point where, uh, you know, you've gained all the weight back and you feel disgusted and the cycle continues. So it's not a sustainable, uh, way of curing yourself, um, if you're at the point that you consider yourself addicted.

Cal Newport 17:46 All right, so then 12-step programs, this actually worked it sounds like. So, so what-

Dale Davidson 17:51 Yeah

Cal Newport 17:51 ... how did they talk about that? Like, what the 12-step programs were, why this was different.

Dale Davidson 17:57 Yeah.

Cal Newport 17:57 Like, how has it worked for them?

Dale Davidson 17:59 Yeah. There's a few things that stood out, and I, I don't think it makes sense to go through each of the 12 steps now, but there's a few elements that they both talked about. One was the element of submission to a higher power. Now, 12 steps kind of came out of this whole, uh, it was kind of like a religious, um, uh, this religious background. Um, and a lot of the, you know, technology addicts, probably more secular, maybe even atheist, but they still held to the principle that they would submit to a higher power, and that could mean any number of things. But the point was to acknowledge that you couldn't do it on your own, essentially, as they, as they personally experienced. So that was kind of the foundational, uh, belief, um, in the 12 steps program. Uh- The other effort, or the other point there, um, that was really interesting was they really valued the group support aspect, which is, again, a core part of 12 steps. Um, and they, you know, these are people that may not be totally super social all the time, but it serves multiple purposes. Uh, you can receive support just even having people understand your experience, which is, you know, th- that's one of the key reasons you go. But that you can also give support when you're in a position to and show you can understand other people's experiences, and you get accountability, which is, uh, uh, one of the key parts that's hard to do on your own. You know, you can cheat on your diet, uh, by yourself, but if someone's, uh, checking in on you every day, it makes it a little bit harder. So those are a couple points there. Uh, and the last kind of really fascinating piece was the deep behavioral and psychological-

Cal Newport 19:37 Mm

Dale Davidson 19:37 ... training that occurs. Um, and they had this really fascinating way to describe the problem, which is, uh, or describe addiction, which was they are solutions to a problem. The addiction itself is not the root thing that they're trying to solve.

Cal Newport 19:52 That final part that you mentioned was interesting to me, uh, because it reminds me of Yuval Harari's book, Chasing the Scream, which was about drug addiction, and he talks about exactly that, that what they discovered was you shouldn't think about, you know, drug addiction as this chemical is addictive, and if the chemical goes into your body, you are now addicted to it, right? So I remember you had this, this set piece where he's, you know, we imagine the way, like, I was raised or you were raised in, like, the '90s, right? Was, um, if an evil scientist strapped you down and injected heroin into your body, you would be a heroin addict or whatever. And they discovered, oh, that- that's not true. If that was true, all these little old ladies in the UK who are essentially given heroin as painkillers after hip replacements, and Demerol, but the same idea, would all be addicts, but they're not. He's like, "No, no, it's all about when you're trying to... You, you're solving a problem with the substance. That's when your mind builds that incredibly strong loop of like, oh, now we need this to make this bad thing-

Dale Davidson 20:48 Yep

Cal Newport 20:48 ... specifically go away." So this is, this is an interesting-- It's not at all surprising if this is an addiction to hear it in that framework, but it's really an interesting thing to hear, uh, at, at least for me, this idea that you're going on these binges or you're using your phone too much. You're trying to create a feeling to solve another problem. I, I, I assume it, you know, you're, you're numbing something out. You're unhappy about something. You're avoiding hardship. You are dealing with anxiety. And, you know, if that problem still exists and you do nothing but just stop trying to use the internet, then every time you feel that uncomfortable feeling, your body will be like, "Look, we need to make this go away, and this is the, this is the tool we have," that you're fighting, you know, trying to make a bad thing go away, not just a... Addiction's not abstract. Like, oh, no, something got rewired, and now for no reason, like Frankenstein's monster, I just have to reach for this thing.

Dale Davidson 21:40 Yeah.

Cal Newport 21:40 So it sounds like that's, that's, uh, that's very interesting that's the way they were thinking about it. Um-

Dale Davidson 21:45 Yeah.

Cal Newport 21:45 Yeah. Go ahead.

Dale Davidson 21:45 Absolutely. Um, and they have really great language to describe, uh, how you might go categorizing or identifying, uh, maybe the types of situations or problems you're in, right? So, um, they call them bottom line, middle line, and top lines.

Cal Newport 22:03 Okay.

Dale Davidson 22:03 So bottom lines are kind of situations or thi- you know, uh, behaviors to avoid entirely. So if you're playing a video game and you know you can't just play one round of a game, for example, you know there's no way to resist it, like almost 100% chance you're going to go down that rabbit hole, just you can't play the game. Like, just a firm line.

Cal Newport 22:25 You don't play the video game. Interesting.

Dale Davidson 22:26 Yeah.

Cal Newport 22:26 You don't play video games.

Dale Davidson 22:26 Yeah.

Cal Newport 22:26 May- maybe TikTok is like this for some people.

Dale Davidson 22:29 Yes.

Cal Newport 22:29 It's so engaging.

Dale Davidson 22:31 Yeah.

Cal Newport 22:31 If you're looking to distract yourself, just that-

Dale Davidson 22:33 Yeah

Cal Newport 22:33 ... that app is not available.

Dale Davidson 22:35 Right. So there, there are, you know-- So it's a bottom line, "Hey, I'm not gonna do it. There's no ambiguity about it." Um, next are middle lines, which are a little more ambiguous, but you might consider them kind of higher risk, uh, either emotional states or physical situations you might be in. So if you come back from a day of work and you're tired or stressed and you just wanna shut your brain off for a minute, and you, you can identify those points and say, "Hey, if I open up YouTube or, or whatever it is here, it's very likely you will go on a binge or, or fall into an addictive behavior there." So-

Cal Newport 23:10 If you're in the, in the wrong mindset or the right mindset for binging. But anyway, if you're in th-- So in certain mindsets, you're saying-

Dale Davidson 23:17 Right

Cal Newport 23:17 ... you're like, "I won't do this." But would that mean if you're not in that mindset, it's not like you're completely abstaining from it. So if someone sends you, "Here's a-"

Dale Davidson 23:24 Yeah

Cal Newport 23:24 ... "a link to Cal Newport interviewing this person, you might find it interesting," and you're having your morning coffee-

Dale Davidson 23:29 Yeah

Cal Newport 23:29 ... you might be like, "That's okay." But if you're super tired or sa-

Dale Davidson 23:32 Yeah

Cal Newport 23:32 ... you know, upset, and you're like, "Let me just-"

Dale Davidson 23:34 That's right

Cal Newport 23:34 ... "the YouTube app and let it wash over me," the- there-

Dale Davidson 23:37 Cal New-

Cal Newport 23:37 ... you're gonna see Cal Newport's flexing videos or something.

Dale Davidson 23:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cal-

Cal Newport 23:40 That could be a rabbit hole you'll fall down.

Dale Davidson 23:43 Yes, it is a, it is a risk point. Um, generally, Cal Newport shows are considered top line behaviors, which I'll describe in a second. But, uh, yeah, I asked, I asked Jack, you know, for example, if he c-- if, like, just going on YouTube-

Cal Newport 23:56 Yeah

Dale Davidson 23:56 ... for, uh, research something for work would be, would be a middle line situation. And he said no, it's a very different state of mind when you have a particular task or goal to accomplish and say, "Hey, I just need to research this, uh, you know, how-to video to accomplish a very specific thing," it's not triggering. But it's very-- But if he was just saying hit board or something like that, then that would be a, a middle line situation where, you know, it, it's a, it's a high-risk thing. I should come up with an alternative plan to address those-

Cal Newport 24:27 Interesting

Dale Davidson 24:27 ... uh, those plans. So go for a walk or something like that.

Cal Newport 24:31 Yeah. Oh, okay. Interesting.

Dale Davidson 24:32 Yeah.

Cal Newport 24:32 All right. So then what are top line?

Dale Davidson 24:34 So top lines are basically just positive situ- situations or behaviors to put yourself in. So say, "Hey, uh, instead of, uh, rewarding myself with, um, you know- Netflix or whatever it is, or video games. It's like, "I'm gonna go, you know, have a drink with a friend." Obviously, doesn't apply if you're also an alcoholic. Uh, or, "I'm gonna go have coffee," or go for a walk or go for a run or something like that. Things that are positive and make your life richer and more meaningful, those are just, you know, just good things to have in your life. I was kind of curious why they had to identify these, but, um, if you're trying to categorize everything and trying to structure how you're gonna behave, I think it's very important to say, "Hey, I like this. This is a thing I'm gonna do. I'm gonna try to do more of it." So, uh, top lines were, uh, just, and generally any good situation that's not addictive, not related to your technology or anything that can-

Cal Newport 25:23 Yeah

Dale Davidson 25:23 ... make life more meaningful for you. Yeah.

Cal Newport 25:25 Yeah, maybe you're buil- you're, you're rebuilding better habits. Okay, when I'm feeling-

Dale Davidson 25:29 Yeah

Cal Newport 25:29 ... this, I'm trying to rewire towards a top-line activity, like going for-

Dale Davidson 25:33 Yeah

Cal Newport 25:33 ... the run or something like that. And after a while-

Dale Davidson 25:35 Absolutely

Cal Newport 25:35 ... that can take over. All right, so then how'd you, did you come out of this... I could see either way. Do you come out of this knowing that there's AA communities just for internet-

Dale Davidson 25:42 Yeah

Cal Newport 25:42 ... techn- did that make you depressed, or did watching Tom and Jack and seeing their experience with those communities somehow make you more optimistic? Where did you land on this?

Dale Davidson 25:51 I came away very optimistic. I mean, I obviously didn't hear from too many people. I don't have a, a formal study here, and I don't know how many, you know, AA's not, or the ITAA process is not successful for. But the fact that they, that this works and that it has, uh, can change your life and make it, make it in such a way that you can still be around technology and not be triggered into binge situations, I found it very hopeful, especially for the rest of us that, you know, may, may not have problems that rise to the level of addiction. Uh, if true addicts can actually solve this, then hey, I think the rest of us can do it as well.

Cal Newport 26:28 All right. I like that bit of optimism. All right.

Dale Davidson 26:30 Yeah.

Cal Newport 26:30 So let's move on, uh, to our second act.

Speaker 26:35 The thing is, a smartphone is quite addicting on its own, right? We can check our emails continuously, even if we're not expecting something important, recheck the weather again, Google any random thought that comes into our head, read the never-ending news. Most of us signal out social media as the culprit, and to be fair, I do think they are one of the worst offenders, but you would be surprised how many of the apps on the device you carry around everywhere can pull your attention endlessly.

Cal Newport 27:03 All right, so that voice you just heard there was Callie Bransford describing how making her smartphone boring wasn't enough to cure her from constant digital distraction. Now, if, if that last name sounds familiar, it might be because, uh, Callie is the successful creator of the media brand known as That Practical Mom, which has a YouTube channel with over 1.3 million subscribers. She's a mom of four, and she spent a year working on trying to wean herself off of digital distractions and f- kept finding this was not enough, this was not enough, and she

Cal Newport 27:37 documented the whole thing. So, uh, Dale dived into that to try to see what we could learn about this one mom's attempt to make the analog part of her life more important and the digital less. All right. So, um, you watched a lot of mom YouTube content, Dale. It sounds like this is the, the long and the short of it here.

Dale Davidson 27:58 It was, it wasn't even for this, this episode. It was just my normal routine, watching mom content and-

Cal Newport 28:03 Your normal routine of four hours of mom YouTube content a day. Yeah, you came across it.

Dale Davidson 28:08 Absolutely. So, uh-

Cal Newport 28:10 [laughs]

Dale Davidson 28:11 ... there's not a lot of dad content, so, uh, this is what I got, so, um, yeah, so I-

Cal Newport 28:16 And then there was, uh, yeah, who else did you... And there was another person, too, you looked at, right?

Dale Davidson 28:20 Yes. Uh, C.A. MacLaurin, uh, not a m- media mom creator there. She is a writer in England who ha- who documented her experience, uh, giving up her smartphone on her Substack, Hanging Up. Um, so, it, these, I like these two examples 'cause they're, it was well documented what, uh, what happened when they tried to remove digital distraction from their life-

Cal Newport 28:43 Yeah. All right

Dale Davidson 28:43 ... um, specifically their smartphones. Yep.

Cal Newport 28:45 Okay, so what, um, what caught your attention? So you, you went through these long accounts.

Dale Davidson 28:50 Yep.

Cal Newport 28:51 What was like a top-line thing that came to your attention?

Dale Davidson 28:54 Okay. Well, first, in my general research, there's lots of people that trying, that are trying to be less distracted by their, uh, by their smartphone. There's even a whole Reddit community, like R/dumbphones or something, where people-

Cal Newport 29:07 Hmm

Dale Davidson 29:07 ... kind of talk about their configurations of, uh, their Nokias or whatever it is they have to remove distractions. So first, this is a common problem that's being tackled by all sorts of people, and there's online communities to, um, address it. Now, what was interesting about Callie was she is very online, and her whole business relies on being online, and the interesting point here was she first started, or she started with her phone, but specifically trying to get rid of her social media apps and everything.

Cal Newport 29:40 Right.

Dale Davidson 29:40 So she said, "Uh, you know, being online, trying to check the likes and all this kind of stuff, it's not for me." So she, so she started that, and it helped, but what she noticed was she was still checking her phone a lot. She mentioned, hey, you know, all these normal apps that aren't social media, like checking the weather, checking your email, uh, you know, whatever it is on your phone, like she was still grabbing for it, and it still got in the way of her, uh, being present. So it, social media, sure, that was a great first step, but eventually she made the switch to, uh, what I think was a light phone, um, that only has a few particular apps like maps and things, and she had very positive effects. And basically she said once you made the switch, it was a little bit hard, but not that hard in the end. Um, so what struck me about that was just that, oh, just by swapping out one device for another, maybe a slightly less cool one, uh, you had all these positive impacts, uh, to her life.

Cal Newport 30:39 All right. But then, so the, but the interesting point here is that it sounds like it's really, once you have the habit loop of looking at that smartphone-

Dale Davidson 30:47 Mm

Cal Newport 30:48 ... it's hard as long as you still have a smartphone.

Dale Davidson 30:51 Yes

Cal Newport 30:51 Because it's a so-- There's always gonna be stu- I mean, your browser will be there because you, you know, it's just very hard. The weather thing-

Dale Davidson 30:57 Yeah

Cal Newport 30:57 ... by the way, that came up in Digital Minimalism, my book, where someone talked about they got rid of all the apps off their phone, but they kept checking the weather app obsessively. So, so, like, the device itself holds a certain power after a while that can only be turned off by replacing the device.

Dale Davidson 31:15 Yeah. I don't know if you've ever gotten phantom vibrations in your pocket where you just pick it up. Oh, did someone get a notification or something like that? But, uh, it's real, and yeah. She, uh, all these apps are just not social media, not innocuous. They, uh, just the fact of it being on a phone and you have that habit loop, like you said, of, of reaching for it, it's, uh, pretty addictive. And, you know, I, I keep using the diet example, but, uh, maybe 'cause I went on a diet this spring and then, you know, went off the diet later. Um, but it's kinda like trying to diet and having snacks and desserts in the house-

Cal Newport 31:47 Yeah

Dale Davidson 31:47 ... and saying, "Hey, why... You're just making life harder for yourself just to swap them out for the boring, I don't know, granola or whatever it is you're gonna eat. You know, don't try to, don't try to fight your environment." So, um, so that was one of the more interesting parts was just saying, "Hey, I, I don't need to white-knuckle it. I just need to make one decision to switch my phone to a dumb phone," and the effects are pretty good.

Cal Newport 32:09 How did they talk about the number one objection or concern people have about that strategy, which are inconveniences? How did... Because they're documenting this, so, like, how did that hit them?

Dale Davidson 32:17 Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I wanna go to McLaren for a second. She had this really funny, uh, Substack note about day two of her sub, uh, s- going to her dumb phone. So, uh, I'm just gonna read the account. It should be quick. Uh, "Day two of the dumphone, dumbphone, I drove downtown, forgot my credit card, no way to pay for anything, no way to pay for parking. Drove in circles for a while, found a free parking spot in front of the coffee shop I wished I could go to, pulled out my laptop and used the Wi-Fi. Online gift card? Only redeemable at the online store. Found a cafe that would take an e-gift card, bought it, put my laptop on the glass display case and said, 'Can you take this?' They said never had someone try to pay with a laptop before. Showed them my Nokia. They liked it. Walked out with a coffee and cookie. Thought about how inconvenient life can be if you don't have the most convenient device in the world." Uh, so I thought that was a pretty funny anecdote, and I'm just imagining going to my local coffee shop and presenting my laptop to, uh, to try to pay for something. Uh-

Cal Newport 33:18 I used to have this... Dale, I had this problem with my smartphone 'cause I don't understand smartphones.

Dale Davidson 33:22 [laughs]

Cal Newport 33:23 I would go to work. My wife finally solved this for me.

Dale Davidson 33:26 Yeah.

Cal Newport 33:26 I would go to work, and I would say, to Georgetown, like, "Oh my God, I left my wallet at home, but I'm gonna be here all day. I'm gonna starve 'cause how am I, how am I gonna eat food or whatever?" And like, eventually, my wife was like, "You know, you can pay for things using your phone." This was like six months ago, Dale. So I, I just wanna say [laughs] I, I understand this. I would just starve was my strategy. I was like, "I guess I'm not eating today," was the way I thought about it.

Dale Davidson 33:48 Uh-

Cal Newport 33:48 Yeah. So-

Dale Davidson 33:49 Well, maybe combined with the diet problem, this could be a good strategy.

Cal Newport 33:53 It's all, it all comes together, all, [laughs] all for, all full circuit, uh-

Dale Davidson 33:57 That's right

Cal Newport 33:58 ... circle. Um, all right.

Dale Davidson 33:59 Yeah.

Cal Newport 33:59 What about, uh, Callie? Did she get into the inconvenience factor?

Dale Davidson 34:04 Yeah. She, she absolutely did. Um, so she, you know, she found things like, hey, I need to, uh, schedule something or look something up. There was a lot of little inconveniences, and I think society, y- you know, generally now is kinda working against you in terms of assuming you're gonna have a smartphone to form a lot of functions. Uh, but one of the things she brought up was, uh, the things we don't tend to calculate, which is the amount of incon- incon- inconvenience that smartphone technology, uh, can also add to our lives.

Cal Newport 34:34 Hmm.

Dale Davidson 34:34 So she, you know, she's a, she, her, she has a, a mom media company and, you know, she talks about, you know, things like organizing and cleaning and things like that as, as part of her content. And she describes, uh, how she has a r- has a Roomba or some other smart, uh, vacuum cleaner that's always going around, and the initial thought there was, "Oh, this is gonna be so convenient. I don't have to, you know, vacuum every day myself. It'll just be constantly going around." But regularly, it would just get stuck or it needs some kind of update that requires your phone, and you spend a non-trivial amount of time, uh, just, you know, trying to solve your Roomba problem, and you already ate up all the time savings there. So I think eventually she mentioned, "Oh, I'm just gonna switch to, instead of, uh, fiddling with this, I'm just gonna switch to just do- using a normal old-school vacuum and spending a few minutes when I need to do it." Uh, so I think we do underestimate the value technology brings from, like, a productivity or convenience, convenience, uh, perspective, and it's, it kinda reminds me a lot when I'm trying to build out all these automations with Excel or Cloud Code, and it's just, oh, I just could've done that manually in, like, five minutes instead of spending hours tinkering around with, uh, with this software. So that, that was another-

Cal Newport 35:49 You do like your Cloud Code. I do know, I do know this about you. If there's a, if there's a custom tool to build...

Dale Davidson 35:56 I, I don't know if you know this, but s- I'm actually an AI avatar at the moment, so, uh-

Cal Newport 36:01 I only talk to AI avatars now.

Dale Davidson 36:02 Using Cloud Code.

Cal Newport 36:02 I find it much easier. Uh-

Dale Davidson 36:04 That's right.

Cal Newport 36:05 Yeah.

Dale Davidson 36:05 They're very agreeable, I think.

Cal Newport 36:07 Yeah. They're like, "You, you're the best." Actually, you, you, if you're an AI avatar, you would say, "You are right except for one thing. I think you're mainly on the right track, but I think, you know, I would do this." And then you would say, "It's not this, but it's that."

Dale Davidson 36:22 Yeah.

Cal Newport 36:22 "It's not the whatever, it's the da da da." And then I would, uh-

Dale Davidson 36:25 Or-

Cal Newport 36:25 ... feel smart

Dale Davidson 36:26 ... that's right, or this, this argument's doing a lot of load-bearing or something to that effect. Uh-

Cal Newport 36:32 With a, with a lot of yeses.

Dale Davidson 36:33 Yes.

Cal Newport 36:33 All right. So how do, uh, uh, how did you come away from, uh, diving into the, the world of people turning to dumb phones? Did that seem to you... Is this just, like, a learning opportunity, or does it actually seem to you like a strategy that we could actually keep in mind as something to, to try?

Dale Davidson 36:49 I actually think it is a low-hanging fruit in a lot of cases. So both the examples of, uh, Callie and, and McLaren here, um, they're both independent, so they don't have a, a, as far as I know, a day job where, uh, that re- that requires them to be responsive and all that. But I was so impressed, which is how making one switch solved so many of their problems in terms of getting their brain space back and, and being able to just be present in the moment around them, whether it's boring or not. Um, I will say the flip side of that, though, is that it also wasn't a cure-all. Basically, yes, you'll get more, more of your brain space back, but you still gotta figure out what you wanna use that for.

Cal Newport 37:37 Mm-hmm.

Dale Davidson 37:37 Whether it's to be more present with your kids or whatever, you know, just enjoying s- looking outside. Um, so it's, it doesn't automatically give you this magical amount of time back, but it does seem to, uh, get, you know... J- it just seems to be, like, a, a solution that seems relatively simple once you figure out how to swap SIM cards and all that kind of stuff. So I was just impressed by just one decision can get so many benefits.

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Speaker 41:12 I, I would have this little notebook where I would-

Cal Newport 41:15 Mm-hmm

Speaker 41:15 ... you know, write down things I needed to look up on the internet. And then, like, twice a week or something, I'd go to the library and, and, you know, do my errands on the internet. And, and, and it was very enlightening to do that because you go to the library, and you look at that list, and I, I remember in particular, like, once I looked at the list and was like, "Look up Justin Bieber's net worth." And I was like, "Why on earth did I write that?" You know? Like, I don't need to do that.

Speaker 41:40 Uh, and so it kind of really enforced how much stupid stuff I was looking at.

Cal Newport 41:45 All right, so that final ver- voice that you just heard there was from Henrik Karlsson, who's the author behind the successful Substack, Escaping Flatland. It documents his stripped-down life as a full-time essay writer who lives on a farm on an island in Denmark. Um, Karlsson's caught my attention, right? He's someone who writes many hours every morning and has sort of built his life around this sort of creative act and trying to simplify everything else. He's really gone to an extreme. He's changed his location in a way to make that possible. So since we were looking for interesting stories of what it really takes to escape our internet hell, um, I, I sent Dale to talk to, uh, Karlsson himself to see what he could learn. So what did you discover?

Dale Davidson 42:34 All right. So again, he's a really fascinating guy making a living in a very difficult way in a not easy to live place. Um, and when I started talking to him, the, the most important thing, uh, I noticed was that he and his wife has, have spent and still continue to spend a lot of time and energy Thinking about the life they wanna live.

Cal Newport 43:02 Mm.

Dale Davidson 43:02 And they've been doing this since they got together, I think sometime in their, in their college days. Um, they were trying to think about where they wanna live, where, you know, what, if they wanna have kids, in what environment they wanna raise their kids. And they both kind of converged on maybe not the exact same idea, but had some version of, like, an autonomous creative life. And then when they actually had kids, they decided they wanted to homeschool, which was, I ... Which he told me was basically illegal in Sweden. You know, the state considers it some very strange thing, and you need some, uh, weird exceptions to be able to do it. So, uh, they moved to, uh, an island farm on, or a farm on an island in Denmark, where they, they built this life. It took a while, where he w- where he had to work, like, 100-hour weeks kinda doing freelance programming and, uh, you know, worked at a, at a art gallery that, that happened to be in town. And, and, but eventually they, you know, they persisted, and now he's able to make a living off his Substack essentially and live this cool life with his wife and two kids that is very autonomous and very creative and very deep.

Cal Newport 44:11 Wait, when he was working, like, 100 hours early on, was this, like, we need to pay off the mortgage or something? Like, why ... It was like we have to make-

Dale Davidson 44:17 There-

Cal Newport 44:17 ... this much money, then that'll allow us to be more autonomous?

Dale Davidson 44:21 Yeah. So I think it was both paying for the farm, and then the house needed a lot of work, so you just need stuff to pay. You need the living expenses. Uh, so I ... That 100 hours a week is not just paid work. It was, you know, doing paid work plus work, uh, on the farm in terms of, like, fixing things up and whatever that was, and that wasn't even in their, in their skillset at the time. Uh, and then just, you know, normal family stuff. So it, it was a lot of years of just grinding in a way just to be able to afford and, and do that, you know, kind of to have that lifestyle out there.

Cal Newport 44:55 So tell me if I have this right, but something that was interesting about-

Dale Davidson 44:59 Yeah

Cal Newport 44:59 ... uh, you know, Karlsson's story was that unlike the other examples, where people-

Dale Davidson 45:03 Yeah

Cal Newport 45:03 ... were living their life and got increasingly brought into the digital world and then sought to escape it, there was sort of the opposite here, is because they were living this very intentional life, for a long time-

Dale Davidson 45:16 Yeah

Cal Newport 45:16 ... the phone wasn't affecting him, right? I mean, so, so in other words, it was, it wasn't even a problem. So it's sort of the reverse.

Dale Davidson 45:23 That's right.

Cal Newport 45:23 But s- so talk to me about, like, the relationship of the internet-

Dale Davidson 45:27 Yeah

Cal Newport 45:27 ... to their life.

Dale Davidson 45:28 Yeah. So really fascinating. So because they had this ... They, they started having this conversation, uh, early on when they're, when they were younger, and Henrik never really ... He just never got a smartphone. He just said, "Well, I don't need it, so I never got it." And in the process of kind of imagining what their life could be like together, it just s- the smartphone and a lot of technology-centric activities just never, never fit into it. Uh, so they decided, hey, uh, we're just not gonna do it for the most part.

Cal Newport 46:01 Yeah.

Dale Davidson 46:01 Um, he only recently got a smartphone last year 'cause I guess his bank required some security thing, where you had to get a text or something like that. And-

Cal Newport 46:08 We, we should clarify. How old is he? It feels like I clarify. He's, he's not a 98-year-old-

Dale Davidson 46:13 He's in his, he's in his-

Cal Newport 46:13 ... uh, grizzled man.

Dale Davidson 46:14 [laughs] Yes. He is a very relevant example. He's 98, and, uh, we can learn a lot from our elders. No, he's in h- he's in his 30s as well.

Cal Newport 46:23 Okay.

Dale Davidson 46:23 Um, so.

Cal Newport 46:23 That's key. If it was, like, a Wendell Berry type situation, be like he's very impressive-

Dale Davidson 46:27 That's-

Cal Newport 46:27 ... but he moved to that farm in the '70s and, you know. That's different.

Dale Davidson 46:30 Yes.

Cal Newport 46:31 Okay. All right.

Dale Davidson 46:31 It is, it is different.

Cal Newport 46:32 So he's in his 30s. Yeah.

Dale Davidson 46:33 Yeah. And, you know, he was a, for a while, he was a, he was a software programmer and did that freelance for a long time, even w- even when smartphones started to come out, so it was pretty interesting. But even today, um, so he has the smartphone, but he really only pulls it out when he, when he needs to for transactional things or if he's traveling for various reasons. Uh, and they h- do have internet at the house, uh, but it's a mobile hotspot that you just, you know, like, you plug into the wall, and it uses a cell signal. And it's unplugged by default. And the process is, uh, he, when he needs to do something online, like our interview or something like that, he tells his wife he's gonna plug it in and kinda gives her a time estimate of how long it will take him, and then he just does it. And if he's on there too long, his wife comes in and says, "Hey, you know, what's going on, dude? Or what are you doing here?" And so there's a little bit of a check in there. But it, it really is so interesting, and it really falls kind of in line with what your digital m- minimalism messages was, was, like, hey, add tools in as you think you need them. And then he, him and his wife, he and his wife just assessed that we don't really need them for, for most of our, you know, what we wanna do and, and f- and l- to live our compelling, uh, vision of our life. Um, and in fact, it's kind of an impediment in many ways.

Cal Newport 47:51 Does he ever have issues with the internet in terms of it being a distraction?

Dale Davidson 47:56 Yeah. So, you know, he's a, he's a normal-ish person, I would think. I mean, he's normal in a, in, in the sense that, uh, he's not immune, uh, to the pull of the smartphone. Uh, so when he was traveling in London recently, you know, he brought it for navigation and to, you know, call his family and everything. Uh, he said he was on a subway, and he was, he was tired from his trip, and he had his smartphone out, and he just found himself, you know, scrolling or browsing on the internet. Uh, well, it's normal behavior, uh, for just, for mostly every- everyone. Um, but he found himself in one of those kind of, uh, middle line situations where you're tired, and, you know, that was just a way to feel, turn your brain off for a minute or, or to, to relax. Uh, so, you know, he's, he's not immune to it. And then sometimes he, he says he'll, you know, accidentally leave the, the hotspot plugged in, and then he'll wake up in the morning, and, uh, somehow he ends up checking his email. And he, he described it as having a, uh, whenever he does that, he has a 30% reduction in his creativity, which is pretty bad for someone who makes your, makes his living writing. So, uh, so yes, he's a, he has the same susceptibility to technology as anyone else, uh, except- He has a compelling vision and systems to help him, uh, minimize, uh, the negative effects of it.

Cal Newport 49:18 So what's his... Tell me more about what his life is like there. This is, this is like put it in my veins type of stuff as far as I'm concerned. When he's on the island, on the farm-

Dale Davidson 49:27 Yeah

Cal Newport 49:27 ... what, what is this life like? You, you talked to him for a while.

Dale Davidson 49:30 Yeah. I, I asked him and he, and he, he said, "Oh, it kind of changes day by day," which is, is itself kind of nice. But it sounds like he wakes up relatively early, maybe writes for, you know, I think he said, like, four, four hours or something. He may have breakfast with his family, do kind of family stuff. Him and his wife switch off for their own, uh, projects in terms of, uh, kids' responsibilities, may go out on a walk, may go out and do more brainstorming, have lunch, have, uh, you know, some fun activity with the kids, have dinner. Uh, basically it's just a lot of walking and thinking and family time for the most part, uh, interspersed with all the various chores that need to be done from living on a farm, uh, island, uh, in Denmark. So it... If you want a simple life and that kind of dreamy state, I mean, he's, he's doing it. Uh, it seems much harder than I would imagine in my vision, but I can still, uh, fantasize that it's way easy and that, uh, you know, I should do that.

Cal Newport 50:35 I feel somehow the secret sauce to him is always that hardness, like the chores, and it's, it's a pain, and the weather there is not... You know, like, it's not, it's not Miami, let's be honest.

Dale Davidson 50:44 [laughs]

Cal Newport 50:45 That, like, that somehow in two ways, A, you're not just sitting... When you're tired or whatever, you're not just sitting around like, "I have nothing to do," which is, like, prime phone period. But also-

Dale Davidson 50:54 Yeah

Cal Newport 50:54 ... I don't know. There's a feeling, that feeling of accomplishment feels good, even if it is a, it was a menial chore on the farm. Like, that fence is fixed or this chicken coop got whatever. And if you're getting-

Dale Davidson 51:05 Yeah

Cal Newport 51:05 ... a steady dose of that, I don't know the neuroscience-

Dale Davidson 51:09 [laughs]

Cal Newport 51:10 ... but I feel like that, that fulfills something that if you don't have-

Dale Davidson 51:14 Yeah

Cal Newport 51:14 ... because you've just been on a computer screen all day and now you're in London going back on the Tube and it's, you know, crowded, you're gonna seek out those chemicals some other way, uh, whether it's, like, on a video game or just let me just generate something. That, like, we don't generate enough chemicals outside of, I don't know, anxiety.

Dale Davidson 51:29 [laughs]

Cal Newport 51:30 So I always thought that was the secret sauce. Like, if we took him, if, if he had, like, "Hey, here's a staff that's gonna take care of everything," so you can just, like, sit and look out the window of your farm and ponder-

Dale Davidson 51:39 Yeah

Cal Newport 51:39 ... it, I don't know. Like, it'd be harder for him, that busyness helps.

Dale Davidson 51:43 Yeah. I, I agree. Uh, and he has this, uh, great clip from our interview where we can wrap up, but, um, he talks about living his life on hard mode.

Cal Newport 51:54 Hard mode.

Dale Davidson 51:55 And, and, uh, you know, it... when I described it, it, he used that, that meme or that joke where, uh, what, what does it go? It says, oh, "We do this not because it's easy, but because we thought it would be easy."

Cal Newport 52:07 [laughs] That's funny.

Dale Davidson 52:08 Uh-

Cal Newport 52:08 Yeah. So let us now, here comes the part we promised. So we, we've heard, Dale, thank you for sharing these stories. We heard three different stories of people who went to, um, relative extremes to try to, uh, reclaim their life from the worst excesses of the internet. I know I promised early on that I would try to, uh, synthesize what we learned to come up with some sort of conclusion for the rest of us once we realize, hey, this internet, the way I use it, might be causing more harm than good. So Dale, I'm gonna give you my conclusion.

Dale Davidson 52:38 Okay.

Cal Newport 52:39 And then I want to get your thoughts on this because you, you talk to all of these people. This is gonna sound self-serving what I'm gonna say, but I actually think it is right. I think what all of these answers, what we learned in all three stories, is orbiting in some degree around the central idea of my next book, which is coming out in March, called The Deep Life. And the, the core idea of The Deep Life was after all of these years of me talking about technology and how it impacts us and how it's bad and how you want to avoid these things, and it's taking you away from other things that are more meaningful, I, I finally learned, and this was a lesson that emerged basically unavoidably during the pandemic, that if you really want people to get away from the worst dehumanizing aspects of technology, you have to stop focusing on the digital things they need to avoid and focus more on making the analog alternatives so compelling that all these sort of gadgets and devices and apps no longer hold the allure. In other words, you have to make your life so intentionable and remarkable and lived on purpose that the digital is no longer having this dominant role in your life because your life's too interesting. It's too meaningful. All of this seems to center somewhat. I mean, I'm trying to go through this, right? Like the addict-

Dale Davidson 53:50 Yeah

Cal Newport 53:50 ... uh, the, the internet addicts we're talking about, look, this is, this behavior is, um, you- it's, it's responding to things happening in your life. You're filling in a hole. You're covering over gaps. You have to, like, fix the psychology that's leading you to these distractions, and they have to be very intentional about the activities in their lives. That really helps. You know, you said, "Why are they talking about top-line activities that have nothing to do with technology?" Because that's the main thing they needed to get away from, the technology. The phone, uh, the practical mom and author that, you know, talked about it, they made a major change in their life. They're like, "I'm, I'm, I'm taking this out of my life so that I can have the breathing room to figure things out." And, and Henrik did something similar. Like, I'm gonna rebuild such an interesting life that when I'm there, I don't even think to plug in the hotspot. And when he left and went to London and was in, like, a normal busy, you know, type of I'm on the Tube and bored type of life, suddenly he had a problem he hadn't had before. So this is what I'm taking away from this, is the internet can be a major problem, but the major solution has to go through creating a life that's so deep that the allure of the digital suddenly becomes much more diminished. All right. You talked to all these people.

Dale Davidson 54:59 Yeah.

Cal Newport 55:00 How am I doing here?

Dale Davidson 55:02 I think that's right. Uh, I think you need a reason and to, to basically answer the question, like, why bother? Like, why bother giving up my smartphone? Why bother, uh, giving- Reducing my internet usage or, or getting a mobile hotspot or switching to a dumb phone or wh- whatever it is. And that only comes from having a really... You, you only have that motivation if you have a compelling vision of your life where the phone is, or whatever technology tools you're using, is, is m- minimized or, or deliberate. It, it's a, it's a secondary thing. I think in the case of addiction, it, it skews on the negative side where, like, this is really bad, and some vision of the good life is getting rid of all this badness, and then complemented by the, all the, all the top-line, uh, uh, great, you know, top-line activities that make life worth living. Uh, I think with Carlson's case, he, he was a little bit more unique in that he kind of, like you said, he kind of started off with a, a compelling vision of life and just never bought into the, the technology, um, that causes us so many problems now. And with the middle case, kind of with, with, with Callie and M- and McLaren there, uh, it, I got the sense that, uh, they, once they got rid of the dumb pho- or got switched to the dumb phone, they had more space to think about, uh, what, what made life more meaningful. And, you know, they're, I think they're on that, on that path. But in all cases, I still think it requires, like you said, like, this, like, analog vision of a life that, that is so, you know, so compelling you can't bother, can't be bothered to have a smartphone or, or whatever, whatever it is.

Cal Newport 56:48 You know, I, I think about this sometimes, um, the degree to which the, the issues we're having with our phones and the internet and these apps that, that, you know, drove the people that you explored to these extremes, the degree to which they really are a canary in a bigger coal mine, right? That in other words, it's, as always happens, we sort of came out of a period and, and, and for whatever re- modernity got very powerful. The sort of organizing narratives of meaning were beginning to diminish. And in that situation, phones and what they offered, there was a lack there. We need to, we need mean- we need to distract ourselves from lack of meaning. We need to distract ourselves from, uh, sort of creeping anxiety or nihilism. And now the phones could come in there and fill that. Uh, I hadn't thought about it before like that, but this more recently, I keep hearing this come up again. I, I would also point listeners towards my interview with Arthur Brooks about his most recent book, and, you know, I did this, uh, earlier in the year. But this was, I remember Brooks was talking about exactly this point. Don't think about this as we were great, and then, like, these evil people came along and, like the mad scientist injecting the heroin into our veins while we're strapped down. We're like, "Oh, my God, they forced us to be an addict. If I could just get rid of this, I'd go back to being great." It was no, we were suffering. Family, community, religion, um, you know, uh, prof- per- predictable professional trajectories, uh, patriotism, whatever it is. Like, these, these binding things that gave meaning and trajectories to our lives sort of unraveled in digital postmodernism, and we needed to have some succor for that lack. And that was a perfect place for the phones to enter and these other things to enter. So I, you know, it's, this was not an idea I thought a ton about, and now suddenly it's everywhere. And so I'm not surprised that that's what goes through it. So it's almost like when someone says, "Man, I can't get off this phone," the question is, you know, what's waiting for you when you do? And when they don't have the great answers, like, great, that's where we need to start. You know, let's, let's, let's work on that. Um, of course, it's self-serving because of what my whole book's about.

Dale Davidson 58:52 [laughs]

Cal Newport 58:52 But this came up, you know, this came up again and again. There's a book, so in my book, I talked about, I, I, I want to get the author's name right. Um, so it's Amy Liptrot. The Outrun was a book I talk about in, in my book. It reminds-- It would have been a great example. It reminds me of these stories. Um, she, she, uh, Amy Liptrot fell into serious alcohol addiction living in London, returned to where she grew up, which was the northern Scottish Isles, and she went there to get sober and rediscover herself. And one of the core things about that book is what makes things go well is the rediscovery part. She, she could go through periods of sobriety, right, you can white-knuckle it, like, when I really don't like myself when I'm like that. And so you can have periods of sobriety. But it was rediscovering herself and her life and, and nature and her meaning, that's what made it last in some sense. So, you know, it's, it's, we can escape the internet hell that a lot of us are, are increasingly disliking. Um, but to do that, we have to focus on the, the analog life outside of it. All right, but look, there's also some practical stuff here. Like, so what, what caught your mind? Well, um, I have a few notes here. Just, like, w- going from that down to some, like, more practicalities, anything else catch your mind that we should probably keep in our toolbox here as people trying to be deeper?

Dale Davidson 1:00:11 I really enjoyed the, the, and, and thought hard about the, the just the bottom line, medium line, top line observation framework. Like, e-even out, if you're not addicted, I think just that having that self-awareness can really, uh, help even just, j-just curing, not curing, but, uh, mitigate the effects of bad habits or just know when you're susceptible to stuff. Like, I know I have a, a... My wife calls me out on sometimes when I'm tired, I'll be kind of short with the, with the kids and not tolerant of their, uh, nonsense. And I've, I've, a lot of times I just now can recognize that like, "Hey, I'm tired. I know I'm prone to reacting to this. I'm just gonna observe that." And that usually prevents me from yelling, "Hey, stop doing whatever." So I, I, I think that's a nice way to, uh, have a, like, a more organized framework for observing when you are likely to, uh, you know, do something that you don't, you know you shouldn't be doing or don't want to be doing, so.

Cal Newport 1:01:10 Yeah.

Dale Davidson 1:01:10 Um, so I, I th- I found that pretty helpful. Uh, the, I'm very compelled by switching to the dumb phone thing. Uh, it's, it seems as if that is a low-hang fruit, um- And if you can maybe like separate having like a work phone that only has a few work-related things on it from, uh, a, uh, you know, just your personal phone, which you can, can be a dumb phone in this case, uh, that seems like it would at least make you aware that, you know, how often you're reaching for it, and then if you're stuck with no alternative on the, on the toilet, you can go back to reading, uh, the shampoo bottle like we used to do as kids, um, back in the day. And that'll give you space to visualize what life could potentially be like without the, uh, a, a smartphone, um, you know, sucking up all that, all that brain space. Um, yeah, so I, I think between those two and then ha- taking the, taking the, creating a vision of life seriously, um, I... and again, just all the lessons we learned from the, from the interviews, um-

Cal Newport 1:02:18 Those are good

Dale Davidson 1:02:18 ... those were... Yeah. I, I, I think those are great places to start.

Cal Newport 1:02:22 I, I, I like the lines as a practical thing, like with technology, right?

Dale Davidson 1:02:26 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:02:26 I mean, first of all, your story about getting short at your kids, um-

Dale Davidson 1:02:29 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:02:29 ... I've never yelled at my kids, "You're a monster," so let me just establish that.

Dale Davidson 1:02:31 [sighs] I, I outed myself-

Cal Newport 1:02:34 Yeah

Dale Davidson 1:02:34 ... on the Cal Newport Show.

Cal Newport 1:02:35 I, I have never-

Dale Davidson 1:02:36 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:02:36 ... I have never shown any anger towards my kids. But I, I think applying the, everyone applying that, that ITAA-

Dale Davidson 1:02:43 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:02:43 ... that's probably how they say it.

Dale Davidson 1:02:44 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:02:44 IT- ITAA, right? Because AA, they say Alcohol-

Dale Davidson 1:02:47 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:02:47 ... Anonymous. Yeah, ITAA. Um-

Dale Davidson 1:02:50 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:02:50 ... everyone could apply that to their technologies just to remind people.

Dale Davidson 1:02:52 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:02:52 I'm looking at the, the notes here again.

Dale Davidson 1:02:54 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:02:54 It's like your bottom line, just have a list of-

Dale Davidson 1:02:56 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:02:56 ... I just don't use these technologies. If you don't, everyone should have that list.

Dale Davidson 1:02:59 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:02:59 Like the ones you just don't use.

Dale Davidson 1:03:01 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:03:01 Like I, you know, I'm in my... If you're in your 30s, you're like, "You know what? I just don't, I'm not getting Grand Theft Auto VI or whatever. Like I can't play video games anymore."

Dale Davidson 1:03:09 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:03:09 Like, "I have responsibilities in life."

Dale Davidson 1:03:10 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:03:10 "They're too addictive." That makes sense. Or TikTok is, or Instagram, I can't get off of it, and I don't really need... Like, okay, have bottom lines.

Dale Davidson 1:03:18 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:03:18 Middle lines then, say, "Okay, certain technologies I do use, I have certain circumstances where I don't, and it, and I, I have to have that." I love that idea that, I don't know if it was Jack or Tom had, of like, "Here's my list of alternatives."

Dale Davidson 1:03:30 Mm.

Cal Newport 1:03:30 "If I'm stressed or tired, it's like I don't wanna think about it. I take that list off the refrigerator. I could do this, this, this, and this. Like I have my alternatives ready to go so I don't fall into it." And then top lines, what are my like positive alternatives I'm trying to program? I think that's great. I think having the personal dumb phone, I agree with you on that. People are very worried about, if I no- no longer have access to X, it's gonna be a problem. But what you're talking about, that's the way to do it, is-

Dale Davidson 1:03:55 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 1:03:55 ... well, I have both, and like more often than not, I grab the dumb phone when I'm going out to do something.

Dale Davidson 1:04:01 Mm.

Cal Newport 1:04:01 And so you just kind of get more used to it, right?

Dale Davidson 1:04:03 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:04:03 And you still have the other phone for work or if you need to go pay for the parking garage or whatever.

Dale Davidson 1:04:08 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:04:08 But like more and more often, you can just have, uh, the dumb phone. Like that's what my middle schoolers have dumb phones, and they're, it, it works, right? They need it. They take it when they're going somewhere where they might need to call us and, or text us and be like, "Hey, it's, uh, the thing ended early."

Dale Davidson 1:04:24 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:04:24 "I need you to pick me up," or, "The bus didn't come." And, and like, it, it captures that emergency situation without any other temptation. So all right, well, we'll, here's how we'll leave it then. Like top line-

Dale Davidson 1:04:34 Yeah

Cal Newport 1:04:34 ... make your life so deep that the digital is no longer as alluring. Like that's ultimately what you need to do. If you're looking at your phone too much-

Dale Davidson 1:04:40 Mm

Cal Newport 1:04:40 ... if it's making you unhappy, be like, "I wanna, I need to focus on my life before I think about the tech." All right, then on the practical things you can do once that's underway, bottom, middle, top lines, everyone should have those for technology. And consider like some of these more drastic... I mean, I, I think having a dumb phone, not as your only phone, but having a dumb phone, it's like if you're really getting serious about getting in shape is getting the gym subscription. Like it costs money.

Dale Davidson 1:05:04 Mm.

Cal Newport 1:05:04 You have to go s- it's like a big change in your life, but it's not completely transforming your life. But like it's like hiring a trainer or something.

Dale Davidson 1:05:10 Mm-hmm.

Cal Newport 1:05:11 This is really going to like help force some action that otherwise I was struggling to do consistently. So I, I don't know. I think we solved the problem, Dale. [laughs]

Dale Davidson 1:05:20 I-

Cal Newport 1:05:20 I think we've, we've, we've got that

Dale Davidson 1:05:22 ... I think so, but I wasn't really listening while I was browsing, uh, on my phone there.

Cal Newport 1:05:26 Yeah, I saw this, this thing you just posted on TikTok.

Dale Davidson 1:05:30 Yeah.

Cal Newport 1:05:30 And I just wanna say that's, um, it's oddly disturbing. I, yeah, that's-

Dale Davidson 1:05:34 Uh, that's, that's what all the comments say, but, uh, it's not gonna keep me down. [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:05:38 [laughs] It's not gonna stop you. You're gonna make a fortune as a-

Dale Davidson 1:05:41 [laughs]

Cal Newport 1:05:42 Yeah. This is where I announce, Dale, that I have decided to become a, uh, an eight-hour-a-day Twitch streamer, um, because I think that's the real lesson of this, is they weren't using enough technology. All right, I appreciate this. Thank you for going out there in the field and getting these stories. I- sometimes you just have to talk to real people to get the real story about what's going on. You gotta have that flavor, those layers. Um, and so, uh, thank you for doing this, Dale. We'll have to, we'll have to launch on another investigation soon, 'cause I had a lot of fun hearing about this.

Dale Davidson 1:06:10 Thanks, Cal. Really enjoyed it.

Cal Newport 1:06:13 All right, so there we have it. That was my report with correspondent Dale Davidson. Uh, I like this idea. I like this approach of occasionally being able to send our correspondents to do a lot of work, a lot of reporting that they can then bring back for us to make sense of. So maybe we'll do some more of that in the future. I think this went long enough that I'm not gonna do Q&A today. Um, but I'll be back next week, as always, with another episode of the show, and maybe even a shorter episode before then. Um, so stay tuned, and until then, as always, stay deep. Today's episode was produced and mastered by Jesse Miller. Nate Mechler provided research and newsletter support.

Cal Newport 1:06:46 The video was edited by Ben Crain and Rob Montz. The theme music is adapted from an original composition by Jay Kirstens. For weekly ideas from me to show up in your inbox, sign up for my newsletter at calnewport.com.