Hello fantastic creature 🐸

I've been doing something unusual lately: going to bed without my phone.

Yeah, I know — shock horror, etc!

Back in the beforetimes, I'd read advice about this in "sleep hygiene" articles that sounded just plain useless. "It'll help you get a better night's sleep," they'd say. But I don't stay up late because of my phone. I'm on my phone because I'm up late already.

I didn't even mean to try out this no-phone bedtime thing. It happened by accident one night when I went to bed, too tired to notice my phone had fallen between the couch cushions. In the morning, I reached over and realised everything was fine. In fact, I felt pretty good.

So, I did it again the next night. And the night after that.
(While letting the phone charge — not sticking it between couch cushions!)

The sleep hygiene articles were wrong — my sleep didn't improve. It actually got worse at first, but I'm not sure whether to blame the no-phone, Perth's mercurial weather, or the usual insomnia.

The benefit for me came in the morning. Not being confronted by notifications and red dots first thing made it easier to imagine what a self-directed day — not beholden to a tiny electronic whipmaster — might look like. The whipping does commence eventually of course, but those first few minutes without a digital device felt like a dose of... well, something nice.

Peace, perhaps. A thimbleful of mental quietude I could somehow sip from throughout the day.

If my sleep has gotten better, it would be from having just that smidge more peace in my life. In which case, I'll begrudgingly concede those articles were right.

Here's what I did miss about having my phone on the nightstand, and what those things have been replaced with:

• The time, especially in the morning — after three weeks, I stopped pretending I could read the angle of the light hitting the curtains, and bought a $5 watch from our local Good Sammy. It's not pretty or a feat of engineering, but just unoffensive enough to sit quietly by the bed and tell me what I need to know.

• My crosswords app — so I got a couple of good old-fashioned crossword puzzle books. When I can't sleep, the sound of a pencil scratching paper while a cat snores nearby can be ever so soothing.

• Audiobooks and podcasts — there's no real workaround for this one, but the upside is that my non-bedtime listening has become more deliberate, focused, and engaged. Maybe having content on tap all the time didn't have the net benefit I thought it would.

Forget addiction and dopamine and blue light waves, and other stuff from the discourse about personal tech. Truth be told, the biggest boost I actually got from doing this was knowing that my own habits aren't painting me into a corner. Getting older, I like to test my brain's ability to overcome the inertia of the familiar. Seeing I'm still capable of doing this made me optimistic for my own future.

Now, I'm asking you: If you were to start going to bed without your phone, what would you miss about having it nearby?

Hit reply and tell me.

Sandy.
sanlive.com

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A good read...

If you’re waiting for some outside authority to give their stamp of approval to what you’re doing with your life – if you’re telling yourself things will only be truly OK once they’ve done so – then you’ll be waiting a long time. And even if they were to give it, it wouldn’t be worth getting...

You may really only have one meaningful choice, which is either to move in the direction “becoming who you are” – becoming more and more yourself, in whatever situation you find yourself in – or else to hold back from doing so.

A thoughtful piece by Oliver Burkeman about actively making our own life choices: Who's in charge around here?

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Finally, here's what I'm up to now.