The devices have become our constant companions. This was not the plan.
By Cal Newport
Mr. Newport is a computer scientist and author.
Smartphones
are our constant companions. For many of us, their glowing screens are a
ubiquitous presence, drawing us in with endless diversions, like the
warm ping of social approval delivered in the forms of likes and
retweets, and the algorithmically amplified outrage of the latest
“breaking” news or controversy. They’re in our hands, as soon as we
wake, and command our attention until the final moments before we fall
asleep.
Steve Jobs would not approve!
In
2007, Mr. Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Convention Center in San
Francisco and introduced the world to the iPhone. If you watch the full speech,
you’ll be surprised by how he imagined our relationship with this
iconic invention, because this vision is so different from the way most
of us use these devices now.
In the
remarks, after discussing the phone’s interface and hardware, he spends
an extended amount of time demonstrating how the device leverages the
touch screen before detailing the many ways Apple engineers improved the
age-old process of making phone calls. “It’s the best iPod we’ve ever
made,” Mr. Jobs exclaims at one point. “The killer app is making calls,”
he later adds. Both lines spark thunderous applause. He doesn’t
dedicate any significant time to discussing the phone’s internet
connectivity features until more than 30 minutes into the address.
The
presentation confirms that Mr. Jobs envisioned a simpler and more
constrained iPhone experience than the one we actually have over a
decade later. For example, he doesn’t focus much on apps. When the
iPhone was first introduced there was no App Store, and this was by
design. As Andy Grignon, an original member of the iPhone team, told me
when I was researching this topic, Mr. Jobs didn’t trust third-party
developers to offer the same level of aesthetically pleasing and stable
experiences that Apple programmers could produce. He was convinced that
the phone’s carefully designed native features were enough. It was “an
iPod that made phone calls,” Mr. Grignon said to me.
Mr.
Jobs seemed to understand the iPhone as something that would help us
with a small number of activities — listening to music, placing calls,
generating directions. He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of
users’ daily lives. He simply wanted to take experiences we already
found important and make them better.
The minimalist vision for the iPhone he offered in 2007 is unrecognizable today — and that’s a shame.
Under
what I call the “constant companion model,” we now see our smartphones
as always-on portals to information. Instead of improving activities
that we found important before this technology existed, this model
changes what we pay attention to in the first place — often in ways
designed to benefit the stock price of attention-economy conglomerates,
not our satisfaction and well-being.
We’ve become so used to the constant companion model
over the past decade that it’s easy to forget its novelty. As a
computer scientist who also writes about the impact of technology on
culture, I think it’s important to highlight the magnitude of this
shift, as it seems increasingly clear to me that Mr. Jobs probably got
it right the first time: Many of us would be better off returning to his
original minimalist vision for our phones.
Practically
speaking, to be a minimalist smartphone user means that you deploy this
device for a small number of features that do things you value (and
that the phone does particularly well), and then outside of these
activities, put it away. This approach dethrones this gadget from a
position of constant companion down to a luxury object, like a fancy
bike or a high-end blender, that gives you great pleasure when you use
it but doesn’t dominate your entire day.
To
succeed with this approach, a useful first step is to remove from your
smartphone any apps that make money from your attention. This includes
social media, addictive games and newsfeeds that clutter your screen
with “breaking” notifications. Unless you’re a cable news producer, you
don’t need minute-by-minute updates on world events, and your
friendships are likely to survive even if you have to wait until you’re
sitting at your home computer to log on to Facebook or Instagram. In
addition, by eliminating your ability to publish carefully curated
images to social media directly from your phone, you can simply be
present in a nice moment, free from the obsessive urge to document it.
Turning
our attention to professional activities, if your work doesn’t
absolutely demand that you be accessible by email when away from your
desk, delete the Gmail app or disconnect the built-in email client from
your office servers. It’s occasionally convenient to check in when out
and about, but this occasional convenience almost always comes at the
cost of developing a compulsive urge to monitor your messages
constantly. If you’re not sure whether your work requires phone-based
email, don’t ask; just delete the apps and wait to see whether it causes
a problem — many people unintentionally exaggerate their need to
constantly be available.
Once you’ve
stripped away the digital chatter clamoring for your attention, your
smartphone will return to something closer to the role originally
conceived by Mr. Jobs. It will become a well-designed object that comes
out occasionally throughout your day to support — not subvert — your
efforts to live well: It helps you find that perfect song to listen to
while walking across town on a sunny fall afternoon; it loads up
directions to the restaurant where you’re meeting a good friend; with
just a few swipes, it allows you to place a call to your mom — and then
it can go back into your pocket, or your bag, or the hall table by your
front door, while you move on with the business of living your
real-world life.
Early in his 2007
keynote, Mr. Jobs said, “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
What he didn’t add, however, was the follow-up promise that “tomorrow,
we’re going to reinvent your life.” The iPhone is a fantastic phone, but
it was never meant to be the foundation for a new form of existence in
which the digital increasingly encroaches on the analog. If you return
this innovation to its original limited role, you’ll get more out of
both your phone and your life.
Cal Newport is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown and the author of the forthcoming book
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A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR2 of the New York edition with the headline: You’re Using
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