14/04/24 The State of My Dumbphone Use
I've been really enjoying using a flip phone lately, and I wanted to write this blog post as a way of engaging with the dumbphone community beyond scrolling the subreddit or watching videos on YouTube. I've been loving hearing about people's experiences with their dumbphones, and I've been loving using my flip phone as a way of ditching my smartphone more often. I might make YouTube videos that overlap with some points I mention here, but I wanted to quickly write down how I've been using my flip phone lately.
For background, I bought a flip phone in about December 2023. Used it a bit, forgot about it for a bit, and over the past few weeks have been gravitating towards it again as part of my efforts to improve my mental health as I come out of a depressive episode.
I wrote a list of everything I still use my smartphone for as things currently stand:
How this has looked in reality is me picking up my smartphone twice a day for mood and medication tracking, with some as-needed pickups in between, and reducing my screen time by a bit over an hour per day, down to 30-40 minutes (excluding laptop and TV use). I carry my flip phone around with me in case of emergency or sometimes use it to call friends and family for fun.
As part of this, I've been using a pocket notebook to jot down ideas, reminders and lists. I've just ordered a planner so I can replace using my phone's calendar, but I accidentally bought an academic year one, so I can't start using it until July. Oops. I'm so excited for it though. I'm not very excited to use my phone's calendar, but to open a nice notebook and use pen and paper? Hell yeah! Going back to analogue ways of doing things has brought me a lot of happiness and joy, just because it's more fun to do. It's also brought me some peace of mind - everything in my notebook is there because I put it there, so opening it up doesn't give me the same stressed feeling as does opening my phone and seeing notifications. Writing things by hand is also slower than typing, and it gives you more time to think and reflect, as well as feeling more peaceful, in my opinion. This enthusiasm has led me to look at different ways of using physical notebooks, and I'm trying out some writing styles as well as starting a bit of a commonplace book, which is where you record information like recipes, quotes and thoughts. I have similar things digitally, so I do worry it's frivolous to have it physically, but it's so nice to leaf through a book, plus writing things with pen and paper is supposed to improve your retention of information, or so I hear. Anyway, I'm having fun.