The High in Your Pocket
On July 1, 2025, I announced to the interwebs I was abandoning my phone for a month. The moment I decided to make the announcement was just before the one where I understood I was most likely going to fail early and often. I'm about to detail how massively I failed, but if you take anything away from this, please make sure to pay attention to the acceptance I experienced in recognizing and coming to terms with this necessary evil.
Since soon after smartphones existed and I held one, I have desperately yearned for the day when I wouldn't be tethered to one. Every generation experiences some level of angst and falls into a sense of righteous annoyance when it comes to technology. My parents’ angst was rap and the internet. Mine is the smartphone.
I have long been a proponent of technological progression. I have always had an inventor's mind—forever pissed off that I was a day late or a dollar short to earn my place among the register of patents. For as long as I can remember, I have internally complained about the efficiency of everything, myself included. I have long both recognized and been in awe of humans’ place in history—at what seems to be close to the pinnacle of human achievement.
Then, last year, I came across a marketing campaign in which some company would pay you if you literally locked your phone in a box for some period of time. I applied, but wasn’t deemed worthy enough to be shoved into phone purgatory. When I entered the contest, it wasn’t for the money or the transformation in mindset. It was to purge myself of what I had deemed a tool of enablement for my evil ways.
How could a cell phone be evil? No—get your mind out of the gutter. I said evil, not dirty. That’s not quite the evil we’re talking about.
Let’s get philosophical for a moment. Marcus Aurelius has two passages from his writings I’d like to share with you.
The first says:
Real good luck would be to abandon life without ever encountering dishonesty, or hypocrisy, or self-indulgence, or pride. But the “next best voyage” is to die when you’ve had enough. Or are you determined to lie down with evil? Hasn’t experience even taught you that—to avoid it like the plague? Because it is a plague—a mental cancer—worse than anything caused by tainted air or an unhealthy climate. Diseases like that can only threaten your life; this one attacks your humanity.
— Meditations, 9.2
The second says:
Another encouragement to humility: you can’t claim to have lived your life as a philosopher—not even your whole adulthood. You can see for yourself how far you are from philosophy. And so can many others. You’re tainted. It’s not so easy now—to have a reputation as a philosopher. And your position is an obstacle as well.
So you know how things stand. Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don’t let anything distract you. You’ve wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.
Then where is it to be found? In doing what human nature requires.
How? Through first principles. Which should govern your intentions and your actions.
What principles? Those to do with good and evil. That nothing is good except what leads to fairness, and self-control, and courage, and free will. And nothing bad except what does the opposite.
If something in those passages resonates with you, congratulations, you’re an amateur philosopher; the exact mindset he mentions up there. All philosophy means is to examine your life and actions. But as old Marc reminds us, to be self-aware is both a benefit and a burden. A benefit because we can avoid that which we know will harm us. A burden because we usually don’t want to avoid what harms us.
What does any of this have to do with our current relationship with smartphones? Self-control. This has everything to do with controlling yourself around your smartphone.
Not for all, but for most, I believe an examination of smartphone usage will show most of us treat it exactly like a drug. The same way a crackhead fiends for a fix is the same way we instinctively reach for our phone when we want to feel good. While the mechanisms are very different, the cause is exactly the same. And I don’t believe everyone can blame it on dopamine. I think you wish to leave your current reality and be transported into a fictional world that you control and can exploit for pleasure.
You see, your phone really isn’t so much a drug or tool of distraction as it is a time machine. If you don’t like the present scene you’re in for whatever reason, you can simply pick up your phone and go somewhere else. If you don’t like the tone of your spouse’s conversation, you could pick up your phone and check email. If you don’t like the porch you’re sitting on at a friend’s house, you can pick up your phone and see what’s going on in Detroit, Dubai, or Deep Space. But your eyes should never see those things, especially not in real time. The peaceful way to live is naturally, as much as possible. There is nothing natural about the ability to see what’s going on anywhere in the world in real time.
Smartphones were invented to make human life easier, simpler. My argument is that they’ve made life too easy—and in the process, needlessly complicated. The human condition thrives best in that narrow balance between strife and tranquility. Not surprisingly, because so many people now live with constant comfort and ease, we’ve seen physical, mental, and emotional health decline at staggering rates. What’s the answer? Self-awareness and restraint, sure. But those are concepts. The practice is simpler: a hell of a lot fewer smartphones.
What you can accomplish with your phone today would’ve been unbelievable only a decade ago. Everyone knows how someone gorgeous or talented can make $1 million on their phone. And let’s not skip past all the other “good” things like movies, records, albums—that anyone can make. But, at the same time, you can also trick the world with fake news or carry on an intimate affair while lying next to your spouse in bed. Sure, smartphones have undeniably prolonged our lives in ways we never could have imagined. Heart-rate monitors, fall sensors, GPS locators, these have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. But our dependence on phones for their drug-like pull for pure distraction from our present scenes has made us weak, confused, and far off course from where the trajectory of human advancement was headed.
Again, I hate to sound like an old curmudgeon, but it might be best to aim for the mindsets and behaviors that existed before smartphones. The presence. The stillness. The pace. The emotions.
We fly at breakneck speeds, literally and figuratively, in ways that were impossible and inconceivable not long ago. When you take into account the full breadth of civilization—the totality of everyone who has looked, thought, and had the same mental capabilities as us—you realize we have to take stock of where we’re at. The small fraction of us who have lived with smartphones woven into our daily lives have experienced more of the world and had more opportunities than any humans in history.
This is so true that it almost feels impossible to be a happy human in 2025 without first admitting how lucky and spoiled you are. “Be grateful” is plastered on school walls, locker rooms, and boardrooms. But what’s really being asked? To compare yourself to the ones who had it worse—or still do. Don’t worry, I’m not here to stroke your Catholic guilt for not doing more for those suffering today. But look at what that expectation says: we’ve gotten so spoiled that society has to remind us to feel good by comparing ourselves downward. That’s how far we’ve drifted into comfort.
And I’m no exception. I proved it firsthand when I tried to stay away from my phone, which I failed almost daily. The longest stretch I stayed away from my phone was for three days, over a weekend. I had set up a system I thought would be foolproof for settling communication gaps between my business and personal life. Given how the backbone of my business interests are set up, a phoneless month was not only a shot to the gut, but a real one to my pocket.
I honestly don’t know the amount of business I lost because I either 1) didn’t call people back quick enough; or 2) they weren’t down with the system I was running at the time. The system, by the way, was to make calls from my laptop. That means no driving calls, or walking calls, or gym calls, or putting away dishes calls. That last one is an actual thing I tried with disastrous results. The other part of my system people couldn’t reconcile was my rule that I wasn’t checking email before noon every day and they should expect a call within 48 hours. Emergencies were to contact my spouse. I would say two-thirds of people wouldn’t or couldn’t abide by these boundaries. Neither could I.
The first day I failed when I justified having to take a client call while driving to court. I still stand by that decision given what was needed to be discussed, but the reason that call was a need was because I didn’t adequately prepare. I should have had that conversation a week earlier. Actually, if I want to be really honest, that conversation should have happened weeks earlier. But like everything in life, I justified pushing it off, replacing it with more immediate concerns. Or, at least, things I deemed to be more immediate concerns.
I’d go a couple days and do it again, give in to what I would call an emergency. They never were. No one was ever at risk of death or losing money or reputation. It was always driven by ego and emotions. Sometimes the culprit was my clients, friends, and family; but most times it was my own doing.
Phones have been the Trojan horse in the fight against mental health. While we need a population that is fulfilled, focused, and fighting their ego every day to reach their dreams, we seem to have many more than others that are scared, silent, and selfish. We allow others to steer the tone of the conversation towards now rather than later. Phones make us do this. We have been reprogrammed to respond as if they need our immediate attention.
Look at the data and the research:
A 2023 study found 56.7% of university students scored as smartphone-addicted, with over 60% reporting disrupted sleep and mental fatigue. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37936164/?)
Nearly 57% agreed they used their smartphone longer than intended. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5680647/
In a different survey, 56.9% of Americans admit they’re addicted to their phones, 89% check within 10 minutes of waking, and 64% bring their phone to the toilet. (https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/study-finds-nearly-57-of-americans-admit-to-being-addicted-to-their-phones/)
A strong 2025 study reveals addictive screen use, not total time, doubles to triples the risk of suicidal ideation in youth.(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40531519/)
Problematic smartphone use can undermine relationships—a quarter of married couples feel distracted or devalued by their partner’s phone (“phubbing”). (https://researchrepository.parkviewhealth.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=informatics&)
I wanted to rid myself of my phone because I had started to reach for it instinctively. In the morning it was the third or fifth thing I touched. My emotions would get consumed immediately with whatever my email said rather than my calendar. I became swept up in fabricated emergencies with deadlines that were completely imaginary.
I had long ago burnt myself out on the infinity loop of endless emails in corporate law, vowing to take victory each day by clearing out my inbox and all of my daily tasks. While my phone had initially helped me with email, its ease of other activities meant the death of my free-thinking time. That’s the time I used before phones to organize and clear my thoughts.
Every great thought you and everyone else ever had at one time came from an undistracted moment in time. Read that again and remember it often. Your greatness is just on the other side of your distractions and your vices. But remember, vices aren’t just the obvious like booze or gambling. Chances are you’re spending way too much time with a phone.
Personally, I love Instagram, Reddit, and chess. So much so that I’m way too embarrassed to show you the numbers of how much time I’d spend on those three apps daily. Since I quit last month, it’s nominal and both my mental health and sleep improved considerably. The data backs that up too:
Blocking mobile internet for 2 weeks let 71% of participants report better mental health—depression improvements rivaled antidepressants, with more sleep and focus.
If you didn’t know all this, you probably suspected it. The bottom line: you need to change your relationship with your phone if you’re ever going to feel like a free human again. Take the stuff off your phone that you want, but don’t need. I’ll readily admit I need a phone to be an active, productive member of society. And so do you. But you don’t need games or funny animal videos to accomplish that.
We must get better at boundaries until we change the mindset about who works for whom. Because right now, we’ve got one hell of a powerful master.
