Recently, I decided to watch The Brutalist — a movie that’s won multiple Academy Awards and has been widely praised by critics — with my wife. I got snacks from the kitchen, snuggled into my recliner, and prepared to be mesmerized by great art.
Not even 10 minutes had passed before I reached for my smartphone. No one was calling me. I wasn’t expecting any texts, emails, or alerts. Yet, as the movie played, for reasons unknown even to me, I was staring at the tiny screen in my hand.
Relentless phone-checking has become a regular occurrence in my life, so much so that it’s poisoning my retirement. It’s become an addiction, and I’m determined to overcome it.
When I was a lawyer, my phone was mostly a helpful tool
I retired from the practice of law in 2020. During my working years, my screen time was quite limited. My staff screened calls to the office, and I checked emails twice a day on my computer. My mobile mostly stayed in my pocket, reserved for communicating with my office on court days or for calling my wife.
When the time came for me to stop working, my retirement plans were ordinary. I imagined the time-consuming demands of clients and courts would be replaced by travel, gardening, and the leisurely reading of good books.
But what I didn’t predict was that my handy pocket computer would turn on me and become a source of the kind of stress I retired to escape.
As a retiree, I find myself checking my phone all too often
My smartphone is an amazing tool. It opens and starts my car. With it, I can locate my house keys, my luggage, and even my wife. I can change the temperature in my home and see what the security cameras see. I can read books, play five-minute chess, and follow the news.
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But what do I really do? I check it dozens of times a day for little or no reason. I get hooked on clickbait in my news feed: “The ingredient that every grilled cheese sandwich needs,” “Five exercises that will give you eternal life,” and whatever else the algorithm has concocted to catch my attention.
When I was still working as a lawyer, I didn’t get sucked into my news feed in the same way, mostly because I didn’t have the time. Nowadays, I find myself checking my phone because it relieves the anxiety I feel when I leave it unchecked for too long.
In the course of my life, I’ve overcome difficulties with alcohol, nicotine, and overeating. With each of those addictions, I knew I was in trouble when I was no longer going for the substance to feel good, but because using gave me temporary respite from withdrawal symptoms. I was doing the same thing with my phone.
Over time, I realized the relaxed retirement I’d envisioned was being sandwiched into the intervals between checking my phone. During my working days, I obsessed about my cases, and my mind would wander off to one of them at random moments. Today, it wanders off similarly to the call of social media and my news feed.
Phones are too valuable a tool in our modern society for abstinence, so I knew I had to learn to regulate my screen use instead of going cold turkey.
The journey to wean myself from addiction has begun
I want a retirement in which I participate in the world, instead of being pulled out of it by repeatedly engaging in behaviors that don’t make me happy.
My first step toward this goal was to admit my dependence and then become sensitive to the difference between using my phone productively and grabbing it at every uncomfortable juncture in life.
Two months ago, I set some rules I adapted from when I quit smoking twenty-five years ago. I’d notice when I felt an urge to check my phone, and then tell myself to wait 10 minutes. When that time had passed, I’d often forget about the urge or decide I could wait another 10 minutes.
My aim is to be intentional about checking my phone. And it’s working. Those intermittent rewards are already losing their grip on me.
When I do eventually look at my phone, because I have a reason to, the cheap reward of three likes on my social media post still gives me a little thrill, but I no longer go looking for them by refreshing my feed twenty minutes after I posted.
I want to learn to control my phone, rather than let it control me
As I navigate healthier phone use, I won’t condemn myself for watching funny videos of cats or stop playing online chess. I only want to end the mindless checking — the things that, when I am finished, make me feel stupid and sad.
I didn’t walk away from the pressures of the law office to replace them with pressure from my phone. I aspire to a retirement of simple tasks and quiet days. It’s a vision that no one ever achieves in this day and age, but for now, I won’t allow that fantasy to be destroyed by my own behaviour and a tiny screen inside my pocket.
Do you have a story to share about retirement? Contact the editor, Charissa Cheong, at ccheong@businessinsider.com
