Phone screen. Computer screen. Television screen. Repeat. We’ve all become a bunch of screen junkies and it’s no way to live. I find myself fighting it constantly and little-by-little I’ve been taking my IRL life back. (Yeah, I know IRL is “In Real Life” but ‘taking my IRL back’ reads weird so I’m sticking with it). But have no fear, I’m here to help. Ever since I wrote this piece late last year, “The Lost Art of Owning Things”, I’ve been trying to bring as much of the stuff that I enjoyed from our pre-Internet/smart phone-addicted world back into my life.
And while I can’t clap my hands and open up a Blockbuster in your hometown, (though we are getting classic Pizza Hut restaurants back, which is amazing even though I can’t take credit for it) I can share a bunch of small things that I’ve done that have made a huge difference in cutting down my online, streaming, screen-living life.
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Stop Using Your Phone for Pictures: Buy a Decent Camera
You can take absolutely incredible photos on your phone. Full stop. I have. You have. They even recently broadcast a full Major League Soccer game using only iPhones. Amazing, but too bad nobody watches soccer haha.
But this suggestion has nothing to do with pixels or resolution. It has to do with attention. In your day-to-day life, sure, use your phone. But for events or if you’re going on vacation, I’d recommend two options:
- Get a decent-quality point-and-shoot camera.
- Go big and get an expensive, incredible camera that IS better than an iPhone.
Either way, ditch your phone as your primary camera and here’s why: When you use your phone as your camera, you get sucked into all kinds of distractions: alerts, texts that come in, your urge to check your email or social media, someone asking you to “send that to me” and on and on.
You don’t even realize this is happening anymore, but it does and it steals your focus and attention from, guess what, THE THING YOU WANTED TO TAKE A PICTURE OF!
Imagine that. You fly somewhere, book a hotel and drive for hours to hike and visit an incredible mountain or trail or lake or view and you reach for your phone to capture it, but instead spend seven minutes reading an email or answering a text or getting distracted by a news alert. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Bring a dedicated camera. Leave the phone. Stay focused. Take the pictures while staying in the moment. Remove the posting and sharing and crap for another day.
Read Print Books
I admit it, I’m biased on this front. I’m an author and I’ve written a bunch of books and I have an awesome print library in my house, but nevertheless, everyone should read more print books.
First, you own them. If your WiFi goes out or the Internet gets wiped out or your digital reader decides to shut down (like what’s happening now to the early Kindle owners) then you are covered. The books are yours. Nobody can take them away.
Second, reading print books and surrounding yourself with print books is good for you. The Japanese even have a word for it. It’s called “tsundoku” and it is viewed with affection as an acknowledgement and appreciation for learning and comfort in being surrounded by knowledge.
Third, they look cool. Book shelves overflowing with great covers and spines never go out of style. They help you organize your interests and allow you to revisit topics that interest you over and over.
Fourth, every man should read more. Period. Whatever you’re into: World War II, football, biographies, arctic exploration, sharks, Teddy Roosevelt, thrillers, Elmore Leonard, Hemingway, whatever… Reading about it helps calm your mind, improve your focus and gives you a sense of purpose and completion when you finish a book and move onto the next one.
Listen to Your Old CDs (Or Buy New Ones)
Do you know how much a new Philips or Magnavox basic CD player/stereo is these days? $40 to $50. That’s it. Do you know how cool it is to roll up to a backyard with a CD player and your old CaseLogic CD case? Super cool, is the answer.
Forget Spotify or Apple Music or whatever you use. Instead, leave your bluetooth speakers and your phone inside or in the car and pop in a full CD and let it run just the way the artist intended, from the first track to the last. Now, instead of paying Apple every single month to listen to songs you don’t own, you can buy a CD one time and listen to it the rest of your life, just like it used to be.
Go On Regular Bike Rides
No, I’m not talking about training for a local triathlon or IronMan. I’m talking about nice, relaxing bike rides after dinner with your wife and/or kids. Bike rides are a near-perfect, post-dinner leisure activity. You’re getting fresh air. The wind is blowing in your face. You can talk easily to someone with you and you can’t (or shouldn’t) have your phone out.
You can cover a lot of ground in a short time. You’re getting your blood moving without working too hard. And if you live close enough, you can bike to get ice cream at night or maybe coffee in the morning. Go grease the chain, pump your tires and get out there. You won’t regret it.
Get Outside and Play Sports
Forget the gym one day a week. You’ll have plenty of time for that in the winter. Find a regular pick-up hoops game. Instead, take one lifting day and find an adult softball or soccer or volleyball league. Whatever your favorite sport used to be, I promise, there are guys over 40 playing in your area having a blast. Find them! Pickleball. Golf. Whatever. Just get out of your normal routine and do it.
Don’t Use Your Phone as Your Alarm
Pop quiz, hot shot: when your phone alarm goes off, do you simply turn it off or do you shut it off, let the cobwebs clear, then doomscroll emails and texts and social media for pretty much no reason before you get out of bed? And on the flip side, when you’re about to go to bed and set your alarm, do you do one last check of your phone to see if you missed anything that turns into sixteen minutes of watching old Seinfeld clips?
If this sounds like you, here’s an amazing option: Spend $10 and get yourself an old school, dedicated alarm clock that does two things: one, tell time and two, sets an alarm.
Then, when it’s time for bed, leave your phone charging in another room.
OR, if you have kids in college or grown up or older parents and you want the phone near you in case of emergencies, charge it and leave it across the room, nowhere near your bed. Easy. You just saved yourself 20-30 minutes of screen time.
Zero Tech Workouts
Ditch your Oura, your Whoop, your Apple Watch, your Garmin… anything that sends or streams or monitors your whatever, unless you’re reading this and you’re Michael Phelps and you’re making a swimming comeback. Wait, are you Michael Phelps? Are you training for the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028? No? You’re not? Then take all that stuff off for the summer. Train in the stone age!
Go for a run. Go swim. Go bike. Go lift and do all those things because they’re good for you and you enjoy them, not because you can track your VO2Max and a made-up recovery algorithm that is most likely wrong.
Bring Back Newspapers and Magazines
True leisure reading used to be when you’d lounge on the couch and pop open a magazine for a little bit. Or you’d wake up in the morning, brew some coffee and flip through a newspaper.
When was the last time you did either? If it’s been too long, order a summer subscription to your local newspaper. It’s cheaper than you think and you can revisit 1990 all over again every morning.
Yes, I know most papers are shells of their former selves. But if you live near a major city, there’s most likely a much smaller version of your paper still being printed every morning. Sports. Entertainment. Local stuff.
Check it out for a change of pace. It beats staring at another screen when you first wake up. Plus, you get to fill in the crossword puzzle with an actual pencil. Good times!
Go to the Movies
Stop streaming everything. Get out of the house. Order M&Ms and a popcorn and a Coke and sit in an air conditioned theater and enjoy a movie on the big screen with no distractions. There’s still nothing like it.
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Jon Finkel
Editor-in-Chief, Midlife Male
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Check out my latest books at jonfinkel.com
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