We human beings are profoundly shaped by, and drawn out from ourselves, by the things that are around us. And the smartphones that most of us carry are purposefully designed with this in mind.It's no accident that we find ourselves checking and re-checking email, messages and social media, before we even know quite why. We're drawn in by the promise of a brief, welcome surge of expectation and hope. This is going to be the moment when we'll find out that everything is OK, or that we're wanted, or that we're loved. This is the moment that we'll be saved from our anxiety.But shortly afterwards, we feel a familiar hollowness and emptiness. The hit was but for a moment. Our devices call to us, wink at us, and buzz us with the promise. And we willingly succumb, knowing it will not satisfy us but feeling unsure about whether we can do anything about it.We have, as Seth Godin writes, a Pavlov in our pocket. An 'optimised, tested and polished call-and-response machine', that works every time. And, because we're so bewitched by its presence, will-power alone is unlikely to help us.If we want to live lives that aren't so directed by the insistent call and the instant dopamine hit, we have to find ways that our devices can serve us rather than having us, unwittingly, serve them. Specifically, we have to take steps to have our devices support us in what's life-giving and in what actually matters to us rather than in what distracts us and numbs us.To help us do this, we could consider putting the features that draw us in to the cycle far out of reach.After finding myself increasingly unwilling to tolerate the effects of all this, I am experimenting with the steps listed below. I have found each of them to be liberating, not least in supporting me in exercising much more conscious choice about how this powerful technology affects me. I'm less distracted. I feel less needy. And - I'm still reachable. I still respond to emails. I am still asked to do work for people. And I still have friends.On my phone
- Turning off all phone notifications (buzzes, beeps, lock-screen messages) apart from those that come from real human beings who are trying to contact me directly. WhatsApp, messenger, phone and text notifications are on. Newsfeed updates, tweets, and anything generated by a machine are off.
- Removing all unnecessary social media apps. If I really want to check something, I'll wait until I'm in front of my laptop.
- Disabling my phone's email applications, and asking people who need to contact me urgently to use WhatsApp or a text message.
- Creating a tools-only homescreen, which has the eight apps I use for quick and important tasks, and launching all other apps by typing their names from the phone's search function. This adds an extra layer of conscious choice making before I get access to an app.
- Disabling fingerprint access to my phone and using a long password so that access to my phone as a whole is a more deliberate act than before.
- Charging my phone outside of my bedroom, so that I am not drawn to check it when it's time to sleep, or to assuage my anxiety if I wake in the middle of the night.
On my laptop
- Checking my email and social media accounts only on my laptop, which means making deliberate decisions about when and where rather than reacting in the moment.
- Using an inbox batching system (BatchedInbox) which delivers email to me only at three specific times of day rather than the moment it is sent, and which completely takes away any potential hit from repeatedly checking for new mail.
- Disabling my Facebook news feed using the Chrome browser extension News Feed Eradicator, which allows me to check messages and post updates without getting drawn in. I can still check for updates from specific people and pages when I choose, by searching for them by name or by allowing notifications from their updates.
- Limiting access to the sites that hypnotise me, using the StayFocusd Chrome extension. This allows me to restrict access to websites (such as news and social media specifically) to certain times of day only, to constrain my total time on them to 10 minutes each day, and to completely block others that don't add richness and depth to my life.
I know that not all of these will suit everyone's life, responsibilities and commitments. But I encourage you to try some of them out, particularly those that seem most doable for you, and let me know how you get on.For more support and information on all of these, you can read Khe Hy's article 'I was addicted to my iPhone' and read more at timewellspent.io
Photo Credit: John Flinchbaugh Flickr via Compfight cc
It's when we actually listen to another human being that they get to be human too. Listening allows a shift from I-It relating in which the other is essentially an object to us (an irritation, a way to get what I want, a way to feel good about myself) to I-You relating, in which the other gets to be a person.As 
An inspiration for my nearly three years of writing On Living and Working has been 
What’s your understanding of the cause of your actions and other people’s actions?Mostly we’ve been taught to think that it’s something within that produces what we do. We talk about motivation, or goals, or drive, or inspiration. We think of ourselves as separate from the world and that our actions and relationship to everything comes from inside us out into the world. And, of course, there’s some truth in that.But I don’t think it’s the whole story.We’re not as separate from the world as all that. Much of the time what’s happening is that we’re being drawn towards situations, equipment, or possibilities that we meet.So, when there’s a chair in the room we’re drawn to sit down when we’re tired. Or when it’s time to go out of the room we’re drawn towards the door and reach for the handle, which draws us too.This is different from the way you might think you relate to doors and chairs.It’s not so much that before we act there’s a thinking process by which we first decide to find a door and then reach for the handle in a series of discrete steps. In the middle of everyday human life all of this just flows out of us, from the everyday familiarity and skilfulness in being in the world that we’ve embodied over a long time.The philosopher Martin Heidegger called such features of the world that draw us out in particular ways affordances.Being around different kinds of affordance draws us out of ourselves in different ways. Perhaps you’ll see this most clearly if you start to watch for a while what you’re drawn into – what you find yourself automatically doing, before you’ve even thought about it – in particular places.
It’s easy to relate to the objects which fill our world as if they were just there – a taken for granted, already existing feature of human life.But the materials in everything you own or use – everything – had to either be grown by somebody or dug out of the ground first. Even the most synthetic and complex of products start out this way. Growing and mining, the source of it all.That’s quite a thought to consider. Take any object around you, from the smallest bolt to the tallest building, and imagine back through the long and complex chain of people and interlocking processes to the raw materials that came from the earth itself.Remembering the source of everything, and the commitment and ingenuity that makes it all possible, can be a way of cultivating deep gratitude and wonder that any of it is available to you in the first place.These must be more possibility-filled moods than the resentment or frustration we can so readily feel at all the products that don’t work as expected, at the chaos of the world, at the sheer everyday humdrum repetitive ordinariness of things. And gratitude, for this aspect of life’s many wonders, can go a long way to awakening the sense of possibility, responsibility and focussed commitment we need in order to do our best work and inspire others.
Our tools shape us. I've argued this here before, most notably 
It seems common sense to think of will-power - our capacity to do or not do the things that matter to us - as coming only from within us. If I can't start something or stop something, develop a new habit or take up a project, if I find myself procrastinating, then it must all be down to me, and me alone. And, if that's the case then pushing harder, or harsh self-criticism, or both, seem to be the way to go in order to get myself started.But self-punishing is hardly life giving, and barely supports our capacity to flourish and get up to what matters in a sustained way. And it's based on a profound misunderstanding, deeply rooted in our culture, that we are essentially separate from the world. If I'm separate, if the world is essentially divided into me (my mind, my thinking) and everything out there which I have to move or push against, then when I find myself not moving or not pushing what other conclusion can I come to than (1) I'm not trying hard enough and (2) there's something wrong with me?But there is another way to look at this that takes into account how open to the world, how indivisible from the world, we are. When we see this we also start to see how much we are affected by who and what is around us. We discover that the world is an affordance for certain things - that different places and people draw out of us different kinds of action and inaction, and that this is often a better description of what's happening than 'I willed it'.Chairs beckon me to sit, paths beckon me to walk, people who are open and receptive beckon me to speak, others beckon me to keep quiet. Place a stack of chocolate biscuits on my desk, and I am drawn to eat. Place a phone in my pocket, filled with incoming messages, tweets, emails, voicemail - and I am drawn to check.Our whole physical and social world acts as a scaffold or a pathway for our action and inaction.The startling corollary of this is that how we are in the world is not brought about by inner will alone. It is also, in large part, brought about by what and who we choose to surround ourselves with in our homes and work spaces. In this way the worlds we build for ourselves also make us.And just as the road layout and road signs here in the UK are an affordance for driving on the left (they call for left-of-the-road driving), and those in mainland Europe or the US are an affordance for driving on the right, we can begin to lay out - with our choice of possessions, tools, spaces and relationships - paths that are an affordance for distraction and delay, or for doing what matters most to us.
What are the habits you have that diminish you?It’s not so difficult to find out what they are. You’ll probably do them automatically, without thinking. They’ll soothe you in some way. And they’ll leave you afterwards with the vaguely queasy feeling of having wasted your time – they’re distracting rather than nourishing, numbing rather than enlivening, they cover up what’s going on rather than have you face it, and they have you turn away from genuine connection with yourself and with other people.A few candidates for you to consider:
First, we had talking.Given half a chance, we human beings can be very good at talking and listening to one another. It's a capacity we've built by doing it for hundreds of thousands of years.If we settle and quieten ourselves, if we tone down our inner chatter and impulsivity, we can speak powerfully with one another in ways that foster deep understanding and the exploration of wide-open possibility. And we can take action together, directly and effectively, by making and responding to each others' promises and commitments.But our technology, to which we are so addicted, does not always help us with this.We invented the telephone, a revolution in connectivity, opening up wide new possibilities to talk and listen with those not physically present with us.This, at least, is synchronous. We must speak to a person who is actually there, when they are there. We have to be in conversation. We have no choice but to witness to their reactions to what we're saying, and they to ours. Though stripped of the bodily presence of another, a conversation by phone brings us in contact with them.But then we invented voicemail (first, the answer machine), allowing us to speak when the other person is absent.And we invented email and text messaging, forums and Facebook and social media of many kinds, which enabled us to exchange messages more quickly and fluidly than recorded voices would allow.And we found that we loved them.These are asynchronous technologies. They afford us the possibility of speaking and listening without the other's simultaneous presence. And we like this because leaving messages feels much less risky, much less exposing, much safer than the delicate work of speaking with another live human being with emotions and reactions, thoughts and judgements, cares and commitments.We get to speak without having to be vulnerable.And, because we like this feeling of safety more than we will admit, today we drown under a deluge of messages. We spend our time interacting with ghosts - distant others who are not there to feel or hear what we have to say. We do not even have to speak. And, most importantly, we are spared feeling or experiencing others' reactions to us.We say this drowning is 'just how it is', but fail to see that we're making a choice. A choice to stay secure behind our machines. A choice to accept a flood of disembodied words at the expense of the shakiness and power of speaking directly to other people.We've made the world this way, and it's killing us.But we can do something about it because, first, we had talking.And we still have it, if we would choose to turn towards one another.Because given half a chance, we human beings can be very good at talking, and listening. It's a capacity we've built already by doing it, very well, for hundreds of thousands of years.
I'm waiting for some friends to pick me up in their car.All around me, people are coming and going on errands, on their way to meet friends or loved ones or business acquaintances. Some are hurrying, others earnest, some struggling with the pain of simple movement. Seagulls are calling. There's a distinctive fresh salty tang to the air. The sun is low, soft-edged, orange-yellow in the late afternoon sky.But I miss all of it. Because a small device in my pocket, bevel-edged and glassy, has grabbed my attention. I'm enchanted, responding to emails, checking for news that I'm wanted and needed, feeling the weight and promise of everything I've offered to do for myself and for others.And I'm at least a little afraid of what I'll feel if I put this down.Wherever I am I always have something to do. I'm defined by my doing, my to-do, my not-yet-done. I become, always, some form of producer or some form of consumer.And, because of this, I no longer know so much about the art of waiting.I am rarely freed, rarely cut loose to fall into the depths of my own longing, my confusion, my boredom, or my simple capacity to wonder at all that is around me.