Day 15 — Contemplation: The Life Force of the Soul
Day 16 — Boredom: Embrace the Act of Being
Day 17 — Dedication: Making Time for Mastery
Day 18 — Full Focus: Urgency versus Importance
Day 19 — Connected: Global Connectivity versus Retreat to Self
Day 20 — The Power of Habit: You Are What You Do
Day 21 — Detached: The New Normal
Introduction
Your phone is likely no more than ten feet away from you as you read this. Its presence alone changes the environment completely, doesn’t it? In that tiny device there exists endless streams of intellectual stimulation, entertainment, communication, and cat pictures.
You have held that luminescent box in your hand and felt its power. You’ve come to understand that its strength is sometimes a necessary component to your day-to-day activities, a life force that draws you into its potential for efficiency, cooperation, productivity, and fun.
On the other hand, you’ve also felt the darkness of your relationship with that phone. You’ve witnessed its ability to entice you with mindlessness and vainglory. You’ve likely spent your free time (and some of your working hours) swiping and button pushing, texting and scrolling, binge-watching and game playing into the wee hours of the night, ignoring even your most loved ones in the process. Like Frodo and the Ring, you feel a special connection with your phone, one that you’ve come to realize is unhealthy at best, and addictive at worst.
You want more, don’t you?
Since the dawn of the smartphone more than a decade ago, we have struggled to identify what our right relationship with technology should be. There are several books and studies that examine the effects of technology use from a secular viewpoint, but very few (if any) books address the spiritual effects of our screens. It is my theory that our devices, especially our phones, have led us to focus less on living happier, holier lives. You’ve likely felt that same spiritual confusion and unease, which is why you have picked up this book.
I wrote this book to help you, as the title indicates, detach yourself from your phone and put it in its proper place. Your phone should be helping you achieve the spiritual heights that God has intended for you, but at this point your phone is doing more to keep you from achieving his will for your life. This book will teach you how to detach yourself from your phone’s addictive temptations, and ultimately move you toward living a life of heroic Christian virtue.
My Story
In 2009, my wife, Maribel, and I purchased smartphones for the first time. We were dirt poor. We had just come back from a year as international missionaries and, with only my income as a first-year teacher, we struggled to make ends meet.
We were accustomed to the old-school text and talk phones we had bought two years prior. Then one day my wife’s phone quite literally blew up. Our cellphone provider made us an offer we couldn’t refuse: Smartphones, surprisingly, were the cheapest replacement.
When we brought the devices into our home, however, the family dynamic changed. I’ve noticed that, at home, the reception waves flow from this lifeless bit of machinery into my soul and pull me away from many opportunities to fulfill my God-given role as a father. When with my kids, I’m “lol”-ing at the latest meme instead of making them laugh in real life with dad jokes. When my son asks me to read him a book, I tell him, “Just a minute while I finish this email and then we can read Hop on Pop.” While my daughter climbs on my lap to offer a bowl of imaginary soup, my thumbs text a friend while I open my mouth wide without making the slightest bit of eye contact, and I swallow my guilt. It all came to a head when my third child, my first son, was coming into the world.
My wife Maribel, my mother, and I were in the hospital, where my wife’s pain medication had made her fall asleep for the entire night. My son’s birth would be delayed, and labor would be induced in a few hours when the doctor arrived.
Unable to sleep, I was alone in the dark hospital room anticipating my son’s arrival with wonder and awe. But this was my third child, so I knew the drill; I’d have a long time before I was needed. So I drifted into the digital world. I sifted through my professional work first, responding to emails from clients and bosses. Then I began dabbling in texts, social media, email, games, and every app I could find. I lost myself in the electronic universe for hours during the stillness of the seemingly eternal night, leaving my body weary and my mind dull.
When the moment came for me to be the encouraging husband, the one who is supposed to comfort his wife and welcome his first son into the world, I found myself holding my wife with one hand and my iPhone with the other. All who were present — the nurses, the doctor, even my own mother — looked at me with shocked discontent. Oblivious to their stares, my own eyes were glued to God knows what was on my cellphone screen. I had already finished my necessary work three or four hours ago. I was being entertained by emptiness. Maribel then took her hand away from mine, looked deep into my eyes and said: “T. J., seriously? Can you put down your phone? I need you now. ALL of you.”
In that moment I realized I was an addict. What kind of man chooses to distract himself from the birth of his son with meaningless entertainment? How disturbing it must have been for everyone who watched me stare blankly into a screen when I should have held my head up proudly as the father of a new and beautiful son. Yet, a few minutes later, there I was. There we were. All of us, including my son, whose first breaths I would have missed had my wife not called me back to reality. I turned off my phone for the rest of the day and became a daddy again.
As my family, home and work responsibilities grew, simultaneously technology advanced in quantity and quality. On those few occasions that Maribel and I were both well-rested and able to leave the house to go have some fun with our kids, I took a look around and saw endless streams of people with their heads buried in their phones. At the restaurant, young couples were not staring into one another’s eyes in the rapture of young love; in their homes, families were not playing board games or reading books; on the playground, parents were not playing with their children. Everyone seemed to be ignoring everyone else, instead paying close attention to whatever was happening on their phones.
And today it continues.
Since my son’s birth, I’ve longed to live a happy life, one that is fulfilling, satisfying, meaningful, and focused. To do so, I have had to learn how to live in a new way, a way that harnesses technology as a tool to build the good life I desire, not the distracted one I fell into long ago.
If you are still reading this book, that means that you desire to live the good life, too.
A Fair Warning
The method that I am proposing will not have you go the Lord of the Rings route by climbing to the top of Mount Doom and throwing your devices into a pit of molten lava (although that might be progress). On the contrary, our devices contain millions of ways to help us live healthier, happier, and more efficient lives.
There are numerous ways in which technology has advanced humanity. I personally have managed to grow my own business, publish several books, and connect