Being busy as a badge of honor is something we have collectively normalized. The claim that we are ‘too busy’ to do something is one of the most common refutations of almost anything that could come to mind. It is also an easy tack-on at the end of ‘good’ when responding to the question of how we are. For of course, we are ‘good; busy…’ This is the current condition we all claim to be; for whatever reason. For a lovely rebuttal of this deification of being busy, go read Tim Kreider’s ‘We learn nothing’. He mocks this in a beautiful dark way that I don’t think I could match, I instead would point at why we are ‘so busy’.

For the moment I want to raise the idea that we are busy because we fill any empty space we get with noise. Less than two decades ago it was okay to get bored while waiting in a coffee shop, or while standing in front of an elevator. This is no longer the case, now, even these commonplace moments of emptiness are rapidly filled up with noise. As a matter of fact, when faced with an opportunity to do nothing and relax, almost all of us reach for a blinking tippity-tappity box, and fill that moment up. It is no wonder then that we are all complaining that we don’t have any time; we don’t! We have, of our own free will given it away. We have filled it with texts, and posts, and tweets, and rage, and online reviews, and mindless consumption, and masterclasses, and doom-scrolling.

This is not to say that I am not a phone addict. I am as bad as anyone could be for having a serious relationship with my phone. The argument for it is that I use the device to keep in contact with a wide range of people in a number of time zones and locations. Yet, I am not actually interacting with those people, I am busy stroking the glowing box in my hand. Staring lovingly at the bright lights as they drip dopamine on my soul. So sure, I might have gotten myself to quit doom scrolling, and the socials may only claim a pittance when it compared to others, yet I still spend more time on my relationship with my device than I do on anyone else, myself included.

This week I realized I don’t actually need to escape to the wilderness for three weeks in the spring to limit my relationship with my device. I don’t even need to spend a few hours reading reviews of ‘dumbphones’ or finding a new product that can help me use my device less. In fact, I can just turn it off. That is it. That easy. Turn it off. This requires searching through some menus to do, but it turns out you can still turn off the blinking box. Even though most people can’t think of a time that they actually do so.

I am not going to write a treatise on my new experiment as a digital luddite (tonight anyways), but I will offer up the challenge that most of us could likely do with more mornings with our phones off. If the idea of that stresses you out, or you find yourself thinking of why you couldn’t try it, you likely need it more than you know.

Try it. Turn the box off before you go to bed.

The next morning you can start your day with empty space. No notifications. No texts. No doom scrolling. You can be ‘not-busy’ for a couple hours at the start of your day. See what that is like. It turns out, you might actually have the time to make real meals and exercise, or invest in your relationship, or go outside, or do something with your life. You just need to reclaim your empty spaces.