andrew mitchell

Starting August 1st, this Friday, I’ll be switching off my smartphone for an entire month. No mobile social media. No phone camera. No banking apps. No browser. It will stay at home, out of sight.

Instead, I’ll be carrying a dumbphone for calls and texts only, the Punkt. MP02, that I was sent to take part in their annual Digital Balance Challenge. Throughout the month I’ll capture moments with a point-and-shoot camera, jot down my thoughts in a paper notebook, and read from a stack of paperbacks I’ve been meaning to get to for far too long. Not the one's I ruin daily for Paperblack Writer I hasten to add.

A few months ago I picked up £20 MP3 player for offline music while running. The player, a tiny Mechen H1 Pro, equivalent in size and shape to deck of playing cards, runs a hugely outdated version of Android but is still able to handle albums downloaded from Tidal.

I’ve had music in my pocket since my first Walkman at age seven or eight. Progressing through a series of tape and CD players, minidiscs, iPods and phones. However, in keeping with the spirit of the month, I've only loaded up actual albums. No playlists or algorithmically generated radio stations. I also have my wonderful XHDATA radio for the allotment. Do I intend to turn the greenhouse into a metal framed, short wave antenna booster? You better believe I do!

The erosion of boredom

In recent years, I’ve noticed how little time I spend being bored. Every moment of nowt; whether waiting for a bus, the walk between the shops and home, lying in bed; all have become an opportunity to check something, to cehck anything. I’ve eliminated boredom from my life almost completely. But that surely comes at a cost.

Psychologist and neuroscientist Bruce Hood, in his 2024 book, The Science of Happiness, who was recently interviewed on the excellent 10% Happier podcast, explains that social media and smartphones hijack the brain’s reward system. The constant feed of novelty; likes, reels, news, endless memes, all keep us hooked, but rob us of focus and deep satisfaction.

“We are cultivating habits of mind that reward distraction,” Hood writes,“and eroding the mental space where imagination, creativity and problem-solving happen.”

Boredom is not a flaw in the human system, it’s a feature. As a child, I filled my time with bike rides, running around woods or waiting impatiently for my favourite TV shows to come on. It's hardly like I was luddite child. After being bored of playing my computer games on my Spectrum +2, I got a book out of the library to learn how to code. And I learned by typing out pages and pages of BASIC, for hours on end.

Living less efficiently

The month is also about breaking habits, like tapping my phone to pay. I’ve been using banking apps, and mobile payment platforms for so long that I simply don't use cash, ever.

This August, I’ll go back to carrying coins and notes where possible. A minor friction, but one that reminds me I’m actually spending something real, something earned. The disconnect between my wages and ordering things online is genuinely terrifying. Things just arrive magically don't they?

So for one month;

• I'll still take photos, but I'll not edit or share them instantly.
• I'll still listen to music, but not on shuffle and I only what I specifically want to hear. Unless on the radio, I get zero say in that one.
• I’ll still capture thoughts, but with pen and paper.

Life will be slower, quieter and undeniably messier.

A pause, not a renunciation

I’m not quitting smartphones forever; my current job is in digital innovation after all. This isn’t a performance or a purity test. It’s a reset, kicked finally into gear by the Digital Challenge.

Like many of us, I often feel totally fragmented; information rich but insight poor. I'm even turning my back on podcasts for the summer. I was there when audioblogs, courtesy of the name from Ben Hammersley, became podcasts. Remember when the only wway to find and suscribe to shows was via RSS feed on the PodcastAlley website? I certainly do. I was even broadcasting them to my car radio on FM as, at the time, bluetooth wasn’t a thing. And amazingly, it was illegal to do so.

I’ve been feeling the need for boredom for some time;  for space, for a mind less tethered to the all deciding algorithm.

As Neil Postman warned in Amusing Ourselves to Death, long before smartphones,

“People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

That undoing happens quietly, notification by notification, swipe by swipe, until the ability to simply sit still, look, and wonder feels like a lost art. I don't even know if I have it in myself to reclaim the attention I’ve so obviously lost along the way but I'm excited to find out. Excited to let things slow down and see what surfaces in the silence.

I’ll report back in September. Maybes.