Leaving the house without my phone is the stuff of nightmares. Leaving the house without my phone on purpose? Are you kidding? What if I need to take a picture of something? What will I look at if I need to wait in line? What if disaster strikes or a War of the Worlds happens? The possibilities are too overwhelming. But in the face of all this uncertainty, I (mostly) left my phone at home for the past week — on purpose.
I wanted to see if I could get by with just an LTE-enabled smartwatch, an experiment I’ve been itching to run for a while. I, like many of my fellow elder millennials, look at my phone entirely too much. It’s my job, but still. A break now and then would be nice. I haven’t been convinced by minimalist phones, which never seem to have all the functionality I want. A cellular smartwatch isn’t meant to be an all-purpose smartphone replacement, but it seems like an entirely viable alternative for someone looking to cut back on screentime and stay connected. You can still send messages, read your email, and play your podcasts while you just, like, exist. The dream!
What would it be like? Waiting to pick up my coffee order, not a screen in sight, just vibing? Would I feel more connected with my fellow man? Could I rewire my brain, cure my anxiety, maybe unclench my jaw for two god damn seconds? Sort of, as it turns out. But it wasn’t exactly a snap.
Day one: The Apple Watch starts with an iPhone
I used an Apple Watch paired with my iPhone 13 Mini for this exercise. I was tempted to try it with an Android phone and a Pixel Watch with Gemini, but bringing an AI assistant into the mix felt like introducing too many variables at once. More on that later.
I had visions of myself sitting at a table at a sidewalk cafe, sipping a cappuccino, probably wearing a billowy skirt (I do not own a billowy skirt), reading a newspaper and pausing occasionally just to take in the lovely summer day. The reality wasn’t that glamorous. It was a lot more furious swiping on the watch’s tiny screen, pulled over on my bike to the side of the road, sure I’d forgotten about an important call that afternoon. Often, it looked like me hunched over my wrist, dictating texts in a quiet, direct voice: “On my way home exclamation point.” Mumbling into your watch in public is a great way to look very normal and not weird at all.
It felt awful and wonderful, all at once
That first afternoon, I left my iPhone face down on the dining room table, only to come running back in the front door a few minutes later to log into Strava and Spotify on the phone so they’d function properly on the watch. Just one of several reminders that the Apple Watch’s existence depends on an iPhone. With that done, I set out on my bike unencumbered. It felt awful and wonderful, all at once.
At the coffee shop, I learned that swiping to type on the watch’s teensy keyboard is surprisingly accurate, if tedious. Voice input is definitely the way, but I hate talking to technology in the presence of others, so I either painstakingly type out text replies or — more likely — just don’t respond until I’m at my laptop later. This is more or less what I expected.
At the end of day one, my morale was high. I didn’t feel any smarter or less anxious, but instead of pulling out my phone to scroll that night I did some pencil-and-paper Sudoku puzzles and felt righteous about it.
Day two: This little smartwatch goes to the market
I should disclose that I cheated a little. Throughout most of this exercise, I carried a second phone as an ereader. But I don’t think I violated the spirit of the challenge because it a) didn’t have a cellular connection and b) I kept it in a mode that mimics e-ink. I banished social media apps and downloaded Ali Wong’s book, which I bought years ago and forgot about until now, to the Kindle app. It’s a fun read.
I headed downtown to Pike Place Market on my bike with the watch on my wrist and the fake e-reader in my bag. I also powered off my iPhone and put it in the bag, too, I guess as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency last resort. Which is how I learned something that seems obvious now: if your iPhone is off, it can’t relay all of your notifications to the watch.
You’ll still get access to anything that has a native watch app, like messaging and emails. But I somehow expected to get Slack messages on the watch, which didn’t happen because there’s no watch app. On the other hand, I did get a little vacation from Slack for the afternoon, and nobody died, because I’m a writer and not a surgeon on call. There’s a lesson to be learned there, I guess. Anyway, the watch battery managed some heavy use, including a 40-minute call to my sister, so I call it a win overall.
I left my phone at home to go pick up my kid from daycare, which I’ve done unintentionally before. This time it was on purpose, and it was reassuring to know that I’d be able to make an emergency call if needed. Things were going well — until it was time to Duolingo.
Forgive me, for I have scrolled. I got into bed and completed a lesson to protect my streak, but once I was done, old habits came creeping back in. I spent 20, maybe 30 minutes scrolling? I finally came to my senses and put the phone on my charger. Lesson learned: if I’m going to allow some phone time for things like Duolingo and catching up on messages, I need to maintain some boundaries. No more bedtime Duolingo.
Day three: Who’s gonna drive me home tonight?
The bus ride went fine; it was just a matter of when to get off. Is the Union Street stop closest to the Symphony light rail station? Or is it Columbia? When did they start calling it Symphony Station? I’d glanced at the directions before I set out, confident that I knew the route well enough not to turn on navigation. But my particular brand of anxiety is one in which I constantly question things I know to be true.
Normally, I’d pull out my phone, look up the necessary info again, calming my nerves with solid reassurance. I could have done the same with the watch, but it would’ve taken too long, and it was too fiddly anyway. I decided just to trust that I’d remember the stop when I got to it, and I did. Union street. Woman triumphs over anxiety. I was one with the city.
I could have just called a yellow taxi service like people did for decades before Uber existed
I came crashing down from my high later when I offered to share an Uber home with a friend who lives near me and then realized that I had no way of requesting said Uber. Rude. My friend kindly hailed the Uber and I Venmoed him my half later. But the unexpected snafu shook me a little. What would have happened if I didn’t have a friend kind enough to arrange a shared Uber? Would I simply have to live at that one brewpub in the U District for the rest of time?
Realistically, I could have gotten back the way I came on public transit without a problem, it just would have taken an extra hour. Or, I realized, I could have just called a yellow taxi service like people did for decades before Uber existed. Uber offers an option to call and request a ride over the phone, as it turns out. Everything would have been fine, and with a little planning ahead, I could have gotten by without asking anyone to spot me a ride home.
I fell off the wagon a bit. I mostly brought my phone along as a backup for when I needed to do something out of the watch’s reach, like quickly finding an open restaurant nearby for lunch and putting in a pickup order. I had to take my husband to an outpatient procedure anyway, and leaving my phone at home felt a little irresponsible. But I maintained the no-phone policy when it made sense, and between the audio cues and haptic wrist taps even found Apple Maps entirely usable on the watch while driving. Ikea’s online order pickup was a little tricky, since it only offered a QR code and web address to let the store know I’d arrived for my order. Hej, how about a phone number, Ikea? But I walked into the store and used their WiFi to check in on the e-ink-ish phone — disaster averted.
Even a few days of a no-phone or phone-light existence has helped dissuade me from reaching for my phone every waking minute. Now, rather than keeping my phone constantly at my side around the house I realize that often I have no idea where it is. I’ve been walking around using AirPods and the watch listening to a podcast, or reaching for that paper Sudoku book when I have a few minutes of downtime. Not a bad outcome.
What using an Apple Watch as my phone taught me about B2B sales (and other learnings)
Pulling this off takes more planning and discipline than I anticipated. You have to be a little more conscious of where you’re headed and what your plans are for getting home. Putting the phone number for Uber’s service in your contacts would be a good idea. Keeping your phone out of your bedroom and following Casey Johnston’s DIY dumbphone method would help when you inevitably pick up your phone again. I also had to think more about charging my watch than I ever have before; getting the biggest, beefiest watch you can muster would be the right move here.
I can also see how an AI assistant would be a really, really nice thing to have on your watch if you want to ditch your phone more. Finding things on my calendar or checking details in a Google Doc could really come in handy. Siri, you may not be surprised to learn, isn’t up to these kinds of tasks.
As tidy as it would be, I don’t think there’s one gadget or one fix for our phone addictions. But I do think an arsenal of tools can help us help ourselves, and a cellular-connected smartwatch is a really good tool. Maybe a little NFC tile can help you reclaim your attention in a particular situation. Or maybe the best minimalist smartphone might just be your current phone with a few good focus modes. Maybe all of the above.
And I can’t learn this lesson enough times in my life, but I have much more success creating habits when I focus on adding something enjoyable to my routine rather than feeling like I’m depriving myself of something. Having a jigsaw puzzle at the table or a Sudoku book next to the couch ready to jump into helps my brain grab onto something before I can get twitchy about the thing I’m trying not to do.
Practice is the thing, as it always is, and it takes practice to build a new habit and chip away at a bad one. Whatever tool you can use to claw back an ounce of your attention helps. Not all at once, and not forever, but as an ongoing thing to keep relearning and opting in to. That’s what I’ve been reminded of by this smartwatch experiment. It wasn’t The Answer, but I’m going to keep the cellular watch on my phone plan to give myself more of those practice opportunities when I need a break from my phone. And it hasn’t helped with my jaw clenching, but that’s probably a medication side effect anyway.
