3443: Three Places To Put Away The Smartphone by Anthony Ongaro of Break The Twitch on Mindfulness

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It's a minimalist Monday edition of Optimal Living Daily. Three places to put away the smartphone by Anthony Angaro of BreakTheTwitch.com and I'm Justin Mollick. Happy Monday. Welcome back to Optimal Living Daily or the OLD podcast where I read to you from some of the best blogs I can find and get permission from, mostly covering personal development and minimalism on this show. For now, let's get right to it and start optimizing your life.

Three places to put away the smartphone by Anthony and Garro of BreakTheTwitch.com. I would love to say that my smartphone use is completely under control, but that would be a bold-faced lie. While I'm much more conscious of the times that I might get distracted, the temptation to look at my phone still persists. It's just so darn easy to pick up my phone and mindlessly scroll through Twitter while I'm sitting at the kitchen table having a snack.

That being said, it's definitely not the ideal way to spend that time and could be significantly improved. My vision for how I'd rather be living periodically looks a little different from what is actually happening. I imagine myself only using my phone, social media, and email

for about an hour per day total. Every day at the same time I sit down, maybe around 2pm, and spend an hour scheduling social media, checking up on friends, writing and replying to emails, then I put my phone away and go about my life, writing, making videos, playing piano, and working. I know that it can be difficult to create boundaries with our technology, but it's doable and so incredibly beneficial.

There are three key places where putting down the smartphone makes a ton of sense. Science even backs me up on this one, at least for most of it.

With that in mind, the three places you should put away the smartphone are kitchen table. There are many things that happen at the kitchen table, but the most common thing at least should be eating. First of all, there is significant evidence that distracted eating is horrible for us. When we use our phones at the table, especially while eating, we're paying less attention to the food we're consuming. That means we enjoy our food less, we tend to overeat and consequently not even remember what we ate.

Turns out having a strong memory of eating leads to less snacking later on after the meal. None of this is even considering whether there is another human being at the table. It's been shown that spending time together while eating has incredibly positive benefits. And if our attention is given to a smartphone or TV, it's simply not the case. This is when we should be spending time with our family, friends, whether over food or not. If you're flying solo,

Take the time to eat mindfully, enjoy and appreciate the food. The phone takes away from enjoying what's in front of us. Bed. As a part of my recently discussed morning routine, I decided that I wouldn't use my phone for the first hour of every day. Previously, I did this. Wake up, mindlessly scroll through emails, news and social media until rolling out of bed maybe 20 minutes later. Later in the day, I realized I had deleted something that I actually need to respond to or deal with.

When we wake up, we're setting the tone for the entire day, where the phrase waking up on the wrong side of the bed comes from, right? Why allow extraneous information and external consequences outside of our control affect our mood and excitement for the day to come? Wake up, do your routine, start the day strong. You can deal with whatever lies on the other end of the glowing screen once you're up and ready for the day. The bed is a sacred place and must be treated as such.

Study after study has proven that sleep is practically a performance enhancing drug. Whether or not you believe it, the blue spectrum light from tablets and smartphones actually messes with our ability to fall asleep and in fact might be killing us. Glowing screens don't belong in bed pretty much ever. Read a book, talk to your spouse or partner, or perhaps consider the vastness of the universe.

Did you know that a Googleplex is not only a real number, but in fact a number so big that if every grain of sand on Earth were a whole other earth full of grains of sand, there would still be less than a Googleplex grains of sand in that whole situation? Think about that for a minute. Bathroom. I'm not going to do any Googling to give scientific data for this one, but stay with me here. Often a bathroom break is one of the few times we get to walk away from our desks or computers and zone out for a minute.

I think we have this fear of what will happen if we allow our minds to be bored. That twitch to pull out our phones the second we sit down. That's our mind just triggering the habit of constantly being entertained, stimulated, and occupied. There's a reason that we tend to think of odd ideas or solve various problems while in the shower, literally called shower thoughts.

It's because our phones can't come in there with us yet, and goodness help us when they finally can. We need to stare at the wall more, wonder why that one tile is out of order from all the rest and just notice things in general. I never thought I'd be advocating for mindfulness during bathroom breaks, but it really does make a ton of sense. Plus, there actually is evidence that sitting on the toilet too long does all kinds of bad things, but lets you Google through that yourself if you're interested.

To be clear, the world isn't going to end if you do, in fact, use your phone in any of these places, but life is going to get better if you don't. You can count on being a little more mindful, a little healthier, and find more satisfaction from the time spent at the table in bed, and, well, I suppose in the bathroom too. You just listened to the post titled, Three Places to Put Away the Smartphone by Anthony and Garro of BreakTheTwitch.com, and I'll be right back with my commentary.

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They get Anthony. I've definitely struggled with phone use over the years. When I first started this podcast, I was constantly checking stats, responding to emails, looking at social media. It feels like pretty much all the time.

And even now, while I am better at it, I still catch myself reaching for my phone way more often than I'd like. That part about waking up and immediately checking your phone, I used to do exactly that, but lately I've been trying something different instead of looking at my phone first thing. I go outside and get some sun.

become a nice little morning ritual that helps me start the day better than scrolling through notifications ever did. And the bathroom one made me laugh because it's so true. We really do need those moments of just letting our minds wander. I learned this during my time at a meditation retreat.

Sometimes the best insights come when we're not constantly stimulated or entertained. Our brains kind of need that downtime to process and just be. The kitchen table point is huge too, I'm definitely guilty of mindless eating while looking at my phone. My brother who hosts optimal health daily have talked about this on his show.

How distracted eating can lead to overeating because we're not paying attention to our food or our body signals. So good stuff to think about today. Thank you again to Anthony and thank you for being here every day and optimizing your life along with me really means a lot. Have a great rest of your day and start your week. And I'll see you tomorrow as usual, where your optimal life awaits.