The Great Uncoupling™
A journey begins.
Sometimes, every so often, when the moon is bright and the stars align, you need to look towards the heavens and take inspiration from Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. And, dear readers, 2025 is that moment for me.
No no, no no no, no, no no no no, not from toxic people or you or this newsletter. From my phone. My dastardly, untrustworthy phone.
The Great Uncoupling™ is upon us all. I hope you’re all ready.
The idea of The Great Uncoupling™ appeared to me, vision-like, while writing the recent piece about my phone dying. In a pathetic sort of way, that experience was a sad wakeup call.
My relationship with my phone is all wrong.
Not only am I too reliant on the device, I’m straight-up addicted to the shitting thing. No matter what I try — whether that’s social media free Sundays or testing out Screen Time — I eventually return to my old usage habits.
The change, then, needs to be deeper. I can’t be trusted to use my phone sensibly, so I’ve got to remove my phone from the centre of technological orbit.
The question is how.
I don’t want to get rid of my iPhone entirely — it’s far too useful for that. But I need to change its position in my life. It shouldn’t be around me every hour of every day and, while my smartphone’s Swiss Army Knife-esque range of functions are useful, I’m too reliant on it.
Thankfully, I have a plan. Or at least a rough one: embrace a wider array of dumber devices, to build mindful redundancy into my life, and try and claw my attention span back.
It’s The Great Uncoupling™.
This article is the launch of the project, the beginning of a journey about getting a handle on digital addiction and living better — but while still loving tech.
How this will look is still up in the air, but that’s part of this adventure.
If you’re interested in any particular part of this, please comment below. And, until next time, may The Great Uncoupling™ bless you and yours.
Great idea, Cal. I have been doing this since before the Covid years and feel so much better for it. I love my technology (I have 3 phones and 6 computers, for goodness sake), and marvel each day at each device and the capability it provides, especially in the age of AI. However, I just have limited time and cannot afford to waste too much of that precious resource on interactions with little or no reason. Before Covid I vowed to turn off "the news" in my life with the theory that if it was important, it will cross my path somehow, someway. It does, and has, and I am thousands of hours richer for having done so. It is quite funny, that when something of importance or significance happens in the World, usually my wife informs me or it flashes up somewhere in the normal course of living and working with my tech. Interacting with my "personal relationship media" (my wife) is so much better than the virtual media with all its "opinion" and diversions. Anyhow, I applaud your efforts and will follow your progress through 2025. Love your blog. It is one of the very, very few I actually read and attend to. Onya mate!
Thank you for noticing. Self awareness is they key… but so damn easy to ignore how much we are losing by constantly being on the iPhone.
How you gonna do it?