A Real Learning Opportunity Here

With the new OS on my iPhone, there's an app keeping track of how much time is spend on the phone -- have you seen this?

I had already been thinking about wanting to decrease my phone usage time -- as I find, like most people, I pick it up all too often. But with this tracker I now know I average two hours a day on my phone!!! Two hours! That seems nuts! Imagine how many other things I could do!

And why am I surprised when I now catch the girls grabbing their phones all day, too?!

So I had started stopping myself before I opened the screen or leaving the phone in another room, etc. to avoid using it when it wasn't really necessary. And I was starting to drop my usage just a little.

Fast-forward to this week, when I finally got around to fixing my cracked phone screen. We got the insurance on my iPhone we bought here so I just needed to drop it off at a store. Little did I know they would send it away to be fixed ... for "about two weeks."

The Loaner

So I was loaned an older Android phone and, wow, is it terrible. The camera is awful, it doesn't have enough memory to run all the apps I usually have, the text messaging is spotty and podcasts jump and can only be downloaded one at a time.

I feel so less connected to things I usually have at my fingertips! Look at that Paris sky, I'll take a photo -- NOPE. On the metro, I'll check Instagram quick. NOPE. Or listen to a podcast on the way to the market. Not today. Argh!!

But, at the same time, isn't this what I was looking for? Less phone time? Bam - the universe was all: "here you go, lady. Just what you wanted."

I'm looking at these two weeks as a vacation from high phone usage and hoping to learn a few lessons about what I actually need my phone for and what I'm just doing as time-filler. Maybe I can break some habits, too.

Sometimes, you just have to take these things minor annoyances as learning opportunities, right?


*****UPDATE****** I got my iPhone back in just under two weeks, as promised. And the replacement screen feels more durable, if that's possible. I got a new case and will take good care of it. It really is a little computer in my pocket and I missed having access to reliable text messages and a map when I needed to navigate somewhere new. Will I use it less? More on that later.