Introduction to Journey away from smartphones: Regaining focus
This series started with the realization that smartphones were fragmenting my attention span, so I abandoned my smartphone for six weeks. During that time, I rediscovered books and reading. I did eventually return to my smartphone because disconnecting from it also meant disconnecting from family, but I continued reading and making more space in my life to consume more of the content offline, rather than the social media feeds on my smartphone.
The greatest outcome of my basic phone experiment was to rekindle interest and enjoyment in reading books. Long-form reading was an activity that I’d sort of forgotten, and even though I reverted to my smartphone, the experiment taught me to love reading again.
Start reading Chapter 1: The awakening.
About Tom Johnson
I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, agent skills, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my AI courses for more on the latest in AI and tech comm. If you're looking for info about documenting APIs, see my API documentation course.
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Finally, I want to note a couple of things. I usually write the first drafts of my posts myself and then use AI to improve accuracy, clarity, and detail in places, so my writing is a mix of human and AI. (Hopefully that's not too off-putting.) Also, the opinions I express on my blog are my own perspectives, not those of my employer.