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Introduction to Journey away from smartphones: Regaining focus

Last updated: Jun 10, 2023

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.

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About Tom Johnson

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, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

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