Decentralizing my smartphone with single purpose devices

None of these devices contain a portal to the internet. None of them contain apps that bombard you with notifications to try and get you to spend hours in them. None of these devices have been relentlessly A/B tested to maximize addictiveness.

It's the tools. Friction and barriers aren't bad things. When you have a CD player, there's a higher barrier to switching from "listening to music" to "doing something else."

It's something I noticed in myself when I switched from streaming services to a curated local library. I actually listen to entire albums and savor them instead of jumping around from one infinite content firehose to another. Streaming is convenient, but the friction of maintaining a local library makes it meaningful.

Self control and discipline are not cognitively free, they take an amount of effort that you may rather spend in something more useful.

1) Choosing to split up tools in this way is a valid form of self control called precommitment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precommitment

2) Apps may change and often experience “enshittification.” Hardware can break but non-connected hardware is otherwise unlikely to change.

3) Many apps collect private data through telemetry or ad networks. Data may leak or be sold.

4) Decoupling allows you to precommit to different situations. For example, you could bring your media player but not your phone to your workout if you have trouble staying on task, or if you just want to disconnect for a while.

5) Many people have limits to their self control, hence the prevalence of destructive addictions (gambling, alcohol, drugs) in society. For these people it’s a good idea to precommit when possible in addition to working on other skills to manage the problem.

Sure, but that's kind of like saying meth is a better productivity tool than coffee, it's just a self-discipline issue to use it safely. Phones are inherently designed to be addicting.

The apps designed for phones are known to use addictive patterns with measured negative effects on our brains.

Why even bother trying to moderate the use of a device that has been purpose built to hook into our reward centers like a slot machine? An addict’s worst enemy is “just one more can’t hurt”

MP3 players don't send me notifications, or show me the latest AI DJ playlists or advertise podcasts I have no interest in. The issue isn't self control, it's platform bloat and engagement optimization.

Is consciously rejecting deliberately addictive short-form content and sacrificing convenience in favour of purpose not a sign of self control and discipline?

I've often thought the same as you wrote in your comment, but my inner contrarian just gave me an answer.

I think it takes discipline to accept that it's impossible (for you) to "purposefully" use short form content and choose the higher-friction option of single purpose devices. The discipline just happens at a higher level, where the Pavlovian temptation to scroll hasn't kicked in yet.

For some reason, that option is commonly seen as lack of self control. Perhaps that is true in the literal definition of the word, but I'd argue (since the result is the same - less time wasted) that it's equal to not scrolling when you have a phone.

Granted, less drastic options are available. I've installed a lot of feed-blocking plugins and time limits (HN noprocrast) which works reasonably well for me.

It is exactly that. And the method used is basically adding inconvenience for no good reason and seems more like a hobby than actual measure.

That is not to piss on single use devices, I still have calculator on my desk just because it is more convenient for me to have key per function, but most of those are outright worse experience.

Tho there is something to be said for pressing play and just getting music instead of waiting for spotify mobile app to sort its mess and still somehow forget on what state it was last time...

The tools feed into self control.

It's a little strange to see people scramble to replace their phone with other things. Before smart phones, or mobile phones in general, I'd carry my wallet and keys, nothing else. We can still just do that, it's fine. If you replace your phone with all this stuff anyway, I don't really see the point. Sure, bring a book if you're traveling, but we don't need to listen to music or be able to watch a movie all the time. It's okay to be bored or just observe your surroundings.

The social pressure I don't get, I think that's a made up excuse. I'm never encountered anyone say anything beyond "Oh, okay" if it comes up that I left my phone at home.

I think a large part of the motivation for this is surely the fun of playing with toys from a different age. Nothing wrong with that of course.

I got a digital camera as a gift a few years ago and I never use it. I do sometimes consider using it instead of my phone camera. But replacing my phone with all of these devices would just be too inconvenient for me and that would outweigh any supposed benefit.

in my hands, safari is a brainrot app. i can easily while away 3 hours on wikipedia. in my opinion, it's not the apps but the device itself, the shiny-glowing-info-dopamine-device.

Perfect point, if i uninstall one app, I just divert my attention to some other app.

Yup, just get rid of the apps you don't need, and you remove the problems with smart phones.

Me too. I'm considering getting a camera that isn't the phone. My phone is basically all the various apps that you kind of need to function in Danish society and then I use it to take photos and listen to music and audiobooks. I'm fine with the music/audiobook part being in the phone, but I've really come to dislike taking photos with it. Partly because I have a flip-phone now, since that's what will fit in my pocket, but frankly also because of all the privacy issues with all the things that want to scan my photos.

Which dumb phone? I would like to try similar, but there are always certain Android apps I need (banking apps like BankID, payment apps). Do you get a "pure" dumb phone and then a separate Android device for when it's required, or a dumb phone which does a little bit of Androiding?

It's not very helpful if we "pull back from technology" but fail to pull back from social media usage, since that's the primary addiction mechanism. It's like yea I sold my super cool blue torch cigarette lighter and exchanged it for a classic Bic like they used in the 90's. If you didn't quit smoking it's pointless.

Plus, how many people are still buying Alexa devices, iPhones, Nintendo Switches, and trying to automate their home with Raspberry Pi and Arduino and such?

I agree with your goal - a more tactile world, but I am not sure the evidence supports us heading that way. Maybe I'm wrong though.

I think we have a pretty good idea already. What I've seen online include:

- standalone MP3 players, with younger Gen Z learning how to get off Spotify and download files through converters and P2P filesharing apps.

- standalone gaming devices like the Switch or retro handhelds running Android under the hood

- mini Digital cameras that create its own 2000s aesthetic, with the picture quality being very different than the selfie- optimized, blemish removing ultra hi-res algorithms of phone cameras.

- portable DVD players that remind GenZ of their youth, and for which content is abundant and cheap online, at Walmart or even gas stations.

- portable photo printers that fit in a pocket and can print pictures from your phone via Wifi or Bluetooth.

What's interesting if inevitable about this is that Western brands are not at all interested in creating products for this segment, as there is no online component, no vertical integration or upsell opportunities. The customer only needs to pay them once, with the exception of the photo printer.

Let's keep in mind that only a fraction do so.

Is that not because people are generally unwilling to spend money on better solutions and take the path of least resistance?

Way back when, I’d imagine your average micro hifi was more than the average BT speaker someone would buy to stick in the kitchen.

Google home / Alexa on the cheap end, BluOS / Sonos / Heos on the more expensive end all do a great job of bridging that gap. People just don’t bother as it’s not enough of a problem to care about, they don’t have the knowledge (technical or otherwise), or it’s cheaper to use a £50 Bluetooth speaker and done with.

> [...] and that it is another distraction from free thinking time.

But do you actually need to maximize this "free thinking time", whatever it may mean for you?

Personally I think everyone should allow themselves to tune out for a bit. Not every waking (or sleeping) moment has to be min/maxed with doing something "productive" (again, whatever that means for you).

Sure, deny yourself the doomscrolling (I really should), but that doesn't mean one should go cold turkey on any kind of stimulation.

Don't know about you, but for me listening to music allows free thinking time. It tunes out all kinds of distractions around me and helps me focus, even when the focus is just on whatever dumb shit I'm thinking about right now.

Changing your habits is hard, especially when it is really easy to fall back into the old habits.

Making such a rigorous change of replacing the phone with other stuff might help some people with not relying on a smartphone as a habit. Then when the muscle memory in your mind is finally broken, you might move back to a smartphone for these tasks.

I have been working on stopping going to some sites on the web, for example continuously looking up news every few minutes. I now block those sites using uBlock. And I still catch myself automatically opening a tab and typing in the url (which is then blocked) when I need to wait for something.

Doing something like this helps learning self control, but breaking ingrained habits is hard (especially when the device is trying to keep you addicted).

Pre commitment is a self control strategy.

and you might have to think about and be conscious of the many things...

like when would you need to take a picture, write an observation, record an interesting noise, wayfind with a gps?

How often do you need to do these things? Is this current trip likely to turn into one of these trips, or is it a grocery run (granted you might want photos on a grocery run).

Can you be specific about what made this horrible?

And yet, there's a lot more deliberate-ness behind it. I can understand the appeal. But I don't do photography or writing so most of this would be wasted on me.

Focus on writing (typing) and only that; in a hypothetical "me as a writer" scenario, doing it on a computer makes it easy to alt-tab to look something up, and before you know it there's more time spent on that (and not necessarily focused on the original question) than the writing.

Arguably, separating different tasks in real life is a positive. If one spends a lot of time writing and wants to separate their leisure time to their writing time, having a dedicated (and limited) machine can be a positive. Like having a separate room to work in.

I've got a newer Kindle, and long-pressing on a word opens up the local dictionary and/or if it has internet access, the wiki page. Great way to expand my vocabulary.