Like many writers I nurture an oft-adjusted list of possible future writing projects (PFWP). I’ve been at this game for more years than I want to confess, so trust me when I say it’s surprisingly easy to get a sizzling-hot-slam-a-roni of an idea and then… have completely forgotten all about it anywhere from five minutes to five weeks later. But there they all are, captured in ink on my PFPW! (I keep mine in my Filofax. Other writers might prefer to keep theirs in a file on their computer or, perhaps, in a special notebook.)
Right now, February 2020, my PFWP list has four nonfiction books, three novels, a batch of stories, a couple of poems, a couple of translation projects, and an essay of creative nonfiction. Two of these possible future writing projects have been sitting on the list for over a decade. Oh, and just yesterday, I came up with a solidly good idea, if I do say so myself, for a scholarly paper about a cavalry officer’s adventures in the Guadalupe Mountains.
Will I ever get to them all? That is not the question.
My PFWP list is not so much a “to do” list as it is my very own rich and appealing menu. Whenever the time comes that I am ready to commit to a new writing project, I’m never left sitting there, spinning my wheels, wondering, ohmygosh, what can I write now? I simply whip out the PFWP and see which of those many projects feels right for me for a next-action.
All of them are appealing enough to me that were any one the only option I would gladly do it– or else I don’t add it to the list.
Meanwhile, one thing that helps keeps me going with my current writing project– the memoir of Far West Texas— is my NTDN list, that is, my list of the things Not To Do Now. These are things I feel pressured by others to do; or tempted against my better judgement to do; or expect / want to do at some point, but not now– “now” being the horizon for my current writing project.
TOP 5 ON MY NTDN LIST
(1) Download Whatsapp Nope, I have never downloaded Whatsapp. Bless you, my many friends and relatives who have asked me for my Whatsapp, because I love you! I do want to be in touch, I do want to see your photos! But it’s either my book gets written + I answer email or I do Whatsapp + I answer email. I have only 24 hours in the day. May I be blunt? Would you really wish for me to not write my book?
(2) Get a TV I gave away my TV an eon ago. I had a Netflix subscription once, but it so long ago I have forgotten when it was that I canceled it. Bless you all who can spend hours watching TV! But I don’t, I can’t, and that’s that!
(3) Participate on Social Media FaceBook deactivated in 2015. LinkedIn minimal. Instagram zip. Twitter I’ve been on since the get-go, but for a long while now I only tweet the link to the once-a-month Q & A on this blog, and on very rare occasion something similar, as a courtesy to that writer and anyone else mentioned on my blog. I consider Twitter so toxic that when I log on I use a timer to keep the whole interaction under 3 minutes. Why so toxic? Let me count the ways… but that would be another blog post. Twitter is just evil.
(4) Pilates class I recently gave up my weekly pilates, a wonderful class. I do think physical activity is important, but right now I don’t want to have to take time to get in my car and drive somewhere else and on a rigid schedule (um, the class doesn’t wait for me…). I’d prefer to take classes with a real person, but again, there are only 24 hours in the day, and to make time for writing I have to let some things go. I do take walks everyday, and weather permitting, I bike, and I also do yoga every day, both on my own, and with online yoga classes which, by their nature, commence, pause, and conclude in my own home at my own convenience.
(5) Teach a writing workshop This is terribly tempting because I love teaching writing workshops. I am always charmed, challenged, and inspired by my students! And I believe my own writing is much better for having taught various workshops over so many years. But right now I need the time and creative energy for my book. Therefore, barring a possible mini-conference workshop next fall, I am not teaching again until (maybe) later this year. In the meantime, I console myself with writing a once-a-month workshop post for this blog.
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My NTDN list is actually far longer, and it includes everything on my PFWP list, by definition. But you get the idea.
Of course, each writer’s PFWP and NTDN lists are going to be as unique as his or her fingerprints. My point is not that the items on my lists would be good for you or anyone else, but simply that, in my experience, too few writers trouble to make these lists in the first place—and then wonder why they feel at a loss about what to write, and then even when they do know what they want to write, they often find themselves spending their time and mental energies in ways that do not support their writing.
If you haven’t already made your PFWP list, simply muse: What writing projects sing (or whisper) to you as possibilities? Be sure to keep a notebook and pen with you at all times. Your best ideas just might come to you when you’re out and about. Or taking a shower. Or folding laundry.
And as for a NTDN list, what are some activities that might tempt you, or be warmly or even hotly encouraged by the people around you, but that, on reflection, you would consider a fatal drag on your time and mental energies for accomplishing your current writing project(s)? Or what are some things that you would be delighted to do, just not now?
Special Note: I ever and always invite comments at the end of each blog post but for this post in particular I would especially like to hear comments and any tips from those of you who have been wrestling with your own working libraries. (It strikes me that in all the many writers’ workshops and writers’ conferences I have attended over the years I have never seen this vital practical necessity addressed. And what I have seen in terms of advice from librarians and personal organizers is not quite apt for a working writer’s needs. Have I missed something?)
Selected titles at-hand as I was writing an essay about Black Seminole oral historian Miss Charles Emily Wilson. This essay is destined for an anthology and will also be the Marfa Mondays podcast # 21, apropos of my book-in-progress about Far West Texas– for which I have a scary-big working library. I call it the Texas Bibliothek. My writing assistant Washingtoniana Quetzalpugalotl says it’s been exhausting, all the thinking going on, and books of so many smells going hither, thither & zither. She would like to take a siesta.
The scene as I was revising my essay. No worries, I certainly would not shelve my books over a radiator! They were here only temporarily. Shortly thereafter, I used my supersonic reshelving method, described anon.
Still working on the same essay… on this day, my other writing assistant having appropriated the chair, I was using my StandStand.
Why a Working Library?
Why should you have a working library? Well, dear writerly reader, maybe you shouldn’t. It depends on what you are writing.
Poetry or, say, a novel of the imagination might require nothing more than a dictionary and thesaurus–– and of course, you could access those online. Perhaps, should you feel so moved, for inspiration you might keep a shelf or two of books by your favorite writers, and perhaps another shelf devoted to books on craft, on process, etc. Or not.
The need for a working library arises when you attempt to write historical fiction or in some genre of nonfiction, for example, a biography, history, or travel memoir. And the problem is–– if I can extrapolate from my own experience––which perhaps I cannot–– but I’ll betcha 1,000 books and three cheesecakes with a pound of cherries on top that I can––you are going to ginormously underestimate how fast and how very necessarily your working library expands, how much space it gobbles up, and how quickly any disorganization unravels into further disorganization, and to muddle the metaphor, makes a clogged up mega-mess of your writing process.
you are going to ginormously underestimate how fast and how very necessarily that working library expands, and how much space it gobbles up, and how quickly any disorganization unravels into further disorganization, and to muddle the metaphor, makes a clogged up mega-mess of your writing process.
In short, by underestimating the importance of first, acquiring, and second, adequately shelving, and third, maintaining the organization of this collection, writing your book will turn into a more frustrating and lengthy process than it otherwise would have been. (Trust me, it will be frustrating and take forever and ten centuries anyway.)
Yes, I know about www.archive.org–– I oftentimes consult books there–– and I have accumulated a collection of Kindles. I also make use of public and university libraries when possible. (There is also the question of keeping paper and digital files, which would merit a separate post.) Nonetheless, my experience has been that a working library of physical books at-hand remains by far, as in, from-here-to-Pluto-and-back, my most vital resource.
About My Working Libraries, In Brief
First understand: I am not a book hoarder! When I do not have a compelling reason and/or space to keep a book, off it goes– to another reader or to donation. (See my previous post “How to Declutter a Library.”) I don’t live in a house the size of an abandoned aircraft hanger; it would be impossible for me to keep every book I’ve read in my life and still find my way in and out of the front door. Aside from a handful (literally maybe 10) that I hold onto for sentimental reasons, the books I keep for the long term I have a precise reason to keep: to assist me as I write my books. And I maintain them scrupulously organized as working libraries.
No, I do not have OCD. Scrupulous organization is terrifically important! My motto: A book I cannot find is a book I do not have. Disorganization is a form of poverty.
A book I cannot find is a book I do not have. Disorganization is a form of poverty.
Over many years of writing several books, each with its own working library, and also teaching, and so gathering an ever-growing working library on craft and process, I have accumulated a daunting number of books, and to keep them all accessible I have had to tackle some eye-crossing challenges. (Add to that moving house a few times in mid-book and, boy howdy, did I get an education in organizing!)
My books for which I assembled and continue to maintain working libraries include:
The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire This working library is more substantial, as it should be for a novel based on the true story set during Mexico’s most complex, tumultuous, and thoroughly transnational episode. (So why did France invade Mexico and install the Austrian Archduke as emperor and then why did the latter make a contract with the family of Mexico’s previous emperor giving them the status of the Murat princes?!!! It took me several years to get my mind around it all…) Some very rare Maximiliana.
World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas (in-progress) I call this one my “Texas Bibliothek.” This one is just… sorry for the cliché… GIANT. Texans are far more literarily industrious than most people imagine, and there is endless celebration of and controversy about their culture and history. Some of the works published just in the last decade are paradigm-smashers. I’ve had a heap of very necessary reading to keep up with… Plus understanding Far West Texas requires fathoming what surrounds it– New Mexico to the west, Coahuila and Chihuahua to the south, the heartland of Texas and Gulf to the east, the Llano Estacado to the north…and the larger geological, geopolitical, and cultural context. Oh, and all about oil!! This has been my most challenging book yet. Wish me luck.
Plus, as mentioned, I maintain a working library on the craft of writing and creative process which I consult for both my writing workshops and my own writing. Accumulated over some twenty years, this is a substantial working library, but it is the smallest. I haven’t counted but I’d say this has some 250 books.
(Did I mention, I’m not 25 years old? If I live to 100… uh oh…)
Why, pray tell, keep all of these books, and even add to the collections, year after year?
(1) I often reference works in one collection for another another book (for example, in writing my book on Far West Texas I have consulted works in all four collections), and I expect this will continue with the projects I am contemplating for the future.
(2) I plan to see more of my books published in translation and so will require consulting some of the original texts (many in Spanish, some in German, a few in French) from which I quoted. This may or may not be an issue for you. But if it is, take heed. It can be crazy difficult and expensive to track some of these things down later.
(3) I often receive email from researchers, both amateur and academic, and I am delighted to assist, when I can, in answering their questions and for this oftentimes I need to reference a book or three in my collections. And what goes around comes around.
(4) I do not live near a relevant library and even if I did, many of the works in my collections are nonetheless exceedingly difficult to find. Plus, even if a nearby library were to have each and every book I would want to consult when I want to consult it, it’s a bother and a time-mega-suck to have to go to a library and call up so many books.
Yes, my working libraries take up a lot of space. This cranks my noodle. But a painter needs an atelier, no? Um, you aren’t going to bake bread in your lipstick compact.
Tips for Your Working Library (Future Reminder to Take My Own Advice)
With all due respect for the operations of institutional libraries, earning a degree in Library Science is not on my schedule for this incarnation. But as a writer with my own absolutely necessary working libraries, none of them large enough in scale to require professional cataloging, yet each nonetheless larger than I was prepared to manage efficiently, alas….. painnnnnNNNfully…. I have learned a few things. What I offer here for you, dear writerly reader, is not the advice of a knowledgeable librarian but what I, a working writer having muddled through writing several books, would have told myself, had I been able to travel back in time… to the late 1990s.
(1) If you have good reason to think you’ll need it, don’t be pennywise and pound foolish, buy the book! To the degree possible, it is better to buy a first edition in fine condition; however, cheap used / ex-library copies are fine for a working library. Many ex-library books in good condition cost just pennies. (Or did you plan to write an sloppily researched, amateurish book?)
(2) Go head and mark up those ex-library books and mass-market paperbacks, but if you happen to have in your hands a hardcover first edition in fine condition, take care! Keep the dust jacket, protect it from any bumps and the sun, and if you must mark the pages, use only very light erasable pencil. Drink your coffee and eat your snacks at another time, in another room. (I shall spare you the super sad episodes…)
P.S. More tips on care and preservation of books here.
A first edition of a Very Important book! Grrrr, I marked it up and I mistreated the dust jacket!! And I already knew better!! I used a highlighter!!!!! WAHHHH
(3) You will need bodacious amounts of bookshelf space. And more after that, and even more after that…. If you do not have it, make it. If you cannot make space, then probably you should reconsider embarking on this type of writing project. I am not kidding.
(4) For keeping the books organized you will need a system that is at once flexible, easy-peasy, and supremely useful to you. It may not make sense to anyone else, but Anyone Else is not the name of the person writing your book.
It may not make sense to anyone else, but Anyone Else is not the name of the person writing your book.
For example, for my Texas Bibliothek, right now I have about 30 categories, each with from 10 to approximately 50 books in each. Each category I have defined to my liking, broad enough that it doesn’t occupy more than a brain cell or two to figure out, yet narrow enough that I don’t need to bother organizing the books alphabetically.
For my writing workshop working library however, I do have the craft and process books organized by author alphabetically. I have never been able to find a reasonable way–– reasonable for me––to break down the collection beyond books on “Craft” and on “Process.”
(5) Of course, some books could fall into more than one category, e.g., Jeff Guinn’s Our Land Before We Die: The Proud Story of the Seminole Negro could be in U.S. Military; African American/ Seminoles; Texas History; Regional History / Fort Clark; US-Mexico Borderlands. (I chose African American / Seminoles. But I might change my mind.) For such endless little categorization conundrums, well, say I, just apply deodorant and do what seems most sensible to you. You can always change your mind, and you probably will.
To make sure you do not overlook important works in your collection, as you work with your library, and as you dust it, make an effort to let your eyes rove over the whole of it.
(6) Dust regularly using an ostrich feather duster. Seriously, go for the ostrich.
(7) For the shelves use BIG, READ-ICU-LOUS-LY EASY-TO-READ LABELS. I print these out on my computer, cut and tape them to index cards, and tape them on the shelves.
This is what I mean by a READ-icu-lous-ly big label. Huh, I can read it.
Tom Lea was a most elegant artist and novelist, El Paso’s best. And, yay, I found a place for my super chido “Honk If You’ve Seen La Llorona” bumpersticker! Maybe one of these days I will put it on my car!
That portrait on the spine of that book to the left is not actually Cabeza de Vaca. Everyone seems to think it is. Which kind of annoys me.
(8) Key is to be able to not only find, but lickety-split, without a thought––look, Ma, no brain cells!–– reshelve any and all books in your working library. Institutional libraries have catalogs you can consult and usually affix a sticker with the catalog number on each book’s spine, but for you, with your writer’s working library, this is probably going to be too fussy a process. And anyway you don’t want to be sticking anything on a rare or first edition book unless it has a mylar cover, in which case, you could put the sticker on the mylar cover. Mylar covers are nice… buying more is on my “to do ” list… but….
What works splendidly well for supersonic reshelving is a labeled bookmark. Yep. It’s this simple.
(9) To label each bookmark, get a typewriter because, for all the many other good reasons to use a typewriter, you can quickly type up legible labels on your bookmarks.
(=You can stop laughing now=)
Trying to make labels for bookmarks using a wordprocessing program and printer will give you a dumptruck of a headache. I used to be a fan of labelers such as the Brother Labeler. No more. Batteries, replacement cartridges… fooey. Yes, using your own handwriting may be the easiest of the peasiest, but it will slow you down when you are trying to reshelve books because the eye groks machine-written words so much faster.
Get the typewriter! A workhorse if you can, such as a refurbished Swiss-made Hermes 3000 from the 1960s-1970s.
No battery, no click-bait, no wifi! No need for any Freedom app, either. (And ecological. Um, my little tree huggers, have you ever actually seen a server farm? Or where and how they mine the stuff to make batteries?)
(1o) To make the bookmarks, use paper strong enough for the bookmark to always stand straight. I cut up left over or ready-to recycle file-folders for this purpose.
(11) To identify each working library (should you have more than one) place a sticker or stamp on each bookmark.
The sticker reads “C.M. Mayo’s Texas Bibliotek.” Make your own at www.moo.com.
(12) Another advantage of these plain paper bookmarks is that you can easily change them. Just cut off the top and type in the new label! As you delve deeper into researching and writing your book, you will undoubtedly find it convenient to both add to and reconfigure the categories in your working library, and perhaps several times.
(13) Further consideration: While many book collectors write their name in the book or paste in a book plate, I stopped doing this several years ago because I found this made it more difficult for me to let go of books that, after all, I wanted to declutter. I might change my mind about this. A custom-made ex-libris has always seemed to me a lovely idea. It’s in my Filofax for my old age when, maybe, I live in a house the size of an aircraft hangar.
(14) Cataloging? Nah. Even with a wall or six or seven or ten filled from floor to ceiling with books you are still far from operating at the scale of an institutional library. A catalog, whether low-tech or high-tech, will take too much time to figure out and maintain (ugh, more glitch-ridden software updates). Ignore anyone who tries to sell you library cataloguing software. Seriously, trying to do it digitally in some-fangled DIY way may also end up proving more trouble for you than it’s worth. (… cough, cough… ) With adequate bookshelf space (see tip #3, above) and meaningful categories with BIG, RIDICULOUSLY EASY-TO-READ labels (see tip #7, above) you can grok your whole enchilada at a glance, or two.
However, it may make sense to catalog the books when you get to your long-term plan (see point 16 below).
(15) Ignore ignorant people who tut-tut that you should declutter your books. Have they ever tried to write a book? No, they have not. Smile sweetly as you shoot them eye-daggers.
(16) Make a long-term plan for your books because obviously, at some point, perhaps when you move into smaller digs for one reason or another, or you die, they have to go. If you are incapacitated or dead, these working libraries may prove a heavy burden for your family, literally, figuratively, and financially. Chances are your family members won’t have a clue what to do with them, nor the time, and possibly, alas, they may not even care. I aim to write more on this sticky wicket of a subject later; for now, I point you to a fantastic resource, the Brattlecast podcast #57 on “Shelf Preservation” from the Brattle Book Shop.
One of the special treasures in my Texas Bibliothek is Cloyd I. Brown’s Black Warrior Chiefs.
Tipped inside my copy of “Black Warrior Chiefs” I found this letter from the late author (I blocked the name of the recipient to protect his privacy). Hmm, he says he has several hundred unsold copies… Only a very few show up for sale online as of 2019.
What has been your experience with your working libraries? Do you have any tips to share?
My writing assistant presents the lap desk. He likes the lap desk. It means we all sit together on the sofa.
As far as the need for equipment goes, writing is not like casting bronze sculpture. All you need is a pencil and paper–any scrap will do. The formidable challenge most writers face is managing their attentional focus, that is to say, their ability to actually sit down and, ahem, actually write.
Sheer willpower isn’t the only thing needed, however. Habits, even tiny habits, can help enormously. Here’s where some writerly material tools can be useful… perhaps. I say “perhaps” because what works for one writer may not necessarily work for another.
What do I mean by “writerly material tools”? Well, you could have a special pencil and make a ritual of sharpening your special pencil– so there you have a pencil, and you have a pencil sharpener. Not a budget buster. If you don’t know what to do with your money, why, you could go gung-ho for such writerly material tools as a gold-plated typewriter with your name engraved in curlicues or, say, some rococo-rama iteration of George Bernard Shaw’s rotating writing shed.
What works for me? Sometimes I write with a pencil and paper but generally I am at my desk with my laptop or, perchance, my typewriter. But for a spell each and every morning I also use a lap desk, which enables me to turn my office sofa– a big sloppy boat of a sofa with two pugs inevitably snoring through their post-breakfast siestas– into another workspace.
A lap desk has its limits, obviously: It holds the laptop, or a pencil and paper, that’s it. But for certain writing endeavors, it enables me to remove myself to a different working space, as needed, and so clear my mind, the better to focus on the task at-hand.
If you want to try using a lap desk you don’t necessarily need to buy one. A cookie pan balanced over a pillow would work just as well.
Where in your house is there a comfortable spot to sit where you don’t normally? Maybe that could be the place you take your lap desk every morning, or every evening, instead of, say, scrolling through the news or social media feeds on the smartphone, or plunking yourself in front that bigger screen.
What for? Well, do you feel stuck with your novel? Or memoir? Might you try flexing your creative mojo with 10 minutes of writing exercises? Or 15 minutes of journaling?
Some writers claim that it helps to do their financial paperwork in a different place than their creative work– so you could try doing one at your lap desk, the other at your regular desk, or kitchen table, or library carrel– or wherever it is for you.
There are of course infinite ways to slice & dice & spice one’s writing time and routines. Again, what works for one writer may or may not for another.
My point is, my experience has been that it helps to corral a convenient alternative writing place for a specific time and specific writerly purpose, and a lap desk, bingo, turns any number of places into possibilities, from the bed to the sofa to the floor to the balcony, the garden….
My distraction free smartphone (DFS) stays in this zippered bag within the bag–unless I have a fully conscious, well-considered reason to take it out and use it. My smartphone, a garden-variety iPhone, is not shown because I used it to take this photo. What’s the little rectangle with the picture? I explain below.
As a writer your foremost resource is your creativity applied by the sustained power of your attentional focus.
Your foremost writerly resource is your creativity applied by the sustained power of your attentional focus. The Muse can gift you with a zillion ideas every minute of the day, but if you cannot plant yourself in your chair and stay focused on your writing, your book will ever and always remain an unfulfilled wish, a ghost of your imagination.
Most people have forfeited a more than generous portion of their attentional focus to their smartphones– to checking and scrolling through text messages, social media feeds, games, shopping, news, YouTube videos & etc. Ergo, I would suggest that if you want to get some writing done, don’t be like most people: consider your smartphone use. Very carefully.
And honestly. Yes, smartphones are gee-whiz useful. But when you consider how much of your time and attention they can so easily suck up, day after day after day, you can recognize how exceedingly dangerous they are to you as a writer.
And it’s not a one-for-one tradeoff: The more time you spend diddling with a smartphone, the more likely you are to suffer from what Nicholas Carr terms “the shallows,” making it increasingly difficult to focus for long on anything. In other words, if you’ve got the shallows, with an hour to work on your book, you no longer actually have an hour because you cannot focus on the page for that long.
There are 24 hours in each day. About a third of them are spent sleeping. Once those 24 hours are gone, they’re gone. If you want to fit in the hours and mental energy it takes to write a book, you have to make some choices.
Most people do not write books, and that includes most of the people who say they want to write a book. As if enchanted, they spend a many hours of their every day in a sort trance, looking at screens. I don’t know about most people, but I did not sign up for a stint on the Learning Planet to spend it, as it were, in Plato’s cave doing the watching-puppets-making-shadows-on-the-wall thing.
Of course, everyone’s life is unique in its joys, challenges, and responsibilities. I cannot claim that what works for mine will work for any one else’s. I share my strategies with the smartphone here not in the presumption that they are the only or the universal best, but simply in the hope that, because they have taken me no small trouble to formulate and refine, and they work very well for me, they might prove in some way useful to you as you consider your own strategies with your smartphone, should you be inclined to do so.
Everyone’s life is unique in its joys, challenges, and responsibilities. I cannot claim that what works for mine will work for yours.
Back in January of this year 2019 I posted on my distraction free smartphone (DFS) and in March on reclaiming “quality leisure,” to use Cal Newport’s term, as vital for enhancing not only quality of life, but creative energy. For me, these ideas clap together because, among other things, for “quality leisure” I have my reading, and I now make a habit of carrying a lightweight paperback for when I might otherwise succumb to checkin’-‘n-peckin’ the smartphone.
As I explained in the above-mentioned post, getting a smartphone to “distraction free” is not about simply going into “airplane mode.” Nor is it about rejecting the smartphone. I do use my smartphone; I am grateful to have such a miraculously powerful and convenient communications device and multi-tool. But, made distraction free, my smartphone serves me, I do not serve it– or rather, I do not serve the attention and data-harvesting corporations behind those cannily designed-to-addict apps. (They don’t call the father of captology B.J. Fogg “the Millionaire Maker” for nothing. See for example Ian Leslie’s reporting in The Economist.)
And without “itchy thumbs,” I can better attend to my writing.
I do use my smartphone; I am grateful to have such a miraculously powerful and convenient communications device and multi-tool. But, made distraction free, my smartphone serves me, I do not serve it.
A NOTE ON READING FOR QUALITY LEISURE
Like many writers, I read like a ravenous owl. For my work-in-progress I have been doing a good amount of reading, but alas, these books are generally too large or, in some cases, fragile to carry around; moreover, such reading requires sustained focus and note-taking. (Not a few of these I might term a three-coffee slog…) When I have no other option, I will read a Kindle, using the Kindle app on my iPad– not on my smartphone. Never on my smartphone!
For “quality leisure”/ smartphone substitute reading–that is, something appealing to me to do besides succumb to the siren call of the smartphone– I look for something not work-related that is physically lightweight, and, crucially, that I would, without hesitation, dip into in odd moments.
(Litmus test: would I find it appealing to read while waiting at the tram stop?)
This is the lineup for April: Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!; Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal; and John Muir’s The Mountains of California.
One at a time! An age ago I decided to make it a project to read Willa Cather’s oeuvre. So far: Death Comes for the Archbishop, The Professor’s House, My Ántonia, and as this posts, I have just finished O Pioneers! I can report that, as ever, Cather is sublime.
Since January of this year, so far so good (with the exception of one episode noted below): my smartphone, turned off and zipped in its bag within a bag, remains at once useful to me and distraction free. I do use my DFS for emergency communications –“emergency” being a necessarily elastic term– yeah, if I call it an emergency, then it is (ye olde “self-authority”)– and I also use a select few distraction-free apps such as a camera, calculator, and recorder.
For the full story and explanation of my distraction free smartphone (DFS), plus an app evaluation flowchart, should you be so inclined to consider making your own tailor-made DFS, see the original blog post, “It Can Be Done! This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone.”)
FOUR CHANGES SINCE JANUARY
(1) An Anti-Trigger for “the Gotta-Show-a-Photo” Trigger
I’ve become increasingly alert to how often an engaging conversation suddenly disintegrates because someone just has to take out their smartphone to show a photo– here’s my dog, here’s my kid being super cute, here’s me at this awesome place on vacation! The problem is, once taken out, there sits the smartphone on the table– to be picked up again in another moment to Google something, check something, show another something, text, check for texts, make or take a phone call… In short, there goes any coherent civilized conversation with those who are actually, I mean physically, present.
(Moreover, as we increasingly rely on visual media to communicate, we’re losing verbal skills.)
I cannot control other people’s itchy fingers for their smartphones, but certainly, I can address my own tendencies. Here’s my antidote for what I think of as the “gotta-show-the-photo” excuse / trigger for bringing out the smartphone: a little card I keep in the bag with my smartphone. It reminds me to keep the smartphone where it is– in the bag— and take the opportunity to exercise my skills with, you know, like, language.
These are my writing assistants, pugs Uli (right) and Washi (left). I keep this card with my smartphone to remind myself not to pick up the phone to show photos without a seriously considered and very good reason to do so. This little card with their photo, people can see that– plus see their not-so-secret Nahuatl names!
In our culture, my stance on the smartphone, not to mention my carrying this little card with my smartphone, might seem eccentric, even extreme. But I submit that it is our culture, in accepting widespread enthrallment to these djinn-like little screens as normal, that is extreme. As in freaky weird.
Why do I want to avoid showing photos on my smartphone to other people? Because I want to reduce the triggers to pick up my smartphone! Towards an effectively distraction free smartphone, this is not trivial.
In captology expert B.J. Fogg’s terminology, with this little card tucked in with the smartphone, I hereby provide a counter-trigger, should I have been triggered to pick up the smartphone to show some photos. For the full explanation of the DFS, and more about B.J. Fogg’s ideas, see my post, “It Can Be Done! This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone.”
(But OK… if I know you, and if I am really fond of you, and you are really fond of me, and you really, truly, truly, very truly really want to see my super cute dogs, I will take my smartphone out and show you photos of them, say, snoozing on the sofa, rolling on the grass, and/or holding the totally awesome squeaky squirrel toy! And even if I don’t know you all that well and you were to show me pictures on your smartphone of your dogs, or your kids, or your totally awesome vacation, I would be polite and say nice things because that would be sweet of you, and I accept, as I must to live happily in this world, that not everyone shares my ideas about what constitutes freaky weirdness.)
(2) Radio Swiss Classic
Another change is that, when traveling, I now use my smartphone for listening to music. (At home I use an iPad, usually parked in the kitchen, for that.) My go-to site is Radio Swiss Classic. No surfing around, no listening to podcasts, no social media, no YouTube, no people jabbering on (as on NPR), just Radio Swiss Classic– Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi, endless free streams of it, 24/7.
Merci beaucoup and Danke schön, Swiss taxpayers.
(3) Uber
And another change is that on a recent trip where timely transportation was otherwise unavailable, I had to download and use the Uber app. Not a bad experience! (I know, I’m late to the parade on this one.)
(4) Texting (…Sigh…) When Required for Certain Financial Transactions and Emergencies
And yet one more, but alas, less felicitous, advent is that for certain online financial operations (and that would include booking a ride with Uber) one now must receive a texted code to confirm the login and/or transaction.
There are some work-arounds: for example, Go Go Grandparent allows you to book Uber rides without a smartphone, using a landline or flip-phone. For some other online financial transactions such as certain credit card purchases and transfers, you can call your bank and authorize skipping this step of a code sent by text message; however, they advise against it for security reasons.
Oh, how I hate texting.
My thumbs are allergic to texting!
Emergencies: I am thinking of, say, being buried in rubble after an earthquake– yes, that might be a good time to text. (Screaming could also help.)
A confession: On that same recent trip, which was to AWP, a ginormously gimungous writers conference held this year at the Oregon Convention Center, I texted with another writer to coordinate a meeting for coffee. I won’t say I regret the meeting– I was delighted to meet with an old friend. But of course, after my friend texted me that she would text me about getting together after the next panel concluded, I ended up checking for her next text. And checking again. And then checking. Just to meet for a 10 minute coffee between panels required multiple texts. I’m on the way. And Be there in 5. That sort of thing.
(On this note, this is one of the reasons I prefer smaller writers conferences where everyone has lunch and/or dinner in the same room, everyone meets in the bookfair or mingles in the hallways outside the panels– I can see everyone I want to see without having to arrange meetings.)
I have been holding the fort against texting and, in particular, Whatsapp, despite heavy pressure from family and friends. When I asked Cal Newport, author of the excellent Digital Minimalism, on his questions forum how he handles texting, he advised that one simply has to “train other people’s expectations.”
Hmmm… There’s a blog post I don’t think I’ll write.
Of course I can appreciate that in certain circumstances texting can be a very appealing and indeed the best method for timely communication. That said, texting can be minimized or eliminated by
(1) prior planning; (2) respecting those plans; and (3) trusting the universe that healthy relationships are possible and that no one will spontaneously combust without constant, tick-like messaging.
What I observe is that just about everyone is checking their smartphone all the livelong day, and expecting to be able to text and thereby expecting to leave everything last-minute flexible precisely because everybody else is checking their smartphone all the livelong day– and night.
Count me out. Apart from my wanting — and my need as a writer–to eliminate distractions from my smartphone, I do not want my relationships electronically intermediated by a corporation, at least to the extent that I can help it. When I’m in a writers conference I want to be in a writers conference, not off in the corner, or doing the smombie shuffle, checking my smartphone for the 157th time since breakfast.
As for communicating with and as disembodied consciousnesses– which is, effectively, what we do when we communicate with each other other than in person– there’s plenty of that going on already with email, the phone, print media and online media, and then, if you buy the idea, after this lifetime, bingo, there’s the whole of eternity for communicating with and as disembodied consciousnesses.
Like I said, what works for me may not work for you.
Just don’t try to text me.
LOOKING TOWARDS THE SECOND QUARTER OF 2019
So, since January, my DFS now has two additional apps, Radio Swiss Classic and Uber, both useful and welcome.
Yes, I will now send and receive text messages, however, only when obliged to do so for financial transactions, and for genuine emergencies– the latter being so rare that one has not yet happened for me whence texting appeared on the scene.
As I write this post, my distraction free smartphone (DFS) remains silently cozy in its zippered bag inside the bag– that bag, for now, in company with the paperback edition of Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.
FREEDOM APP, YES!
As for the laptop– where I do my email, wordprocessing, blog updates, and any Internet research– I recently installed the latest version of the Freedom app. I hadn’t been too impressed with the earlier version, but this new one is a ludic loop snipper par excellence. It’s curious how well it works.
I don’t need the Freedom app for my smartphone, but if you are struggling with reducing the pull to yours, the Freedom app might be something for you to consider.
You could leave it hanging in the tree in the backyard… not what I am recommending, however. Photo courtesy of MorgueFile.
SMOMBIE: It’s a word that popped up in Germany only in 2015. It’s hard to imagine now, but a decade ago, a scene, typical today, of smombies shuffling along city streets would have been but a cliché in a sci fi novel. But here we are.
When we lack the words to precisely describe something, it becomes difficult to recognize it, never mind debate and discuss it. Albeit some decades ago, the Digital Revolution burst upon us all, a series of tsunamis of such dizzying celerity that our vocabulary is still catching up. Only a few years ago a much-needed term was coined by Jake Knapp: “Distraction Free iPhone.” I came across the term when I read Knapp’s recent update on his experience here.
DISTRACTION FREE SMARTPHONE = DFS = defis
I’ll switch that last word from “iPhone” to “smartphone” to make it Distraction Free Smartphone, DFS for short. I did not think of my smartphone as distraction free until now, but for the past several years, that’s precisely what I have been moving towards, a DFS. Hmm, that sounds a mite snappier!
And I hereby tweak DFS to “defis,” which, I note, is the plural of “defi” which means “challenge” or “defiance.” Indeed, using a distraction-free smartphone is an act of defiance towards smombiedom.
BEYOND PRO OR CON
The magic is, this new word, DFS, or defis, nudges us beyond the rigid ping-pong of pro or anti-smartphone; forward-looking or old fogey. As I wrote in a recent post:
“The reigning paradigm is the same one we’ve had since forever: if it’s digital and new it must be better; those who resist are old fogeys. It’s a crude paradigm, a cultural fiction. And it has lasted so long a time in part because those who resisted either were old fogeys and/or for the most part could not articulate their objections beyond a vaguely whiney, ‘I don’t like it.’
“As an early adopter of digital technologies for decades now (wordprocessing in 1987, email in 1996, website 1998, blog 2006, podcast and Youtube channel 2009, bought a first generation iPad, Twitter 2008, and first generation Kindle, self-pubbed Kindles in 2010, etc.), I have more than earned the cred to say, no, my little grasshoppers, no, if it is digital and it is new it might, actually, maybe, in many instances, be very bad for you.
“In other words, adopting a given digital technology does not necessarily equate with ‘onwards and upwards’; neither does rejecting a given digital technology necessarily equate with backwardness. I so often hear that ‘there is no choice.’ There is in fact a splendiferous array of choices, and each with a cascade of consequences. But we have to have our eyes, ears, and minds open enough to perceive these, and the courage to act accordingly.”
Of course, when it comes to using digital technologies, different people have different needs, different talents, goals, obligations, opportunities, and vulnerabilities. A responsible mother with young children will probably want to use Whatsapp with the babysitter; a real estate agent who wants to stay in business needs to be available to clients, whether by phone, email or text– and so on. Some people slip into the vortex of addiction to social media or gaming far more easily than others…
My aim here is not to judge other people (although I’ll admit to some eye-rolling at smombies slapping themselves into streetlamps), but to examine the nature of digital technology and my own use of it. I am not a mother with young children, nor a real estate agent. Games bore me, always have. I am a writer of books. I blog about digital technology because first, it’s my way of grokking it; and second, I trust that what I’ve learned may be of interest to my readers– for I know that many of you are also writers.
We writers are hardly alone in the need for uninterrupted chunks of time. Brain surgeons, composers, painters, historians, statisticians, sculptors, software engineers… many people, in a wide variety of professions and vocations need, to quote Cal Newport, “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task,” that is to say, engage in what he terms “deep work.”
“Literary travel writing is about first perceiving in wider and sharper focus than normal; then, in the act of composition, shaping and exploring these perceptions so that, as with fiction, it may evoke in a reader’s mind emotions, thoughts, and pictures. It’s not meant to be practical, to serve up, say, the top ten deals on rental cars, or a low-down on the newest ‘hot spas.’ Literary travel writing, at its best, provides the reader the sense of actually traveling with the writer, so that she smells the tortillas heating on the comal, tastes the almond-laced hot chocolate, sees the lights in the distant houses brightening yellow in the twilight, and, after the put-put of a motorcycle, that sudden swirl of dust over the road.”
Writers have always battled distractions, but with the ubiquity of smartphones, and increasingly sophisticated app designs and algorithms to lure us and trap us into “the machine zone,” we’re at a new level of the game– or the war, as Steven Pressfield would have it.
Whatever might or might not be an optimal use of digital technology for you, I know this:
A book that can claim a thoughtful person’s time and attention is not going to be written by someone who is pinged by & poking at their smartphone all the live-long day.
“OUT IN THE WORLD”
Some writers have outright rejected smartphones– but so few, in fact, that only two come to mind: John Michael Greer, a prolific blogger and author whose stance on modern conveniences is, as he titled a collection of essays on his vision of the post-industrial future, Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush; and journalist Sebastian Junger. As Junger said on the Joe Rogan podcast:
“when I’m out, I want to be out in the world. If you’re looking at your phone, you’re not in the world… I just look around at this– and I’m an anthropologist, and I’m interested in human behavior– and I look at the behavior, like literally, the physical behavior of people with smartphones and… it looks anti-social and unhappy and anxious, and I don’t want to look like that, and I don’t want to feel like how I think those people feel.”
While I say a quadruple “AMEN” to Junger’s comment, I decided to keep my smartphone because I value having the emergency information-access and communication backups enough to pay for the smartphone for that alone; plus, I much prefer using the smartphone’s camera and dictation app to having to carry separate appliances, and I use these often in my work.
For me, the question was never whether or not a smartphone is useful. For me, obviously it is. The question is rather:
How can I maximize the benefits of this sleekly convenient multi-tool / communications device, while blocking its djinn-like demands, and so with sharpest powers of observation and consciously directed concentration, stay awake in this world?
I had answered this question by turning my smartphone into a distraction free smartphone, as I realized when I read Jake Knapp’s post.
Knapp’s version of “distraction free” turned out to be different than mine– he deleted his smartphone’s Mail and browser apps, which I kept. And when I Googled around a bit to find other writers who had tried to convert their smartphone to distraction free– and they were astonishingly few– I found that each had a different version of distraction free. Some recommended using grayscale, which I did not find helpful– but you might. Again, no surprise, what works for one writer may not work for another.
And that got me noodling… over the year-end holidays, instead of going to the movies, I stayed home and made my App Evaluation Flowchart for a Custom Distraction Free Smartphone, which you will find at the end of this post.
THIS WRITER’S DISTRACTION FREE SMARTPHONE (DFS or “defis”)
In early 2019, here’s where I stand, comfortable at last, with my smartphone. My defis, as it were. In order of importance, I use my smartphone as / for a:
Camera (for stills and video)
Audioplayer (various apps for audio books, podcasts, and music, which I usually listen to when flying or driving, never when walking or on public transport)
Emergency Mail
Recorder (dictation app for interviews)
Google translator
Emergency telephone
Emergency Google Maps
Emergency Safari
Calculator
Flashlight
In essence, I use my smartphone only when I decide it will serve me for a specific purpose, e.g., to take a photo, make a call, record an interview. Otherwise, it stays in the charging station at home or zipped into its felt bag in my backpack, wifi off, roaming off. I do not allow it to beep, rill, cheep, chirp, ding, ping or vibrate.
Other than the above-mentioned apps, I have deleted all apps (except the ones Apple will not allow me to delete; those I corralled into a folder I labeled “NOPE.” Do not ask me what they are, I do not remember.)
No social media apps, no Whatsapp, no news, no games.
All– all– notifications are off.
About the smartphone as a phone: I make a call from the smartphone maybe two or three times a month. I never check voicemail. Ever. I don’t know how to check voicemail and don’t tell me its easy because I don’t want to know how.
If you leap to conclude that I’m living the life of a Luddite you’d be wrong. I do make and receive plenty of phone calls– except for emergencies, on a landline. I Skype. I spend hours galore on email– but at my desk, on a laptop. On the laptop I also manage my website and blog. I podcast, too, editing the audio with GarageBand (listen in anytime here). And I film and edit short videos for my YouTube and Vimeo channels.
When I first got an iPhone nearly a decade ago, oh, did I fiddle with apps, apps for this and apps for that and apps that would confect a fairy’s hat! I was becharmed by apps! Ingenious things, apps are.
I was on FB, too, until 2015.
But I am a writer of books, and this smartphone rabbit-hole-orama, it wasn’t working for me.
THE TWO MAIN PULLS
For me, the two main pulls to pick up the smartphone have been:
(1) to see any messages from people and/or about matters I care about; (2) to have something convenient to read / look at when I’m away from my desk and feel bored.
Once I had this clear, I could formulate a more effective strategy than vaguely “finding a healthy balance” or blanging down the anvil of will power.
Over the past several years, trying to figure this out, backsliding, and trying again (and again) to figure this out, what I have found actually works is to remove or minimize temptations to even look at, never mind pick up, the smartphone when it is not in my fully conscious and decided interest to do so; and crucially, I have replaced those “pulls” to look at the smartphone with what are, for me, either superior or at least realistically acceptable alternatives.
B.J. FOGG
B.J. Fogg of Stanford University’s Behavior Design Lab has been an influence in my thinking about the smartphone. His basic equation for inducing a behavior is Motivation + Ability + Prompt (all three simultaneous), or B = MAP.
You can read more about Fogg’s behavior model here.
He’s all very sunny and even uses puppets when talking about his behavior model and how it can help people improve their lives, and I for one sincerely appreciate this. But I suspect that people with darker designs (oh I dunno, like those starry eyed newbies with VC in Silicon Valley who would launch a platform / app that, with maximum speed and efficiency, sucks the life-hours, money, and data out of you) also look to professor Fogg as a guru.
What I’m saying is, more likely than not, you are being very, very cannily manipulated by any one of a number of apps to pick up and remain focused on your smartphone despite what you know perfectly well are your better interests.
And understanding the way in is to understand the way out.
THIS WRITER’S STRATEGIES
I don’t pretend that my strategies will work for other writers. This section is not meant to be a series of recommendations but an example: what works for me, a working writer. (If you want to go direct to the App Evaluation Flowchart for a Custom Distraction Free Smartphone, just scroll on down to the bottom of this post.)
(1) Focus digital communications on email, and always at the desk, on the laptop
This is, to-the-moon-and-back, the most powerful strategy for me. (Read about my game-changing 10-point email protocol here.) I take email very seriously. However, with rare, emergency-level exceptions, I check email only on my laptop, only after 3 PM, and I batch it. I thereby establish the boundaries I need to be able to do my work, and I can truthfully say, “I welcome email,” and “the best way to reach me is by email.” And if not perfect, I am ever better about responding to email in a timely manner– since I have relatively fewer distractions!
Many people have told me that they would prefer to communicate with me on FB or Whatsapp, but… too bad! I am a writer who writes books, which means that I need to funnel communication into specific times, not allowing interruptions to leech my attention willynilly throughout the day. If someone cannot summon the empathy to appreciate that, well, like I said. (Anyway, I love you guys.)
This strategy allows me to keep the smartphone silent and in the closet (its charging station) or zipped in its bag inside my backpack. In B.J. Fogg’s terminology, I have hereby eliminated the motivation, the ability, and the prompts to pick up the smartphone. So I don’t.
(2) When out and about, if there’s a chance of having to wait a spell, carry a paperback
Recent Reading: J.M. Synge’s The Aran Islands Ye, verily, of the time before Instagram and TripAdvisor (A classic of travel writing and the Irish Renaissance, and a reading cure for “the shallows”) weighing in at about the same as a potato
This is the second most powerful strategy for me, and simple and old-fashioned as it is, it took what seems to me now an embarrassingly long time to figure it out.
I’ve always been an avid reader of books and magazines, but when I got an iPhone, suddenly, in spare moments, such as waiting at the dentist, in line at the grocery store, waiting for a friend in a coffee shop, I found myself pecking at it. I was reading, but… it was, in fact, more often skimming, watching, and surfing.
As Nicholas Carr explains in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, reading a book and clicking & scrolling on a smartphone (from, say, website to website, to Twitter to FB to Whatsapp to YouTube to Instagram feeds x, then y, then z), do two very different things to one’s brain. The latter literally retrains your brain, resulting in what Carr calls “the shallows,” and once you’re in the shallows, tasks requiring sustained cognitive focus– such as writing a book– become ants-in-the-pants-nigh-impossible.
Don’t tell me I could use a Kindle app to read ebooks on my smartphone; I don’t and I won’t because, again, my goal is to remove as many siren calls to the smartphone as possible, relying on acceptable or superior alternatives. For me, a paperback provides a superior reading experience to an ebook; and if it’s not too heavy, I don’t mind tucking a real book in my bag.
But, by the way, I do read Kindles on occasion, using the Kindle app on my iPad, as a last resort only, when a paper copy is unavailable. I also use my iPad for reading news (which I inevitably regret), a select few favorite blogs, and for listening to audiobooks and podcasts in the kitchen. (If not in its charging station, or with me as I am doing something like say, folding laundry, my iPad remains parked on the kitchen counter.)
In B.J. Fogg’s terminology, with this strategy, I have reduced the motivation to pick up the smartphone. Also in his terminology, I build a tiny habit: when tempted to take out the smartphone to surf, take out the paperback. (You can watch Fogg’s TEDx talk on tiny habits here.)
(3) For a calendar, “to do” lists, and selected contacts, use a Filofax
This strategy is an old one for me, tried and true. As Getting Things Done guru David Allen says, “low-tech is oftentimes better because it is in your face.” The Filofax is a century-old British system designed for engineers that is so efficient it still has legions of devotees, among them myself, for over 30 years now. My lovely and ridiculously sturdy cherry-red leather Filofax normally stays next to my laptop on my desk; I can, but I rarely carry it with me.
As for contacts, I keep the addresses and telephone numbers I need at-hand in the Filofax and the rest in a separate system, but not on the smartphone because, again, I aim to focus my communications on email, and always on the laptop. (My smartphone does have emergency contacts.)
In B.J. Foggese: For my to dos and calendar, I have no motivation nor prompts to pick up the smartphone.
(4) For an alarm clock use an alarm clock (and for a watch use a watch)
Back in the days of my starry-eyed wonderfest with apps, I downloaded three different alarm clock apps. The cornucopia of “alarms,” from harps to waterfalls to drums to roosters yodeling, that was fun. But I deleted them all and instead use a little plastic alarm clock powered by two AA batteries. It weighs almost nothing, cost less than ten bucks, and works just fine– so I can keep the volume on the smartphone on mute. Don’t tell me I could adjust the volume on the alarm clock app because I don’t want to touch the smartphone if I don’t have to, and certainly not as the last thing at night and first thing in the morning. And I don’t want the smartphone parked anywhere near where I sleep.
This strategy might sound silly. How is the alarm clock app different than say, the calculator or the flashlight or the camera or diction app? The answer is, by definition an alarm clock distracts, it prompts me to pick it up to turn it off– and that is precisely what I do not want my distraction free smartphone to do.
This is not trivial.
In B.J. Foggese: another motivation, ability, and prompt to pick up the smartphone eliminated.
(5) Use paper maps
You read that right. People laugh at me. I laugh back! Sometimes I use a store-bought map but more often, before I go out, I’ve Googled on my laptop and printed out or sketched the directions. I do make use of Google Maps on the laptop and on my smartphone in emergencies– this is one of the reasons for which I keep a smartphone. But by relying primarily on paper, rather than GPS via the smartphone in realtime, I have removed yet another reason to pick up and start poking at the smartphone.
An added benefit, crucial for me as a travel writer, is that my sense of space, direction, and the lay of any given landscape have remained sharper.
(If you love the planet and believe everything paper should be digital, I would invite you to Google a bit to learn about the energy realities of server farms and what precisely goes into smartphone batteries.)
(6) Always carry a pen and small a notebook
Another opportunity to not pick up the smartphone.
(7) Make it a habit to keep the smartphone zipped inside its bag
I don’t make a habit of holding my smartphone in my hand, carrying it in a back pocket, or setting it down on the desk or table next to me. Unless it’s an emergency, or I have an excellent, fully conscious reason to take it out and use it, the smartphone stays dead quiet and out of sight in its bag inside the bag.
In B.J. Foggese, I thereby reduce my motivation, ability, and prompts to touch it.
IN CONCLUSION
My smartphone is now simply (albeit miraculously!!) a lightweight selected multi-tool (camera / recorder / audio player / caculator / flashlight) and emergency information-access and communications device which I carry when I go out of the house, unless it is to walk the dogs. (I never take it when I walk the dogs because when I walk the dogs, I walk the dogs.)
My smartphone does have Mail, Safari, and Googlemaps buttons, but because I rely on my laptop for email and other Internet access, and paper for out-and-about navigation, I no longer feel that pesky tug to pick up and peck at the smartphone– but I do have these apps available to me should I need them. And sometimes I do need them.
Ditto the telephone.
Again, and of course, what works for me may not necessarily work for you. But may this new term, Distraction Free Smartphone, or as I would suggest, DFS, or defis, serve you in thinking through your own concerns and strategies for your own smartphone and your own writing.
DFS MODE
I’ll add one more term: “DFS mode.” A smartphone need not be distraction free almost all the time, as mine is. Let’s say one needs to be available on Whatsapp, voicemail, email or to use some other app for family or work that may ping, ring or ding-ding you at random intervals, and so be it; then, for the time alloted for writing (or other deep work), one’s smartphone could be put into DFS mode. As I hope I have made abundantly clear, this would not necessarily be the same as “airplane mode.”
P.S. Cal Newport’sDigital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World will be out next month. From what I’ve read of his other books and blog, this promises to be a pathbreaking book. If nothing else, the term “digital minimalism” adds depth and nuance to our thinking about digital technology and our use of it.
