The average American spent 2.5 months on their phone in 2024.

Trapped inside of a screen for 76 days sounds like the plot of a low-budget horror film. Unfortunately, that nightmare was my reality.

That’s why I started experimenting with alternatives so I could find ways to detach from the grips of digital distractions. It turns out that a lot of what we rely on our phones for is easy to replace with analog tools. But these tools are more than just alternatives to excessive phone use. By design, they encourage focus, presence, and creative thinking unbound from the linear form of the vertical screen.

Without the constant pull of digital distractions, intentional living is the default rather than the exception.

The digital dilemma.

In every pocket of the modern citizen is a phone that's considered smart because it has more functions than the dumb phones of the past.

• Maps are no longer needed, thanks to GPS systems.
• Calculators are pre-installed to solve basic math problems.
• And when the power of our homes goes out, we have flashlights built-in, eliminating the need to have a stockpile of AA batteries.

I love that my phone is smart enough to correct my spelling when I fat-finger a text response, but these functions that we rely on phones for come at a hidden cost.

Most people I know would have no idea how to get home if their phone died two hours outside of town. The 22-year-old who has never driven anywhere without GPS is completely lost without a phone telling them where they are. They don't know that US Interstate highways ending in even numbers always travel east and west or that the numbers on an exit sign indicate mile markers. Most would argue they don’t need to know–and they don’t so long as they have their phone.

Perhaps what makes smartphones so smart is they’ve figured out how to make us dependent on them to live. Even the ancients were aware that new technologies come at a cost.

"Writing is a recipe not for memory," Plato said, "but for reminder."

As Plato accurately points out, even technologies as fundamental as writing exchange one value for another. He feared that people would become forgetful and less wise. Writing would give us the illusion of wisdom without the work of internalizing knowledge into memory. Time has proven some of his fears true. Poets no longer memorize all 15,000 lines of The Iliad; they read it instead.

Nobody would argue that writing hurt society, but Plato had a point: there is a tradeoff.

So, when the smartphone replaces more than 25 tools of the past, keep in mind the hidden costs of your increasing dependence.

One of the steepest fees is your time.

Watches & Clocks.

The average American checks their phone 144 times a day.

I'd wager that at least a quarter of those check-ins are to tell time. But it's never just time that you check for when you look at your phone.

• If there's a text notification, there's a high chance you'll take a moment to respond.
• Maybe you'll do a quick scan of your email and then pop onto Instagram to see if you have any DM's.
• Next thing you know, 5 or 10 minutes are gone.

No big deal–until you realize this is happening 30 times a day, leading to a subtle siphoning of 2 hours.

Because most people depend on their phones for something as crucial as time, they become habituated to looking at it more than necessary.

The phone on its own is not evil. It's just a piece of machinery. But that machinery houses an environment of distraction, amusement, and impulse.

Imagine you had to go to a casino to check the time.

• Hyper-stimulating lights, sounds, and colors would surround you.
• Games, music, and endless entertainment would beckon you to come enjoy yourself.
• Money would exchange hands from gamblers to the house and ads would penetrate every point of the experience.

A phone is a piece of metal and plastic. A smartphone is an environment you enter.

A watch is also a piece of metal and plastic but it’s more like entering a hospital waiting room than a casino–There’s not much to do other than look at the clock.

The best gift I've received in years is a watch my wife gave me. Immediately after putting it on, I realized how often I relied on my phone for such a basic need. I could finally lose myself in reading, writing, and working without a single digital device nearby to pull me out of flow.

It felt like I could breathe deeper and focus far longer.

You don’t need an expensive Rolex or even a watch at all. A cheap plastic clock on your desk or a funky old stopwatch you throw in your pocket works fine. Any analog source of time-keeping will be much less distracting and remove some of your dependence on smartphones.

Time management is a critical part of everyone’s life and the next tool I want to talk about allows you to plan at scale without a single app.

Planners & Calendars.

In March of 2024, I went all in on a digital workflow.

I had read Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte and was enamored with the idea of digital tools giving me another brain–the one I had was struggling to keep up with weekly YouTube publishing.

I spent over 100 hours building a custom Notion system that catered to my every need.

• I built a notes database filled with templates, tags, and checklists for processing.
• I had automation sequences, a scheduling system, and weekly planners.
• To-do lists, habit trackers, and logging procedures to keep me on track with my goals.

The whole system was gamified with XP points, a leveling system, and a reward schedule to create the most optimized creative process I could conceive.

But my optimism for its potential waned after a few months.

Soon, I realized the reality of what I had created: one thousand more reasons to look at my phone. Just a few more months and my neck would have been permanently craned to a ninety-degree angle aimed at the phone I depended on for everything.

Did it keep me motivated and hungry to check the boxes off my to-do list? Unquestionably. But it also left me feeling disconnected from my creative work and left me craving something I could tangibly touch in reality.

You lose some of the magic of creative work when it’s all bits in a virtual world.

Even worse, it was a massive time suck. The siren song of efficiency lured me into a trap of my own making. Maintaining and tinkering with the system became a daily labor forcing me to reckon with reality: my digital second brain was feeding on all of my physical brain’s energy.

A pocket planner was the analog solution to my problems.

I spent $20 on a Moleskine planner that fits in my pocket, and I've never been more productive.

Inside this tiny notebook:

• I log reading and writing activities.
• I track upcoming events and appointments with people.
• I write notes, plan my workouts, and schedule self-imposed deadlines.

Every day, I flip through the pages to quickly review my goals, see where I'm in and out of alignment, and get after the day.

It's low maintenance, portable, and tangible. And best of all, it keeps me away from the virtual casino.

There are no distractions in it, only a record of accomplishments.

Most productivity systems don't require an app or digital devices to be successful. Seductive marketing and a well-funded creator economy do the leg work of convincing you otherwise.

And I'll prove it with the next set of analog tools I use that replicates a productivity system most people assume you need an app for.

Corkboards, notecards, and sticky notes.

Operating a one-person media company–which is what creators do–can be overwhelming.

It involves a lot of moving parts:

• writing
• filming
• editing
• designing
• publishing
• researching

Creating regular content for an audience requires you to be organized, methodical, and capable of managing multiple projects.

In the 1940s, Toyota faced similar challenges at a much larger scale with manufacturing cars. To make their production cycles more efficient, they invented the Kanban method.

The idea is simple: a corkboard is divided into columns–each column representing a stage in the production cycle–and projects are represented by a notecard that moves from column to column as it progresses through production.

This made it easy for engineers to visualize the different stages that individual projects were in and it does the same for me.

I write an outline for a video on a note card and pin those ideas under the "Queue” column. Then, I choose an idea to write about and move it under the “Newsletter” column. This card travels across the corkboard kanban system until it finds its final resting spot under the “Published” column.

Sticky notes are helpful here because they allow me to attach checklists, notes, or due dates to the cards for additional information or context. All of these tangible steps make the creative process feel creative.

I don’t need Notion, Trello, or Milanote to have an efficient system. Plus, it's more fun pinning notecards to a corkboard than pushing a button on my phone screen.

It worked for Toyota and it works for me.

Honorable mentions

1. Books: Reading a physical book encourages focus and reflection, the perfect environment for learning.
2. Notebooks: Journaling on an app just doesn't hit the same as an old-fashioned notebook. No ads and no subscriptions; just you and the page.
3. Conversation: Not technically an analog technology, but it makes the list because people are chronically undervaluing its importance in their lives. Social media is fun for a few minutes, but there is nothing like seeing a person face to face and enjoying some banter with another human being.

You can learn more about how I use notebooks to slow down time and live a more intentional life here: How Journaling Slows Down Time​

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