More and more people are exchanging their fancy smartphone for an ‘old’ model that only allows you to make calls and send text messages (and which can also survive a fall from a building), but why? Smartphones make things easier, improve our lives and give us instant access to just about everything we want and need. Still, there are quite a few advantages to dumping your smartphone. Let’s see!
You become more efficient
How often do you not sit on your phone to check the latest notifications and participate in meaningless talk on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. Instead, you can work better, harder and more efficiently on the current project or promotion you’re following. Let’s also consider the entrepreneur, or businessman. How can anyone run the best business possible by wasting our time browsing waste on our smartphones? Simply put, smartphones steal our efficiency, our attention and our time, which could be more productively spent on our work, our business or our overall life goals.
You stop a serious addiction
As you may notice when you just walk on the street, at work, in the family home or when you are eating out, people cannot leave their smartphones alone. It seems to be an extra limb for them that they cannot let go. They reach obsessively for their wallets and mentally drool at the thought of new reports or news. There is ample evidence that tools such as the smartphone affect dopamine levels in the brain – a major neurotransmitter involved in addiction formation. How can you tell if you’re addicted or not if you never try to quit? See how your brain reacts when you spend a day without your smartphone!
You have more patience and focus
When you throw your smartphone out the window, you are left with a greater attention span. The smartphone breeds an expectation for instant gratification that, while big in the moment, spills over into the rest of your life and reduces the amount of patience and focus you have on other things.
You improve your social skills
When people use their smartphones constantly, they unwittingly train their neuroplastic brains to become less socially effective. By avoiding daily face-to-face interactions and increasingly using text and a screen to communicate, we become socially weaker and even experience heightened social anxiety when we need to communicate. People without smartphones are more confident and enjoy social interactions more.
You do more fun things
I used to sit at home and tap my smartphone. It was easy, fun and satisfying. So why would you give that up, you might wonder? Ever since I threw my smartphone in a public trash, I’ve been forced to come up with positive ways to enjoy myself and fill my time. Whether that’s going to the gym, going to social events, being productive, playing guitar or just going out of the house, I can’t fall back on my smartphone as a boredom device right now. This works wonders!
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