During the Easter break I went back home for the first time in three years and because of the long time it had been since our last visit, we had the first few days solidly booked with family events (meals, hikes, meals, etc ..) and the last few days in a hotel, for a bit of an actual holiday, mind you still with family but … hey ho.

The endless run of family events left very little time for me to use my phone for my usual constant checking of Hacker News, Reddit and LinkedIn and then on day two at the hotel I did something really careless: I jumped into the kids pool, all of its 40 cm of depth, with my phone on my pocket and managed to get my phone really, really wet.

Unfortunately?, the phone stopped working and despite the usual remedies: rice, time, etc .. it wouldn’t turn on, which left me without a phone. No big deal, I was on holiday in a hotel in a subtropical island, I don’t need to be constantly checking Reddit for news on the Ukrainian War or LinkedIn for that job that will not only fullfil my intellectual needs but will also make me financially independent, all that could wait till we got back home.

And then when we got back and I simply did not go back to constantly using the phone, so much so that I’ve been averaging ~ 20% battery use per day, I just don’t really use my phone that much anymore. I don’t finish watching something on Netflix and instantly reach for my phone, I don’t instantly reach for my phone while I’m waiting for a pipeline to complete, I simply do something else or I just wait and do nothing, yes really, I stare out of the window a lot these days and watch the odd bird on my neighbour’s magnolia tree.

This got me thinking that if I could drop a bad habit so easily and it really was a bad habit for me, then what else can I change?