Due to corona pandemic, most of the countries on lockdown. For us, it’s been more than 3 weeks now and government expecting people to self-quarantine at home until further notice. During this period, worst thing that can ever happen is “forced to spend quarantine without a smartphone”. Unfortunately, it happened to me in the middle of quarantine. Yes, my phone got completely dead due to over heat.
I am not much addicted to the phone. But I would still spend couple of hours per day on scrolling the Facebook, sending messages on Whatsapp, checking up Insta stories etc. When I realized that I have no longer access to a smartphone, I felt bit empty and clueless on how am I going to survive the rest of quarantine without my phone. Because, there is no way I can buy a new phone, until the lockdown is lift. But I just hold back a moment and think “After all it’s just a phone!” and I made myself up for it.
As of today, it’s been 18 days I am spending my quarantine days without a smartphone. I learned few lessons through out these days and below are they,
Boredom
Boredom is the common challenge during a quarantine and most of the time, your phone will be the key therapy for it. In my case, I don’t have that option.
But I figured out alternative ways to get away from boredom. Below are some of them,
- Learning new things — I invest this free time to learn new things like, how to play chess strategically, cinematography, and some tech related stuffs. Also I was trying to crack my phone, so then I can backup the data in it.
- Hobbies — Photography is my passion. Since I can’t go out, was just trying out some low light shutter experiments indoor. Also illustration is something I had in my mind and wanted to try out. I was designing couple of artwork during this period.
- Writing — This article is something I wrote during this period
Trouble waking up on time
Waking up in the morning is the hardest job for me. I usually setup 3 alarms in my phone with dynamic intervals to wake-up on time. I have been working from home these days. Since we are working from home, we have an internal sync-up call every morning at 9 o’clock. So waking up on time is a must. Since I was used to my phone’s alarm, waking up on time was bit challenging in earlier days and I ended up missing the morning call.
Early sleep
Usually I go to bed around 11. But as a habit I always spend an extra hour on the phone watching Youtube videos until I fall sleep. Eventually I always get late to sleep. This is a habit I always wanted to change, but couldn’t. Fortunately, I was able to break this pattern during this quarantine.
First day without a phone it was pretty hard for me to close my eyes the moment I hop onto the bed. Day by day, I eventually use to sleep on time. It made me realize that having the smart phone next to me was the main reason why I late to sleep.
Less anxiety
Usually when I wake-up in the morning, first thing I do is checking the phone whether I have any notification and spend couple of minutes for that. If I accidentally see any freaking message in the morning, my day is over from that moment onward.
Without a phone, my anxiety level decreased as I don’t really have to keep an eye on my phone to see if I got any messages or notifications. Also I don’t need to bother on charging the phone continuously and stick near the plug point.
I Became VIP
I had to use my laptop for communication. I was mainly interacting with friends through Skype and Facebook. Laptop is not convenient as a mobile. Also my laptop has a heating problem and I have to keep it on the table if I want to use. Because of that, I can’t really drag my laptop with me everywhere. So until I turn my laptop on, they can’t reach me.
Conclusion
Smart phone is something that make our life easier. But most of us are treating the smart phone as an important part of our life. If you ask me, can I live without a smart phone, I would say “It is based on how much you addicted to your smartphone”. The lesser you give importance to your smart phone, more peaceful the life would be.
