analog
There is a particular kind of afternoon I have become protective of. No phone, a notebook, possibly a pen I have been thinking about for longer than is reasonable. The window is open. Nothing is happening. This is, apparently, the goal.
The case for a less connected life is by now familiar enough to have become its own kind of content, which is one reason I have no interest in making it at length. What I can offer is that certain things have accumulated, over years, as genuinely worth doing, and this page is where I have written them down. If you are reading it on a phone, the irony is noted, and we can proceed.
writing by hand
It takes some time to recover, if the handwriting has been left to its own devices for twenty years. Hemlock & Oak is a reasonable place to start thinking seriously about pens, inks, and paper. For cursive specifically, Consistent Cursive is structured and practical, which is what is needed.
There is something in the physical act of writing that slows thought in a way typing does not, and this is not always a disadvantage. A paper journal or planner is also, incidentally, immune to notifications.
leaving the phone alone
Not a detox, which is a word I find faintly embarrassing in this context. Just leaving it in another room for a few hours. The adjustment period is shorter than expected. The more interesting discovery is what the mind reaches for when there is nothing to reach for.
boredom
Genuine boredom has largely gone missing from daily life, and this seems like a loss. The bored mind, given enough time, tends to produce something: an idea, a memory, a decision that has been successfully avoided until now. It is at minimum a more interesting state than being perpetually half-attentive to something else.
getting outside
Spending time outdoors fits somewhere in all of this. I have found that trying to explain why tends to make it sound worse than it is.
books over news
Daily newspapers are engineered to make yesterday feel like an emergency. A history of something that ended five centuries ago is, among other things, a relief from the present tense. If journalism is genuinely wanted, there is something to be said for the kind that ages well. The Economist and The Atlantic are both better in print, partly because print does not send notifications, and partly because finishing a piece before moving on turns out to require some architectural encouragement.
Magazines generally reward a kind of reading that feeds do not. Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer for the questions worth arguing about. Country Life for everything that isn’t.