Is your phone getting in the way of your writing?

If you write, you’re probably already very aware of how easily all the distractions of email, social media and the internet can steal your writing time.

Just how crucial it is to carve out time for thinking and writing is the subject of research and inquiry for Cal Newport. His book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, and his newsletter and short articles, are some of my favourite sources of support and inspiration.

This week, Newport’s newsletter pointed me to a very real example of the profound positive effect that limiting phone use can have on our ability to produce ‘deep work.’ The example is that described by Adam Weiss, a doctoral student in Chemistry at the University of Chicago. In February 2022, Weiss published a column article in Nature in which he shared the story of the drastic action he decided to take, having ‘hit a rut’ in his studies. Realising that, although he was putting in increasingly longer hours, his work ‘felt chaotic and disorganized,’ Weiss writes:

‘As I began to search for the cause of my struggles, I became increasingly aware that my ‘quiet time’ at the lab bench — for instance, when I was running chromatography columns or microscopy experiments — was anything but. Instead of thinking about science, I was watching television or interacting with social media on my smartphone… I would come home from a long day in the lab and respond to e-mails or Slack messages over dinner or in bed.’

Weiss began to limit time on his smartphone, replacing it during work hours with a phone with basic features. He also implemented ideas from Digital Minimalism, another of Newport’s books. As a result, he has experienced an increase in creativity, focus and engagement, and a decrease in anxiety

The ‘quiet time’ that Weiss noticed he was missing is crucial for writers. Quiet time is time to dream, time to think, time to roll words around in our heads, as well as time to scribble ideas in a notebook or try things out on the white page of a blank screen.

But how easy it is to open our eyes in the morning, reach for our phones and begin to scroll. How many of us, faced with ten or fifteen minutes of time in a waiting room or meeting room, allow ourselves to be distracted by a slab of glowing glass, rather than letting our minds wander for a while? We must check our email inboxes, our calendars, perhaps our Twitter or Instagram. We must keep in touch at all times with what is going on.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps by letting ourselves off the hook, allowing ourselves to switch off from the 24/7, always-on world, we’ll get in touch with something else again, something much more urgent and important.