Friction

Like most people, I feel like my free time has been sucked away. I remember 2000, reading a book every few weeks. Twenty five years later, and I’m happy to read a book a year. I can account for a little bit of that lost time—I took up running, so I’m often spending a weekend morning on a trail for a few hours. But during the week? I’d like if I said I don’t know where it goes. I know exactly where that time goes.

We all know where it goes. It’s picking up our phone to check the time or a text and realizing 20 minutes of scrolling has gone by. The world has become so frictionless. Time sucks abound. A time suck in 1995 was sitting down for three hours to read the Sunday paper. It was an afternoon tinkering with a small engine or working on a piece of art. But we all know that now it’s catching up whatever X/Blusky/TikTok drama is happening.

So while I’m working on being a Luddite, I’m adding friction and removing distractions. Somewhat inspired by She’s a Beast’s DIY Dumbphone, I’ve tuned the kitchen radio to NPR. It’s an actual radio. Make coffee, flip the power on. It’s instant. It’s on. No phone to pick up, no bluetooth to sync, no apps to open.

And what happens when the radio is on? Randomness. That interview or story you didn’t know you were interested in, like discovering the show-I’ve-been-hesitant-to-watch-because-I’m-gunshy-about-getting-sucked-into-a-mystery-box-just-to-find-out-the-writer’s-didn’t-have-a-plan-a-la-LOST is produced by Ben Stiller and stars John Turtorro.

Or, wearing a watch and eliminating the need to pick up the phone to check the time. It’s a dumb watch. A wind-up dumb watch. Every morning, every night, I wind it. It’s a little Indian frankenwatch. It does one thing and only passably well enough. But that’s half the reason I’d look at my phone—what time is it?

These are not high-tech solutions to a high-tech problem. These are small changes to address the cause of the symptom. It’s been a few weeks. I’m not radically different. I still catch myself reading Bluesky for 30 minute while having my morning coffee. But I’ve also read fifteen pages in the past week, up from zero the month before.