Like many of you, I have a complicated relationship with my phone. I’ve been actively trying to limit my interactions with the stupid thing for years now. Any of you who listen to Triple Click will have heard me talk about this from time to time.

A few of the things I’ve tried over the years have stuck, and these days, I use my phone less obsessively than I once did. Two big ones:

I put those two changes into practice several years ago, and they’ve been relatively easy to stick with. They’ve also noticeably improved my day-to-day life. Not a life-changing amount or anything, just enough to make me feel more relaxed and focused on average.

Unfortunately, I’ve been noticing lately that they aren’t enough. Scrolling before bed may mess up my sleep, but scrolling during the day is still an enervating time-suck. Even with no social media apps, the phone itself is a fundamentally distracting device.

I’ll look over at it during a commercial break, or while a podcast episode is exporting, or during a video game loading screen, and I’ll find myself pulled into a five- or ten-minute loop. I check email, refresh the New York Times, check email, check a reddit thread, refresh Polygon, read half of a newsletter, check another couple video game sites, read half of a NYT opinion article, check email, click a link in a newsletter leading to an article that I won’t read, send a couple texts, reply to a group thread I’m on, refresh the New York Times, notice I got a reply to one of my texts, check email…. does this sound familiar to any of you?

In a recent edition of this newsletter, I linked to a Business Insider interview with Yondr founder Graham Dugoni. (Yondr makes the pouches schools use to lock away kids’ phones during the day.) Dugoni says he only uses a flip phone, and elaborated on why (most important bit bolded by me):

That feels true to me. The moment I pick up my phone, I’m already on its turf. Whatever my intention—I’m just going to reply to this text really quick!—I’m still going to interact with it in the way it wants me to, which is to say, in the way the people who designed it want me to. I’d really been noticing this over the past six months or so, as my phone habits steadily deteriorated without any conscious thought on my part. (A process no doubt hastened by the shortening fall days, a busy period of work, and the firehose of horrifying news we’re all drowning in every day.)

I needed to shake things up. I considered buying an actual Yondr pouch, or keeping my phone in a special box by the front door, but then I realized I was overthinking it. Why not just leave the phone on its charger all day? My phone charges on my bedside table overnight, so what if I just… left it there, rather than carrying it around in my pocket? Could it be that simple?

So far, the answer appears to be yes. Every morning, I get out of bed and leave my phone behind. I don’t even look at it. I check email and Discord around lunchtime, from a tablet or from my computer. I use an Apple Watch to listen to music when I run, and to set timers. (I’m starting to think modern devices are mostly just timers.) I don’t get many calls, but when I do get one, my phone routes it to my other devices, so I don’t miss them. I don’t actually lose much of my phone’s functionality, I just don’t have the thing in my pocket all day. As a result, I don’t have the urge to pick it up and fall into the scroll-hole.

I know everyone’s life is different and everyone needs to use their phone in different ways. Some people don’t work from home. Some people need instant access to their phone for their job, or for safety, or don’t have other devices to pick up the slack. But I still figured I’d share, since it’s been a very positive change for me. If you’re reading this and you carry your phone around in your pocket all day, it’s worth at least asking the question: do you actually need to do that? What if you didn’t?

Eddy Burback - “ChatGPT Made Me Delusional” - I can’t remember how I first learned about Burback; probably the algorithm saw me enjoying a Drew Gooden video and was like, “this guy talks kind of similarly and is also funny.” Anyway, I don’t want to spoil too much about this video, but it is incredible and terrifying in equal measure. Absolutely worth a watch.

Lee Sklar - “‘Doc’ Kupka Vlog” - I discovered bass legend Lee Sklar’s YouTube channel as I was researching who made that one sound on Gene Clark’s “Lady of the North” for Strong Songs. Lee’s videos are like what YouTube used to be, when it was better - just a guy with a billion stories and a webcam sharing assorted wisdom in his free time. This one, about Tower of Power bari player “Doc” Kupka, is great, particularly since I just saw Doc and the band with the Portland Symphony earlier in the year.

Justin Ostrander - “What Have I Done? 1959 Gibson ES-335” - I like Ostrander’s channel more than most guitar channels I follow. He’s a working Nashville guy and has a down-to-earth openness that I dig. He also focuses on music and guitar, rather than cranking out gear reviews, so he doesn’t come across like a part of Sweetwater’s marketing division. This video actually is technically a gear video, in that it’s a guy talking about an incredible instrument he bought. But it’s more interesting than that to me, because it’s not like you can click an affiliate link and buy your own ‘59 335. (Though I guess you could go to Reverb and drop $82k on this one!) As Ostrander talks, you can see him processing the excitement and anxiety of finally purchasing a once-in-a-lifetime dream instrument, and realizing what he wants to do with it.

Stevie Knight - “Should Musicians be Worried?” - Someone sent me this video of YouTuber Stevie Knight reacting to an AI-generated gospel rendition of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.” They asked me to explain how the AI sounded so good. Okay, here’s my take: it sucks, and the original is a billion times better. So many of these AI songs are formless riffing, with no real structure. The AI models just do four chords over and over and insert a bunch of “cool riffs” stolen from pop Gospel and Motown recordings. I know AI can make pretty convincing recordings in other contexts, but this ain’t it imo.

Challenger Andy - “Defeating the Taurus Demon with a Trumpet” - I’m kinda sick of the videos of people beating Dark Souls with Aerophones and other MIDI instruments; those are basically just buttons on a plastic casing, same as a game controller. This video, however, has the inputs of the game mapped to different notes played by an actual trumpet. Much dumber and way better.

Any Austin - “Are The Witcher 3’s Rivers Realistic?” - This guy has deservedly been blowing up lately. His videos attempt to nail down the believability of the smaller things in hyper-detailed video games. (This one on the power system of Red Dead Redemption 2 is another highlight.) His Witcher 3 video is a hell of a ride, particularly given where it starts. I laughed, I learned, I walked away satisfied.

That’ll do it for now. I hope you’re all taking care out there, and if you try one of those phone experiments, feel free to reach out and let me know how it’s going.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa, sitting next to her ghostly Halloween doppelgänger. Appa is the one on the left, in case you couldn’t tell them apart.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
11/07/2025