Bricking My iPhone Is My Tech 'Upgrade of the Year'

My concentration is shot. I know this because I've checked my phone four times while writing this opening paragraph. I'm addicted to my phone in a way that feels both embarrassing and completely normal, which is perhaps the most damning part. My phone feels essential for everything: my job requires Slack and email responsiveness, my hobbies live in apps and group chats, and even my downtime involves scrolling through feeds I don't actually enjoy. These days, we tend to think of upgrades (in life, in tech, wherever) as adding features, but sometimes the real upgrade is eliminating. So I did something a little radical this year: I bricked my iPhone. Well, sort of. And it's been the best tech decision I've made in years. What I actually did to fix my concentration We talk about phone addiction like it's a personal failing, but cut yourself some slack. Every app, every notification, every infinite scroll is designed by engineers whose job is to keep us locked in. As such, we've eliminated almost all empty space from our lives, filling every waiting moment with content consumption. Waiting for the train? Scroll. In line at the store? Scroll. Between tasks at work? Scroll. I can't afford to go full "dumb-phone" , so I took a middle path: "demoting" my smartphone, so it functions like a dumb phone while retaining genuinely useful features like navigation, ride shares, and FaceTime. Here's what I did: I turned on grayscale mode. It's amazing how boring your phone becomes when it looks like an old newspaper. That dopamine-triggering red notification badge? Just gray. Instagram's carefully curated visual feast? Gray. Suddenly my phone looked as exciting as a filing cabinet. I deleted the time-consuming apps. I got rid of the primary social media apps, any news apps that were really just anxiety delivery systems, and more social media apps. If I wanted to check something, I'd have to do it on my computer, which added just enough friction to make me reconsider whether I actually cared. I turned off non-essential notifications. Actually, I turned off almost all notifications. No badges, no banners, no sounds. My phone became silent unless someone was actually calling me or texting me directly. I started physically separating myself from my phone during focused work. It went in another room, face down in a drawer, anywhere but within arm's reach. Out of sight, out of the dopamine loop. How bricking my iPhone was the ultimate life hack This might sound embarrassing, but it's honest: at first, it felt like phantom limb syndrome. My thumb kept reaching for apps that weren't there. I'd pull out my phone in line at the coffee shop only to stare at a blank screen and think, "Now what?" The answer, it turned out, was nothing. And that nothing was exactly what I needed. The first week was genuinely uncomfortable. My brain kept expecting hits that weren't coming. I felt anxious, ashamed, humbled, understimulated, almost itchy-which pretty much told me everything...

Preview: ~500 words