Can You Live Without Your Cell Phone?

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As an experiment, I tried the other day to go one business day without my cell phone.  I figured one day was as long as I wanted to be disconnected from the world, but some people suggested that I try it for a week.  Keep in mind most of those people were over 60 years old, and hadn't developed the same dependency as most of us have on our smart phones.  I heard some crazy ideas from some crazy people.  Here's an excerpt from a conversation with my uncle.

"You can't get love from an iPhone"
" What about Tinder?"
" What's that? Tinder? Is it some kind of fire starting thingy?"
" You could say that."
" Why do you have to have that damn phone all the time anyway?"
" So people can contact me."
" Can't they call your office?"
" Yes but I'm rarely in my office. So it wouldn't make sense."
" Well maybe you should spend more time in your office."
" Yeah that'll solve the problem."
" Well if you don't like what you hear, don't ask!"
" I won't anymore."
" Well you're an ungrateful SOB."
" Yep and that's pretty sad."
" What's so sad about it?"
" Cause you're my favorite uncle."

Following a few more odd conversations with even less technically savvy people, I was very reluctant to try and go a day without using my phone.  In fact, I was freaking out!  I had a whole list of concerns:

1. How will anyone contact me? - I have many family members, relatives, friends, customers and they call me everyday, or send texts, or emails.  Therefore, how would they react without hearing from me instantly? Would they feel ignored and resent me?  Could our relationship survive a day without contact?
2. What if a customer has a crisis? - I don't work as a doctor so no one was going to die if they didn't contact me, but I still had clients that might need a quick consult on an issue with an employee. And how would they get ahold of me?  Would they be able to wait a day?
3. How will I know how to get where I'm going? - I drive a lot every day. And I have become so reliant on Google Maps that even though I know every area of the city of Los Angeles, I still feel like having Maps on is a nice security blanket. What am I suppose to use?  A Thomas Guide? Where would I even buy one?
4. What if I have a medical emergency? - I'm pretty healthy.  I exercise just about every day and my family does not have a history of heart disease, but what if I have an aneurysm or heart attack or something?  How will I get medical attention quickly?
5. What if my friends are sending me an IM? - How can I miss out on all the bad inside jokes between my group of friends?  Will I be ostracized?  Will they not include me anymore?
6. How can I go a day without facebook? - I receive so many messages and updates from my friends, that going an entire day without logging on to fb would be a social catastrophe. How would I know where my friends were eating or what their kids were doing?  Or worse, if they had a photo of them I wanted to mock, where could I direct my sarcasm?
7. Will I survive an entire day without Game of War, Angry Birds, or Words With Friends? - I can go a day without talking to clients or friends...I think.  But not being allowed to play my favorite games instantly, could be soul crushing.
8. How can I make it through a whole day without texting? - Forget about phone calls, those take up a lot of time and thought.  What am I going to do if I can't send a text?  Someone will find me on a street corner babbling to myself.  I will be a social pariah!
9. If I see something spectacular how will I remember it? - I don't know about you but I need a record of everything I've ever done. So if I see a leprechaun, or a man walk on water, how am I going to share that memory? I won't have video or a photo of it. I'll have to keep it in my head!
10. What if I need to call my mom? - I don't speak to my mom as often as I used to, and probably because she doesn't use her cell phone, unless it's an emergency.  So she doesn't use it all really.  But if I needed to talk to her or consult her while I'm out in the big city, how do I get in touch with her.  I would feel like an orphan.

I have not listed all my concerns, which would have taken several hours, but these were in the top ten.  I know it was only a day, and I wasn't totally denying myself computer access or anything like that, so I figured, this would be pretty easy.  In fact, then I got really brave and made another contingency, that I wouldn't use my computer from 8 am until 8 pm.  I was going to really "rough it" like pioneers way back in the 1980's! So I prepared for bed that night, without using my phone as an alarm clock. That was weird. And I drifted restlessly off to something resembling sleep because I was worried I wouldn't wake up on time...even though I rise at the same time everyday with or without the alarm.

Here is a diary of how the day went:

6:45 am - 7:00 am - I rose as usual exactly at this time and looked for my cell phone.  Which I realized I had put inside a watch box in another room.  I felt okay, no need to worry, I would check my emails after coffee
7:00 am - 8:00 am - Since I was basically freaked out to be out of contact with the world I hopped on my computer for an hour, check all my emails, my facebook page, and perused different sites for a while. I then worked on a few projects, and I was finished just before 8 am.
8:00 am - 8:20 am - I showered, dressed, and got ready for my appointments.  I was feeling pretty confident that I could get through the day without incident.  I was feeling very cocky at this point. I thought of other things and forgot all about my little "experiment".
8:20 am - 8:30 am - Subconsciously started looking for my phone before I headed out.  Couldn't figure out where I had put it, and then realized I wasn't supposed to be taking it with me. Felt like an idiot as I walked out the door.
8:30 am - 9:00 am- Drove to client's offices without a problem.  This seemed to be getting easier. But my hands were twitching for a phone at each intersection, wondering if I was going the right way. I thought at one point about using the compass app on my phone but then realized I didn't have my damn phone!
9:00 am - 10:30 am - Met with my clients, who know that I am old school and use a paper day planner in addition to my phone calendar.  They kept asking, "Are you going to remember this? We'll send a meeting request to your phone.  Wait where is your phone?"  I told them I forgot it, which they seem to buy as an excuse, but not before adding, "Oh god, I would die without my cell phone!"
10:30 am - 11:00 am - Took another drive to a familiar client, but this time I got crossed up on the off ramps from the freeway.  In Los Angeles, if you don't take the right off ramp, at the right time, you can get stuck in a maze of streets trying to get back on the freeway.  I did and I was frustrated for a few minutes but remembered from my years as a courier the way back to the freeway.  I made it just in time the appointment.
11:00 am - 12:30 pm - I met with one of my most loyal clients who was having trouble identifying candidates for his team.  He had just turned over two people and I reached in my pocket for my cell phone to post a job for him online, and realized I had no cell phone. I just had laugh.
"What's so funny?", the owner asked.
"Oh nothing.  I forgot my cell phone.", I said.
"I don't think I could function without my phone. Damn you must be going crazy!"
"Not yet, but I'm getting there. I'll manage.  Hey it's only for one day right?"
"You don't sound that convinced."
"I'm not.", I added and then we both laughed.
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm - I had lunch with the same client and I told him about my little experiment.  He found it amusing. The problem was that during our conversation he kept looking at either emails or texts on his cell phone, which made me feel awkward without my phone, and also upset me because he didn't feel engaged in our conversation.  I had to keep myself constrained. He even took a call at one point which previously had never bothered me, but today was pissing me off. I had this impulse to grab his phone and throw it across the restaurant, hoping it would land in a bowl of soup. Fortunately, I repressed that impulse and made it through the lunch without an incident.
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm - I had a long commute to my next appointment which was way down south in Orange County.  Which actually isn't that far south from LA but it takes a long time if you're driving on the freeway.  Since I had an hour to reflect on my day and how it was going, I started to get paranoid.  I felt like I needed to contact my office to see if there were any messages for me, and then I was wondering about the mountain of emails piling up in my inbox, or the attendee lists for my next seminar.  Did we oversell the event?  There were going to be a lot of upset people if we oversold.  As the hour commute passed, I felt like I should call the office when I got to my next appointment.  In fact, I felt HAD TO call the office because I was feeling a good and bad disconnect from my business world.  Good because I felt free of burden, and then bad because I had an overwhelming sense that everything was going wrong in my absence.  Which was stupid because I had great people on my team and the business could easily function without me being present. 
2:15 pm - 2:30 pm - I made it early to my next appointment and asked if I could use a phone to contact my office.  When I called, they put me right through to our Marketing Director.
"Oh my god.  I'm so glad you called. We have a huge problem."
"Oh no.  What is it?"
"Well for our upcoming seminar we oversold the venue.  We have a lot of angry emails from customers."
" Well that's happen before."
" No it's worse.  The venue says they double booked our event with another one and they need us to cancel."
Okay now I was panicked. "What!  You tell those bastards they can't do that to us?  We do a lot of business there.  What the heck is wrong with them."
" They want you to call them asap.  Do you have your phone? I'll give you the number."
" I left it at home and you know that. But give me the number anyway. I'll call from here."
" Oh that's right, I forgot about your little experiment.  Okay here's the number are you ready."
" Yep."
" It's 1-8-0-0-G-O-T-C-H-A." she said and then started snickering over the line.
" I got it.  1-8-0-0-G-O-T-C-H-A. I'll call them right...you son of a bitch. Very funny."
" What did you think the world would crash if you didn't have your cell phone?"
" Maybe?  I was just checking in is all.  Is there really a problem with the venue?"
" Yeah but I took care of it.  No worries.  They did double book, but they made the other company reschedule.  I really had you going didn't I?"
" Absolutely.  So were all good for the seminar?"
" Yep we're good.  You trained us to think and act on our own, so don't worry so much.  We got it covered."

I hung up the phone.  Went in to my appointment and felt pretty confident in my team and my business.  She was right, I had trained them to think and act on their own, so they could handle any crisis.

2:30 pm - 4:00 pm - I met with another long time customer and we chatted mostly about his family.  Issues with his kids and grand kids.  Like I said, it was a long time customer.  He was adding a few more reps and decreasing the size of the sales territories.  Again, I caught myself reaching for my phone when he asked how far it was from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo. 
"Maybe you can check it on your computer?"
"Sure. I called you earlier today.  Did you get my voicemail?"
"I didn't bring my phone with me today."
"What? Who doesn't bring their cell phone with them to work?"
"Apparently, an idiot, like me. What was the voicemail?"
"Oh nothing big, I wanted to push back our meeting 15 minutes.  No worries."

And that was all he really had to say, "no worries". The rest of the meeting went off without a hitch.  We scheduled a follow up meeting for the next week, and I told him I would map out the best territory break down, based upon the prospects in each territory. 

4:00 pm - 5:00 pm - I drove home, ran into some traffic and could have used an app to get around it, which turned a 30 minute drive into an hour.  However, in Los Angeles there often isn't a way around traffic, you just have deal with it, so maybe even Waze would not have reduced my drive time. When I got home, I wanted to call the office to check voicemails and messages, but realized I don't even have a home phone, plus I couldn't use my computer, or anyone else's cell phone.  Moreover, I couldn't look up where there were pay phones near me, since I didn't have my smart phone to utilize an app.

5:00 pm - 5:30 pm - I drove to the nearest gas station and found a pay phone.  I called in and there were a few voicemails but nothing too serious.  Nothing that couldn't wait til tomorrow to address.  As I was driving home from the station, I was thinking someone should develop an app to find a pay phone in case your smart phone is broken.  But then I thought, "wait if your phone is broken how are you going to use the app to find the pay phone?"  And then I thought, "wait if I go back in a time machine will I meet my younger self, like in X Men?"  And then I determined not to think about such complicated matters like time travel and phone apps for broken phones.

5:30 pm - 7:45 pm - I had dinner and actually spent some quality time with my family.  It was nice not to have to think about work stuff, which is normally running through my head at all times.  And although I wasn't checking my phone every 5 minutes, other people were, which began to annoy me.  I don't know why but I was offended by their lack of attention.  It finally got to the point where I said, "please put the damn phone down and listen for 2 seconds." This seemed to work and we interacted like people used to do way back in the 90's.  It was kind of nice and somewhat nostalgic.

7:45 pm - 8:00 pm - I sat and looked at the clock, and I was "jonesing" to get on my computer to check my emails.  I was like a crack addict who hadn't had a hit for months.  I had felt so disconnected all day, and I was craving to be reconnected with society.  As the clock struck 8 pm, I jumped online and checked my emails expecting to see something urgent.  A problem that needed to be resolved right away by only me.  With a phone call or email I would work diligently to save the day, but instead I found a lot of FYI emails and nothing urgent.  I felt so empty and useless.  Everything had gone on fine without me.  The world had not imploded.  None of my friends had even noticed I wasn't tweeting or sending facebook updates or emailing them.  None of my customers had suffered a crisis that I needed to fix in an instant.  The world without my online interactions had gone along as normal. 

For a few moments I felt very small and insignificant, and then my phone buzzed with a text message. After more than 12 hours of being without my smart phone, I looked down to find a slew of text messages and IMs.  Suddenly, I was back in the fold.  I was a member of society again, and as I read through the messages, for the next few hours I wrapped myself up in a warm cellular blanket, until I fell asleep with my phone on the pillow next to me.

The world could easily get along without me, but I could not easily get along without the world...or my cell phone.