Rating: 5 out of 5

An interesting book to read during a lockdown due to a pandemic! And some of the exercises failed to land because of that. It’s nicely paced with week by week guidance and psychological research to back that guidance up. A book that encourages one to write in it (which I did).

I don’t think I am or was “addicted” to my phone. But I did use it mindlessly. Often as a distraction. Sometimes to keep up with ever arriving emails.

As a result of reading this I’ve reevaluated my relationship with my phone and iPad and made some adjustments which have reduced my overall usage.

Highlighted passages:

Your time is precious. Don’t spend it on mindless browsing

Whether technology’s effect is good or bad depends on the user. It’s important that we shouldn’t be slaves to technology, it should help us - 14th Dalai Lama

Devices, phones, iPods, iPads - these all block us from being in the here and now

It is ultimately up to you and no one else to listen to your body and to put healthy boundaries in place to protect your health and well-being.

We are everywhere but rarely are we fully present anywhere

We cannot understand, learn, or remember that which we do not first attend to

‘When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost in doing so’ - Earl Miller< MIT neuroscientist

Only handle it once (OHIO) it essentially means if you take something on, you don’t leave it until you complete it, or at least a section of it that you designate at the outset

What’s suppressed needs to surface so that it can be worked through and healed

Smartphones can be a gateway for comparison, thus potentially undermining our own confidence in succeeding at whatever task we deem challenging

self-confidence is about not tying one’s self-worth to this one thing, one task. It takes confidence to be able to say what you’ve done is okay and good as it is, and then to let it go. While also acknowledging it could be better you let it out into the world because you want to move on and do other things as well as have a balance in your life

Often what lies beneath their procrastination is fear. It could be fear of success, fear of failure, or both!

‘the curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am then I can change’ - Carl Rogers

According to the Buddha who lived around 2500BC ‘To keep the body in good health is a duty. Otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear’

Ask yourself ‘is this really my goal? Do I want the same thing? when you feel like pitting yourself next to someone else’s achievement

The biggest conflict I’ve seen in my clients is when they’re living a life that is out of sync with their own principles

When I work with clients I have the privilege to become acquainted with them over a period of time, usually upward of six months, and to witness their unfolding as they get to know themselves. Speaking to you via this book is never going to be the same. What I’ve tried to distill here are techniques to facilitate befriending yourself and discovering new ways of behaving that make you happier

There’s a huge amount of research that illustrates that pet owners are happier and healthier than those who don’t have pets. Dogs have been shown to have the most significant impact on our mental health and fitness

Our phones limit us, serving us up more of the same based on past purchases, past likes, past news stories shared. However some of my favourite books would never have been suggested through Amazon’s incredibly intelligent ‘we think you might like’ service, they just keep me with more of the same type of book, which, while enjoyable, doesn’t really challenge me in the same way a new genre might. The books I’ve loved most have been ones I’ve found abandoned at a hotel or hostel when I’ve run out of reading material or grabbed hurriedly at the library when it’s about to close

“We use AI and neuroscience to increase your usage, make apps more persuasive. It’s not an accident. It’s a conscious design decision. We’re designing minds. The biggest tech companies in the world are always trying to figure out how to juice people”

“Ramsay Brown, COO of Dopamine Labs, a companyu that developers and delivers an application programming interface (API) that enables developers to reinforce users for their applications (i.e. make their apps ‘stickier’) quoted by Brian Solis at 2018 SxSW

If we can manage, despite all the alluring things our smartphones serve up to us, to still be attentive, to focus on thethings that are important to us, to be fully present both to ourselves and our loved ones, but also have the capacity to switch off, then they truly can be tools that serve us rather than making us their slaves.

Originally posted to my Goodreads account