dynamic elf

A week or two ago, I read an article in the New York Times (oh Times, I still can’t quit you) about turning your phone to grayscale to make it more boring. The idea, says the article, is that if your phone is less exciting, you will be less hooked on it in bad ways. And while I love how much I can stay in contact with the world via my phone, there is no denying that I spend too much time looking at it when I would rather be doing something else.

I’m all for a good brain hack, so I gave it a whirl. Took the color out of my phone, but set the Accessibility Shortcut to bring the colors back if I needed them to look at a photo. Instantly my feeling was UGH, WHAT HAVE I DONE? What Puritan anti-fun bullshit is this, deliberately sucking the joy and beauty out of an object? Even the Times article has called it making your phone “worse”, and I had to say I agreed.

For a few days I kept finding that I had turned the colors back on just for a moment and then left them on. Inevitably I would notice this when I felt myself getting sucked in and cycling through apps without motive. But as I’ve become better and better about leaving it grayscale, I think it’s working. Now, to me, the bright colors and red badges on my home screen look shocking. And I haven’t done any kind of systematic analysis, but it certainly feels like I’m more likely to perform the following magic trick:

* Pick my phone up for a purpose
* Use it for that purpose
* Put it back down again.

One pleasant side effect of making the phone less interesting to look at is that it makes the world MORE interesting. I’m spending more time casually observing things, which has always been one of my favorite pastimes, so that’s cool too. Also, I love seeing people’s selfies and Instagram photos in grayscale. I always check them in color too, but it feels like I get a secret window into the composition.

So I dunno! My brain often doesn’t generalize to other people’s brains, but I’m finding this exercise more interesting and joy-filled than I had expected to, based on that initial OH FUCK YOU, PURITANS reaction.

If you’ve tried it: how’s it working for you?