Status Updates From Goodbye Phone, Hello World:...

This is a very strange book. It purports to give ideas for things we could do other than being on our phones, some of which are clearly not serious ("With the 1,400 hours a year you'd have after giving up your smartphone, you'd have sufficient time to have sex with your partner nearly 16,000 times"). But that raises the question, is any of it serious? And if not, what's the point?

"A 2016 study... found that book readers lived an average of 23 months longer than nonreaders. 'People who report as little as a half-hour a day of book reading had a significant survival advantage over those who did not read,' said the senior author."

A satisfying result, but I can't help wondering whether they overlooked some other factor. Half an hour of focused free time every day sounds like a luxury right now.

An unexpected turn: after noting that the average smartphone user spends about 14,000 hours on their phone over ten years, more than Gladwell's "10,000 hours" needed to become an expert at something, Greenberg starts talking about how we can literally convert our phone time into the development of expertise via deliberate practice. But it's precisely when I'm tired that I'm most likely to spend too long on my phone.