Habits, good and bad, have long fascinated philosophers and policymakers. Checking the smartphone had become a bad habit that I couldn’t break. For the first time, I could imagine what it’s like to be a smoker craving a cigarette.
But I’d be watching the clock, counting the hours till I could turn the thing on. The only time I managed to resist was during Shabbos, when I don’t read e-mail. When I tried switching the phone to silent, I ended up checking it perhaps even more often, just in case there was something to deal with. Like most people who’ve made it through medical training-with its early mornings and its long shifts when your friends are partying-I had an established track record of delaying gratification. I’d always prided myself on my will power. The machine had seemed like a miraculous servant, but gradually I became its slave. This started to interfere with work and conversations. Soon, I was reaching for the device every time it made a sound, like Pavlov’s dog salivating when it heard a bell. Texts arrived with the tones of a French horn and were similarly dispatched. Every time I got an e-mail, the phone emitted a ping and I would deal with whatever it was, priding myself on my efficiency. Being able to send an e-mail, look up a fact, or buy something no matter where I was meant a previously unimaginable gain in productivity. Several years ago, I bought a smartphone and soon came to love it.
