#4: Can some stickers change your life?
This article was originally published on Attention!
Today, Attention! is making a small contribution to the universe of stuff that helps you use your phone less.
And boy, is it a packed universe. To give just a few examples:
Software tools like Freedom, Opal, and One Sec that block you from accessing addictive sites/apps, or, like my own tool Nudge, hide distractions
Alternative devices like the various dumbphone comeback kids — sift through them on this super handy website, or discuss on r/dumbphones
Communities like r/nosurf and r/digitalmininalism to be (virtually) around other people trying to ditch the habit (Win 100 Irony Points If You Get Addicted To Browsing Them!)
Physical interventions like this lockbox for your phone, or the extremely weird Pavlok wristband which can electrocute you for doomscrolling too much
Books, books, books, so many books promising to help you out of zombie mode (here’s a good long list of some)
Card decks like this very nicely-designed but also very expensive one from Mind Over Tech, with 50 different experiments to ‘take back control over tech’
Methods like The 5D Method, by Gabriela Nguyen from APPstinence, an awesome anti-social media campaigner who I spoke to a couple of weeks ago
Here’s what we’ve got:
Smartphone Free Stickers, to nudge you away from your phone.
In a nutshell, it’s a set of free, open source sticker designs that you can print out and use around your home, office, school etc. to introduce mindfulness around phone usage.
Smartphone Free Stickers is designed to work on four levels:
Using the stickers: They’re under a Creative Commons licence — download them, print them, modify them, use them in any way other than commercially.
DIYing the stickers: If you’re like me, printing anything out is a once-a-year pain in the ass. No problem! Read about the different stickers below, and see if you want to make your own. A scrawl on a scrap of paper is all it takes.
Using the concepts: The stickers are optional. Have a think about whether any of the stickers’ norms would help you. Interested in no phones at the dinner table? In the bedroom? If it feels hard to set those norms, why?
Sharing the concepts: Maybe you’re unhappy with the pervasiveness of smartphones in your school, office, community centre, Apple Store1 etc. So — send this article to whoever’s in charge to start a conversation about making your environment a little friendlier.
Only one of these levels involves actually using the stickers directly, which is totally fine. What we think is great about these stickers is that they give you something to point at as you think through how to put smartphones in their place. The stickers are a tool to bring already-widespread ideas around limiting smartphone usage one step closer to the physical world.
We’re hoping the stickers prompt the question: why don’t we actually do this?
Why don’t we designate a Phone Bucket for everyone to drop their phones in before meals?
Why don’t we empower our kids to show us the red card if they catch us doomscrolling while they’re trying to tell us about their day at school?
Why don’t we decide rooms in our homes, schools, offices where people stay away from their phones?
That’s why we think these stickers could change your life. We wouldn’t claim it’s 95% likely — but even if it’s more like 5%, we’d be thrilled.
The motivation
My friend and I launched this project inspired by Smartphone Free Childhood, a UK-based movement of parents working to solve the collective action problem of keeping kids off smartphones for longer, e.g. by pushing schools to implement smartphone free policies.
We wondered: what’s something we could make that could be useful to Smartphone Free Childhood?
The stickers
As we brainstormed on that question, we decided that 1) it would be great to do something in the real world instead of making yet another software tool, and 2) that we should start with something tiny that we can make quickly and put out there for feedback to see if it’s useful before doing too much work on it.
That led us pretty quickly to: stickers! They’re cheap, versatile, they change our physical environment, and they’re quick to make. So here are the stickers we came up with:
No Phone Zone: a sticker to set certain rooms or areas as places where no one should ever use their phone.
Eye To Eye Zone: No Phone Zone is a negative concept, defined by what it doesn’t want. Negative concepts are a little bit of a downer. So what do we want? Perhaps it’s more eye contact, hence the Eye To Eye Zone sticker.
Phone Bucket: Designate a container as your Phone Bucket — everyone agrees to put their phones into it before a communal activity.
Look Up: Does what it says on the tin.
Bedroom No Phone Zone: We’ve all heard the idea of leaving phones outside of the bedroom. So — try it out, with or without this sticker!
Q. What’s holding you back from keeping your phone outside of the bedroom? Would be interested to know in the comments.
Place Phone Here, Face Down: Leaving your phone face up means notifications can distract you. This sticker is for your desk, to remind you to place it face down.
Yellow Card, Red Card: Dreamed up by my friend, these two stickers let your kids tell you off if you’re distracted around them in a playful way.
And here are the links to download them again:
Thanks so much for reading! We’d love to hear from you (hi [at] louis [dot] work) if:
You have feedback on the stickers or new sticker ideas
You’d like the stickers in a different format
You’d like to order printed versions of the stickers
You’d like to design different versions of these stickers — we know these designs won’t be everyone’s cup of tea so we’re planning to add alternatives at SmartphoneFreeStickers.com
Many thanks to my friend who helped out with this project but prefers not to be named, making it seem like I made them up to look like I have friends. I didn’t. Anyway, thanks again, friend! You are so very real, and not at all imaginary!
Joke