Where’s my phone?

How many times a day honestly do you say to yourself, often in a panicked way ‘where’s my phone?’.

I used to do it often, maybe I was the only one, but I somehow doubt it.

Then how many times do you say the same thing about other items? Like ‘where’s my toothbrush?’ or ‘where’s my ..’. There are no others items whose whereabouts we care about to anywhere near the same degree as our phone.

When was the last time you did not have your phone within a metre radius of you? When did you last leave your house without it? When did you last go a day without your phone? When did you last go more than an hour without checking something on it?

The thing is we have become attached to our phones like nothing else ever before in the history of the human race. I see people almost cradling their phones, hugging them, I would not be surprised to see people kissing them, making like dolls house furniture for them, perhaps even a bedside table bed for them, so they can tuck them in at night.

Yet most of what we do on our phones really doesn’t add that much value to our lives, most of it is shallow, habitual activity, often in search of worthiness, to fit in, to be liked, to feel important.

I no longer want to live a life where I am dependent on a lump of plastic that sucks me into a vortex of shallow, often quite depressing emotional turmoil and angst. We have become enslaved by them and their Apps.

Freedom lies away from them.

Try one week without your phone, or even a day. Try switching off the notifications. Try having it in another room.

See how you feel. Odd, is how you will feel.

But the oddness goes and is replaced by more meaningful things.

Deep life is what we all could enjoy if we weren’t worried about where our phones were.

It only comes in black

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Henry Ford famously said ‘you can have any color you like, as long as it’s black’.

He only made black cars as the paint dried faster, so more could be produced. It also made the whole process that much more simple and productive. Thus more profitable.

We do not want mass anymore and the internet has allowed us to seek out and promote to the weird that we all possess.

Now you can get pretty much anything you desire.

That has created a new challenge. Finding your customers in the mass of choice and shades of grey. No more black and white means having to create something truly remarkable and different that customers really want.

Don’t go for safe, bland, mass and homogenised. It’s been done.

Small is the new big. But it is no easier to be a small shot than it was to be a big shot.