Sustaining a founder lifestyle

Hey there,

So, it has been 5 months since I started using a feature phone. Basically a phone of the early 2000s - press buttons and a small non-touch display.

It was not an attempt to just be different from the crowd. I had to do it to lead a better life.

I feel that you will really benefit from this experiment and possibly be inspired to give it a try. Let me share more details.

Anyway, back to my story :)

Why

Now, I did share earlier that we built a product but piece by piece we dumped The first question you might have is, “Why Karthik? Why a feature phone in this day & age?”.

So, I was not an early adopter of smartphones. My family forced me to get one in 2015 when they were fed up with not having easy access to talk to me. I grudgingly got one.

Things were fine till I started building my startup, Flexiple. The smartphone became my tool for everything - communication (of course), note-taking, research, learning and also aimless usage.

Each year it became worse than before.

1. The phone was the first thing I picked up after waking up and the last thing I saw before sleeping.

2. I used to also wake up in the middle of the night and check if there were any new messages on Slack, new Twitter/ LinkedIn notifications and then start typing replies. That would then extend into idle scrolling.

3. I would with no reason pick up the phone, unlock it and open a few apps - all while my mind pretended that I was doing this for work.

Overall, the phone had slowly grown from an enabler to just taking over my life.

Impact

All this meant that I slept very poorly - it was disturbed and I woke up tired instead of refreshed.

The consequence of it was a poor mood, getting easily irritated and not being at my sharpest for work. Ironical that what I thought I was doing for work was making me worse at it.

The COVID-era of remote work only made it worse as every interaction became digital.

I tried app blockers to reduce my usage, but I always found a way past them or a reason why it was “very important” to use the phone.

Most founders (& frankly even many others) have this ability to artificially pump up the importance of everything at work.

The reality is that nothing is “very important” - 99.9% of things could wait for the next morning when I would anyway open my laptop for work.

Solution

Anyway, so earlier this year I decided that I needed a drastic decision to shock myself out of this ridiculous and sick habit.

My solution was to get a simple feature phone.

Whenever I picked up the phone on impulse, there wasn’t much I could do with it and I put it back down.

I did use Twitter, LinkedIn & WhatsApp on my laptop but that was only during work time. Once I was done with work, so were these apps.

Even when I had to talk to my family, I just called them from my laptop. Soon, I had gone 3 weeks without touching my phone.

Results

It has been game-changing. Here’s the experience:

1. Significant decrease in mobile viewing time

2. No impulse usage of the phone, only highly need-based

3. Isn’t the first thing I see in the morning by a fair distance (1-2 hours)

4. A clear cut-off time at night

I realized that while I was using working remotely as an excuse for excessive phone time, it was actually a boon.

As a remote worker, I hardly needed Uber, Swiggy (to order food) or Google Pay (to pay anyone).

Complexity

But in June we moved back to the office and it has been tricky. Booking cabs, paying people and ordering food have become inevitable.

As a result, I had to bring back the smartphone. But the 5 months I spent using only the feature phone built a lot of strong habits.

So my usage is still super low. Further, here’s how I am reducing smartphone usage:

• Using cash

• Travel by my own 2-wheeler/car

• Prepare my own meals

Of course, a 100% adherence is tough as time doesn’t permit choices at times, but the larger goal is to continuously reinforce the low-usage mindset.

Parting Words

I am sure a majority of people out there are facing the same problem I faced. I stopped (& later reduced) using smartphones because it was important to sustain my already tough lifestyle as a founder.

I can see a difference in:

• Getting better sleep

• My mind being more calm & sharp

• Having more time for reading and chilling

I would strongly suggest that you shock yourself too in a similar fashion and experience the fruits of that decision :)

Best,
Karthik

P.S. Please consider forwarding this to a friend! It would really help my two startups.

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