What the reach pays

Nobody does something eighty times a day for no reason. If the reach were pure loss you'd have dropped it years ago. So before I argue with it, I want to set out what it gives you, as fairly as I can. I count five payments.

The first is a way out of the empty moment. Standing in a kitchen with nothing to do for two minutes is a mildly uncomfortable state for most people. The discomfort is slight, about the size of an itch, but it's there. The phone removes it at once. This is the payment that fires every time, and I think it's the main one.

The second is the chance of something nice. Most times round the loop there's nothing. Now and then there's a message from someone you like, or good news, or a thing that makes you laugh out loud on a train. You can't know which sort of time this is without looking. The possibility is a small pleasure in itself, a little like hearing the letterbox.

The third is the feeling of being in touch. You see what your friends are doing and what the world is talking about. You feel like a person who's connected to other people and knows what's going on.

The fourth is the feeling of being on top of things. The inbox has been looked at and nothing is on fire. Nobody is waiting for you without your knowing about it. For people whose work comes through the phone, this one can feel less like a payment and more like a duty.

The fifth is a way out of something hard. You're writing a difficult email, or doing your accounts, or listening to a child explain a game for the ninth minute. Attention strains, and the phone offers it somewhere easier to go. The gap, in this case, is one you've made yourself in the middle of a task.

Those are real. I'd ask you to notice one thing about them, though. Four of the five are feelings that last about as long as the reach does. The relief from the empty moment is over as soon as the next empty moment arrives. The feeling of being in touch isn't the same as having been in touch with anybody. The feeling of being on top of things fades within minutes, which is why you check again. Only the second payment, the occasional nice thing, leaves you with something. And the nice thing would still have been there at six o'clock.

Now the costs. None of them is dramatic, and that's why they go uncounted.

The first is the one in the title of this book. The reach presents itself as a rest and it isn't one. Chapter 3 makes that case properly. For now I'll just say that a tired mind needs less to deal with, and a phone gives it more.

The second is the gaps themselves. A gap that's been filled is gone. Chapter 11 is about what gaps were quietly doing, which includes letting your mind settle between one thing and the next. It also includes noticing that you're thirsty, or tired, or that your daughter looks worried.

The third is that the reach rarely stays the length of the gap. The kettle takes two minutes and the reach takes six. Some of the reaches in a day turn into twenty minutes you'd have spent otherwise if anyone had asked you.

The fourth is what it does to whatever you were in the middle of. A task you leave and come back to is harder to pick up than one you stayed with. Chapter 8 is about that.

The fifth is that your mood gets handed to the loop. You pick the phone up feeling all right. Thirty seconds later you've read about a war, seen a former colleague's new kitchen, and found an email with "quick question" in the subject line. You didn't choose any of those. They just happened to be what was there.

The sixth falls on other people. Someone who's with you while you're on your phone has less of you, and they can tell. I'll keep that one short, because you know it already and guilt isn't the engine of this book.

The last cost is the oddest. The habit feeds itself. The more gaps you fill, the less practice you get at leaving one empty, and the more uncomfortable an empty gap becomes. So the phone is relieving a discomfort that it has also helped to build up. I'm offering that as my interpretation and not as a finding. Chapter 6 gives the evidence that points that way.

Here's a question to carry through the rest of the book. When you find the phone in your hand, ask, "What did I pick this up for?" If there's an answer, you're on an errand, and you can carry on with it. If there's no answer, that was a reach. You don't have to do anything about it yet. For now, the point is only to see how often there's no answer.