Notes

This book gives general information. It isn't medical or psychological advice, and it's no substitute for a doctor or therapist who knows your situation.

I've kept sources out of the chapters so they read easily. Here they are by chapter, with the limits I'm aware of. Where a chapter isn't listed, it rests on my own reasoning. That includes the split between errands and reaches in chapter 1, the list of payments and costs in chapter 2, and the list of what gaps do in chapter 11.

A general caution applies to most of what follows. Research on phone use is young, the devices and apps change faster than the studies, and many samples are small or made up of students. Much of it measures what people do alongside how they feel, which can't show what causes what. I've tried to say in each chapter which kind of study I'm describing.

Chapter 3. Kang and Kurtzberg, "Reach for your cell phone at your own risk: the cognitive costs of media choice for breaks", Journal of Behavioral Addictions 8, 2019, pages 395 to 403. The puzzles were anagrams. On time taken, the phone-break group didn't differ from the no-break group. On anagrams solved, the phone-break group averaged 6.4, the no-break group 5.3, and the paper and computer break groups about 8.1. Dora, van Hooff, Geurts, Kompier and Bijleveld, "Fatigue, boredom and objectively measured smartphone use at work", Royal Society Open Science 8, 2021, article 201915. The authors stopped collecting data before reaching their planned sample and changed their analysis plan. They say the results should be read as exploratory, and that the design can't show cause. The account of why a phone doesn't rest you, as many small acts of taking in and judging, is my interpretation.

Chapter 4. Andrews, Ellis, Shaw and Piwek, "Beyond self-report: tools to compare estimated and real-world smartphone use", PLoS One 10, 2015, e0139004. Twenty-nine people were recruited and 23 were compared. The mean was 84.68 uses a day against an estimate of 37.20, and 55 per cent of uses lasted under thirty seconds. Average daily use was about five hours. Leroy, "Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 109, 2009, pages 168 to 181. I confirmed the citation and the outline of the findings but haven't read the paper in full. Mark, Gudith and Klocke, "The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress", Proceedings of the 2008 conference on human factors in computing systems, pages 107 to 110. Applying both papers to self-made interruptions by phone is my step and not the authors'.

Chapter 5. That unpredictable rewards produce more persistent habits than reliable ones comes from laboratory work on learning that goes back to Ferster and Skinner's Schedules of Reinforcement, 1957. Applying it to checking a phone is an interpretation, though a common one. Oulasvirta, Rattenbury, Ma and Raita, "Habits make smartphone use more pervasive", Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 16, 2012, pages 105 to 114. I read a summary of the abstract and not the paper. Kushlev and Dunn, "Checking email less frequently reduces stress", Computers in Human Behavior 43, 2015, pages 220 to 228. Each person did both weeks. I read summaries and not the paper. Fitz, Kushlev, Jagannathan, Lewis, Paliwal and Ariely, "Batching smartphone notifications can improve well-being", Computers in Human Behavior 101, 2019, pages 84 to 94. The split into things that can and can't wait an hour is mine.

Chapter 6. Wilson, Reinhard, Westgate, Gilbert, Ellerbeck, Hahn, Brown and Shaked, "Just think: the challenges of the disengaged mind", Science 345, 2014, pages 75 to 77. The shock figures leave out people who hadn't said they'd pay to avoid the shock, and one man who pressed the button 190 times. Tam and Inzlicht, "Fast-forward to boredom: how switching behavior on digital media makes people more bored", Journal of Experimental Psychology General 153, 2024, pages 2409 to 2426. Six of the seven experiments were registered in advance. The sixth and seventh, with articles and with non-student samples, gave less clear results. The suggestion that filling every gap lowers your tolerance for an empty one is mine, and I know of no study that has measured it.

Chapter 7. Verduyn, Lee, Park, Shablack, Orvell, Bayer, Ybarra, Jonides and Kross, "Passive Facebook usage undermines affective well-being: experimental and longitudinal evidence", Journal of Experimental Psychology General 144, 2015, pages 480 to 488. Dwyer, Kushlev and Dunn, "Smartphone use undermines enjoyment of face-to-face social interactions", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 78, 2018, pages 233 to 239.

Chapter 8. The studies are those listed under chapters 3 and 4. The idea that the hard point of a task is often the point where it's about to move is mine.

Chapter 9. Heitmayer and Lahlou, "Why are smartphones disruptive? An empirical study of smartphone use in real-life contexts", Computers in Human Behavior 116, 2021, article 106637. Thirty-seven people is a small group, and wearing a camera may change what people do. Panova and Carbonell, "Is smartphone addiction really an addiction?", Journal of Behavioral Addictions 7, 2018, pages 252 to 259. It is a review and an argument, and other researchers take the opposite view.

Chapter 10. Duckworth, Gendler and Gross, "Situational strategies for self-control", Perspectives on Psychological Science 11, 2016, pages 35 to 55. It is a review that sets out a model. It didn't test phone habits.

Chapter 11. Killingsworth and Gilbert, "A wandering mind is an unhappy mind", Science 330, 2010, page 932. Baird, Smallwood, Mrazek, Kam, Franklin and Schooler, "Inspired by distraction: mind wandering facilitates creative incubation", Psychological Science 23, 2012, pages 1117 to 1122. The task was thinking of unusual uses for everyday objects. Comparing a kettle gap to the easy-task condition is my analogy and wasn't tested.

Chapter 12. Brailovskaia, Delveaux, John, Wicker, Noveski, Kim, Schillack and Margraf, "Finding the sweet spot of smartphone use: reduction or abstinence to increase well-being and healthy lifestyle?! An experimental intervention study", Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied 29, 2023, pages 149 to 161. Outcomes were reported by the participants themselves in online surveys. Plans in "when, then" form are from Gollwitzer and Sheeran, "Implementation intentions and goal achievement", Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38, 2006, pages 69 to 119. The sitting borrows from the notification batching study under chapter 5. The six-part method as a whole is mine and hasn't been tested as a package by anyone.

Chapter 13. The advice on when to seek help is general. In England you can refer yourself to NHS talking therapies without seeing a GP first, and services differ elsewhere.