Slack Slacker and Seneca say, "Detox Your Tech if You Want Your Life Back."

Slack Slacker and Seneca say, "Detox Your Tech if You Want Your Life Back."

Your phone isn’t just stealing your time; it's stealing your willpower. Every scroll, every notification, every meaningless swipe is training your brain to run from discomfort and crave Distraction. You're not tired, you're overstimulated. The Stoics had no smartphones, but they understood this trap. Senecal warned that being everywhere is being nowhere. Today, that’s your phone, your intent, conversations for acts, and zero moments. Here's the stoic tech detox. 

Not a gimmick, but a discipline delay, your first dopamine hit. No phone for the first 60 minutes after waking. You start your day on your terms—single-task like a warrior. When you eat, eat; when you walk, walk; when you scroll, scroll intentionally, not endlessly. Digital cold exposure: set aside 1 hour a day—no screens, no noise—just silence. 

It'll hurt at 1st. That pain is your willpower growing back, Marcus Aurelius said, You have power over your mind, not outside of that. Your phone is an outside event; control it or be controlled by it. You don't need to throw your phone away; you just need to prove to yourself that you can walk away from it —that's absolute freedom, that's stoic willpower.

Storytime: I, Lee Bines, aka Slack Slacker, was one of the last of my friends, relatives, and colleagues to buy and use a smartphone. Honestly, I didn’t like being pestered by people. I like being the odd man out of the loop. I would always give an email address or a trusted landline number where a message could be left for an emergency. And the only calls that got returned were those indicating blood was spilled, and no arrest and bail money were involved. Other than that, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what was going on in the world or the lives of anyone who knew me. Selfish? Maybe. But stress-free, definitely.

However, Uber, Uber Eats, Lyft, online banking, Spotify, Pandora, Google, Bing, Amazon, and all those other app enticements began to make me reconsider the value of the smartphone. So. I caved and purchased an inexpensive Android on Amazon. Yeah, I know, Apple is the preferred phone of smartphone snobs, but I always thought the first sucker that fell for an Apple (Eve) everybody tossed out of Eden and ended up working hard for the rest of their lives. And being a Slacker, I’m sure you can see my point.

Still, that smart Android phone became so helpful so quickly that I began to rely on it so regularly, and I saw it as a necessity as much as a bodily appendage. I noticed my addiction had taken hold when I was multitasking, working on my car in the driveway, and absentmindedly misplaced the smartphone somewhere. Without realizing it wasn’t in my back pocket, I came in the house for a shot of tequila and some chips and salsa. I was watching recaps of the latest NBA games when I reached for my trusted Star Trek Communicator —and it was nowhere to be found. I went into panic mode. Like a crackhead who’d misplaced his last rock, I began to tear my house apart in search of my link to the world that years ago I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about.

After all my failed efforts to find my next phone fix, I broke my wife’s peaceful bliss by shopping online for her next-generation Apple smartphone to entice me. (The Damn Irony) The only saving grace in the idiotic tale is my wife’s name, which is Kathy, not Eve. I needed her to call my phone so I could listen for the ringtone to locate my dumb phone, since she’s been encouraging me to upgrade.

Annoyed, she complied and started dialing the phone while I ran up and down three flights of stairs in the house without a single ringtone. Nothing. Maybe the battery was dead, I thought. Shit, Mother-You know what, I thought. What now?, I wondered as I nervously contemplated having to do without my best companion until it could be replaced. All the while, being pestered by my wife and two daughters (The Three Eves in my life) to take the bite of the Apple, finally.

Well, thanks to my wife’s infinite wisdom, she decided to go outside and dialed my number. And I’ll be damned. She found sitting atop one of the trash cans in front of the garage door. How the Fuck? I thought!

Don’t get me wrong. I was eternally grateful. I was just realizing I was just as addicted to this device as the rest of the world. I was a communication junkie. And when I lost contact with it, I nearly lost my mind over it,

True Story, Lee Bines aka Slack Slacker 😎