On Whipping It Out
While riding crowded subways in Central Europe last fall, I could immediately discern the handful of the Remnant from the hoard of the Reprobate. I'd say the ratio was 50:1. The Remnant One would be reading a book. The 50? All captured by their phones.
Mel would keep a book by him during small social gatherings in case the conversation became less than robust.
The bronco buster known as "Mom" broke Mel of the practice quickly, before I was even born.
Fast forward half a century, and everyone has become an electronic Mel on cocaine: reaching for their phone at every turn . . . and stop sign and freeway and on-ramp/off-ramp.
Conversation lulls: grab the phone. Middle of a conversation: grab the phone. Conjugal relations: grab the phone and make a video, somehow without her knowing (employing a pickpocket's deftness that I can't even comprehend--twisted wizards that they are).
Luckily, we've come to realize that the phone is killing social gatherings more surely than the twisted wizard kills future liaisons with that women after the video goes viral. Some venues even demand that guests give up their phones when they walk in the door, like a posse demanding that a surrounded bandit drop his gun.
It's a great development.
But people continue to whip out the phone at idle moments. When taking their morning constitution, for instance. Or waiting outside Little Caesars because its stoned workforce (yet again) botched the online order. Or suffering through the "five more minutes" assurance of the person whose notion of "five minutes" is more nebulous than the foggiest passages from The Cloud of Unknowing.
One of today's great readers, James Marriott, says he greatly increased his reading productivity when he got rid of his smartphone. I believe him. The constant tension to pick it up is micro-tiring and the actual act of picking it up insidiously zaps hours from the day as effectively as that deft pickpocket zaps wallets off drunk guys.
Dumbphones are the dumbest thing ever, but we're arguably living in the dumbest era ever, so they just might be the ticket.
Me? I treat my smartphone like a responsible dogowner treats dogshit. You gotta pick it up occasionally, but it's not the highlight of the day . . . and you don't eat it or make it your sustenance. Every time I succumb to the micro-temptation and pick it up, I tell myself I just put VD on my fingers then whack myself in the genitals, adopting the White Goodman approach to self-discipline.
It's worked. The temptation has faded quickly. Still there, but like a cowering drug dealer who just got an ass-kicking from one of his addict customer's big brothers.
But it's just a first wobbly step. Every spiritual master tells you the same thing: You can't just eliminate something and create a vacuum. You gotta fill it with something.
Do the Mel
Mel was ahead of his time.
We can learn from him.
Whip out a book every opportunity you get. Are the millennials at the dinner table taking out their little phones? Whip out your big book. You'll be the John Holmes of the supper party.
The Little Caesars stoners grappling mightily with your pizza order? Whip it out.
The interminable "five minutes" churning away into an hour? Whip it out.
Your sex partner failing to bring the proper level of ardor to the task? You know what to do.
Productivity hacks claim that making use of small blocks of time increases productivity by as much as 20%. I believe it. I'm on pace to notch a dozen extra books this year by snatching little blocks of time like a broke alcoholic grabbing the coins that bar patrons have been dropping into the urinal all night.
But those small blocks aren't the glory hole of the reading room.
You also need larger blocks. Fifteen minutes or more. One in the morning, one in the evening. Hard reading in the morning; recreational in the evening. That's my approach, but one size fits everyone here about as well as one suit fits Shaq and Mini-Me. The average young mother gets fewer large blocks of time than a eunuch gets erections. Everyone's just gotta figure it out for themselves.
If you want one nifty reading hack that appears to be working for huge numbers of people, however, try the Pomodoro timer. I got one of these for Christmas. It changes the concentration game like the varsity quarterback entering a Pop Warner football game. Put your smartphone in a toilet, turn every clock to the wall, set the Pomodoro, and go.
And if you need a little "extra" help, maybe focus your mind with a little mantra first, maybe repeating Simone Weil's observation that, in the intellectual sphere, the power of attention is the virtue of humility. A type of love, as it were. Focus squelches the left hemisphere's wandering neuroticism.
And if you need something more, grab some caffeine and maybe a little nicotine.
You'll be on your nerdy reading way like a jack rabbit on meth.
You might also want to try setting a reading goal. Challenge, say the good psychiatrists (not the wicked quacks who prescribe castration to treat melancholy), invigorates the mind like Viagra invigorates the nether brain. Last week, I set a goal to finish Raymond Chander's The Big Sleep in three days. I woulda made it, if alcohol hadn't intervened.
A famous writer once said you haven't read a book if you don't finish it in three weeks. I think he's right. You lose the thread. How you want to fit that guideline into grappling with David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is for you to decide.
But don't freakin' stress out about it. The challenge is a game. If you lose, you lose. No big deal. I don't want any of you nerds hurling The Brothers Karamazov and its bookmark against the wall when Day 22 arrives.
Good luck.
