Seems easy, right? Just…pick up your phone, and carry it out of the room. Well, not so much! Recently I realized that my phone habits were getting a little out of control, and in order to dial it back a bit, I thought that by taking my phone out of my bedroom would mean I actually SLEEP (whatever that is). While it’s mostly true, it’s not so easy…
Yesterday, we finally got some actual rainy weather, perhaps the second or third time in literally…months…here in PA. As such, I was cleaning up and decided to take my phone charger off my nightstand, and perhaps move it to another room like my office. Doing so means I don’t have easy access to it, and that means not grabbing the phone if I can’t sleep, or staying on it for hours when I should be sleeping. The problem comes into play in how integrated our phones have become.
Home Security
For starters, I have some outdoor cameras that monitor things, and it’s nice if I see the outside light come on, that I could just grab the phone and see what’s going on without even getting up. Likewise, I also have door sensors that alert me if something is opened at night, although the alerts on the phone kinda suck for this and I need to come up with something better (or leverage/integrate the existing-but-obsolete security system I do have). I could easily implement some sort of alarm/siren, but I’d like to know what caused the alarm to begin with, something you need a screen or display for.
Communication
Getting emergency calls is important to me; so I need to be able to hear the phone ring, which would be a challenge if the phone is in another room, as loud as they are. Same with texts; while I generally don’t get any at night, if I did get some alerts, it usually means an emergency.
Control
Like many “smart” homes, my phone also acts as a control panel for my smart devices, like lights, speakers, and so on. While I DO have a couple standalone switches and shortcut buttons, it’s still nice to be able to remotely turn on various lights without so much as getting up.
What I Tried
(Short answer, not much, but I just started tossing this idea around yesterday)
Well being in team Apple I thought my Apple watch would essentially act as a light-version of the phone for just about all of the above, and generally, it should be able to meet all the needs. The watch can control lights and devices, you can accept a call through it, it gets notified of your texts and other notifications, and generally its loud enough to wake me up…
… while it’s on my wrist. I found that the Apple watch really goes into stupor mode when on it’s charger, and that means no phone calls, no texts or notifications, and with requiring a password, needing to be locked to do any control functionality. That makes it a no starter for the phone-free bedroom. There are a few settings that slightly change this, such as disabling wrist detection, and shutting off the password, however there’s side effects of these settings that mean they’re both not plausible for me.
My only other experiment, as dumb as it sounds, was to simply move the phone to the other side of the room. Still loud enough to hear, still convenient enough to grab in an emergency, but out of reach from bed, which means no grabbing it to google “one last thing”, or refreshing Twitter for the 700th time. I’ll be honest: This worked! I woke up this morning and DIDN’T check email before my eyes even adjusted. I didn’t look to see what texts or alerts I got. I didn’t pick up my phone until dressed and ready to leave the room, which was much more balanced to me.
Summary
As with everything in life, technology is supposed to work for US, although in reality it’s often a give-and-take relationship. Balance is very important, and adjustments are often needed if tech starts to “take” more than “give”.
Two very apparent facts became obvious after putting a little thought into the idea of a phone-free bedroom:
- I monitor and make myself available, via technology, even in sleep, for certain situations. Without technology, I’d just sleep.
- It would take SEVERAL devices, if not many, some of which simply don’t exist off the shelf yet, to replace the functionality of my phone, while limiting my social media and internet use.
I plan to put some thought into this and see what I can do. For example, I can get a Bluetooth ATA and get a normal or cordless phone to replace the phone functionality. Thats the easy part. How do I get security notifications? How do I see texts? How can I control things? Those will be a little harder to solve for.
If you have any ideas – please feel free to comment below. Any solution, easy to complex would be interesting to hear about if something worked for you.