It’s funny, but my favorite new development in technology is kind of a technology that defeats technology.
Eloquence, thy name is Pete.
Do Not Disturb is a new feature on Apple’s new OS. It’s really simple. You can slide it off or on, or schedule it for a regular time. When it’s activated, it keeps ALL notifications from coming through except for those that you specifically allow. You can now go to bed without being woken up by texts or emails, while at the same time still receiving them and enabling the people who really may need to get in touch with you. This is really important for two reasons.
One, it’s yet another way we could keep ourselves from disrupting movies. Seriously, motherfuckers. I know it’s almost a hack thing to even bring up, but it’s STILL GODDAMN happening. I wish to god they would let me do that little thing before the movie starts that reminds people to turn off their phones.
Hi, I’m Pete. I’m here to remind you to turn off your phones. No fun music, no cute animals from Madagascar, no hilarious jokes. Just me. And we’re going to sit here for the next two and a half minutes. I’m not fucking around, two and a half minutes, and I’m just going to stare out at all of you. Because we have so much time together, why not bust out the phone and make sure it’s turned off. As in off, off. Not vibrate so you can check it and see who called for no real reason. Not almost silent. Fucking. Off. Your two and a half minutes starts now.
But the good news is that now you have yet another option. You can just flip the Do Not Disturb and not get ANY notifications besides those you allow, so if you are one of those idiots who makes excuses about what if my mom dies or I have a child, you can still greatly increase your chances of not pissing me off.
That’s the first reason I think this is important. The second one will likely be something more interesting.
The second reason is because this is one of the few times in recent history I’ve seen technological innovation used to LIMIT connectivity as opposed to increasing it. Think about it. We have the phone itself, so you never have to be away from your phone. We have texting so that you may be reached in times you can’t or won’t talk. We added apps for Facebook and Twitter. There’s Facetime. There’s Skype. There’s all this stuff out there, but really, I feel like Caller ID is the last thing that made it possible to ignore someone, and even that is about actively ignoring something, not about being unreachable.
People tell me I’m crazy sometimes, and I get a lot of shit because I’m not the best about returning phone calls and texts. I’ve worked on it some. I’m better than I used to be.
But honestly, and don’t take this the wrong way, sometimes I don’t want to talk to anybody. I want to have some time to just do what I’m doing. Or sometimes I AM talking to someone in person and that’s what I would like to continue doing.
I think a good sign in your life, a sign that things are going well, is that you stop craving interruption. Think about it. If I was doing something terrible, doing that thing at Thanksgiving with a family who actually makes you do that awful thing where you say what you’re thankful for, I would want nothing more than an interruption to get me out of it. Or in school. Once in school, a girl vomited all over her coat right next to me. Rather than being appalled, I was grateful because it meant that calculus was interrupted, even if it was only for a few seconds because my calculus teacher, god love her, would be swayed by nothing, even an apocalyptic quantity of vomit in her classroom.
I was reading an article somewhere the other day, and the gist was that one way to increase productivity was to make it okay for yourself to be unreachable at some times. To make the people you care about understand that while you’re working, or maybe while you’re doing something you love, that you won’t be answering the phone. Not because you don’t care, not because you don’t like hearing from them, but because you are a real person who does things and enjoys things and sometimes that happens outside the context of family, friends, and loved ones.
That really got to me. It’s true. I think a lot of people feel guilty if they leave their phones behind. Even for a short time. They feel like someone MIGHT call or text, and if they aren’t responded to immediately the relationship will be in jeopardy.
For the most part, I enjoy my time and don’t crave interruption. I really don’t. I don’t need to break up the day with little moments of contact if I’m having a good time in general.
It’s hard to explain this because it feels like you’re telling people that they are an interruption and that you only want to talk on your time. That’s not true. I’m not saying that. I think what I’m saying is what has been said before, that our technology is advancing a lot faster than our etiquette, and frankly I don’t understand why we can’t apply the values we used to have on the phone to current phones.
One still wouldn’t answer the phone while having sex, correct? I think we can all agree that’s off the table. Why is it okay to be sitting across from someone at a restaurant and answer the phone? Or, more to the point, why would we even expect someone in that situation to be carrying a phone at all? Why do people so often pull out phones in movies or at concerts only to text back that they are unavailable because they are at a concert? Can’t you just explain that later?
Do Not Disturb is nice for me. It makes me think that maybe I’m not crazy. Maybe there are other people out there for whom being reachable at all times is not necessarily the best thing.
I’d challenge anyone with an iPhone: Set your Do Not Disturb for a minimum of 10 hours, the time when you should be asleep plus an hour bookend on each side when you don’t need to be on the phone anyway. Just try it. You can even alter it so that your wife, girlfriend, girlfriends, or wives can get through, and a list of relatives that may or may not be knock, knock, knockin’ on Heaven’s door. Or Hell’s, depending on their life path. Just try it for eight hours. Then see how it goes for twelve.
Just as a heads-up, my Do Not Disturb is currently set from 9 AM to 9 PM. So if my phone is unlocked and in my hands, I’ll get your call. Or if I check it because I’m not up to anything else, I’ll check it. But texts? Calls? Emails? They wait until morning, for a better, well-rested Pete to deal with.
Unless your one of my wives. In which case, in the event that your sister-wives are unable to deal with the situation, I’ll do what I can.