Why My Phone Doesn't Get to Read

People assume the ereader argument and the phone argument are the same argument. They’re not, and I get a little worked up about the distinction more than the subject probably deserves.

I don’t have strong feelings about ereaders. A Kindle is fine. It’s a dedicated object that does one thing, and if you like the weight of it and the page turn animation, good for you, I’m not going to fight you about it. My problem is specifically the phone, the idea that the same four inch rectangle that has my work schedule on it, my texts, three different apps that all want my attention at once, is also supposed to be where I read a novel in six minute increments during a slow stretch overnight.

Here’s the actual reason, not the aesthetic one. When I pick up a book, paper or ereader either one, picking it up is the whole decision. There’s nothing else that object can do. I open it, I’m reading, that’s the entire transaction. When I pick up my phone, opening it is not a decision, it’s an invitation, and by the time I’ve navigated past the lock screen and the three notifications sitting on top of everything, I’ve already spent forty of my six minutes negotiating with an object that fundamentally does not want me to just read in peace. It wants me to check something else first. It’s very good at that job. That’s the problem.

I tried it for a while, back when I was between apartments and didn’t want to carry a bag with an actual book in it. Downloaded an app, had a whole library on there technically. What actually happened is I’d open the app, see a text waiting, answer the text, see that the score of a game I didn’t even care about had updated, check that, and by the time I got back to the book I’d have four minutes left instead of six and I’d read maybe half a page before a call bell went. The phone doesn’t protect the reading time. It just sits there letting everything else compete for it.

A physical book in my scrubs pocket can’t do that. It has exactly one function and it’s bad at everything else, which from where I’m standing is the whole point. I’ve got maybe six uninterrupted minutes on a good stretch, sometimes less, and I need every one of those minutes to actually be reading minutes, not minutes spent fighting my own device for custody of my attention.

Marcus gives me grief about this, says I’m one step from being the guy who complains about kids these days, and maybe he’s not wrong. He got a split shift once and used the extra hour to nap instead of read, which is probably the more honest use of found time than what I’m describing here. But I’ve watched him lose ten minutes of a break to his phone more times than I can count, not because he wanted to, just because the thing is designed to eat time and it’s very good at its job. I’d rather carry the extra weight of an actual book and know that when I open it, I’m actually going to read it.