The Physical Boundary

You are probably reading this on a phone, or on some other device that knows more about you than your family, your doctor, or your closest friend. We have come to treat this as normal. It was not always so.

This is not a lecture about giving up your devices, though perhaps it should be. It is a short experiment in attention, because your attention is the most valuable thing you have, and on most days it is spent before you have decided where it should go.

Read these pages, then put the device down. Twenty minutes is enough for a first boundary. When your hand moves toward the phone, notice the reach and bring the hand back. Do this every time it happens, and keep count. That is the whole exercise.