What would it take for your life to be more interesting than your phone?

I heard a crazy quote from the entrepreneur Dan Martell the other day.

It went something like this: “You’re not addicted to your phone, your life just isn’t interesting enough.”

Woof.

That fired up a lot of emotions and thoughts for me. Indignation. Realization. Sadness. Self-examination. And lastly (+ most importantly), motivation to make this NOT be true.

Because I have a feeling that it’s true for a lot of us. The majority, maybe.

The pull of what’s on our phone is stronger than whatever is around us in the real world. It’s more interesting. More stimulating.

Sure, there are thousands of crafty advertisers and behavioral scientists on the other side of the phone, leveraging irresistible marketing strategies and attention-grabbers to make it this way.

But no matter how engaging the content on our phones is, this isn’t the only reason we’re staring at screens for way too much of each day. There’s something to be said for the content of our lives. I think we’re f$%*ing bored.

Which begs the question:

What would it take for your life to be more interesting than your phone?

I don’t have some perfect answer for you. I don’t have a perfect answer for myself, either.

But to share the initial seeds of my own sprouting thought process on the matter, it starts with taking a more active role in your own life. Creating the content of your life so that it’s actually engaging, stimulating. Living by design, not default. I think a lot of problem boils down to getting swept up into our defaults. Our routines. Which (although many are important and serve a purpose) may dig deep ruts into the soil of our minds and daily life that are hard to climb out of. They entrench us in our norms and in drudgery. Our phones then offer escapism.

I intend to spend more time thinking about all of this over the coming days, and will likely revisit in another article once I’ve stewed on some of these ideas further, but for now I want to leave you with the question, again. Because I think it’s worth asking twice.

What would it take for your life to be more interesting than your phone?