Phoneless delight!

In lieu of a new year's resolution this year, I took up the Guardian's challenge to "reclaim your brain," a five-week program by Catherine Price, author of How to break up with your phone. It's fantastic - highly recommend! I think its being spaced out is key to its success so I don't want to give anything away. But one bit of brilliance I can't resist sharing. Even if you've weaned yourself from obsessively checking your smartphone for any and every update or message or news, recognizing how the phone trained you to do that whenever you had a spare moment (waiting for the subway or elevator, for instance), the physical reflex may still be there. When an unscripted moment opens up, instead of even wondering what to do with it your hand reaches for the pocket where your cellphone usually resides. 

Catching yourself red-handed has its satisfactions (well, a somewhat mortified satisfaction) but what's really needed, we learned in one of the later weeks, is new habits - including for your hand. Price suggests: "start a 'delight' practice."

This is an idea I got from the poet Ross Gay, who spent a year writing an essay each day about something that delighted him, and then compiled a selection of these pieces into The Book of Delights.

A delight practice is quite simple: you make a point, as you go about your everyday life, to notice things that spark a moment of delight for you.

These could be anything – a beautiful cloud, a pretty flower, or even something funny or absurd. When you encounter it, you raise a finger in the air – and you announce, out loud and enthusiastically, “Delight!” (The out loud part is important, even if you are alone.)

If someone asks you what the heck you are doing, tell them about this practice and invite them to join you.

This works better than I could have dared imagine. Moments otherwise lost - moments where we disconnect from what surrounds us, burrowing mindlessly into the quicksand of social media - are turned instead into momens of discovery, connection, agency!