THE JOYS (AND FRUSTRATIONS) OF GOING GRAY... AND NO, THIS IS NOT ABOUT MY HAIR COLOR
A little over three weeks ago I was at a friend’s house for dinner. The person to my left took out his phone to look up some information related to our conversation. His phone looked odd to me, so I asked him about it.
It turns out that he had read an article that said getting rid of the color on your phone makes it less appealing and could help to reduce the amount of time you spend/waste looking at it. While I had seen this article in the New York Times, I had not acted on it as he had.
I decided to give it a try.
At first I found my phone really boring and unappealing. I missed the enticing bright colors. And, according to my weekly usage report, the week after switching over, I used my phone 18 percent less. This made me feel great. What an easy fix!
I also noticed that when I started watching the Netflix movie, Roma, it took a while for me to realize that it was in black and white because I had become accustomed to looking at a black and white screen. As a side note, if you haven’t seen it, it is a great movie.
ADAPTATION
As with most things, we adapt. By the second week of grayscale I had reverted back to my bad phone-checking habits. My usage popped back up to where it had previously been. The novelty of the grayscale no longer bothered me and I was back to seeking dopamine hits from my device.
While I was initially delighted that something as simple as going gray resulted in less wasted time, I also learned firsthand that, as humans, we are extremely adaptable.
After my three week experiment, I converted my screen back to full color.
I will continue to search for new ways to resist the urge to constantly be on my phone.
Unfortunately, going gray didn’t do it for me.
WANT TO TRY GOING GRAY?
If you would like to turn your iPhone to gray scale, simply follow these steps:
Go to Settings.
Then General
Click on Accessibility
Then Display Accommodations
Click on Color Filters
Check off Grayscale
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