Hi Mudita Family, very exited to get my hands on a Pure later this year.
One thing and I waft back and forth on is am I a strong enough person to give up my always connected life? I have taken steps to eliminate screens from the bedroom and keep phones in a designated space in my home. However, there is also the reality of life and work that will keep me tied to a smart phone for the foreseeable future.
I think back to a time early in my career where I carried a Blackberry for work and had my personal iPhone for friends/family/personal. That use case was easy because my work phone at that point had it’s own phone number etc. It was also easy to unplug from work and just be on my own schedule and personal time - just put the Blackberry down and don’t look it - problem solved. Also at this point in time the iPhone was not overcrowded with apps notifying you of everything so it was less painless to use as a daily driver. However since the corporate world has moved to BYOD, that has now shifted and consolidated the devices I carry and face the ever present reality of nonstop interruptions be it work, personal, or just some random notification from my phone telling me something about itself.
Am I able to really go cold turkey and give up the connectives productivity side completely? I don’t think this is actually feasible or realistic. Is it realistic to give all my friends and family multiple phone numbers to reach me on? I don’t know. I still need to be on Slack during work hours, even if I have the flexibility to walk down to a coffee shop or spend as long as I want over lunch.
I’m currently planning to put Mudita Pure on it’s on phone number and set up a complicated phone call forwarding system to make sure that phone rings if my “primary” device is off. My current plan is to continue to use my primary 20 year old cell phone number with my iPhone, then change my “no answer call forwarding” to ring the phone number I set up on the Mudita Pure rather than go to voicemail. I will then configure the Mudita Pure’s phone number’s “no answer call forwarding” to forward to my GoogleVoice phone number and voicemail system. This way after I am done working or the weekend starts, I can turn my iPhone off and not worry about missed calls.
The one problem this presents is text messages. Being an iPhone user means being locked into iMessage. About 90% of my “texting” goes through either Signal or WhatsApp. This is something I’m still figuring out.
After doing a bunch of research on Carriers in the USA, it looks like most have features/plans that allow for your same number to ring/text multiple devices. Currently this is reserved mostly for Smart Watches/Alexas and secondary devices like that. The issue with all three of the solutions - from Verizon, AT&T, at T-Mobile - is that their solutions require active data connections to operate. They also seem to be really trying to limit the functionality to sell more smart watches. I believe I also read that AT&T particularly had an issue where their initial plan was to have a network controlled switch so you could use whatever multiple phones tied to the same number but they changed those plans after their network switches became overwhelmed.
To me the perfect relationship would be to somehow have a Mudita Pure on a NumberSynced carrier controlled system so both devices can share the same phone number - meaning calls ring simultaneously and text messages go to both devices. Outbound calls would also call out with the same number. I know this is impossible with the current implementation of the Pure hardware and requirements from the carriers to maintain an active data connection and be more smart watch like but it is a pretty cool idea. I could easily give up iMessage and go back to SMS if I was able to get them on two devices at once.
Let me know your thoughts: How are you going to cope with the digital detox or what is your plan to keep your work/life balance truly in balance?