On Cell Phones and Always Being Available

It's almost never an emergency

There’s an assumption that as a pastor you’ll end up getting a few phone calls in the night. Granted, it can happen. People go to the hospital, have a serious accident, or have any number of urgent events. But in my small church, these phone calls are almost non-existent.

But I do get a lot of texts.

I have daydreams about office hours with a phone that stays plugged in on a desk. Imagine, only ever being reached when you were near that phone. And at a certain point in the day you could close and lock the door and leave that phone behind. Bliss!

Instead I live in what is too common a reality. My phone almost never leaves my side. I’m sorry to admit that I sleep with my phone almost right under my pillow. I know how disastrous this is and I do it anyway. Sometimes I try to keep limits on different apps so I’m not scrolling too much. I use the do not disturb function when I’m reading on my phone. But it’s not the active phone use that actually bothers me most. It’s the availability.

My one phone number receives messages from every aspect of my life. Church folks text me. The parents of my piano students text me. My mom texts me. Each of those messages activates a different part of my life. My brain scrambles when I’m in my church office and get a piano message. Or when I’m walking out of a piano student’s house and am answering a call about the gutters at our church building.

This pinging back and forth is known as task-switching. You can’t avoid it entirely if you’re a person with any kind of complexity in your life. But adding a cell phone in the mix takes this challenge and supercharges it.

My spouse, Josh, is a huge proponent of me getting a Google Voice number to separate out these identities. To him, it doesn’t make sense that I insist on everything coming in through the same number. It’s a point of stubbornness for me as I don’t want to subdivide my life further. Perhaps it’s a tech workaround that will suit some of you.

For me, the best change I’ve made in combatting the pressure to be always available via cell phone is more of a spiritual/mental shift. I have to remind myself—I am not that important. I am not actually an essential emergency service. Yes, there’s always an extreme exception, but that’s not what I should structure my entire life around. If I am not immediately available, there’s always the next person to call.

And so I make small adjustments. I flip my phone screen down when I’m writing. I keep my phone in my car when I’m teaching. I batch deliver notifications. But I also try to keep in mind that the world carries on with or without me.

Isn’t that a relief.

You should know about

Google Voice! Even though I don’t currently use it, Google Voice gives access for folks to have a free personal phone number. It’s one of the pioneers of the VoIP phone systems. Because having a phone number is essential for so many things, it’s always good to be able to recommend to anyone who needs to be able to send messages or receive voicemails but might not be able to financially support a phone plan. There’s also paid versions for businesses or international calls.

Read more

• An interesting little fact sheet about cell phone usage

• A meditation like the one I often use at the end of the day to switch modes

• A book for those still thinking about how we split our attention

• How to grayscale your phone to make it a little less interesting

What life looks like

Sunflowers growing in my parents garden.