I Made My iPhone Dumb. Here’s What Changed

Bzzzt!

“Igor, check out this new taco place in your area” — says Uber Eats.
Swipe.

Bzzzt!

“Igor, how about checking out our latest deals?” — Amazon hits me.
Swipe.

Bzzzt!

“Igor, insane hotel deals in Guatemala!” — Booking.com.
WTF? When the hell did I ever search for Guatemala? Ignore.

I open Telegram. Russia bombed another power station in Ukraine. A drone crashed into a residential building in Kyiv.
Sad… Is this shit ever going to end?

I go to X to see what the “experts” are screaming about.
Swipe, swipe, swipe… Fuck, I’m already exhausted.

Blink!

Claude just dumped another massive blob of code. I need to review it immediately. But first I have to finish drafting this email with yet another AI.
I feel completely drained.

Screw it. I need something cheerful. YouTube Shorts. Yes!
Swipe, swipe, haha, like, swipe…

…Twenty minutes later.

What the fuck?
Why do I feel so tired? Why does my brain feel violated? Why do I feel like I’m in a fog?

Everything is screaming for my attention. All the time. I already killed most notifications, yet they still sneak in. My single-threaded Homo Sapiens brain — the same one we had living in caves 10,000 years ago — gets yanked in ten different directions every minute. And with AI, the information firehose is only getting bigger and faster.

I keep fantasizing about 2004. A simple Motorola Razr. It just worked. That’s it. Dumb phones rule. Maybe I should just get one?

“It’s in your power to have a dumb phone right now,” my wife says calmly. “Just remove all that junk from your iPhone.”
I wish I were that smart.

So I did it. I nuked everything. Instagram — accounts deleted, app gone. X — get the hell off my phone. YouTube, Facebook, Booking, Airbnb, Uber Eats — all of them are gone.
Left only the bare essentials: camera, email, one messenger app to call parents, parking app, and Slack (because… work).

I’ve been living with this “dumb” iPhone for two weeks now.

Every morning the old habit kicks in. Fifteen seconds after waking up, my eyes automatically lock onto the screen. But now it’s empty. I can put the phone down and just… think. What do I actually want from today? What shouldn’t I forget?

I drink my coffee and actually taste it instead of doom-scrolling some guy’s “vibe coding” post while he brags about becoming a millionaire overnight.
No FOMO. No anxiety. No overload.

Just freedom.