Big phone, little phone.

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I’ve recently been documenting some of the things I do to help my life flow more smoothly. For example, using a ‘long hug’ to start the day smoothly or using AI tools to help me eat more hot meals.

I figured I’d continue that trend today by writing about my ‘big phone, little phone’ setup. A technique i use to help me disconnect from the world, sleep and manage my use of social media.

Two modes.

The basic idea is very simple. I have two smartphones in my life. Big phone & little phone.

Big phone is my main smartphone. It has email, social media & all my other apps.

Little phone is an old smartphone which has almost nothing installed. It’s limited to viewing media & messaging friends.

My little phone helps me to disconnect from social demands and complex things, while still being able to enjoy the media I like. I can enjoy watching something knowing I won’t get interrupted by a notification etc.

For whatever reason, separate physical devices seems to work better for me than ‘focus modes’ on the same phone.

I tend to use the little phone at night and over the weekend. I occasionally go entire days without picking up my big phone at all.

Less is more.

The little phone works because it’s so limited.

At the start, I disabled almost everthing on the phone. Over time I’ve added things back based on what I needed.

Media stuff like audible, YouTube and Disney+ were added quite quickly. I also added my friends to an ‘allow list’ so I could message them.

Setting stuff up was easy using the Apple ‘family’ system. The little phone is setup with a child account which lets me manage it remotely, share content & track it on a map. Useful when i loose it behind the sofa :)

How it helps

I like the separation. It helps me to disconnect at the end of the day and has definitely improved my sleep.

I also like splitting things between ‘big’ and ‘little’. Other people might have a ‘work’ and ‘personal’ phone but that didn’t work for me. It just gave me two phones I wanted to avoid in the evening.

Splitting it by complexity works better for my brain. I can take a break from the more demanding parts of my life to enjoy something simpler and easier.

Final thoughts

I hope it’s useful to share this stuff. I’ve had a little phone for years, but I realised I’d never really documented it. I’m curious if other people do something similar and how they manage the split.

It’s kinda delightful how small things like this improve my life. Each thing helps me to flow better, getting more done and having more fun along the way

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Spaced Out & Smiling is about exploring the fun side of Autism, and trying to understand what it means to be Autistically Happy.

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Jamie: @JamieKnight
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