Inconvenience series

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As I’ve written in a previous post, I believe that sometimes the best option is not the most convenient one. I’m definitely not the first one to come to this conclusion; the IndieWeb is full of thought-provoking posts dealing with friction and its value to our life (some examples that I enjoyed reading: A Fan of Friction, Friction is a Feature, On the importance of friction - apologies to many others not linked here).

A common idea about inconvenience/friction is that this is where you develop skills, character and resilience. One area where this is almost obvious to anyone, not just to freaks like us who tend to overthink everything, is health and fitness. The whole point in physical exercise is doing things that are hard and in some sense ‘inconvenient’ in order to gain something. Similarly, changing your diet is never convenient, but many people choose to do that. The first question I’m asking myself is why something which seems so obvious in those domains is so unintuitive in others.

Is it that in the case of physical inconvenience we are more aware of the systematic relation between what we do and what happens to our bodies? If so, is it about the awareness or about how big and important the possible gains/losses are? Or is there another reason why we respond differently to the idea of adding inconvenience in different domains?

And then, there’s also the question of how much: If a person chooses to wear weights on their wrists or ankles to make ordinary movement more challenging, they probably look for something which is heavy enough to have an effect, but not too heavy. Similarly, even the most hard-core fan of intentional inconvenience probably won’t follow the principle of ‘Let’s make our lives as inconvenient as possible all the time’. How do decide then, in different domains, what’s enough inconvenience but not too much?

In order to better understand this, as well as to help myself make better choices of where, when and how to apply inconvenience to my life, I’m going to write a series of posts about ways in which I’m intentionally choosing things that are hard or inconvenient. What’s relevant here is places where I’m making a choice; there are many things in life that are inconvenient but we don’t choose them, and these are not what I’m talking about. So for instance something like having your car break down (very inconvenient but not something you choose) is not what I have in mind; but maybe opting to stick with an inexpensive old car, which might break down - that could be an instance of the kind of intentional inconvenience I have in mind; but that is only under the assumption that you’re really making this choice (e.g., that you can afford a more reliable car but choose not to); and that you make the choice with the understanding that you might experience inconvenience, not because you’re just a stubborn fool who refuses to see what you don’t want to see.

My goal is not just to notice areas of intentional inconvenience in my life - actual or potential - but also to ask meaningful questions about these choices:

What do I gain, or hope to gain?
What is the ‘price’ that I pay?
What are the alternatives?
How do I balance the degree of inconvenience?
Am I really making a conscious choice, or just acting on autopilot or following the herd?

So, this post is just an intro to what, I hope, would become an interesting series of posts.

This tiny phone is not convenient at all. I love it.

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Even though I try as much as possible not to carry a smartphone, sometimes I have to; and on those occasions I do like it when people notice my somewhat unconventional choice. The Unihertz Jelly Star has a 3 inch display, and I am often asked questions like whether it’s a real phone and does it have a camera/internet/apps etc.

A few days ago I went to pick up a package, which required me to have the smartphone in order to show the pick-up message and confirm delivery. Both the shop owner and his younger employee, who asked to see the message, were amazed to see my phone. The shop owner commented on how everyone is always looking for bigger and bigger and how rare it is to see someone go in the opposite direction. The employee wanted to hold it in his hand to see how it feels. Then he asked something like ‘yeah, but is it convenient to type on? Do you use Whatsapp or anything on this thing?’. My reply was that it’s not really convenient, and that I don’t use Whatsapp. At this point the shop owner started smiling synpathetically, while the younger guy looked quite confused. So I added that I prefer to use my phone as little as possible and that this inconvenience really helps. Well, it was worth going there just for the shop owner’s smile; he clearly got the idea.

Buying this phone about a year and a half ago was a brilliant choice. My screen time immediately dropped from 2-3 hours a day to less that 30 minutes (and now it’s more like 3 minutes a day). I use it when I have to, and that’s it. I don’t use Whatsapp; and other than phone calls I handle all my electronic communications on my computer. The Jelly Star is far from perfect, but that’s exactly the point: I love it mostly for how convenient it is in my pocket; the fact that it’s really inconvenient on my eyes is, paradoxically, a huge plus.

We live in a world where ultimate convenience and lack of friction make addiction something we have to actively defend ourselves against. Sometimes choosing an inconvenient option is the way to go.

Inconvenience on Sure but on the other hand

Inconvenience series

This tiny phone is not convenient at all. I love it.