I started the timer for fifteen minutes, flipped my phone over, and started to think. First, I thought about the task at hand, no phone for the next fifteen minutes, just me and my thoughts. My thoughts wander, I realize that I haven’t done this since coming to college. While in the past, I never intentionally avoided my phone for a specific amount of time, I had done it naturally before coming to school. Ever since I’ve been here, though, I am usually always doing something. Whether that’s sitting in class, doing work, watching a movie, spending time with friends, the list goes on. But as I sat and really thought about it, this is the first time I have done nothing, literally nothing.

When I first came to college, the thought of sitting and doing nothing stressed me out. I felt like if I was doing nothing, odds were, I had something I should be doing. I’ve found a less stressful way to manifest that ideology, but it still reigns true to how I live on a day to day basis. I finish my homework and immediately click, scroll, and watch things on my phone. Nothing productive is being accomplished, yet I still feel like that is better than doing nothing.

What I took away from the fifteen minutes was that putting the phone down, or putting everything down, feels so good. Yes, I did have urges to reach for my phone to text someone or check something. But knowing that once the time had passed, I could check whatever and text whoever kept my mind at ease. While I may have an attachment to my phone, I do know that most things can wait fifteen minutes.