Phil PowisChief Wisdom Keeper @ Sacred Business Flow

Create Friction, Protect Your Attention #substack #shorts

1 Jul 2026 · 2 min

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1:58

In this short conversational clip, two speakers discuss how to set personal boundaries around technology use to protect attention. Speaker B demonstrates a practical system: keeping an iPhone locked in a physical phone box for the day and using a Light Phone 3, a minimalist non‑smartphone, for essential communication. They explain that the key principle is to create friction—deliberate obstacles that make accessing digital distractions harder. This idea is drawn from a chapter titled “Guardians and Protectors” in a book they reference, which itself was inspired by an episode of The Emerald podcast that explores how apps are engineered by behavioral psychologists to be addictive and frictionless in order to maximize user attention and revenue. The conversation highlights the tension between wanting the benefits of technology and avoiding its addictive pull, and suggests that personal rules and physical separation can serve as protective boundaries.

Chapters

with these boundaries for themselves around technology use. And they want to kind of— it's fun, you know, we're here having this conversation, I think, using technology in a fruitful way. So they want the benefits that technology affords them, but then they're struggling to figure out like, well, how do I do this in a way that honors me? And like, you know, does it become addictive? Or like, you know, I get all fried out on technology. But do you have a set of rules that you follow for yourself? Maybe they're in the book. Maybe that's just the teaser to go read the book. I don't know. But like, what is the— you know, what are the quick list of rules that you have for how you choose to show up? Like, I know we were going back and forth on email for a couple minutes before this, so you're here doing it, right? Like, yeah, yeah.
Oh my gosh, 30 seconds. Okay. Well, for the first part of the 30 seconds, I'll show you. This is my, my phone box. My iPhone stays in there off all day. Um, and I'm on my laptop right now and I use a phone called the Light Phone, the Light Phone 3, which is a non-smartphone, has no, no internet, no apps, but it actually has everything you need. So that, that, um, create— and not everyone can have a non-smartphone, so that's not my suggestion. You can have an iPhone too, but we need to create friction. Uh, there is a chapter in the book called Guardians and Protectors, uh, which is based on this really fascinating podcast that I listened to called The Emerald. And, and it's about setting up friction as boundary, as protection, like friction. We, these apps, the apps on our phones are developed by behavioral psychologists to be addictive, to sustain our attention. Not because these platforms are evil, but because they make money the more attention they can hold. And so, so they have been developed to be frictionless.