I bought a Brick because my phone was in my hand too much.

That’s a pretty sophisticated clinical assessment, right?

Too. Much.

So, naturally, I bought a device to stop me from using the device I was already using too much.

I was checking emails outside of work hours, opening Instagram without really deciding to, and generally behaving like a person who had somehow forgotten that not every thirty-second gap in the day requires entertainment.

Which is interesting, because clients talk to me about this all the time.

How do I stop doomscrolling?

How do I stop checking work after hours?

How do I stay off my phone when I’m supposed to be doing literally anything else?

And like most people, I had tried things.

Focus modes. Screen-time limits. ScreenZen. I looked at Opal and decided I didn’t want another subscription quietly draining money from my bank account while reminding me I lacked self-control.

Then Brick had a back-to-school sale.

Fine.

Take my money.

So, what exactly is a Brick?

Brick is a small physical device that works with an app on your phone.

You decide which apps and websites you want unavailable, tap your phone against the Brick, and they disappear until you physically tap the Brick again.

You get a limited number of emergency unblocks.

Five.

Which initially sounded generous when I read it on the website.

It does not feel generous when you have misplaced the Brick somewhere in your own house.

More on that later though.

I started simply: social media blocked at certain times, particularly in the morning and for about two hours before bed.

Then I started playing around and felt the pressure to optimize it.

Now, during the workweek, my social apps are generally blocked from 9 to 5. I have another setup that leaves essentially calls and messages available and it's become my favourite. On weekends, Outlook and my work apps get blocked too.

If something genuinely needs my attention, I can walk over to my computer and deal with it.

Which turns out to be a useful distinction.

Answering an email from my laptop feels like work.

Checking Outlook in my kitchen while waiting for the kettle does not feel like work.

My nervous system, however, appears not to care about this distinction.

Once I’ve read the email, I’m back at work.

The first morning was extremely satisfying

The first day was easy.

Of course it was.

It was new.

I was motivated and made sure someone else know about my new experiment.

I was going to become one of those disciplined people who wakes up, meditates, works out and apparently has never watched seventeen Instagram stories while still horizontal.

I got my workout done before my socials became available and felt absurdly pleased with myself.

Day two?

Still pretty good.

Day three involved more of a groan-followed by a flash of resentment. Because once I've told someone what I'm committing to- especially if it's a client- I know I have to be accountable.

And honestly, that was probably where the experiment actually started.

Because motivation is lovely, but mine lately has the reliability of a toddler with a tambourine.

Structure is more useful.

The weirdly important part is where I keep it

My phone often sits on my nightstand. I justify it because I have teens, but it's a lovely excuse to keep it close.

The Brick lives near the back door beside the dog leash.

Not beside the coffee maker.

That decision may tell you everything you need to know about how well I understand my own behaviour.

If the Brick were beside my coffee maker, I would absolutely make coffee, unbrick my phone and settle in for a little scroll.

Just a little peak.

You know how that goes.

Instead, I have to physically move through my morning before I get anywhere near it.

I wake up.

I spend some time in silence or meditation.

I get dressed.

I start the day.

And something about that sequence has felt familiar in a way I didn’t expect.

Years ago, when I worked in person five days a week, mornings had more structure simply because I had somewhere to be.

Now I run my own practice.

I love the flexibility.

I also have enough freedom to accidentally invent a morning routine consisting entirely of coffee, Instagram and answering emails no one asked me to answer at 7:14 a.m.

Apparently entrepreneurship occasionally requires building your own guardrails.

I don’t think my problem was ever knowing better

This is the part that interests me as a therapist.

Most of us already know when we’re using our phones more than we want to.

We know when we’ve opened Instagram or the dating apps because we were avoiding something.

We know when we’ve picked up our phone for one reason and somehow ended up looking at an article, three reels, a sweater we don’t need and a house for sale in a town we have no intention of moving to.

Insight is not always the problem.

Sometimes behaviour is simply too easy.

If I can dismiss a screen-time warning with one tap, there will eventually be a version of me who taps it.

Tired me.

Avoidant me.

Procrastinating me.

The version of me who apparently needs to know what everyone from high school is doing right this second.

Brick makes the unwanted behaviour slightly harder.

That’s it.

But slightly harder matters.

It creates friction.

And turns out that I will apparently abandon quite a lot of unnecessary phone activity if you make me stand up first.

It has also helped my work boundaries

One of the reasons I wanted to try Brick was that I noticed how often work was leaking into the rest of my life again.

Not dramatically.

Quietly.

A quick email check.

A response while making dinner.

Opening Outlook on a Sunday because technically it would only take thirty seconds.

Except the thirty seconds isn’t really the issue.

The issue is that now I’m thinking about work.

So on weekends, I block it.

If I truly need to deal with something, I can sit down at my laptop and make that choice deliberately.

And sometimes I do.

But usually I don’t.

Turns out a lot of things stop feeling urgent when they require walking into another room.

My Screen Time numbers are basically useless

I thought about comparing my Screen Time before and after Brick because that sounds like the kind of impressive data a responsible person writing a review should provide.

Unfortunately, I use Spotify constantly and Insight Timer for long stretches.

My phone is also legitimately part of how I run my business.

So my total Screen Time is not particularly illuminating.

It’s also largely unchanged this month.

Which is interesting...

Because my experience of my phone has changed quite a bit.

I care less about the number now than I do about whether I’m using my phone intentionally.

Am I choosing to be here?

Or did I just end up here?

Those are two completely different experiences.

My sleep hygiene is better

One of my original goals was to be off my phone for roughly two hours before bed.

This has been one of the easiest change to notice.

I’m not lying there technically exhausted while somehow deciding I need seventeen more minutes of information about people I don’t know.

Friday and Saturday nights are looser.

I’m not trying to turn my life into a behavioural intervention plan.

But most nights, my phone gets quieter earlier.

And I do too.

I expected boredom. I got space.

A lot of conversations about reducing phone use focus on boredom.

Learning to tolerate boredom.

Letting yourself be bored.

Practising boredom.

Apparently everyone is very worried about boredom.

I’m not. Maybe it's an only child thing...

I don’t struggle with being bored.

My brain can generate material just fine.

What I struggle with more is giving my thoughts enough quiet to settle.

That’s been the surprise.

I’ve been writing more.

Creating more.

Doing puzzles.

Colouring.

Working out longer.

Playing board games.

Experimenting in the kitchen.

Nothing particularly revolutionary.

Just things I like doing that somehow become harder to begin when there is a tiny glowing rectangle offering immediate stimulation three inches away.

I’m also talking to more people

This may be my favourite unexpected side effect.

I’m having more conversations in real life.

Not deep, life-altering conversations. Mostly tiny ones. In line. At coffee shops. Waiting for something to start. Walking the dog.

I’m looking up more and if I’m not always wearing AirPods.

Apparently that makes a person startlingly approachable.

Recently, a stranger commented on a thrift-store item I was holding and told me her grandmother had one just like it—and that she loved it.

Without thinking, I held it out to her and said, “Do you want to give it back to her?”

She looked at me and said, “No. She’s dead.”

And I did what any highly trained therapist would do.

Shut the hell up and leave.

Not every spontaneous human interaction is going to become a meaningful exchange.

Some are just deeply awkward.

But even that made me laugh later, because it reminded me that being more available to the world means you get the whole range of human contact.

Sweet.

Funny.

Uncomfortable.

Unexpected.

Phones don’t just fill boredom.

They fill transitions.

Waiting.

Standing around.

The walk between the car and the store.

The two minutes before someone arrives.

Those used to be moments where we noticed things.

And people.

I don’t think I realized how many of those moments I’d quietly opted out of.

Including my own kid

One day I heard my daughter singing to herself in the basement.

Just singing.

Happy.

Completely unaware that I was listening.

And for a second she sounded little again.

It took me right back to when she was younger and I would overhear her singing to herself somewhere in the house.

I stood there and listened.

That’s it.

No productivity hack.

No dramatic transformation.

Just a moment I might otherwise have filled.

I don’t know how you put that into a Screen Time report.

But it’s probably one of the best arguments I have for why I keep using the Brick.

Of course, I have also lost the stupid thing

This system does have one fairly obvious flaw.

The physical device is physical and quite small.

Which means it can be misplaced.

I have gone to work without it.

I have left for a big event without it.

That experience is strangely delightful and annoying at the same time.

You realize halfway there that Instagram is gone for the foreseeable future and think:

Well. I guess this is who I am tonight.

Fine.

More interesting is losing it somewhere in your own house for hours.

That is much less delightful.

Because Brick does not care that you’re annoyed.

Brick does not negotiate.

Brick has no empathy.

Brick is perhaps the purest behaviourist in this relationship.

The gamification works on me

I’ve also noticed I like seeing how long I can stay Bricked.

I want to beat yesterday.

It has become a little like tracking a run.

Which is why I think some people with ADHD may enjoy this style of tool, particularly if they tend to respond well to external structure, challenge and gamification.

That is not the same thing as saying Brick is an ADHD treatment.

It isn’t.

But knowing what kind of scaffolding works for your brain can be useful.

Personally, I would like Brick to let me share my progress with friends the way Apple Fitness does.

Let me see someone else’s streak.

Let me compete and have a unicorn fly across my screen like Asana.

Let me be psychologically manipulated toward wellness.

I’m fine with it.

Brick developers, if you need a therapist for the focus group, you know where to find me.

And then my teenager started using it

This part interested behaviouralist me.

Other phones can use the app with the same Brick, so my teenager started choosing times to block their own phone.

I loved that.

Not because I suddenly have a new way to control their screen time.

Quite the opposite.

I’m much more interested in teenagers learning how to regulate their own attention than I am in parents controlling it indefinitely.

Eventually, we aren’t going to be standing beside them telling them to get off their phones.

They need opportunities to notice:

I don’t like how this feels.

I want to focus.

I want a break.

I want to put this away.

And then practise doing something about it.

That is a very different skill from simply having a parent remove your phone.

So, is Brick worth it?

For me?

Yes.

I’m still probably underusing it.

I still scroll.

I still enjoy social media.

I run a business that requires me to spend plenty of time online.

And I am certainly not going to tell you I have achieved some enlightened state of digital minimalism.

But I’m negotiating with myself less.

Should I check?

Should I she if she answered back yet?

Maybe I’ll just look quickly.

Maybe I need— (Amazon.ca is blocked).

Nope.

Bricked.

Carry on.

The biggest change hasn’t been my Screen Time.

It’s the reduction in those small moments of guilt that come from repeatedly choosing something you didn’t really mean to choose.

That feeling of surfacing from your phone and thinking:

Why did I spend my time doing that?

There are a lot fewer of those.

And in their place there has been a little more silence.

A few more conversations.

Better boundaries around work.

A workout before Instagram.

My daughter singing downstairs.

Will the novelty wear off?

Maybe.

But feeling present, focused and connected is pretty reinforcing.

And maybe the most useful thing Brick has given me isn’t less screen time at all.

It’s fewer moments of wishing I’d spent my attention differently.

More room to be where I actually am.

More space to exhale.

And one more blogpost written.