A few years ago, I saw something online that stuck with me. In Tel Aviv, some smartphones are sold with a warning label. Like on a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of liquor. You might even have to fill out a form saying you understand how to use it. The implication was clear: this device is not neutral. It can be harmful. Handle with care.

That memory came rushing back on a flight a while ago. I was sandwiched between a large group of Orthodox Jewish men, flying from Toronto to New York. For hours, the cabin was alive with loud, festive conversation in Hebrew. And, like everyone else, they were NOT on their phones.

Then we landed at JFK. As we taxied,  from pockets and bags emerged… flip phones. Simple, clamshell devices. It was 2022. Here was a community famously influential in media, tech, governance, law, and yet, in their personal lives, they had drawn a stark, physical line. Their tool for connection was not the same device that connected all of us to the endless scroll. It was a deliberate choice. A boundary.

It made me think: they know something we’ve forgotten.

Yesterday, I argued with my wife about time management and our phones. It’s a universal fight now, isn’t it? But it’s more than time. It’s about presence. I think of people I know—good, hardworking folks—who take their phone to bed. They place it right there on the nightstand, waiting for the buzz that will pull them from sleep into someone else’s demand. They’ll wake up and respond.

This baffles me. You are sleeping with a computer next to your brain. Let’s set aside for a moment the (very real) chatter about radiation and brainwaves. Let’s talk about the psychological invasion.

If you have no control, you’ve installed the gates to Babylon on that thing: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. And if you’re not selling on those apps—if you’re not building a business or a brand—then what are you doing?

You’re watching. You’re consuming. You’re lending your most precious, non-renewable asset—your time—to people who do not care about you. Your attention is the product being sold. The influencers sell it to advertisers. The platforms sell it to data brokers. They are building fortunes and you are the raw material. You are, as I bluntly told my wife, the sucker.

You will die. Your time is linear and finite. And you are spending chunks of it watching a 15-second clip of a stranger dancing in a kitchen. For what? A hit of dopamine? A fleeting sense of connection?

The disadvantage of this always-on life isn’t just poor sleep or distracted families. It’s the slow, silent erosion of your own life. You are living in the shallow glow of someone else’s highlight reel while your own story goes unwritten.

So here’s the radical, ancient wisdom of the flip phone: Intention.

Do you really need a supercomputer in your pocket 24/7? Is that constant access part of your soul, or is it a parasite you’ve mistaken for a limb?

If you want to wake up—truly wake up to your own life—keep that phone away. Charge it in another room. Get an alarm clock. Or yes, consider the glorious, freedom-giving flip phone. It makes calls. It sends texts. It severs the tentacles of the infinite feed.

The people who understand power—who literally help run the systems of the world—seem to understand the power of boundaries. They put warning labels on things that are addictive and harmful. They choose tools that serve them, not algorithms that own them.

Maybe we should too.

Your time is your life. Who are you giving it to?