Goodbye Phone, Hello World: 60 Ways to Disconnect from Tech and Reconnect to Joy

By Paul Greenberg and Emiliano Ponzi

Goodbye Phone, Hello World features 65 bite-size, device-free activities scientifically proven to promote true happiness.

With wit, wisdom, and warmth, bestselling author Paul Greenberg presents practices for connection, mindfulness, conversation, creativity, and well-being.

Reconnect to life's enduring pleasures: friendship, family, romance, laughter, food, books, music, sleep, nature, art, and so much more.

• Teaches tricks to cut down on phone use—the average person spends 1,400 hours per year on their phone
• Filled with colorful, meditative artwork throughout

For anyone who needs a break from their device, Goodbye Phone, Hello World is a rousing call to reclaim the precious hours lost to screen time.

• This book is for anyone who wants to do a digital detox, challenge their dependency on their phone, and seek out true connections.
• Author Paul Greenberg is a New York Times bestselling author and the winner of the James Beard Award for Writing and Literature.
• Perfect book for anyone who claims to be addicted to their phone
• You'll love this book if you love books like 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You by Tony Reinke. How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life by Catherine Price, and Off: Your Digital Detox for a Better Life by Tanya Goodin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: Nov 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781797200293

Paul Greenberg

Paul Greenberg is founder & Managing Principal of The 56 Group, LLC, an advisory firm, focused on customer-facing strategic services, including CRM, customer experience and customer engagement strategies. His book, CRM at the Speed of Light now in its 4th edition, is in 9 languages and been called "the bible of the CRM industry". It has been used by more than 70 universities as a primary text. Currently, Paul sits on the Global Advisory Board of the SEAT Consortium as the only non-sports professional of a sports business professionals organization. Prior to this, Paul has been the EVP of the CRM Association, the Chairman of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management CRM Centre of Excellence Board of Advisors, a Board of Advisors member of the Baylor University MBA Program for CRM majors, & co-chairman of Rutgers University's CRM Research Center. Paul works both with customer-facing technology vendors and practitioners to craft go-to-market strategies, engagement programs, product development road maps, marketing/messaging & outreach among other things. Paul is considered a thought leader in CRM and often called "The Godfather of CRM." He has been published in numerous industry and business publications over the years. He was elected to CRM magazine's CRM Hall of Fame in 2010 - the first non-vendor related thought leader in its history. He also writes on customer-facing matters for CBS's ZDNet high profile tech media property (www.zdnet.com/blogs/crm). He has won dozens of industry awards over the years in CRM, marketing, sales, and customer service as an influencer and thought leader. He has just released a book on customer engagement entitled "The Commonwealth of Self-Interest: Customer Engagement, Business Benefit" (He also recently launched a new blog in addition to his ZDNet blog, called "The Science of Business, the Art of Life and Live from NY..." and a podcast "The Commonwealth." Paul currently lives in Manassas, Virginia with his wife of more than 35 years and 7 cats (yes, 7) - and to be entirely clear - is a HUGE New York Yankees fan.

Book preview

Text copyright © 2020 by Paul Greenberg.

Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Emiliano Ponzi.

All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-8452-4 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-7972-0029-3 (epub, mobi)

Design by Lizzie Vaughan.

Typeset in Brandon Text and Sentinel.

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CONTENTS

Beginning 9

I.    Finding Purpose 27

II.   Strengthening the Mind 35

III.  Strengthening the Body 59

IV.  Strengthening Love, Friendships, and Family 75

V.   Healing the Environment 103

VI.  Healing Your Environment 121

Afterword 147

Endnotes 152

Select Bibliography 158

Acknowledgments 160

About the Author

Life is available only in the present moment.

—THICH NHAT HANH

Beginning

My son was born in 2006.

The iPhone was born in 2007.

They have been competing for my attention ever since.

I always knew it was wrong to steal a moment to look at my phone instead of my son.

But I thought I had plenty of moments . . .

REALITY CHECK

Secure attachment begins in infancy, when children take visual cues from their parents’ gaze. In a 2017 study of children aged seven to twenty-four months, it was found that infants and toddlers had higher levels of distress and were less likely to investigate their surroundings when their parents were on their mobile devices.¹

And then my son was twelve.

My time as the father of a small child had come to an end.

What had I given my device that I could have given my son?

Like the average American, just under 4 hours a day.²

Every day.

Two months out of every year.

Two years out of the dozen my son had been alive.

Gone.

REALITY CHECK

How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?

—Sean Parker, first president of Facebook³

And now my son was twelve.

He told me it was time he got his own phone.

Most of his friends already had one.

Eighty-nine percent of the 40 million American adolescents already do.⁴

Was there anything I could say?

Is every child now required to forfeit those same hours, months, and years?

More, actually.

Teens now spend on average more than 7 hours out of every day on their devices.⁵

Nearly the sum of their entire time outside of school.

I researched, I reflected, I despaired . . .

I learned that my phone is not there for my amusement or my son’s education.

It’s there for our marketable distraction.

Its purpose and our purposes are at odds.

I learned that the bank account of my time, which my device had drained over the last decade, was the currency of something that had recently come to be called The Attention Economy.

A system of commerce that draws its profits by laying claim to our focus and selling it on the open market.

Of course, people have always been trying to use our time for their profit.

The first newspapers that sold advertising took a few minutes a day away from the people of the 1800s.

Radio in the 1920s and ’30s took a few more.

Television in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s took still more.

Our minds and media have always been a little like host and virus.

The host tries to resist invasion.

The virus adapts to penetrate the host’s defenses.

The host adapts again and resists the new infection.

The virus adapts again and penetrates . . .

Reviews for Goodbye Phone, Hello World

[Tayyab Ali · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A book about tech that is teeming with humanity. Profound.