CMP Review 2025-09-04

September 4, 2025

I’m taking another pass through Catherine Price’s 2018 How to Break Up With Your Phone, a neat little volume that has aged quite well. Of special interest to Charlotte Mason enthusiasts is Price’s frequent references to habit and neuroplasticity, phenomena that Charlotte Mason handily (and accurately) explained more than 100 years ago.

Price notes how apps give us rewards for certain behavior, training us to use them more. This technique (aka “gamification”) leverages our internal habit engine, changing our brains and ultimately our lives. It’s enough to make one seriously consider “breaking up” with one’s phone.

But of course phones are useful tools and life would be a slog without one. Although … I don’t need it to be my constant companion.

Well it turns out there are two sides of gamification. I have a stand on a shelf for my phone and it stays there most of the time. In front of it is a bright six-sided die. Every time I take the phone out of the stand, I turn the die to the next number. It’s my counter. It’s my accountability. It’s my game.

How low can the number be by the end of the day? Sometimes zero, sometimes one. Today maybe a bit tricky though. I’m already at one because of this shot.

@artmiddlekauff