Slouching Towards Work/Life Boundaries: a Love Letter to the Brick

Unfortunately, I am a devotee—but not for the "usual" phone addiction reasons.

Credit / The Brick.

In December and January, a lot of people suddenly pushed the Brick. I'd seen this little phone-free device around for several years—after all, I write gift guides for a living—but the Brick’s marketing finally broke through and showed how it’s different. Before, their campaign must have been lacking some clarity.¹

I was under the impression that this Brick stuck to the back of your phone, like a PopSocket. In college, I'd used the Forest app while doing homework, which grew trees on the screen for as long as you were off your phone.² I’ve also been pitched phone lockboxes and similar—other gadgets that block signals to your devices—that I never ended up actually using, so I didn’t understand how the Brick was any different. Instead, my impression was that it seemed silly and wasteful to fork over $60 when there are plenty of free or low-cost apps that achieve the same effect. Why do you need a little square? Like screen-time limits from Apple, wouldn’t you just unBrick your phone immediately if you’re already sucked into it?

Instead, Brick came out swinging this year and said no, no, its value is that you leave the Brick somewhere and come back to it when you’re ready to reactivate your phone. That distinction changes things, and made me realize that I’m the exact personality that might love and benefit from its combination of physical + app functionality. It’s more flexible than a lockbox because you can customize what’s available to you each time you Brick it (and control it remotely if you really need), but it has the physical and spatial friction that I tend to thrive on in my habits.

For context, my particular brain loves the benefits of single-use devices and classical conditioning. I love my Freewrite Traveler, despite thinking it’s overpriced. I have a pair of over-ear headphones I only allow myself to use when drafting or studying—anything “deep work” rather than tinkering. I’m obsessive about perfumes and other sensory tricks to hoard and train my memory.

Plenty of people think the Brick is a trendy gimmick that’ll die out. Others swear by it. I wanted to hop on here a few months past the trend to casually describe how I use it and share the persona that might find themselves reaching for it—because I often find myself sending back paragraphs of case study on Substack Notes whenever someone asks if anyone actually does.

What Exactly Is the Brick?

The Brick on my fridge!

The Brick is a small, physical magnetic square that blocks your phone apps. You can carry it around, leave it on your desk, attach it to your fridge, etc. Once you tap it, the device gives a small haptic buzz and locks you out of those chosen apps on your phone, which you can customize through different modes. Mine are FOCUS (deep work mode), SCROLL (just scrolling apps), and YOU ARE HAPPIER OFF (all.)

For example, one mode might allow you access to email but block scrolling platforms you find eating away at your time; another might block you from absolutely everything. (For example, when I found myself using Internet browsers to access apps that I’d restricted, I knew I had to block those too.)

What the app looks like.

You can schedule times in which these blocks will kick in, block your phone from a distance on the app (which still requires you to eventually go to the physical Brick device to unlock it), and—as of a few weeks ago—also schedule times that your phone will unlock for you. The Brick also comes with a few emergency unBricks built into the app in case you catch yourself in an emergency.

I bought it in December and was completely right in guessing that it would work well for how my brain functions. Also—on the product reviewer side—it feels sturdy, sleek, and high-quality. A premium magnet.

I’ve always been jealous of people talking about the “laptop off” feeling of a Friday because I have never felt that way—largely a personal flaw of my schedule at the moment.

How I Use the Brick

The main pro of the Brick for me is that I—like many others—struggle with work-life balance.

There’s always something more I could be doing to grow, to share my book, to build my blog the way that I want to. It’s a total black hole. Therefore, I’ve tried to figure out and build in safeguards that keep the abyss of a life dream from swallowing my entire life and right to privacy. I used to love huge periods of being wholly offline, but now, that doesn’t feel possible for what I want. I can never go cold turkey on the phone, but I resent the insidious ways in which using one can creep into my time, energy, and awareness.

Books to Make You Throw Your Phone into the River (The Actual, Original List)

So I probably use the Brick in the opposite way of most people in that I use social apps during my work hours but Brick them as a formal way of telling myself that I’m done for the day. It’s not so much that I need it for phone addiction so much that it feels like a stronger shield or bit of friction shielding against my sense of visibility or access.

As a full-time writer who will be promoting a book over the next year, I’ve grappled a lot with the frustration that the science behind marketing—at least in my chosen genres—requires others having so much access to me online. Basically, all the most effective forms of marketing rely on forming parasocial relationships. So how do I market my book and remain online enough without feeling like it’s taking so much from me?

Although I post plenty online, I try not to linger in my scroll before and after posting. It is still more than I’d like, and there’s still plenty of fear built into it. If I worked in an office, or had a more traditional role, I might not feel the need for this boundary. But I do.

The benefit is that the automated scheduling of the Brick builds in a conscious check-in point. Am I still working past 6:30 pm? Usually. Do I need to be online or on these apps for it? Maybe. If so, I’ll walk over to the fridge and unBrick it. Easy. But if I’ve been wasting time or feeling that ugh of spending too much time available, that check-in kicks me into gear and reminds me I can still salvage my day.

When another wave of Brick-ing happens about an hour later, I can decide again whether I’ve wrapped things up enough to be wholly offline. This has the added bonus of seeing where my time is going because I don’t formally track my time unless a particular project requires me to.

For most, the gadget’s extra moment of decision-making will definitely show the extent to which you unconsciously open an infinite-scroll platform in small slivers of time. Even if you use it for a little while, it’s helpful to realize “Oh, in this bit, my instinct was to apparently open a social app.” Some people really don’t believe that I read as much as I say I do (lol) but a big reason why is that I usually open a library book on my phone in these weird little pockets, and the awkward in-between minutes really add up.

I’ve thought a lot about how feeding the monster gives it more power over you re: phones and attention economies. Like, I’m very upfront about how I infinitely love posting on my own book blog at-will and resent having to crosspost here for algorithmic leverage.³ I have to feed the monster, but I don’t want it to consume more of me than I intend. Part of why we idolize people offline is because most of us want to be more offline than we are, which has a lot to do with how your work life and compensation is structured. Posting, for many, is a lottery ticket—hence, all the dopamine involved.⁴

A comment I left on this Substack some months ago that largely summarizes how I feel on the subject. (The article itself was later paywalled, but may be of interest to you. You can infer enough from the subject line, and Substack’s fixation on “offline is the new luxury” / “analog.”

Personally, I just love the sense of hours that this gadget gives me. I work on weekends nowadays, but often have a random weekday out of commission because I’m tired. I’ve tried to schedule myself like a normal person but book revisions have meant that the tasks required to achieve my ambitions are weirdly timed and unpredictable. So I love the feeling of clocking in and out of the Internet, like working a restaurant shift,⁵ versus all of my time existing in this hazy half-on, half-off. It’s not so much about the phone itself as the dilineated slices of protected time broken up by conscious moments of check-in.

It’s been an easy system to instigate, has made off time feel more restful, and that’s more than worth the money for me. It builds back in some on/off, private/public, virtual/IRL binaries I craved and needed.

Love Letters to Ivory Tunics, Phone Blockers, and Topo Chico

Why I Like the Brick, and When I Use It

• As soon as I get up in the morning—it’s better for you not to be on your phone first thing in the morning, but I remember the panic of checking emails at 5 A.M. to see if editor emails came in overnight (as I was in a later time zone than NYC.) So I’m still wired to roll over and want to stress myself out immediately. Now, I’m offline in the morning until the conscious time that I choose to activate my phone.

• For blocks of deep work when I know I’ll procrastinate

• At a certain point in the afternoon, to signal myself to decide my work hours, basically. Do I need to keep going? Can I log off for the night? Do I still need to be accessible?

• At a later point in the evening for a final cutoff before bed (and because I’m a bad sleeper, I won’t accidentally scroll in bed or exacerbate my insomnia.)

• For going on walks—the relief of knowing that I can’t get distracted by a ping, but I have my phone in case I need a map or phone call. I do love listening to music while walking or hiking, but books like The Nature Fix by Florence Williams point out the benefits of absorbing the natural sounds.

• I default to Bricking my phone on the weekend, and have had some fabulous screen-free stretches of several days of not being reachable/scrollable. Right now, I’m out of that habit because I have too much to do, but it’s a nice default to set up.

• I haven’t gone out to dinner a lot in the last months, but I love Bricking my phone before I go somewhere with friends. I used to work an “always on” job that had managers calling me at odd times and on Friday nights, or Slack messages coming in really late. Since I work for myself now, there’s no reason I need to anxiously check my email between drinks and dinner arriving. This gets me to be more in-the-moment for sure. I’m definitely less distracted by the possibility of notifications.

• I love that a Brick is not personalized, either, or 1:1 to a given phone. If I bring my Brick on a family trip, everyone can use it; they just have to download the app. I’ve also thought this could be cute for a dinner party/movie night with friends. There’s something so nice about just knowing it won’t turn into everyone scrolling on their phones (which is why I say I used to be able to read a ton because everyone was on their phones at the pregames.)⁶

  

The Obvious Pushback to the Brick

Whether you fall for the Brick or not definitely depends on your personality type. I’ve seen a lot of people scoff at the need for one, which I find a little unfair, because someone using the Brick doesn’t inherently mean they’re so addicted to their phone that they need a physical block to stay off of it because they can’t fathom just…turning it off. The structural benefits of the Brick for me have had actually very little to do with that.

I find it helpful to have an instant method of removing everything connected while still using my phone in the way it’s intended. I love the Pavlovian/Pomodoro sense of having blocked time for specific tasks. I love having hours for being online and hours for being not.

Some people have noted that you can build the same software yourself with an NFC token that’s cheaper. For me, the ease of buying one with everything built-in and programmed (plus, with the scheduling/adjustment components) outweighed this. If you want to do that, it’s a great option and makes so much sense.

If your brain doesn’t work quite the same way as mine, or if you don’t struggle with the same lack of delineations, it may make more sense for you to just download an app, configure your own, or just turn off your phone whenever you want. For me, the last year has been blurry enough across domains that I need a more physical overlay between areas of life.

Overall Thoughts

I love this thing. In the four or so months I’ve been using it, I still struggle with the perception elements of my chosen workload and my screentime overall when working so much on a computer all day, but I’ve gained back these satisfying, restorative slivers that I’d been missing for a while. I’ve talked a lot with friends and others about how I thought I’d get this post-exam feeling when my book [redacted], but it still hasn’t kicked in. I still never feel done.

Maybe I just won’t until it’s on shelves. There’s always something more I could be doing, and for that reason—even after turning in book revisions, I’ve had periods of slowness but never the precise sensation of rest.

So moving to the Brick model, in which I’m more consciously deciding when I’m “on,” protects some against that haziness. I like clocking in and out of the Internet, and feeling that I’m clocking in and out of those access issues too. Since I’m so bad with work/life balance, I’ve always done better in structures when you know there are times at which people will not call or bother you; getting a notification from a social media site functions in a similar way. I love knowing that, even if they’re occurring, I will check them at a conscious time when I’ve decided I want to. It’s a subtle difference, but it goes a long way.

I now own three Bricks. One lives at home, on my fridge, unmoving. The second travels with me when I’m elsewhere. I cart it on travels, or while at a coffeeshop, for example. The third is just a backup because I lost the second for a while, and genuinely really love what the Brick has done for my mental lines between modes. That might seem excessive and probably is for most, but the rotation works for my habits and tendencies.

Obviously, those struggling to put down social media will benefit. Those like me who like more obvious boundaries between online / work time and not will probably like it. People who love work methods like the Pomodoro or Cal Newport’s Deep Work might love it as a cue to get serious for studying, writing, and the like.

Also, it might just get you to read more.

This does have an affiliate link attached (10%) because I love it enough.

1. I know everyone was writing about the Brick in like December or January, but I don’t really care about being late to a trend.

2. I worked a customer service contract for PopSockets for maybe nine months a few years back? If you DM’d their Instagram on a weekend, it was me responding via a ZenDesk ticket.

3. My blog does not “chip away” at me in the same way, because it’s actually exempt from a lot of the scientific levers that make us unhappy on social media—which include infinite scroll, a personal profile attached, the ability to like/visibly validate, visible/identifiable audience (on Substack, I can see the faces & profiles of those reading), algorithm, etc. Also, my blog preserves my voice perfectly and is the best display of my curiosity because I am always 100% sure I’m not secretly writing for popularity. I assume I’m not writing for anybody other than me, which is why I’m always magically surprised when it’s the opposite. I check its stats maybe once every two years. Which is why it’s made me extremely happy for the last fifteen years, although it’s technically an “online space” that is supposed to be very similar to this. It is better, undoubtedly.

4. I do freaking love The Molecule of More, which is a review I should transfer over here.

5. Which I just did in the fall, partly because of this reason—I loved having barback shifts where I only focused on what I was doing with my hands or the tickets coming in. It’s not a mental break in the traditional way, because it is hard and exhausting, but it felt so good to have part of my day occupied by another mode of thinking. So I’m in a mode where I love clocking in and out rather than the low-grade diffuse of a WFH computer job.

6. I think frequently about a study from Irresistible by Adam Alter about how even the awareness of a phone is enough to degrade the quality of a conversation. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve committed not to check it; the knowledge of a phone’s distractibility basically reminds you of the world outside who you’re with. While I haven’t done this yet, I’ve thought about how lovely it is to Brick your phone with someone and know for sure that you won’t go to it. See also: You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy. Will link to these later.