I don’t usually listen to podcasts, but my kids’ piano teacher (who blogs over at Midlife Creative) recommended this one to me and I can’t stop thinking about it.

The podcast is about a class taught at UPenn, Living Deliberately: Monks, Saints, and the Contemplative Life. Students in this class are asked to live as if they are part of a religious order. The list of restrictions is long, and surprisingly strict. Men must wear white and women must wear black. No eating meat unless you’ve killed it yourself. No drinking alcohol unless you’ve brewed it yourself. No sex. No touching. No talking. No technology.

No exceptions.

How do busy college students make these rules work for them? Well, it takes a lot of preparation, but they are serious about it and you should really listen to the podcast for all the details, it’s fascinating.

I’ve been thinking about something the professor said when introducing the concept for this class. In the modern world we tend to deal with our mental health issues by adding things: therapy, meditation, exercise, medication, vegetables. But what if we need the opposite: to take things away?

Did your mind jump to your phone when you read that last sentence? Mine did. My stupid fucking smart phone.

My phone is a tranquilizer, anti-depressant, and upper all in one. If I am still, I am probably looking at my phone. If I am bored, I am looking at my phone. If I’m tired, I’m looking at my phone. If I’m uncomfortable, I’m looking at my phone. If I’m anxious, well, you get it. Mindlessly scrolling through stupid reels in Instagram is my first reaction to everything. My phone is a drug.

But my phone isn’t all bad! My phone allows the school to get in touch with me if there’s an emergency with the kids. It is how I contact my mother, who lives 1,500 miles away. It’s how I take pictures of the kids and the cats, and how I manage our online photo album. Even Instagram–that awful, awful waste of time–has some wonderful influencers who have given me great insights and genuinely improved my life with their content.

But I keep circling back to that podcast and how much the students gained when they took things away, even good, important things like talking to friends or writing a research paper on a computer.

I’ve been inspired, but I’m going to start small like the class does. Yesterday morning I had my husband enact a five minute limit on my Instagram, set with a password that only he knows. I’ll still be able to post to this blog’s Instagram account, but not much else. No more mindlessly scrolling through reels in the late afternoon.

I’ve also made a new rule for myself: no watching a screen unless I’m watching with someone else or I’m at the gym. This means I can’t watch hours of old Friends episodes every night like I’ve been doing. I can’t start a documentary while eating lunch and finish it later that afternoon while my to do list and my creativity idles.

These seem like small changes, but they feel big to me. Yesterday I kept pulling my phone out of my pocket and sliding it back in. At lunch I ate my sandwich with nothing in front of me and thought about how so many girls in my generation have the middle names Lynn or Marie. I think I’m going to be awkwardly sitting around doing nothing for a while.

I can still play Nintendo whenever I want and watch Bob’s Burgers with my kids every night so it’s not like I’m really living a monastic life over here. But I’m hoping to live each moment just slightly more deliberately than I have been.