The day I realised my phone was deciding my life for me

When I Realised My Phone Was Quietly Leading Me

One second the sky above my house was perfectly clear. The next second, as I stepped out to walk Loki, the rain came down with full force. No warning. No light drizzle to prepare the mood. Just a full tropical downpour, like someone flipped a switch in the clouds.

I stood there under the shade outside my house and had two choices.

Version one of the story:

“Great. I finally want to walk my dog and now the rain ruins everything.”

Version two of the story:

“Thank God it started pouring before I stepped out. I got protected, not punished.”

Same sky. Same rain. Same five minutes. Completely different experience, depending on how I chose to read it.

That small moment exposed a bigger truth.

A lot of my life is not just what happens. It is how I interpret what happens.

Then another, sharper thought slipped in.

If I am not careful, the thing interpreting my life is not me.

It is my phone.

My notifications decide what is urgent.

They decide when my heart jumps.

They decide what interrupts my family, my thoughts, my rest.

That was the day I had to ask myself a hard question:

Am I leading my life, or are my notifications quietly leading me?

Parenting, Generations, and the Only Notification That Truly Deserved a Ping

By the time I reached about five minutes of reflection, the rain had already stopped. The same storm that could have ruined my mood lasted shorter than boiling water for instant noodles. Loki did not care at all. He ran around the porch with the same joy he always had, as if the entire world existed only to give him this moment.

For Loki, stepping outside is a big event.

Nothing fancy. Simple routine. But he enjoys it fully.

That quiet joy put another thought in my heart.

Earlier that day, I had been speaking with a director about parenting. I told him something I remind myself often:

We chose to have children. They did not choose us.

Our children did not submit a form to become part of our family. We brought them into this world. That one decision forces us to grow. They stretch our emotional capacity, our patience, our resilience. They force us to learn sustainability and to think in generations, not just months.

I remember the privilege of four generations in one row. My grandparents, my dad, myself, and my son, all sitting together. You do not need to experience ten generations to feel the weight of legacy. One alive picture is enough if your heart is awake.

Maybe that is why, when my daughter was born, I did something that looked very technical but was actually deeply emotional.

I installed CCTV in the house and set my phone in a very specific way. I did not want notifications about random motion, sales alerts from shopping apps, not even social media to interrupt my day.

I wanted one notification only: The alert that told me my daughter was crying. That was the only sound I allowed to cut through anything. Her cry was the one notification that deserved my immediate attention. It was not just a tech setting. It was a declaration of values.

This alert means life. Everything else is convenience.

That decision stayed with me, long after she grew older. It made me ask a serious question:

If I could be that selective with one notification,

why was I so careless with all the others?

Ant, Lion, and Eagle: How Notifications Train Your Leadership View

Slowly, I began to notice how my days were being sliced into tiny reactions.

A ping from WhatsApp.

A badge on email.

A preview from social media.

Another “urgent” group message.

Another “quick question” that is not really quick.

If you study phone habits, the numbers are frightening. The average person touches their phone more than 2,000 times a day. Heavy users can go past 5,000. Many honestly believe they are “not really on the phone that much.”

Habits become invisible. The damage does not.

Behind every ping, something happens in your body and brain.

• Every notification gives you a tiny hit of dopamine. That is the brain chemical that makes slot machines addictive. Many apps are designed with behavioural experts so you keep coming back.
• At the same time, every ping can trigger a small spike in cortisol, your stress hormone. Your body treats the sound closer to “possible threat” than “harmless noise.”
• One small interruption can break your focus for up to 20 minutes. Even if you only glance at the alert and do nothing, your mind needs time to regain depth.

So you are not losing seconds. You are losing full blocks of deep thinking.

Uncleared notifications behave like open tabs in your brain. They are unfinished loops. Your mind quietly monitors them, like unresolved tasks. This drains your working memory and adds to mental fatigue, even if you “ignore” them.

The hardest truth is this:

Most people do not choose what they pay attention to. Their phone chooses for them.

I started to look at this through a leadership lens. In an organisation, there are different ways of seeing. That is when the Ant, Lion, Eagle framework was born in my head.

Ant View – Reactive Attention

Ants are close to the ground.

They see only what is directly in front of them.

They respond fast because the job demands it.

In a school context, Ant View is the front desk, the customer service line, the ClassDojo group admin, the operations person who gets the call when a child falls or a parent is anxious.

Ant view is not inferior. It is essential.

• They answer quickly to calm worried parents, even if the issue is small.
• They help prevent minor problems from growing into bigger storms.
• They live in the world of immediate reassurance and fast closure.

At Ant level, notifications are part of the job.

The risk is not in having many alerts. The risk is when everyone else also lives like this.

Lion View – Bridge Attention

Lions stand between ground and sky.

They see what the ants face every day.

They hear the emotion, the tension, the complaints, the patterns, they also look up and hear from the eagle: The vision. The direction. The long game.

Lion view belongs to principals, heads of department, centre leaders, middle managers. Their work is to align what the organisation is trying to build with what people are actually experiencing.

For Lions, notifications must be curated.

• They cannot respond to every small noise, or they will burn out.
• They cannot ignore the right noise, or they will miss key signals.
• They need enough alerts to feel the ground, but enough silence to think and plan.

Lions translate. They connect.

They carry messages both ways.

Eagle View – Strategic Attention

Eagles stay high in the sky.

They do not see every ant. They do not hear every complaint.

Their eyesight is for patterns, not individual grains of sand.

They see thunderstorms forming long before the first raindrop hits the ground.

They notice clouds gathering kilometers away.

They sense shifts in law, culture, finance, education, before the average person feels it.

Eagle View belongs to people who carry the weight of the future: Founders, Senior leaders, Boards, the ones whose decisions can affect hundreds or thousands of lives.

If Eagles live like Ants, the whole system suffers.

• If the Eagle reacts to every notification, the Eagle loses altitude.
• If the Eagle loses altitude, no one is watching the horizon.
• If no one watches the horizon, storms always arrive as “sudden crisis.”

That was the uncomfortable mirror for me. I am meant to function at Eagle View for Stellar and my family. But my phone was training me to react like an Ant. My notification settings and my role were in conflict.

Leadership is not just about what you say in meetings. It is also about how you allocate your attention. So I started changing my rules.

Designing Notifications To Match Your View

The first practical step was simple, but not easy.

I muted almost everything. No notifications for social media. No banners for group chats.

No sounds for promotional apps. I wanted my brain to stop expecting interruption.

With that one decision, something shifted.

• My urge to check social media started to drop. It felt less like craving, more like choice.
• My nervous system gradually calmed. The constant micro-stress reduced.
• My thinking blocks lengthened. I could stay in an idea for longer without being yanked out.

Silence is not empty. Silence restores cognitive bandwidth. Then I began to match notification rights to leadership view.

If You Are In Ant View

• You will have more notifications. It is part of your function.
• But you can still remove useless noise: shopping alerts, random promotions, non-work group chats.
• You can also use work modes. During certain hours, only selected apps are allowed to interrupt.

Key question:

“What truly helps me serve people better, and what just distracts me while I work”

If You Are In Lion View

• You need enough signal from the ground to understand what is really happening.
• You also need slow, quiet thinking time to plan, coach, and solve problems.

Practical moves:

• Turn off notifications for non-essential groups.
• Keep alerts from your core team, your principal, your key parents or partners.
• Block one or two hours a day as “Lion thinking time” with no interruptions.

Key question:

“Am I protecting enough time to think, or am I living like a front line Ant every day?”

If You Are In Eagle View

• You must be ruthless about your notification rights.
• Only a handful of people or systems should be allowed to cut through instantly.

Practical moves:

• Emergency calls and family alerts, yes.
• A few key leaders, yes.
• Everything else waits for your chosen check-in times.

Key question:

“What storms do I see coming that others cannot see yet, and what noise must I say no to so that I can see clearly?”

Alongside this, I also protected my “bored” spaces: Toilet time. Short walks. Small gaps between meetings. I used to mindlessly clear notifications there. Now I leave the phone alone.

Those quiet slots are where many breakthroughs actually come. The brain’s default mode network lights up when we are not forcing it to do specific tasks. That is when your mind connects dots, replays conversations, and surfaces ideas you did not know you had. If you fill all that with pings and replies, you kill the space where insight is born.

Finally, I changed my starting point of the day.

If I let my phone speak first, my inner world is shaped by everyone else’s urgency.

If I let God, reflection, or family speak first, my inner world is shaped by what actually matters.

It is not about hating the phone.

It is about deciding who gets to lead.

The Reverse That Redefines It All: Freedom Is Not Noise

As the ground dried after the rain, Loki ran around in his usual pattern. He has boundaries: A leash and clear limits to where he can go. Those boundaries do not reduce his joy. They protect it, allow him to be fully present, fully playful, without danger.

Our version of “freedom” as adults often looks very different.

We call it freedom when we:

• Reply instantly to everything.
• Keep every app on full alert.
• Answer every call in the first three rings.
• Check our phones first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

On the surface, it looks responsible. It looks committed. It looks like we care. But underneath, something else is happening. We are letting noise define our lives.

The more I muted my notifications, the more I started to hear the things that actually mattered.

I could hear my own thoughts more clearly.

I could hear my wife without my mind half-occupied.

I could feel my children’s presence, not just manage their logistics.

I could sense God’s quiet prompting in moments of stillness.

I could think about Stellar’s future in years, not just days.

That is when a simple reversal formed in my heart.

The opposite of freedom is not restriction, it is noise.

Noise from other people’s urgency.

Noise from unfiltered apps.

Noise from demands that have nothing to do with your calling.

Real freedom is not the ability to react to everything immediately.

Real freedom is the ability to respond only to what aligns with your purpose, your role, and your legacy.

So here is the practical call to action.

1. Name your current view. Are you functioning as Ant, Lion, or Eagle in this season and in this role Be honest. One role may be Ant at work and Eagle at home, or the other way around.
2. Match your notifications to your view. Ants simplify noise, Lions curate alerts, Eagles are ruthless about what gets through.
3. Protect one block of deep thinking every day. No notifications. No pings. Just you and the problem or possibility that truly matters.
4. Let your family and team see you model this. Your phone habit is not just private. It is leadership training for everyone watching you.

Someone needs you to be fully present: Your children. Your spouse. Your team. Your God. Your own future self.

Mute the noise. Guard your attention. Choose your view.

When you mute notifications, you do not lose your life. You finally start to hear it.