The Silence on the Counter

Yesterday, I did something I’ve never done before.

I left my phone on the counter when I left for the day.

My partner and I were heading out the door, first to the gym, then to a dinner celebrating Christmas, New Year’s, and our upcoming anniversary.

Amidst the armful I carried out of the house, somehow my phone slipped my mental checklist and stayed on the counter. I didn't even realize until I had already driven all the way to the gym!

At first, I was a little panicked thinking, Did I leave it on the roof of the car? Is it currently somewhere getting the brunt of 301 traffic? But once I was assured it was safe at home, I made a choice to leave it there.

I spent the next 11 hours entirely disconnected from the digital pulse, a first for me in as long as I can remember.

This isn’t particularly revolutionary, and I am sure some of you have left your phone behind for the day. But for me, this forced separation offered an intersection of insight and opportunity.

The insight was a measure of my own growth. There was a point in my life where the anxiety of disconnection would have been overwhelming, and it would have never been out of my hand long enough to be left at home. There was a different point where I would have dropped everything and turned the car around immediately, bound by the gravity of the device.

But yesterday, I recognized a shift.

This leads to the opportunity. The challenge.

Could I go an entire day without my phone?

The irony is that less than twenty-four hours prior, I had expressed a desire to integrate "disconnection days" into my routine—once a month, a total fast from the TV, phone, and computer.

We all have the tendency to downplay our reliance on our vices. You know the refrain: "I can quit whenever I want; I just don’t want to yet."

I wouldn’t consider myself addicted to my phone, yet I keep the device within arm's reach more often than I do a glass of water.

Could you go a day without the Diet Coke? The glass of wine? The doom scrolling?

And, more importantly: Why would you want to?

Why voluntarily remove the very thing that “makes you happy,” even if it is the beer that eases the friction of a stressful day? Why sit in the silence when the noise is so entertaining?

The answer is relatively simple: self-discipline.

There is a misconception that an uninterrupted life is one of ease; that it is without restraint, discipline, or conscious effort. In reality, the autonomy of an uninterrupted life requires authority.

I often find myself caught in the dichotomy between effortful and effortless living because it forces me to wrestle with the ultimate weight of my actions, to question the degree of meaningfulness anything I do carries.

Does anything we do tangibly alter the trajectory of the universe?

No.
In the grand scale of entropy, our actions are statistically insignificant, plain and simple.

Does it feel like they matter?

Yes.

This is the friction between Nihilism (nothingness) and Existentialism (subjectivity). I won’t bore you with a lengthy philosophy lesson, but in essence, Nihilism looks at the heat death of the universe and says, "Nothing matters, so why bother?" Existentialism counters, "Maybe nothing matters in the end, but it’s still worth bothering."

When Nihilism says, "We all die anyway, so consume frivolously," Existentialism whispers, "Sure we all die, but we can create a beautiful life while we are here."

Self-discipline, then, becomes a tenet of a more existentialist worldview. It is not a guarantee of a longer life, riches, or anything really. You could eat kale every day and still be struck by lightning, or you could smoke a pack a day and live to be 100. There are no guarantees in a chaotic system we call life, and it hardly ever makes sense how it pans out.

Rather, self-discipline is an act of defiance. It is a way of taking a perception of control within the inherent meaninglessness. It is asserting that this moment has mass.

This brings us to the mechanism of control: Willpower.

Autonomy requires decision-making. But the catch is that willpower can only be accessed in the present moment.

You cannot pick up a pen in the future any more than you can use it to rewrite the past. You can only exert willpower now.

This is why I built Arete. I realized that my intentions for the future were useless if I didn't have a structure to ground them in the present. Put another way, having goals mean nothing if you can’t work towards them every single day. We build apps and systems not to control the outcome, but to focus the beam of our willpower on the only time that exists: today. Arete is a Life OS, a system to help you engage with every day fully and intentionally and to build your use of willpower. There are still spots available in the Founding Circle, the lucky group that gets first access to Arete and lifetime access to everything it will become.

You can sign up to join the Founding Circle by visiting theareteapp.io!

Self-discipline and presence are the same coin. To be disciplined is to refuse to be pulled out of the "now" by the distraction of the "then" or the "someday."

Our world is filled with noise and distractions that have no inherent value and drag us into a hyper-curated, ego-centric hallucination of reality.

Maybe you’ve set some new years resolutions, made a fancy new vision board, or performed a new year ritual of writing intentions and burning them with a white candle. Whatever your method, I would encourage you to add one to your list: to intentionally find presence in your every day life.

Here are four ways to tune out some of the noise:

1. Sit in silence. (This is one of my favorites.) It is easy to fall into the trap of "productive busyness." We tell ourselves we don’t have time to do nothing, but I invite you to sit down and do just that... nothing. Don’t read. Don’t journal. Sit and stare at the wall or out the window. Within seconds, your brain will scream. It will offer you a menu of anxieties and tasks to escape the boredom and every excuse to get up and “do something.” Watch them. Who is in control—you, or the panic?

2. Spend time in nature. Go outside. Take a walk, watch the sunset, sit in the sun. Watch the birds ride the wind; listen to the cars on the highway. Even if your nature includes sirens and streetlamps, it is real. It is happening outside of a screen. What beauty can you find in where you are right now?

3. Engage the senses. Take off your shoes and go stand outside. Sit still and ask what you see, hear, smell, taste, or sense. When a sizzling steak is placed before you, embrace the sensory experience of it. How does it look, feel, or smell? When you walk, feel the gravity holding you to the pavement. How much can you notice through the senses simultaneously?

4. Practice Mono-tasking. Dealer’s choice. Paint without a clock, music, or phone. Drive without the radio. Eat without the TV. Do one thing, with total fidelity, complete singularity of focus. How long can you sustain focus before you feel the urge to move on?

Self-discipline is a practice, a perpetual rehearsal in listening.

Perhaps the Nihilists are right. Maybe none of it matters. The universe expands, and the stars burn out.

But the point isn't how many moments we get. It is in making the most of the ones we have and enjoying the sweet melody while it plays.

How many moments will you let slip through your fingers in 2026?

Oh, and if you want to know how many text messages I came home to after being off the grid for 11 hours?

One.

Until next time, live uninterrupted.

~ Coleman