Phone Breakup Week 3: Dan Harris and Catherine Price on meditation, attention, and phone-induced anxiety

Summary

Podcast Summary

How to Feel Alive with Catherine Price

Episode: Phone Breakup Week 3: Dan Harris and Catherine Price on meditation, attention, and phone-induced anxiety

Date: February 19, 2025
Guest: Dan Harris (author/podcaster, 10% Happier)

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Overview

This week’s episode delves into the intersection of meditation, focus, and the very real anxiety that can accompany breaking up with your phone. Host Catherine Price is joined by Dan Harris—renowned meditation advocate, author, and journalist—to discuss how mindfulness practices can help repair attention spans and manage anxiety many experience during phone detox. The conversation is full of practical takeaways, candid reflections, and gently humorous rapport, perfect for anyone seeking to recalibrate their relationship with technology and their own mind.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Phone Separation Causes Anxiety

• Sources of Anxiety:
  • Catherine identifies two main drivers:
    • Phones as an "emotional soother"—removing them exposes underlying anxious thoughts previously masked by scrolling.
    • Compulsive checking and fear of missing out (FOMO) or failing to respond to urgent matters.
  • "When you take it away, you're left with these thoughts that you haven't dealt with, these feelings, you've been kind of suppressing them with the phone." – Catherine [03:19]
• Dan’s Perspective:
  • Agrees and adds that device and app design intentionally trigger that "twitchy" feeling meant to keep us hooked.
  • Solutions offered: Use tech (e.g., smartwatches and Do Not Disturb) to manage real-world anxieties about missing urgent contacts while creating healthier phone boundaries.

2. How Technology Can Help Wean Us Off Technology

• Dan recounts how his Apple Watch became “technology that, when used properly, can lead to a healthier relationship with technology” [06:23], serving as "training wheels" for phone boundaries.
• “The watch really reduces the anxiety, or at least one part of the anxiety that people feel as they try to create healthy boundaries with the phone.” – Dan [06:35]
• Both emphasize that experimentation and systems are key to finding what works for each person.

3. What Is Mindfulness Meditation?

• Dan Explains:
  • Mindfulness meditation, derived from Buddhism but secularized for broad use, has been well-studied for its benefits: anxiety and depression reduction, immune function, blood pressure, and notably, improvements in attention span.
  • Physical and psychological mechanisms: focusing attention (usually on the breath or senses), noticing distraction, gently returning focus—akin to brain "bicep curls".
  • “When you notice how distractible we are...what you think is you doing it wrong is actually you doing it right. …Waking up from distraction is the magic.” – Dan [09:15]
  • Three basic steps:
    1. Sit comfortably (or lie down).
    2. Focus attention on sensory experience (breath/body/sound).
    3. Notice distraction and gently start again.

4. Managing Phone-Induced and General Anxiety

• Advice for Noticing and Investigating Anxiety:

  • Instead of running from anxious feelings, meditation teaches turning toward them with curiosity—“like a swarm of bees in the chest,” noticing physical sensations and thoughts—which makes the anxiety more workable.
  • Catherine highlights that non-judgmental awareness (“like watching a movie as opposed to getting involved in the plot”) interrupts self-criticism and makes anxiety feel smaller.
  • “You can learn how to respond wisely to stuff instead of reacting blindly to everything that goes through your head.” – Dan [12:35]

• Caveat on Trauma:

  • If listeners have significant trauma, recommend seeking professional guidance before intense mindfulness practices.

5. Turning Phone Distraction into Mindfulness Prompts

• Catherine suggests using the moment you reflexively reach for your phone as a cue to check in: "Why did I reach for it? How do I feel? Is the phone the answer?" [15:13]
• Dan agrees:
  • “We don’t meditate to become awesome meditators; it’s to get better at life.” [15:44]
  • Even brief formal meditation builds the "self-awareness muscle" for real-world scenarios.

6. Meditation and the Rebuilding of Focus

• Both stress that frequent distraction isn’t a failure—it's part of human wiring, especially reinforced by smartphones.
• Dan’s analogy: Noticing distraction and returning to focus is like a mental "bicep curl" (builds attention strength).
• “What is on the menu is just focusing for a few nanoseconds at a time, getting distracted, starting again…that is good practice.” – Dan [18:51]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “My job on the planet now is to point out that what you think is you doing it wrong is actually you doing it right.” – Dan Harris [09:15]
• “This radical move of turning toward it, feeling it fully, investigating—what is this like?—and then you’ll see, once you’re paying attention, that it comes and goes.” – Dan Harris [12:28]
• “When you notice you’re reaching for your phone, use that as a prompt to check in with yourself…even if not formal meditation.” – Catherine Price [15:13]
• “We don’t meditate to become awesome meditators; it’s to get better at life.” – Dan Harris [15:44]
• Host’s Humorous Aside: Catherine laughing about Dan being willing to fetch her earrings post-TED talk, illustrating their friendship and relaxed vibe. [00:45]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:41] – Catherine introduces the Phone Breakup Challenge, focus on rebuilding attention spans.
• [03:04] – Dan begins probing the sources of phone-induced anxiety.
• [05:14] – Dan describes how smartwatches can reduce phone anxiety.
• [07:18] – Dan detailed explanation: what is mindfulness meditation, why it works, its effects on anxiety and focus.
• [12:44] – Discussion of John Kabat-Zinn/book recommendations for mindfulness basics.
• [15:13] – Using “reaching for your phone” as a mindfulness cue in daily life.
• [16:47] – Brief discourse on reclaiming attention spans and how meditation helps.
• [19:12] – Transition to a live guided meditation with Dan.

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Tone & Style

The conversation is warm, thoughtful, and shot through with gentle self-deprecating humor. Both speakers carefully demystify meditation (“no, you’re not broken if you get distracted!”) and offer validation and practical steps for anyone struggling with the turbulence of separating themselves from their devices.

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Practical Takeaways

• Phone anxiety is common and surmountable; some anxiety will likely arise as you reduce scrolling.
• Mindfulness meditation is simple in practice, powerful in effect, especially for attention and self-awareness.
• Reaching for your phone can become a mindfulness "bell".
• There’s no one-size-fits-all: Experiment with systems (like smartwatches, notification settings) to meet real-world needs.
• Mindfulness practice is worth it: not to become a perfect meditator, but to become more resilient, self-aware, and present.

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For more, including guided meditations, check out Dan Harris’s and Catherine Price’s substacks.

Transcript

[A]

We go. All right. Hello, everyone. This is Katherine Price. I'm the author of the how to Feel Alive substack, and I'm here with my friend Dan Harris, who writes the Dan Harris substack.

[B]

I'm laughing because I should change it. It's so egotistical just to be the Dan Harris podcast substack.

[A]

Well, it's kind of funny to talk about it that way because it's. Yeah, I'm like, I'll be joined by Dan Harris, author of the dan harris.com. i mean, one of my goals for our conversation today is to people as possible to subscribe to your newsletter. So maybe we just did that. Anyway, Dan is an expert on meditation and a former anchor at Good Morning America and Nightline, among many other things he's done. He's the host of the 10% Happier podcast and the author of the 10% Happier book. Dan and I met years ago through my book, how to break up with your Phone. And. And then subsequently have had interesting experiences such as giving TED talks the same year together. Wonderful memory, Dan. First of all of you being the first person I saw after my talk was over. And you gave me such a reassuring hug. It was so nice. And you also offered to get my earrings for me from my hotel room. I don't think you probably remember that, but it was very thoughtful. So, anyway, so excited to get to talk to you today. So thanks for making the time.

[B]

Thanks for having me. I'm a huge fan of, I mean, you personally. But also I recommend how to break up with your phone all the time. So it's been a. Is it is my go to recommendation when people ask, how do I not get so wrapped up in this device that's, you know, degrading my quality of life?

[A]

Thank you. Thank you for recommending it for that. Well, that is, of course, what we're here to talk about today, because I have been running, as hopefully people know, a phone breakup challenge for the month of February in honor of the release of the revised edition of how to Break up with youh Phone. And we are in week three right now. And the theme of week three is to rebuild our attention spans, which in many cases have totally atrophied as a result of the things we're doing on our phones. And that's why I thought, who better to talk to than Dan, since he has such a background in meditation. And I also started to notice something really interesting in the chat that I've been running for my paid subscribers, where we've been going through the Breakup step by step together, which is I've accidentally triggered a lot of anxiety in people. That's probably the. One of the biggest themes in our chat is this feeling of just nervousness and anxiousness that comes when people start to try to separate from their devices. So I'm really excited to talk to you both about how we can use meditation to help build back our muscles of attention and then also how to use meditation and mindfulness to cope with anxiety, whether it's triggered by the phone or anything else in life. So I guess the first thing I wanted to ask you about, and you can take this wherever you want, but can you give us a sense of what meditation actually is? Because I think that that can be actually a widely used but often misunderstood word for people, both meditation and mindfulness.

[B]

I'm happy to yammer about that, but I'm just so, so curious when you say that anxiety is showing up among people who are trying to break up with their phone. Why? What's the source of that anxiety?

[A]

Well, I think that there's a lot of emotional sources for the anxiety. I think that it may be because, well, two things come to mind. One is that I think using our phones to cover up anxiety and soothe. And so when you take it away, you're left with these thoughts that you haven't dealt with, these feelings, you've been kind of suppressing them with the phone. Then I think it also is because people are so conditioned to feel like they have to check their phones all the time because they don't want to leave people hanging. They don't want to miss something important that when they separate themselves from their phone, even for a couple of hours, that triggers anxiety too. So I kind of think it's two separate things happening at once.

[B]

Right. So you're removing this dysfunctional source of self soothing. And you are, and I, I believe you. You wrote about this in your book, that, that one of the diabolically ingenious aspects of the, of the design of the phone and the apps on the phone is that if you're not checking, you feel twitchy with FOMO and, and a sense that you're not only missing something cool, but that you're missing something that you're going to get in trouble for missing from your boss or something like that. So, yeah.

[A]

Are you a good summary, parents? You're worried you might miss, you know, that one in a million, like emergency call, it's just anxiety triggering for a lot of people.

[B]

Well, on the second part, like there are, I mean, I'm sure you get into this. There are fixes for that you can. I mean, I put my phone away all the time, but I have a watch. And I know that if there's a call that comes in that is really important, like, my parents are in assisted living, and if somebody has a fall, like, I'll get the call, but I'm just not looking at my phone during dinner.

[A]

This makes me so excited, Dan, because the other thing we did years ago is I remember coming to your apartment and we did a phone breakup, like, challenge together. And I remember finding a place for you to charge your phone that wasn't your bedroom and you were crawling around in your closet like Good Morning America, like, filming you. So that's so special. Do not disturb settings on the watch to only let certain calls through or just a few people call. Use. Use the phone to call that it's not an issue. Like, how did you do that?

[B]

Exactly? I use. I don't, I didn't, didn't require any fancy. And I promise everybody I will talk about meditation, but it did not pro. I did not require any fancy settings on the phone. I essentially, I wear the watch, and if somebody calls that I don't need to talk to, I just refuse the call. But if it's my mom or I'm away and it's my wife, even though the phone is charging in a different room, I can take it. So in some ways. And I remember Farhad Manju, who's this brilliant tech writer for the New York Times, when the watch first came out, the Apple Watch, he said that he thought the. The number one application of the watch will be to wean you off your phone. So it's technology that, when used properly, can lead to a healthier relationship with technology. And so I have found that the watch really reduces the anxiety, or at least one part of the anxiety that people feel as they try to create healthy boundaries with the phone.

[A]

I think that's really important for people to keep in mind that a lot of this is about experimenting with systems that work for you.

[B]

Yes. Yeah.

[A]

Because I know. I remember going to the Apple Store when the first watch came out and asking that question, like, are people coming in to use this instead of the phone? So that's good to keep in mind. This is the part in the conversation where I'm tempted to just ask you more about your do not disturb settings, but promise people some meditation talk. So how does this work? Like, how can meditation help us beyond in addition to having a Apple watch on our wrist?

[B]

Well, you asked, and I filibustered and didn't answer. But you asked, what is meditation? And, and the word meditation is a little bit like the word sports in that it describes a whole range of activities. When I talk about meditation generally, I'm talking about mindfulness meditation, which is derived from Buddhism but has been secularized. And that secularization, that stripping away of religious lingo and metaphysical claims, is what has allowed this practice to be studied so extensively for the last 15, 20 years in laboratories. So we now have a pretty good sense of how this practice can lower anxiety and depression, boost your immune system, reduce your blood pressure. And we also have these brain scans that show that, you know, short daily doses of this kind of meditation can change the parts of the brain associated with stress, associated with self awareness, associated with self compassion. And crucially for this discussion associated with focus, which is, you know, pointing this part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which, you know, regulates our capacity to pay attention. And we see in these brain studies that doing a little bit of mindfulness meditation can boost your attentional capacities. And so that's, that's really helpful and all of that in concert. The kind of the, the ability to pay attention, the ability to be self aware, the ability to be sort of warm and friendly. That is, that's kind of the cocktail that we need in order to manage our anxiety. So you want to be able to see that the anxiety is happening because often we're kind of aware of a background static of worry, but that's kind of owning us and controlling us. But actually if you can be very aware of, oh yeah, this is anxiety that's happening right now, I can see its component parts. It's like a swarm of bees in the chest. My ears are turning red, I'm having worrying thoughts. I have the ability to drill into it with a, with my mind, in other words, to pay attention to it in a clear way, way. And in that way it becomes workable. Instead of it happening kind of in the backdrop of your psyche, where you kind of know you're anxious, but you don't really, really know what to do about it, you can bring your full attention to it through meditation or through mindfulness and work with it and watch that it will come and go and you don't have to be owned by it. So what's the mechanism for this? We'll, we'll do a little bit of meditation, but basically it's pretty simple. Beginning mindfulness meditation really has only three steps. The first is sit comfortably. You don't even have to sit. You can lie on the ground if you want, close your eyes. The second is to bring your full attention to something that is based in your senses. So, like, something that is not your thinking. So the feeling of your breath coming in and going out, sounds in the environment, the feeling of your full body sitting or lying down. Some. Something sensual, not in the prince sense, but based in the senses. And then the third thing is, the most important third step is because it sounds pretty easy to just kind of feel your breath coming in and going out. But most of us very quickly bump into a ton of distractions. And many of us, when we notice how distractible we are, we tell ourselves a whole story about how. How we're uniquely unqualified to meditate, that we're doing it wrong. But this is. This is, you know, my job on the planet now is to point out that what you think is you doing it wrong is actually you doing it right. Because the whole goal in meditation is just to notice when you've become distracted and to start again and again and again. And that waking up from distraction is the magic, because that is the process whereby you get more familiar with what your mind is like, you see, And I'm. Pardon me, I'm gonna work a little blue here. I'm gonna be a little inappropriate. You see how crazy you are, and then you're not as owned by all of your historical storylines, ancient resentments, neurotic obsessions, random desires. And. And that is. That is so useful when it comes to anxiety, either based on not having your phone with you or anything else. You know, all of the. We're in an epidemic of anxiety. We've never seen levels of anxiety like we're seeing now. And so you want to be able to experience your anxiety in a way that allows you not to be owned by it. So that's not running from it. That's not pretending it's not there. It's this radical move of kind of turning toward it, feeling it, fully investigating, like, what is this? Like. And then you'll see, once you're paying attention, that it comes and goes and you can make a saner decision. On the other side, you can learn how to respond wisely to stuff instead of reacting blindly to everything that goes through your head.

[A]

Well, all that is really helpful to hear, so. Oh, that's so funny. I was like, I need to look over here. You know why? Guess what I have next to me. This is totally random. What talking about. In case anybody wants more background about this particular type of meditation, and it's its benefits that have been scientifically studied. John Cabot Zinn wrote this book Full Catastrophe Living, which is kind of like the go to basic mindfulness guy, but it's also, it's a little bit long. So maybe read 10% Happier by Dan. Just the act of paying attention to what you're paying attention to, which is what I think you were touching on and also getting to tune into the sensations in your body and the thoughts you're having in your mind without judging yourself for it. Because one thing that I appreciate it is that when we're trying to meditate, as we will in a minute, and your mind wanders, which it will, because that's one of my meditation teachers used to say, you have a mind. That's what they do. They come up with thoughts. We should not beat ourselves up for it. Which is my go to response to pretty much everything in life. So. But I really appreciate the way you're talking about just experiencing the anxiety as it shows up in your body, but not being angry about it, not judging ourselves for it, just allowing it to be there and just observe it. Almost like you're watching a movie as opposed to getting involved in the plot directly.

[B]

Yes. And there's something really radical about that. It sounds counterintuitive, like no, when I. The fix for my anxiety has to be some. Something that takes me out of it entirely. It has to be a bubble bath that has to be taking a pill and some of those things that. That's appropriate sometimes bubble baths, medication, if your doctor recommends it, whatever. There are ways to kind of switch your attention away from it. But there are also, there's also this way to bring your full attention to what you're feeling. And then it. You realize it's not as big and scary as you thought. And you know, the one asterisk for this is if you have capital T trauma, then I think you have to be a little bit careful about this exercise and you might want to do met your meditation with a trained mental health professional. But for the worried, well, for the garden variety anxious among us, this is a really helpful technique to turn toward what's bothering us rather than running from it and realize that you can work with it in ways that you might not have realized earlier.

[A]

Well, I think that's very useful. And I also think it's interesting to try to turn the phone from a source of anxiety, which I mean honestly, it will be forever for most of us, but to additionally have it as a reminder to check in with ourselves in this way, then when you notice you're reaching for your phone and you start to, you use the noticing of the reaching for the phone itself as a prompt to check in with yourself and to become a bit more mindful in that moment, even if you're not engaging in a formal meditation in that moment. But just say, oh, why did I reach for it? How do I feel? You know, how do I want to respond?

[B]

Just to jump in on that. We don't meditate to the point of meditation isn't to, like, try to be an awesome meditator. It's to get better at life. And you can use the mindfulness, which is just a fancy way of saying self awareness. You can use the mindfulness or self awareness that you generate in your formal meditation practice for one minute, two minutes a day, five minutes a day, you can use that skill in the rest of your life. And so just as Catherine was saying, you know, you, you recommend in your book, like, use the moment you see your zombie arm reaching for the phone as a kind of alarm, a mindfulness bell of like. Yeah. The question you, you get people to ask is like, what do I want to feel right now? Why am I doing this? And is the phone the right answer? So I think this practice of meditation in the formal sense that will, and we'll do it formally in a moment, is training for using mindfulness in the rest of your life.

[A]

Yeah, that's great. Before we jump into the actual meditation, I wanted to ask you to. Can you briefly tell us a bit about the focus boosting benefits as well? Because a lot of people, actually pretty much everyone I speak to, when I talk to them about breaking up with their phones, they feel like their attention span is shot. And I always reassure them. It's not reassuring. I always tell them, you're right, it is shot. Because everything we do on our phones trains us to be distractible. Even now, Dan and I are having this conversation. On the bottom of our screens are all your comments and there's like hearts going, I'm not looking at them because it will be too distracting. But we're just training our brains to constantly try to focus on multiple things at once. That really does make it harder to sit down at night and read a book for a while, which is something a lot of people want to do. So can you comment briefly on the effect that meditation in particular has on attention spans and then we can jump in and try one?

[B]

Yeah. With the caveat that I'm not a neuroscientist and I don't know, the. The science, chapter and verse.

[A]

Play one on tv.

[B]

Exactly. Yes. Look, the very thing most of us beat ourselves up about during meditation, which is getting distracted and having to start again is like a bicep curl for your brain, especially the attentional resources of your brain, your faculty of. Of focus. And so you. It's you. I think this bicep curl analogy is really useful. Instead of telling yourself some story that you're. You can never do this. Just realize, oh, this is. This is the work. It is trying to focus on my breath, or, you know, picking one thing to focus on, often the breath. And then you start wondering, like, what's for lunch? You know, what kind of bird was big bird, whatever. And you just wake up to that and start again and start again. And that starting over is the thing that's not some magical state you're trying to get to, where all thoughts have disappeared. Maybe that's possible for, like, people who are living in a monastery, but for most of us, that is not on the menu. What is on the menu is just focusing for a few nanoseconds at a time. Getting distracted, starting again. Getting distracted, starting again. That is good practice.

[A]

That's so helpful to hear because we're about to do this. And I know. I mean, I've been doing this for years myself. It's still the kind of like, oh, I had a thought, it failed. Oh, you know, so just know that that is the work. Like that noticing you're succeeding. If you. If you noticed it, you succeeded. So.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So let's have you lead us in a. In a short, guided meditation, Dan, which is totally going to embarrass me because I hate closing my eyes in front of people. And this is like, the uncomfortable sensation of people's eyes upon me with my eyes closed. Then I also wanted to say for people in my audience who are watching, Dan does regular guided meditations like this on his own sub stack. Which is another reason I wanted to introduce you guys to each other, because I think that's really cool to get to meditate live with someone. So, yeah, take us away, and I'll close my eyes.

[B]

So I should. Maybe I'll do five minutes.

[A]

Perfect.

[B]

Okay. I'm gonna set a little.

[A]

And people look down with a soft gaze. Right. Like, if you're at work right now, you don't want to close your eyes.

[B]

Oh, yeah. I'll give you lots of options. Don't worry.

[A]

Going for it.