Hari spent his first week in a “haze of decompression,” he writes, sitting in cafes and reading books, sometimes talking to strangers and often just being alone with his thoughts. He also felt something he hadn’t experienced in years: Calm.

It was a weird sensation given that all he’d done was “leave two lumps of metal behind,” Hari writes. It was as if his phone and laptop were “screaming, colicky babies, and now the babies had been handed over to a babysitter, and their screaming and vomiting had vanished from view.”

But he also experienced panic. What emails was he neglecting? What Twitter trending topics had he missed? What texts were waiting to be read? There were days when Hari would instinctively reach into a pocket for his phone, like he was scratching a phantom limb.