Introducing Project 2005

An experiment in turning my technological clock back a couple decades

In July of 2005, I started my first post-collegiate job as an assistant producer at CBSNews.com in New York. Though I was earning what I believed at the time to be the almost excessive sum of $31,000/year, I quickly grew tired of the work itself, which never quite reached Woodward and Bernstein heights of world-changing journalism.

As I wiled away the hours in a dark and oddly silent newsroom that was widely and derisively known internally as “the web site,” I frequently succumbed to the sirens’ call of online diversion. This was the pre-iPhone era when company Blackberry privileges were confined to the lucky few and texting on a personal flip phone was only a slightly more efficient form of communication than Morse code.

And so, all of my web-based procrastination took place on my desktop computer. While I took full advantage of peak Gawker, options were generally limited. Facebook was for college kids. I wasn’t into the emo scene enough to have a MySpace account. YouTube hadn’t yet launched with the Lazy Sunday to end all lazy Sundays. And Jeeves from AskJeeves.com was entering his twilight years of valet service (R.I.P., Your Grace). That left the recently launched Gmail as my main source of “let’s see if anyone is trying to reach me” distraction.

Over the course of the average workday, I began to engage in a familiar pattern. First, I checked my email Then, I did some work before checking it again. Once I was finished with that, I’d check my email again. Then I’d take a short walk to get a cup of coffee from a nearby bodega before settling back into my desk chair for a little more work. Finally, I’d check my email to see if anything new had come in, while I was out living my busy life. Then I’d check my email before going home.

Mind you, no one was emailing 22-year-old me anything that could conceivably considered important or urgent. A quick search of my (very spotty) Gmail archives from 2005 reveals some rare archeological finds that include:

—a thread among a few college friends, in which various theories on the whereabouts of a missing disposable camera roll were presented and then debated.

—a response from customer service at Dell Computers (Dude, I was apparently still getting a Dell in the mid-oughts) regarding a “monitor problem” I’d been having.

—a link to a news article about a man in Oklahoma whose attorneys had negotiated a plea deal for him to serve 30 years for armed robbery only to see their client successfully lobby the judge to add three years to his sentence, so that his prison term would match Larry Bird’s #33. (he had some second thoughts a few years later).

In my current context of wifely calendar invite barrages, Kindergarten bus pickup time updates, and S Corp tax filing deadlines, these 2005 emails all seem pretty low-priority.

Still, at the time, my impulsive email-checking regimen got to the point where I remember making a deal with myself that I was only allowed to open gmail once an hour. Back then, this seemed so pathetic. I really couldn’t go more than one hour without checking my messages? Was Al Gore’s information superhighway becoming a road to mental ruin?

Today, of course, that “once an hour” rule seems impossibly quaint. How many times a day do I check my phone in the year of our Lord 2025, you might ask? I’m honestly afraid to estimate.

What I’m certain of this: My brain worked better in the days when my binge email checkins were desktop only and the robotically performed tilt-and-stare had yet to become a societal scourge. I’m pretty sure that I was able to take in my surroundings much more comprehensively in 2005 than I am now. I could even concentrate for long medium periods of time on a single task.

In 2005, I read Anna Karenina in a few weeks. In 2025, I tried to read War And Peace and made it through 25 pages before I gave up and turned that particular Russian novel into an improvised ring light stand for Zoom calls.

In 2005, I loved meandering around New York City, looking at the weird people and the tall buildings, while letting my mind go wherever it wanted to. In 2025, I live in Los Angeles where I enjoy playing tennis year-round but chastise myself every time I feel compelled to check my texts during the 30-second changeover between games.

Whenever my imaginative, often restless six-year-old daughter complains about being bored, I tell her that boredom is actually a good thing—that having to sit with your own thoughts is where creativity comes from. But I also recognize that I’m a complete hypocrite. I’ve long since lost the ability to be comfortable with being bored. And now, I want to change that.

Over the years, I’ve tried to cut down on technology in various ways. For me, it’s pretty easy to ditch social media, which I enjoy from time to time but also believe to be the one thing that’s most likely to bring about the downfall of humanity. I’ve never been more than a sporadic Instagram user. The recent changes to Twitter/X have made it pretty easy to sunset my engagement with that particular platform. And I’ve seen enough spy movies to stay off TikTok.

What’s been much harder for me to shake is the constant, grinding compulsion to take my attention out of the real world and into the virtual one by staring at my phone for no good reason at all—even if only for a few seconds at a time.

And so, I’ve been wondering lately what it would be like to attempt to go back to a time when the Internet was still relatively convenient and accessible—yet not overwhelming and all-encompassing. As someone with a wife, three kids, a dog, and a career in a phone-centric industry, it’s not realistic for me to go “cabin in the woods-style” to a pre-smartphone era (though I think I’d like it, if I could).

But if it is still possible—from time to time, at least—to party like it’s 1999, doesn’t it stand to reason that I can try to live my technological life a bit like it’s 2005?

Project 2005 is my own attempt to put that notion to the test—to find out whether I have the self-control to opt out of our exhausting, overwhelmingly intrusive, around-the-clock texting and email culture.

Why am I doing this? Because I want to try to get my critical thinking skills back to where they were 20 years ago … because I’d very much like to be present with my rapidly growing kids … and because maybe I can even inspire a few friends and family members to embrace their own inner Luddite.

I should say off the bat that this is not going to be an attempt to make a literal return to the 2005 technological landscape, “Frontier House”-style. I realize, for example, that there was no Substack back in 2005. We live in a time when Wikipedia has gone from the joke of the Internet to possibly the best thing the online world has going. And so, dear reader, I will not apologize for losing an hour in the day to a rabbit hole on the mystery airship sightings of the 1890s. I’ll continue to stick with Google Maps over playing the dangerous game of “guess the L.A. traffic” roulette, thank you very much. And, oh yeah, you can pry my podcasts from my cold, dead hands.

But here are the three things that I’m going to TRY to do for as long as I’m able to keep this experiment going:

1. Stay off of social media entirely.

2. Refrain from picking up my phone (unless receiving an incoming call) more than once an hour.

3. Check my email, texts, and WhatsApp messages no more than twice a day.

If you’d like to go on this virtual journey with me back to the time of going-out tops and “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” please hop in the backseat! I won’t even make you listen to My Humps while we’re driving, though it wouldn’t hurt to add a touch of authenticity to the project.

You’re of course free to tailor your own 2005-esque use of technology to your particular life and career needs, as well as your individual goals. I’d be interested to hear how it’s going in the comments.

I realize that this will be hard. But I’m going to try my best to remember three things:

1. For the last 200,000 years or so, humans have done well by spending most of their time looking up at the world around them, rather than down at a tiny screen.

2. Silicon Valley has made a lot of good products over the last half-century. But it seems crystal clear now that things up there have taken a wrong turn, and I’m not just talking about Zuckerberg’s chain necklace.

3. If someone really needs to get in touch, they can always call.

This whole thing might very well end in rapid and embarrassing failure. But I’m excited to give it a shot. I’ll aim for weekly updates on how it’s going. Thanks for following along.