Describe a time when you were not allowed to use your mobile phone.

So the time that immediately springs to mind was actually pretty recent — it happened a couple of months ago when I went on a weekend meditation retreat at a temple up in the hills, about two hours outside the city. It was one of those digital detox things my sister had been nagging me to try for ages.

The rules were crystal clear from the moment we arrived: they collected everyone's phones at the front desk and locked them away in these little lockers, and we weren't allowed to touch them until we checked out on Sunday afternoon. The whole idea, they explained, was that constant notifications completely fragment your attention, so if you genuinely want to switch off and be present, the phone has to go — no exceptions.

Honestly, the first few hours were torture. I kept instinctively reaching for my pocket, and my hand would just close on thin air. But once that itch faded, I ended up doing things I hadn't done in years — I read an entire novel cover to cover, went for these long, aimless walks, and had a proper face-to-face conversation with a total stranger over dinner without either of us glancing at a screen.

Looking back, it was genuinely eye-opening. I'd never realised quite how tethered I was to that device, almost like it was surgically attached to my hand. By the end I felt weirdly lighter, and it made me want to be a lot more deliberate about when I actually pick the thing up.