An Accidental Discovery May Improve the Relationship with Your Tech

The Reader’s Edge | Charlie Samways | July 5, 2026 |

On my recent trip to Rome, the heat drained my phone’s battery.

I needed my phone to make payments and navigate through the city, so I had no choice but to put it away.

This wasn’t the only change to my phone that I experienced in Rome. I took the decision to remove social media apps to save storage space, but also to remove potential distractions.

These changes pushed me to be present for as many special moments as possible.

The benefits I experienced are supported by research completed by Gloria Mark, which found that it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully regain focus after a digital interruption. In Rome, the distraction was removed, so I had fewer occasions where I had to reset my focus.

And there was one more change that I made for this trip. I moved solely over to journaling and note-taking on my Kindle Scribe. As someone who has taken what feels like bag loads of physical books and notebooks on holidays in the past, it was refreshing to only need my Kindle Paperwhite and Scribe.

This simplified my writing habit, as I just had one place to write everything, which resulted in me writing more.

I’m grateful for the reminder that this trip brought me. Intentional tech is not a destination you arrive at and stay permanently. It requires recalibration, and sometimes scenarios you weren’t expecting may force a recalibration you wouldn’t have chosen.

The Accidental Discovery Pattern 

If you’ve never heard of a company called Odeo, you’re not alone.

Odeo was a podcasting company whose product became irrelevant when Apple announced podcast support within iTunes.

The Odeo team decided that rather than fold, they needed to pivot and move quickly. Jack Dorsey pitched a short-form status update service, and from this move, Twitter was born.

Odeo was shut down. Twitter launched separately and went on to become one of the most significant communication platforms of the last twenty years. 

Twitter, now known as X, was not built from a vision. It was found inside a constraint.

This can happen on a scale that takes a company to worldwide fame, as was the case with Twitter. Or it can happen more personally to you.

I had my own instance of an accidental discovery this week. I needed to manually update my Scribe, and the device was not showing in Finder on my Mac.

The solution came in the form of Amazon’s Send to Kindle desktop application. This is an app that I was aware of, but I had never given it a great deal of time. In the space of a week, it has transformed into an important part of my Kindle set-up.

Over the last few weeks, I faced a dead phone battery in Rome, apps deleted for storage space, and a Scribe that wouldn’t appear in Finder. None of these were planned, and yet they all improved something. That is accidental discovery working on a personal level. 

This Week’s Question

Is there an app or device you removed temporarily and found you didn't miss? What did that tell you?

Reply to me at hello@charliesamways.com. I read every one.

From The Channel This Week

This week, I went into detail on the Send to Kindle desktop app, which solved my Kindle Scribe issue. If you enjoyed this week’s newsletter, this one is worth watching:

The Kindle App Most People Don't Know Exists (Send to Kindle)

And if you haven’t already, check out my Free Kindle Guide, available to download here

Wishing you all the best this week, and finding your own accidental discoveries.

Catch up next week,

Charlie Samways