How I reduced the time spent on my phone from 3.5h daily to 30 min (still getting there…)
STEP ONE WAS, THAT I NOTICED that my phone screen was what I looked at the longest and most often on any given day. From the moment I woke up by my phone alarm, to before drifting off to sleep I was constantly checking my phone.
My phone had become my companion, an extension of myself. It was a distraction from being “just me”. Since changing my habit I’ve started doing new activities that I enjoy so much I get up early. Now, my day begins where I am, no longer in the off-reality of a news article or opinion piece. Every evening I used to cycle through all my newsfeeds till none of them popped up any new tidbit for me to notice. In retrospect, how ridiculous was it that I kept going until there was a lull. The more content I followed, the less likely it was going to happen.
Another symptom I noticed was that my thumb hurt from the scrolling and typing motion on days I was browsing on my phone for hours. Since I stopped doing that, I started to look around more and now I see the people around me all hunched over their phones, like their neck will soon snap. Or as my aunt put it “ I am astounded by how many bowed heads I encounter here at home and as I am out and about — and it is not because they are praying.” I was part of an epidemic.
My behavior had gradually changed since the days I got my first iPhone in 2008. At the restaurant with friends I started to leave my phone out on the table. If it buzzed, that notification was top urgent and need my attention immediately. The meal I was having, the friend I was chatting with, that was just a backdrop to my important in demand phone-me.
Even when I was alone for a meal, I’d wolf down my food while checking my phone. If I didn’t post a picture of what I was eating, did I even notice the menu? Did I experience what the texture was like, how the flavours combined? I was too distracted checking my phone harvesting likes and attention from others in reaction to the picture of the food I supposedly had eaten. This changed when last Fall I visited a mindful cooking retreat at Plum Village. At a silent lunch I ate a crunchy leaf of salad and it was a revelation of how exhilarating truly experiencing what you are doing can be. There I learnt to connect with my own senses again. Hearing the birch tree’s leaves quiver in the breeze I had a first glimpse of truly living. It was also the first time that my phone was in flight mode for long periods at a time, without being on a plane.
That week did not cure my phone-in-hand syndrome, it just made me aware of how attached to the phone I had become. When walking somewhere I didn’t put my phone in my bag, I’d have to check it again in a few moments anyway and rummage nervously through my bag to unearth it. Everything was on my phone, my planner, my notes, my reminders, my life? It seemed so convenient and efficient when I set it up, all centralized and not getting lost. To unhook from my phone I’ve switched by to paper note books and a pencil. Like when I was at school I draw again, doodling along the margins. It can even happen that I forget my phone at home upon leaving and have to go back and get it.
That was inconceivable a few months back. My phone attachment was strong and I was caught in my cycle of checking for new emails, newsfeeds, social media and starting over again until the well of information would run dry. When that happened it would then lead me to start following yet another news source, irrelevant to me or my life.
If I ever mislaid my phone, I’d search for it frantically as if there was a countdown running to some bomb that my go off if I didn’t find out about it first. After I got in the habit of turning off the notification sound at least I didn’t have to run to my phone to see whether it was me at every beep noise. It was like a Pavlovian reflex and when I hear other phones make the sound I still inadvertently reach for my phone just in case it is mine. Realizing that I was hooked, was my first step of gradually detaching myself.
The most telling sign that my phone was a too dominant force in my life was when it fell down the toilet. That’s what happens when you keep it in your back pocket. And it happens because I no longer set it down and left it outside. It turns out is very well possible to go to the restroom without a phone, and realizing that I do not need my phone with me at all times was part of step one, noticing.
PHASE TWO IS DETACHING YOURSELF from your phone. To start this process these are the instant wins that gave me back large chunks of time, listed in the order of time I gained back:
I rebooted all my feeds. On every app or site that I regularly visited I unfollowed all news, content or people. When you do this, you notice that most sites make it difficult to reduce your footprint. That is no coincidence. If you don’t have the patience to do this one by one process, you could close the user account and start a new one. Once I got to zero I slept over it multiple nights. I noticed which voices or content I missed, what I appreciated about them. I evaluated what I wanted to continue to consume. I’m convinced that everything we consume leaves a trace in us. I wanted to get myself influenced by sources where I learn something new or that inspire me. Then I cherry-picked from each topic or area of expertise my favorites. One by one I added back to my feed information, applying my filter “learning or inspiring”. I decided that there’s no need for me to know about the latest meme, and also I trust that if something is truly relevant to me I’ll find out about it.
I turned off all notifications from every app on my phone. It’s up to me now to decide when I’m curious to check what is happening. For any urgency my phone will ring. I’m no longer tethered to my phone reacting to every buzz or pop-up that happens. Once I did so, I noticed that many apps become very insistent with reminders to turn the notifications on. This is not a coincidence either.
I deleted apps from my phone that were in my standard rotation routine. If you have a standard rotation routine, you’ll know what I mean, the screens you cycle through every time you pick up your phone. I kept the apps that are utilities. Deleting adds friction, in order to check in I now sign in with my username and password. That helped me to decide before logging in, if it was that important to check in. I set up limitations for myself: Facebook Friday, Instagram Wednesdays. On the designated day I’d sign in on the phone browser and catch up. While doing so I’d try to consciously notice what the information was, that I was looking at and qualify if I really needed to know about it. Before I used to walk to the bus stop while scrolling on my phone, drifting through emails, glimpses of images, registering who did what where, as if it was relevant to me to know that information about people not in my immediate circle. The more distance I gained from this type of information, the more absurd it seemed to me that I used to see travel photos from people I crossed paths with once in my life. By checking in to social media far less, the information there filtered by the algorithm quality did improve. I also noticed that I started getting “bait” emails to lure me back and check what x or y had posted or commented. This happens by design, once you no longer log in at a certain rhythm, you become a retention case. After a while I unsubscribed from them too. For a while out of habit I started checking other information on my phone, once I noticed, I stopped. Now, when I stand in line, I’m standing in line. When I walk to the train station, I’m walking to the train station. There’s no evading reality or transporting my imagination elsewhere. My mind is no longer flooded with images that are not my actual experience. Instead I observe what is around me, my own experience has become richer. I see and hear more details about what is going on around me.
I set a timer before logging on outside of my designated days, it happened. What I found was, that I thought I needed to look up this information, and I instantly got sidetracked and sucked back in to scrolling. Then the timer went off, and I hadn’t even checked what I had intended to. That was revealing to how hooked I had become. After a few months these incidents are far fewer and I log off before reaching the last item I checked the time before. My attitude as changed, I’m no longer as attached, as susceptible to knowing what is being posted. I’m drafting this article in my notebook with the time I’ve gained back from checking feeds on my phone, and also with the concentration I rediscovered and attention span I’ve regained.
I downloaded the Moment app and I check my stats to hold myself accountable. The tracking the app provides gave me a baseline that made it cristal clear, my daily screen time was extensive and I could be spending my time more useful. It helped me see what my patterns were, in which situations was I still distracting myself on the phone. My next challenge is to no longer check my phone after 8.30 pm. I can forgo any news that prevents me from getting my rest. I’m now clock in about than one hour and a half on average days. By saving two hours of screen time every week I gain one full day of time that I can do more interesting and more tangible activites with. I’ll update this article with further reduction steps to reach my goal of 30 minutes a day.
PHASE THREE — HOW LIFE CHANGES WHEN YOU PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE. In one word I’d say RICHNESS is what I gained by my experiment so far: Richness of experience, through improving my productivity, lengthening my attention span and deepening my perception.
Within the past 6 months I could tackle many of the projects I had always wanted to do but never had the time. When I started out I made a bucket list of activities I wanted to do, activities that result in something tangible: I wanted to draw again, read more books and listen to podcasts. I started to volunteer with a local organisation doing beach clean-ups along the lake shore I live by, and I signed up to assist a refugee family settling in. Today what was on my to do list is my daily life.
When I researched what I called the phone-in-hand syndrome, I found the Kara Swisher interview with Travis Harris very helpful to learning how apps monetize on our attention and how technology is built to appeal to our reptilian brain. I realized why I had gotten so wrapped up in repeatedly checking my phone for extended periods of time. I also watched the Ted Talk with Dr. Cal Newport. He talks about reading a book in the evening, I hadn’t enjoyed a book cover-to-cover for ages, it used to be my favorite pastime. My attention span had shrunk to the extent that I wasn’t diving into the story the way I used to. I no longer had the concentration, my brain was conditioned to a stream of tidbits and not to navigating a complex storyline using my own imagination. Gladly, now that I no longer have notifications buzzing and distracting me from climbing into a book, my focus is no longer scattered among different information feeds. I have long stretches of cohesive thought because I’ve reversed my conditioning to recheck my phone every minute. I’m back to my reading bliss experience.
What has changed the most however is that I’m no longer living in a phone haze. All the impressions that I consume come from my own immediate experience. Through this my appetite to experience the world myself has returned and I no longer live vicariously through the lens of others’ postings. When I now talk with a friend I’m there 100%, I’m fully engaged with my surroundings. This way of living has peeled off a layer of “fuzz” and makes me feel more alive and awake. I highly recommend it.
