How I reduced my phone dependence using my professor’s advice, data analysis and gamification

I have always been cautious about phone/tech addiction and never joined some of the most popular social networks. Twitter was an exception as it helped me delve deeper into the things I cared about and it was great for content discovery. Twitter alone took so much time, I wondered how much time and effort would a larger social media presence require.

I gradually curbed my twitter use by (sequentially) pruning the list of people I followed, limiting the use of twitter to thrice every day, then accessing it only from my laptop. Discovering addons like Simplified Twitter and modifying these felt like a breakthrough but it still took more than an hour every day to read every interesting tweet (I liked interesting videos and articles for later reference).

The above steps added some time back to my life but fell short of what I expected. I eventually stopped using Twitter six months back and though not life changing, the results made me happy. The app ActionDash indicated that my daily screen time was 80–100 minutes consistently which was not bad considering my previous use of around 3 hours.

Now I wasn’t worried about the hours I was spending on the phone but the urge to check the phone regularly still remained. The low hanging fruit of excessive and useless notifications had long been eaten thanks to Android’s impressive notification management and some Tasker profiles I had created (blocking Whatsapp notifications at work and Outlook notifications at home being my favorites). Unfortunately my problem was much deeper, probably years of mental conditioning in line with what a former VP of User Growth at Facebook once mentioned to Stanford students, “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works”.

To conquer the final frontier, I tried using the mantra often repeated by my favorite professor Boman Moradian, “People perform on what is measured and how frequently it is measured”, some good old data analysis and gamification.

I logged every time my screen turned on (called ‘Screen On’ or ‘Screen On event(s)’ going forward) using Tasker. While most Screen On events are triggered by me, a small fraction is beyond my control — like when I receive an SMS notification, the charger is plugged in, incoming calls etc. For simplicity I treated all Screen On events in the same way while logging.

After logging every Screen On event with a timestamp for 3 months, I aggregated the data for daily totals and did a quick analysis of maximum, minimum, median, average, standard deviation etc. Some daily totals were too low and I realized that when my phone battery died and some other weird conditions were met, the log for the rest of that day was not captured. I deleted these outliers (2 days’ logs) and plotted what my phone use was on an average day (again, for simplicity I didn’t treat weekends or days I worked from home differently).

After data collection and data analysis, it was time for action. My objective was to reduce phone usage by at least 20%. I placed the counter displaying the total number of Screen On events for the day on my phone’s home screen. I also created a Tasker profile (and action) which was triggered every hour between 8 AM and 9 PM which:

• warned me if my performance was worse than the target (a notification like “Warning: Phone usage is over by 5”)
• did nothing if I was meeting my target

Finally, if my phone use for the day was significantly below the target i.e. 40% below my previous average, there would be a congratulatory notification waiting for me in the morning.

I was trying to train my brain to get a dopamine rush from this notification instead of countless other notifications. After 3 months of implementing these changes, the results are impressive. My phone usage is down 47% from my previous average. Other than 6 days in the 3 month period, I achieved my target every single day.

I’m glad this experiment worked. Even though my phone dependence has reduced significantly, re-calibrating this simple iterative approach (by setting the target against this new average) a couple of times will reduce my phone usage to a point where it will no longer be a problem. I can now resist the urge to check my phone immediately after notifications, something which was unthinkable a few months back.

I might adapt this slightly to meet some other objectives like drinking more water or ensuring I stop using my phone well before bedtime etc.

If you want to curb your phone use too, I suggest starting with some of these simple steps first (nothing drastic):

1. Setup sleep mode (no notifications) which activates at least 90 minutes before your usual bedtime
2. Set your display to monochrome/grey-scale at the same time as above (Tasker and Digital Wellbeing work well for this). A lot of addictive apps will lose their appeal in the absence of color.
3. Your phone should not be on your bed, nightstand or other easily accessible places when you go to bed
4. Do not snooze alarms — that’s the first conscious decision you take every day and you should not be losing your first battle of the day consistently. Though this does not have anything to do with phone usage directly, this constant erosion of willpower affects your other goals too.
5. Use notification settings to disable useless notifications. For example, the poker app I use often sends random notifications like “It’s time for your weekend poker game!”. But it also notifies me when someone starts a game. I have disabled the former notification category but retained the latter.
6. No multi screening i.e. you should not be using more than one of the following devices simultaneously — phone, TV, laptop, e-reader, tablet etc.
7. Limit the use of social networking apps to X instances or Y hours every day using apps or native settings like Digital Wellbeing or ActionDash (Android) or Screen Time (iPhone).
8. Android users who don’t care much about Google Now should turn that feature off. The timeline/feed is trash anyway.
9. Do not remove your phone from your pocket/purse/bag at lunch or dinner when you have company.
10. Establish no use space/time zones for your phone. For example: do not use the phone on the dining table or in the loo or till 10 minutes before leaving for work.