12 hours to 6 hours: How I Reduced My Screentime to Live a More Fulfilling Life
Simple tricks to cut down your phone usage
You’re working on a task and the phone buzzes…
You take a look, nothing interesting and you move on to do what you were doing.
But there’s more to it than that…
Studies show that after a distraction, it takes an average of 23 minutes to get your focus aligned on what you’re doing before.
But notifications are just a part of the Issue.
The broader issue that needs to be addressed here is Smart Phone Addiction itself.
Habitual Smartphone Use: You end up using your phone mindlessly due to habit even when you don’t need to.
It’s a result of the interplay between these three components…
- Prompt: Trigger factors like notifications which start the habit loop of picking up your smartphone and starting to use it.
- Ability: The ease of picking up your phone and start using it mindlessly
- Motivation: Being bored with what you were doing previously.
You can stop your habitual use of smartphones by meddling with each of these components. Here’s how…
- Use Passwords
You might find it surprising but turning off your Face unlock and Fingerprint and using a password to unlock your phone has been found helpful in reducing screentime.
Having to physically type the password adds a layer of friction to using the phone.
2. No Notifications
Open your settings and turn off push notifications of the majority of apps.
You’ll be surprised by how little you need those notifications from apps that you may think are helpful.
The peace that comes with not having to impulsively pick up your phone with every notification is priceless.
3. Not In Sight
From your home screen, remove all the social media apps.
Just by following this simple step; by increasing the friction of opening the app, you’ll be able to decrease the screentime by a lot.
4. Computers:
Put your Mail apps and Social media apps on your computer.
By making it hard to access, you’ll only open them when you really need them.
Avoiding mindless use of social media apps.
5. Friction Interventions:
Turning on the Greyscale mode on your phone has also been shown to help reduce your screen time.
What doesn't work:
While Researching for this I came across an interesting fact that contrary to what would seem logical, Screen time monitoring is not shown to have any effect in reducing screen time.
Something that might seem helpful but is not of much use.
Problematic smartphone use interferes with well-being by negatively impacting activities like sleep, exercise, and socializing.
These simple steps will help you cut down your screen time and you can be more mindful of what you spend your time on.
I would like to recommend a great book I read about this topic :
Follow if you’d like to see more stories like this :-)
