Six Strategies for Stealing Time Back from Our Screens
If you are reading this on your phone in public, take a second to look around you. If the majority of people surrounding you are not heads down, scrolling through their phones, screens illuminating their faces — where do you live?! (I want to move there).
Constantly using our phones is the new normal. Why wouldn’t it be? Phones are amazing. They let us do basically anything from anywhere — figure out the name of a song playing at a coffee shop, know when the rain is supposed to stop to the minute, talk to friends living down the hall or halfway around the world. I don’t need to tell you all the ways that phones make our lives better.
I also likely don’t need to tell you that our constant phone usage might be making our lives worse. We know, from research and personal experience, that our phones can negatively impact our sleep, our focus, our mental health, and our relationships.
And there’s still so much that we don’t know about the longer-term impacts of our smartphones as they have only become ubiquitous over the past few years. In 2011, only 35% of Americans had smartphones; now it’s over 85%.
Smartphones aren’t going anywhere (and they’re only getting smarter), so it’s on us* to figure out how to regulate our usage and reclaim the time that our screens are taking from us.
*Side note: I do think some of the onus is on the technology companies that are developing the devices and applications. While Apple’s Screen Time and Google’s Digital Wellbeing experiments are a step in the right direction, there’s more they could be doing and it’s in their best interest to do so.
January’s Reduced Screen Time Challenge
All of this explains why, for the month of January, I challenged myself to reduce my phone screen time by 50% per week (<11–18 hours), with the sub-goal of trying to stay under 2 hours per day. The real objective was to become more present and productive in my day-to-day life, mitigating the negative effects mentioned earlier.
So how’d I do?
I achieved my weekly goal, and stayed under my 2 hour limit most days (see chart below). While harder to measure, I also feel that I was more present and productive. When I was with people, I tried to keep my phone away, make eye contact, and really focus on our conversation. Similarly, when I was working on a project at work or even doing a simple task at home, I felt like I was more focused and able to get things done more quickly.
I also had a lot more time to think. It took a little while to get comfortable with simply being alone with my thoughts and not turning to my phone in those lulls of daily life—an elevator ride, waiting for the subway—or moments of anxiety, but once I embraced my thoughts, I started having a lot of realizations and ideas (which I captured in a little notebook instead of on my phone).
Here are the strategies that helped me and others who participated in the challenge cut down our screen time:
1. Turn off notifications
Notifications do a great job at their job: getting your attention. It’s clear from the chart above that there’s a relationship between the number of notifications I received and the number of times I ‘picked up’ (aka unlocked) my phone.
Andy Billingsley, who also took on January’s screen time challenge, sums it up well:
“For me, the most difficult part was dealing with notifications. Notifications would serve as my entry into my phone, and then I would get side tracked once I’d unlocked my phone. For example — I’d see a text/email that would make me want to open my phone. Once on my phone, I’d then see other apps that I felt the desire to check, namely, Instagram.”
In addition to notifications sucking you in, notifications are also extremely distracting from whatever you were initially trying to accomplish, and research shows it can take 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption.
The message is clear: only allow notifications for the most important, time-sensitive applications.
I set up the iOS emergency bypass feature so that my phone will always ring when I get a call from my immediate family, even if my phone is on silent, so I won’t feel the need to constantly check my phone.
2. Delete your most addicting applications
If you find yourself spending a lot of unnecessary time on specific applications, it might make sense to delete them altogether. For me, this was Instagram.
Before this challenge, I had a one hour limit for Instagram, but once I set my overall screen time limit at two hours, I couldn’t imagine wasting half (or really any) of that time on Instagram. I like that the challenge forced me to be very intentional every time I used my phone.
Even if you delete an application, you can usually still go on the web version of the app, which can help ‘scratch the itch’ but is less tempting than seeing the actual application on your home screen.
If you still can’t bring yourself to delete an app, use the screen time limits and/or log out of the application after every use.
3. Keep your phone out of sight
Research shows that having your phone on your desk, even if it’s turned off, can reduce our ability to focus on other tasks.
The old saying holds true: out of sight, out of mind.
One of the strategies I found to be the most effective in limiting my screen time was essentially hiding my phone from myself. I would keep it in my bag when at work or at dinner with friends, and at home, I moved my phone charger to the kitchen.
Nicole Yap, my partner-in-crime in tackling these monthly challenges, took a similar approach:
“One of the most effective strategies in limiting my screen time has been putting my phone out of reach before bed. Usually, I charge my phone right next to me before bed and because of that I would spend a lot of time aimlessly scrolling through Instagram until I felt tired. To avoid this, I would set my alarm on my phone and charge my phone overnight in my kitchen area. This was a super helpful strategy and it also helped me avoid snoozing in the morning!”
Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone suggests “turning your cell phone into a landline.” This means picking a spot in your home where you will always leave your phone, forcing you to get up to go use it instead of bringing it everywhere you go.
4. Plan ahead for how you’ll use your extra free time
Cutting back my screen time by 50% meant I was ‘getting back’ 11–18 hours of my week to do whatever I want — that’s a lot of time!
I realized early on how critical it was to make a plan for how I was going to use those hours, especially on the weekends, to prevent myself from getting sucked into using my phone or other screens (e.g., my laptop, watching TV). I read/listened to books/audiobooks, volunteered at a local soup kitchen, slept a lot, exercised, and spent quality time with friends and family.
Cutting back on screen time is really the means to an end. If you’re going to put in the hard work to cut down your screen time, think of the time you gain as a reward and use it to do something you enjoy, or something you’ve been wanting to try but never felt like you had the time.
5. Surround yourself with others who share your goals
When you’re not on your phone, you realize how much other people are on their phones. And seeing other people on their phones makes you want to go on your phone.
Randi Fuchs, my bff since 3rd grade, who also joined in on January’s challenge, explains this well:
“The most challenging aspect of limiting my screen time were moments where I’d be surrounded by friends (or even strangers) that were on their phone while I was trying to avoid looking at my phone. This included my commute, waiting in line somewhere, or down time with friends. It feels like an itch I really want to scratch.”
Like all goals in life, it helps to surround yourself with people who share similar ones. When I would tell friends or coworkers that I was challenging myself to limit my screen time, everyone was supportive and people would usually keep their phones away when we were together. The best scenario is when it’s a shared goal so you can encourage one another and do ‘screen-free’ activities together to fill your free time.
6. Take some time to disconnect completely
While I reduced the time I spent on my phone during the month of January, I found myself using my laptop much more when I was at home. To me, this seemed like a fair tradeoff — being more present around others and productive at work, but then using my laptop to check personal emails and coordinate things when at home.
Still, I recognize switching from one screen to another is definitely not ideal and I wanted to find a way to more fully disconnect.
Kerice Hyatt, one of my colleagues, who participated in the challenge also sees the value in finding time to disconnect:
“Disconnecting is part of self-care. It gave me time to think — time to innovate.”
Inspired by Tiffany Schlain’s book, “24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week,” I did a Technology Shabbat where I completely disconnected from all technology (phone, television, computer) for 24 hours.
I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version, which is narrated by the author and feels as if you’re listening to a podcast (plus, no screen time!). She touches on a lot of interesting topics such as the idea of self-regulation when it comes to our relationship with technology, and how it’s a privilege to be able to unplug from technology (something I tried not to take for granted during the challenge).
Those 24 hours I spent disconnected from technology were probably the best 24 hours of the month — I felt more connected to the people I was with (and myself), I slept better, and overall felt more ready to take on the week ahead. I was forced to plan ahead and actually commit to being somewhere at a certain time (no ‘running late’ texts!).
Although I don’t feel that it’s realistic for me to do a Tech Shabbat every week, I definitely want to try to incorporate them on a regular basis going forward.
Taking time to disconnect helped me appreciate the benefits of technology while also making me realize how important it is to find ways to unplug and be present with others and myself.
I feel that Tiffany Schlain captures this sentiment, which is my overall takeaway from the month, best: “Connecting broadly is meaningless unless we also connect deeply.”
For our February challenge, Nicole Yap and I have been challenging ourselves to live more sustainably by cutting out single-use plastic and our reliance on animal agriculture.
