Breaking Free From The Scroll
Day-4 of #WriteForWellnessChallenge
In my previous blog, I discussed how doomscrolling affects our well-being and productivity.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, please read it here.
In this blog, I’ll share some practices I’ve used to reduce my screen time.
Turning on Flight mode at night
One major issue I faced was immediately reaching for my phone and scrolling through reels upon waking up, which set a negative tone for the day.
They say mornings determine our entire day, so I decided to change that habit.
Before going to bed, I put my phone on flight mode and made a rule not to touch it until I completed my morning routine.
This led to increased productivity and ensured I didn’t start my day by mindlessly scrolling through reels.
Deleting unnecessary apps and making use of an app timer
Until 8 or 9 in the morning, I kept busy with physical exercise, cleaning my room, and freshening up.
You might wonder how I resisted the urge to check my phone after that.
I realized that every notification tempted me to watch reels, so I deleted unnecessary apps like Snapchat and set a 30-minute timer for apps I frequently used, such as YouTube, Myntra, and Nykaa (for window shopping). I turned off notifications for most apps, keeping only Gmail notifications on.
Setting a timer for YouTube helped me avoid wasting time on reels.
Using chrome extension
I also installed a Chrome extension on my laptop to hide YouTube shorts from the platform.
Make sure to use the extension, if you are feeling that reels are adversely affecting your productivity
Forest app
During work, I treated my phone as a Pomodoro clock, I use the Forest app for focus time. I Make sure my phone is on DND mode during the whole session.
Bonus Tips
Another helpful step was using wallpapers as reminders(Like the one below)
On my home screen, I kept only essential apps like contacts, messages, WhatsApp, and Google. This created friction in accessing apps like YouTube etc.
I designated specific times for checking emails and other notifications, to avoid frequently checking my phone.
It’s important to understand that everyone has different ways of coping, so find what works best for you through experimentation and building your toolkit.
Comment down your way of dealing with excess screen time.
Follow the tag WriteForWellnessChallenge to read all the related blogs.
