How I reduced my Mobile Screen-time to 25 mins/day

People spend about 4 hours a day in front of their smartphones. That's roughly 50 days per year.

Your smartphone does everything, anything you can think of. It will fill every boring second of your day and it’s bad for you.

You might have heard about “dumb phones”. More and more people are trading in their smartphones for more old-fashioned devices in the name of peace and quiet. I am not suggesting to use it, and neither am I using one.

I can’t use a dumb phone, at least for now. But I made a setup and some rules which makes it really easy for me to reduce my smartphone usage and I guarantee you this will work for you as well.

If you have the willpower to do this I assure you it will be extremely rewarding.

Deleting the distractions

It’s hard to believe but I deleted all of my social media apps. I did not delete the accounts, I can still access them from my browser. Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook are designed to consume your time, delete them as soon as possible.

I can still use Signal or Whatsapp but mute all notifications from groups and chat I don’t need. I can take a look at them at a specific time.

The Setup

You can replicate this setup on any Android phone, for iPhone you will need to figure out some things.

Launcher

Basically, I wanted to make my smartphone dumb, so I tried some Launchers.

I tried Ratio Launcher but felt too complicated for my use case, Niagara Launcher is one of the best minimal launchers out there but I am using Indistractable Launcher.

Indistractable Launcher — Play Store

I use this launcher with AMOLED dark theme which provides a minimal look and also saves battery. It’s got a clean, minimalist look, without too much clutter. There are no catchy icons, there is a clock and date widget. I can customize the list of apps and sort their order.

The best feature is this launcher shows screen usage time on the home screen, which constantly alerts me. This creates a healthy environment where I want to break my previous record and reduce screen time.

Greyscale or Monochrome

I chose to keep black and white as basic colors. I changed my accent color to white and the theme was as always dark. Finally, I switched to greyscale or monochrome. Check the tutorial here.

It is really bad when I want to see a colorful image or use emojis but as I don’t use Social Media on my phone so don't need it. Also, I changed my lock screen wallpaper to a black AMOLED background. Unlocking the phone feels smooth as everything is just black.

Turn Data/Wi-Fi off

I am not suggesting throwing away your sim card. You just need to work on a schedule. I keep my data off and check my texts at night. If there is an emergency someone would call me, if there is an official announcement I would get it by the mail.

Simply knowing that I will not get a text or get notified as my data is off cleared a lot of pings my brain gave before.

Benefits

Here are some of the benefits I found:

• More Productivity
• Less Anxiety
• Mindfulness
• More at rest
• No longer overwhelmed

This changed my life for the better and anyone can try this. This setup doesn’t take away the features smartphones provide, I can still check my email, and use Google maps but I prefer using everything on my PC.

FOMO

A lot of people believe they would miss something, this is referred to as fear of missing out or FOMO. It is the feeling that you are missing out on something fundamentally important that others are experiencing right now.

Social media has accelerated the FOMO phenomenon and it creates a situation in which you are comparing your regular life to the highlights of others’ lives.

Recommendations

You will not be able to switch to this system, it takes time to adjust. You can start by doing some of the things below:

Conclusion:

You can see what works for your best use case, don’t stop trying different setups. I will probably stick to this until I get a dumb phone. In the end, most of the population simply can’t quit it and will remain addicted, staying away from this gives you the ultimate edge to get ahead and do the things you want to do.