6 ways to spend less time on your phone (and more time with people)
If you thinking it’s time to unplug but are struggling to look away, I’ve got some tips for you.
Modern technology has allowed us to do some amazing things. With a single hand-held device, I can navigate my way to somewhere I’ve never been without getting lost, take a photo of something beautiful without needing film, and instantly send that picture to a friend on the other side of the world without a postage stamp.
But I can also spend hours lying on the couch with my eyes glued, and fingers mindlessly scrolling the social media feeds of strangers who I’ll never actually meet, watching them live their easy glamourous lives while my own passes me by.
The average person over 3 hours a day on their phones. But it’s not just the total screen time that has an impact, but how often we look at our phones.
Most people check their phones 58 times a day (with 30 of those being through working hours).
So, if you’re reading this and thinking that maybe it’s time to unplug a bit more and get some of that time back from your screen, I’ve got some tips for you.
Start small
Set small goals for restricting times when you don’t want to look at your phone. Say you wake up at 8 am. Promise yourself that you won’t look at your phone until at least 8:10 am. Once that becomes normal for you, push it out a bit further, 8:20 am, 8:30 am, and so on.
Or maybe your goal could be about where you look at your phone? Maybe you won’t take it to the bathroom with you anymore. Or will leave it in another room during dinner. Just remember to start small and work your way up slowly to larger goals.
Make it harder to open
Like standing in front of an open fridge, not quite sure what we want to eat, at least some of those 58 times we look at our phone we are doing it without a set purpose. So why not make it more difficult to unlock your phone? Try turning off the biometric functions and changing your lock to a custom alphanumeric passcode. The hope is this extra work will make you less likely to open your phone without a specific intent in mind.
Go a step further and treat your phone like a landline. Give it a single place in your house that it will live – and leave it there. That way, you’ll have to get up and go to it before you even start trying to open it.
Reorganize your apps
Let’s be honest, it’s not really the phone itself that you’re addicted to, but the apps on it. So just like the last tip, make it harder to find them. Create groups of apps and put the ones you’re most guilty of wasting time on the second page of these groups. While you’re at it, take the groups with your most toxic apps off your home screen and put them on the second (or even third) page of your phone.
Each gesture it takes to find the offending apps is an additional opportunity for you to remember why you wanted to hide them in the first place.
Get better apps
After all, they’re not all bad. Try downloading some fitness, meditation, education, finance, or language learning apps and put them in the places you used to have the apps you’ve now hidden.
You may notice though, that these good and healthy apps are probably more expensive than the ones they’ve replaced. Don’t let this put you off. Think of it like this, those free apps you’re so addicted to, are only free because they are earning their money from your addiction. They don’t think of you as anything more than a set of eyeballs they can sell to advertisers. The apps that do care about you, all of you, can only continue making your life better if you support them in return.
Get to know your modes
Your phone actually has plenty of inbuilt ways to help curb your impulses to look at it. Get acquainted with some of the following modes on your device.
- Do Not Disturb
- Airplane Mode
- Greyscale Colour Filters
- Notification and Badge Settings.
I won’t presume to tell you which to turn on, or when and where you need to use them, but ask only that you check out what each function does and reflect on when each might be useful for you.
Go analog
Yes, it’s amazing that one device can do all these things, but I’ve never become addicted to looking at a watch on my wrist. And while I have been guilty of spending hours with a nose in a book, the yellowed musty pages of my thrift store paperbacks aren’t messing with the hormones that help me sleep. Buy a real alarm clock for your bedside. Use a real pen and notebook.
At the very least, give your eyes a rest from the screen, and use your phone for its original purpose and call a friend instead of texting them.
Interested in other ways to connect with people? Why not check out my article on Fika, the Swedish coffee ritual.
About the Creator
Jacynta Clayton
As a child I wanted to be a mermaid when I grew up - or a writer. As I got older and discovered seashell bras to be impractical professional daywear, I started focussing on the latter.
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