“If only I had spent more time doom scrolling TikTok!”
– Quote from my book The Bottom 5 Regrets of The Dying.
A few months ago, I noticed that I had spend an entire 24 hours on my phone just in ONE WEEK.
That is “just” 3h25m per day. But to put it into perspective,
Deduct 9h/day for time in bed or asleep and 3h25m becomes nearly 25% of my time awake.
Not what the human animal was designed to do.
| Daily Phone Use | Becomes Weekly Phone Use | % of Hours Awake |
|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | 7 hours | 7% |
| 2 hours | 14 hours | 13% |
| 3 hours | 21 hours | 20% |
| 4 hours | 28 hours | 27% |
| 5 hours | 35 hours | 33% |
| 6 hours | 42 hours | 40% |
| 7 hours | 49 hours | 47% |
The goal of this article is to:
- Increase your awareness of your phone habits
- Reduce your amount of low-quality phone time
Low-quality vs high-quality phone time
Don’t get me wrong though; phones are great. Especially for calling friends and family. The problem is that most of my phone time wasn’t quality phone time.
Before we get into the details, I do want to acknowledge that not all phone time is bad. Obviously.
But having less of
High quality
- Journaling
- Noting down ideas
- Calling friends/family
- Chatting with friends/family
- Creating video content
- Taking photos
Those are all things
Low quality
- Porn
- Candy Crush
- Doom scrolling
- YouTube binging
Those are all things you probably want to do less of.
Reflection questions: You might not have a problem
Reflect on these questions:
- Who is in charge, me or the phone?
- Can I put my phone down when I need to?
- Do I feel anxious when my phone isn’t nearby?
- Do I feel better or worse when I scroll on social media?
- What times of day do I use my phone most frequently?
- Do I check my phone during conversations? How often?
- Has my phone use affected my real-world relationships?
You don’t need to write massive notes on each question, just think about it for a bit and then continue.
Know your baseline
Awareness is key.
Start by going to your screen time right now and check how much you spend on your phone on average.
On iPhone this is easy, just search for “Screen Time” and it will pop right up.
Physically remove it
Doing this one thing can drastically improve your phone use, especially if you have a habits of using your phone in bed.
Create a charging station for your phone that is not in your bedroom.
Digitally block stuff
Use an app blocker like Freedom to strategically block specific apps during the day. For example, I usually have messaging and social media apps blocked from 10pm-10am.
That way I am not even tempted to check anything. It makes it much easier to focus in the morning as well.
Make it boring
Here are a few things to make your phone boring:
- Remove stupid apps
- Remove notifications
- Turn on the grey scale
Those things will reduce the amount of dopamine you get from your phone, automatically making you use it less.