Sweeping tips on how to hang less on your phone

Starting to use these principles, I finally regained my own life

He is in his pocket. Lies on the table. Waiting for you in the cup holder of the car.



You want to use it. Come on, take it and ease the boredom or discomfort. You can even simply leaf through news headlines - and not try to type words on a blank screen. And why continue to argue in a raised voice with your spouse (or spouse) when someone posted something on Instagram again? "Kid, I'm sorry, I can’t play dinosaurs right now - I need to answer the letter."



That's what our phones have turned into. They are for us an opportunity to escape from reality and at the same time a constant burden. I remember when I got the first BlackBerry, it was an exciting and surprisingly touching moment. Not because of the admiration for technology, but because it meant that someone at work decided that I was an important person enough to need such an apparatus.



However, over the years, this pride has come to naught. The telephone, once a source of freedom (one could check e-mail without returning home - and more time was left for other classes), in the end became a burdensome burden. He no longer helped at work, but vice versa: the phone prevented, as Cal Newport says, from getting into work — maintaining focus, focus, and realizing creative opportunities. He no longer brought joy to life - but rather made me miserable.



Therefore, some time ago, I began to think about how to sit less on the phone, and how to get benefit from these technologies without burdening myself with minuses.



If you are striving for the same goal, the rules outlined in this article can help you: some of them are simple, others are more difficult to implement, and some will probably seem crazy - maybe they are. But they work.



Translated to Alconost

Turn off all alerts

My lock screen is almost always empty - and not because nothing happens or no one needs me: I just went into the phone’s settings and turned off all the default alerts, except for SMS and notifications about really emergency situations. (We have flash floods and tornadoes in Texas .) Even when I unlock my phone, I don’t see red circles showing how many messages or notifications I have. I don’t need Strava, who will say that I need to go in and check for updates. On my phone, no application is allowed to make noise and buzz. (I turned off the vibration for SMS.) If there are no notifications, then you need to be less distracted, and the fear of missing important things is also reduced.





Photos - Rodion Kutsaev, Unsplash

Determine how you can be contacted

One of the best decisions I made several years ago was to limit the ways in which I can be reached. Many today have email, a phone number for SMS and calls, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, private messages on Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn, Slack, Telegram and God knows what else. No wonder people are overloaded with information.



Basically, I limit myself to three ways of communication: I can call, send SMS or email. Mail - for questions about work, SMS - for friends and family, and if someone calls, usually this is something important from one of these groups. I no longer need to check twenty different applications and folders fifty times a day: I know that everything important will come from one of three channels.

Leave the phone in another room before going to bed.

Senator Ben Sass from Nebraska is known for giving young employees old-style alarms - not so that they arrive on time, but so that they have no excuse to leave the phone on the bedside table. If the alarm clock is not a clock application, then the phone can be left in another room - and you will not be able to sit in it at night.



Yes, you will not know that an SMS or letter has arrived. But you won’t be tempted to leaf through the pages of social networks. You will have to lie alone with your thoughts, read a book - maybe you will even fall asleep on time.

Start your morning without a phone

About six months ago, I was challenged in a Spar habits app: not touching the phone for the first 10 minutes after waking up. For several years I had left the phone for the night in another room, but in the mornings I usually clutched at it first thing.



The incentive was significant: for each violation of the rule you had to pay $ 10. But the main advantage was that I had the opportunity to give the first minutes of wakefulness to my son. So after a while I complicated the task: 10 minutes turned into 30, then at 45, and finally at the hour. Now, when I write in the mornings, the phone can lie alone until lunch - on such days I feel happier and more productive.

Buy a smart watch

I'm not a big fan of the logic of “solve a problem with one device by buying another”, but in this case this approach really works. Thanks to the presence of a watch connected to the phone, which I don’t use as the phone itself, I began to spend less time behind it, and this helped to curb the desire to always keep it close. The only notifications allowed on the watch are calendar reminders and phone calls that are somehow related to work. In addition, calls can be rejected without removing the phone from your pocket.

Buy Wireless Headphones

The absence of the cable connecting me to the phone is of great importance: I want to listen to music, but I do not want to be tempted to look through the mail, I want to talk on the phone, but I do not want to simultaneously sit on social networks.

Get rid of social networking apps

I'm old enough to remember the days when Facebook and Twitter came from a computer, and not from applications that are with us 24 hours a day. Such a world was a little less terrible than the one in which we live today. It used to be fun on Twitter, and people posted photos of their dinners on Facebook - now they are arguing there and there.



The decision to remove social networks from the phone significantly reduced the role of these applications in my life. Twitter is good as a social network where you can have fun from time to time. But using it as a notebook for every first thought that comes to mind is not a good idea.

Do not use your phone for entertainment - never

Why do mobile operators make deals with Netflix? Why did AT&T buy DirecTV? Because they want to make a phone look like a TV. They want to enter us data and entertain almost intravenously. It is beneficial to them, but disadvantageous to us. I don’t watch movies on the phone on the plane — I read books. If I want to watch TV, I will have to sit on the sofa and click the remote control.



And since it’s about entertainment, delete the games too. The most intelligent psychologists, designers and marketers have worked to make them as exciting and absorbing attention as possible, so getting rid of games is one of the easiest ways to start using the phone less. My phone is for communication, not for entertainment; and strict adherence to this rule helps to control the impact of the phone on life.

Get two phones

Chris Pfaff, nicknamed Drama , the founder of the Young & Reckless apparel brand, once told me that he has two phones: one for work and one for entertainment. The latter - with all the social networks and other favorite apps - remains in the car while Chris is at work. Of course, they laugh at him when he has to go to the garage to send a message, but it works. If you can afford it, be sure to try it.

Do not sync your phone with a computer

If the phone has become a distraction machine, then the computer should be a tool for focused work - and the more these two areas are separated, the better. It was not enough for the computer to start ringing. Why the hell do I need SMS on my work computer? The less they interrupt you, the better.

Print your flight tickets at the airport

When I need to fly somewhere, first of all I print a ticket on self-registration monitors. Firstly, barcodes from the phone’s screen are never read, and I can’t stand people who delay the queue trying to position the phone correctly. Secondly, and this is more important, I do not want to keep the phone at hand: a piece of paper in my pocket tells everything I need for a flight, so you can put the phone in your backpack and forget about it. The phone’s presence time in my life will decrease just a little bit - but I take everything I can, even such a trifle.

Use the child protection feature - for yourself

Do you know that you can block certain sites on your phone? Therefore, if you uninstall the Facebook application, but still go to the site in a browser, then you can use the parental controls - and protect yourself. I decided to stop going to several sites, so I complicated myself visiting them.

Total Stripping

Delete contacts you don’t use. Remove unnecessary applications. Clear cookies. Do you really need an app from the mall? Is it really necessary to keep both Lyft and Uber on the phone? Simplify your life. The phone wants to remember everything in order to make using it more convenient - do not give in.

Do Not Disturb - Your Friend

Use this feature everywhere: when you sit in a meeting, when you go to the cinema, when you do something with your family. Fence off people, letters and SMS. Protect your privacy. Enjoy the moment.

If possible, replace the phone with something else.

If you read news on your phone, try subscribing to a newspaper or magazine. If you are looking for a restaurant, ask a friend. If you use the countdown application for games with children, buy a kitchen timer. Yes, with a phone, all this can be simpler - if you do not take into account the senseless scrolling of news feeds into which we are immersed as soon as we do what we wanted. The less the phone is used to solve trivial tasks and simplify life a little, the less you will depend on it.



OK, but why use the phone? Well, he has a lot of useful things. This is a calculator. It allows you to search for the right information on the go. Use it to take photos. I listen to music and podcasts on it. You can still build routes. You can call Uber, who will pick me up anywhere in the world. I make a schedule on it for myself. I am writing personal notes. I jog and swim. Leaving far, I communicate on video with children.



Thanks to the ability to do the above, my life has become better. But I want to get rid of what just prevents me from doing all this.



Because it is my life, and it is shrinking every second . I want to live it, and not pass by, staring at the screen.



About the translator



The article was translated by Alconost.



Alconost localizes games , applications and sites in 70 languages. Native translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, project managers 24/7, any format of string resources.



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