How I broke the spell my phone had over me
Hypno-phonified — The concept that we are all hypnotized by these tiny devices we carry with us 24/7. Our devices have us living in a constant trance-like state. Looking for the next hit of dopamine from the next notification instead of living IRL, being fully present and enjoying moments in time we won’t ever get back. Yet, our devices have become so much a part of us that most of us aren’t aware of the control they have over us.
A couple of years ago, when I first started out on my mindfulness journey, I became more and more aware of where my attention and time were being spent. Only challenge was, it was hard to put tangible numbers behind exactly how much time was being spent looking at my screens. That is, until Apple came out with the Screen Time widget (which is one of my favorite widgets).
Screen Time Widget Example
If you don't believe you are Hypno-phonified, then you go glenn coco and this post might not be for you. However, the first step is always admitting to yourself, and data out there says most likely you are. According to eMarketer, people spend an average of 3.5 hours per day on their phones. With only 24 hours in the day, 7-8 of those spent sleeping, that means the average person is spending ~25% of their waking time each day staring at their phone (and that’s on average! This doesn't include your computers, iPads and any of the other screens we add to our lives).
So, are you ready to break the spell, wake up and use your phone for the powerful tool it can be? Then let's dive right in. I'm going to break down a few tips that ultimately helped me awake from this trance.
Purge that shit!
I'm willing to bet a lot of us have downloaded and acquired tons of apps on our devices over the years. The more apps we have on our phones the more our brains want to pick up the device and mindlessly scroll to see what captures our attention. So, the first tip is to go through your device and delete any unused apps.
Sometimes I've found its human nature to say "eh maybe I'll want that app later" so, being a Digital Marketer, I've learned to follow the data and make data driven decisions. How can you use data to delete apps? Just follow the steps below.
Navigate to Settings and tap General.
Scroll down and choose iPhone Storage.
Wait for the details to load. Scroll down to see a list of apps and the last time they were opened.
Tap an app to see details, offload or delete the app.
If you follow the above steps, you’ll be able to see the following and make a decision right there to either delete that shit or keep that shit:
have you ever used the app before?
when was the last time you opened the app?
List of apps and details on when/if it was used
Clicking into an app allows you to delete it
Set-up your phone with intention
If you have your apps scattered across multiple different pages where it’s a scavenger hunt every time you want to find an app, I’ve found you’re going to train yourself to mindlessly scroll between home pages looking for the app you want. Instead, think about how you want to use you phone and organize you phone around that vision.
If you aren't sure what you've been using your phone for or where to begin a great place to start is to navigate to your Settings and tap Screen Time. From here you can look at what apps you've used the most on a weekly basis (screenshot below) to gain insight and inspiration into what apps are most important to you and what you really use your device for. The more intentional you can be with your home screens set up the less time you will mindlessly spend on the device.
I will post a future blog around how I have decided to set up my home screen in hopes of providing inspiration for anyone who's curious.
A big way that I used to organize myself is via folders and ensuring that all like-minded apps were grouped together. With the release of iOS 14 and the new app drawer page (I'll hold my feelings on that for my home screen set up post) Apple automatically categorizes your apps taking out the hard work. But even if you don’t use this feature, I still recommend you manually categorize the apps you want to use into themed folders and to cut down on the number of screens you can swipe between.
Click here to see your activity
See your weekly activity
Take a minimalistic approach
This one might not be for everyone, but I personally have found the smaller number of home screens the better. I have a total of 3 home screens on my current set up and of those 2 house apps and one is built for a goals and inspiration setup using widgets.
The reason I’ve found this suggestion helpful is because I used to just flick between my home screens out of habit but cutting that down and only having what you need has been a game changer for me. I never just pick my phone up anymore without intent because I've removed option all together.
Turn those pesty notification off
I know, you read this, and you might be thinking to yourself "turn off my notifications, but what if I miss something." yes, that is a valid concern. However, I'm not suggesting that you turn off ALL notifications. And if we are being honest with ourselves, are there that many notifications that if we don’t see that second the entire world will spiral into chaos? When I thought about it myself the answer was', no.
On average, we tend to pick our phones up over 100 times a day. That's because you get notification, after notification screaming "hey, pick me up, look at what you're missing" there is science out there that backs up the dopamine hit we get and how addictive these notifications are. So, I'd recommend you take the following steps, back to data driven.
Navigate to Settings and then tap on Screen Time
Click on "See all activity"
Scroll down to notifications
This will allow you to see what apps are sending you notifications and how many times a day.
Here's another tip. You have OPTIONS as to how these apps can send you notifications. For each app you can let it alert you in the following three ways:
Lock Screen - a notification pops up on your lock screen, the phone lights up and you are sucked in.
Notification Center - possibly one of the most underutilized features of the phone. When your phone is locked, if you swipe up you can see an entire place specifically built to store notifications.
Banners - these are possibly the most annoying of the alerts as I've found it always took me out of a state of flow distracting me and causing my monkey mind to go wild. This is when you are reading an article and ESPN sends you a notification, so this banner shows on the screen before it disappears.
What I'd recommend is that anything URGENT such as messages, phone calls, emails etc you keep them all checked. BUT for anything like Social Media apps, ESPN, dating apps etc just let those go into you notification center and that way you can address them on YOUR TIME when YOU want to instead of the device telling you too.
Different Notification options referenced above
Out of sight, out of mind (social media apps)
Depending on how you organize your phone and the operating system you are using you will either have the option to remove the app from the home screen completely (storing it in the App Drawer) or putting it in a folder, maybe even the second page of a folder so it’s out of sight. This is what I'd recommend you do for ALL your social media apps. Personally, I did this for myself (I use the app drawer feature of iOS14 and so I removed it completely from my home screen). This forces me to pull down and search for Instagram or Twitter every time I want to use the app adding an additional step of friction and making me pick up my phone with the intent of using the apps.
The reality is most all social media apps on our devices are designed to suck us in. YOU are the product and even more importantly your time, attention and eye balls are what the Facebooks, Instagram and Twitters alike are monetizing. As a result, they want you to keep coming back, they want you to feel FOMO about what’s happening in the world.
Tell me you haven't received an IG notification being like "so and so just posted on their story for the first time in a while" - GREAT, WHO CARES!
Use the Do Not Disturb feature (DND)
I've found that this feature is incredible and allows me to disconnect and focus on a specific task at hand. This feature silences all notifications (except for anyone in your favorites) so that you can focus or disconnect without having to turn of individual notifications.
Even better, in the Settings app on your phone you can click DND and set a schedule for when the phone will automatically go into DND mode daily. For example, I have my phone to go into DND at 10:30pm and 7:30am every single day. This allows me to unplug an hour before I doze off without being bothered and to have an hour of silence in the morning setting myself up with a more positive mindset before the day gets started. I cannot stress enough how mentally freeing this feature has been for me.
Hot tip: if you often forget that your phone is on DND you can get around this by setting up a Siri Shortcut to have DND automatically turn back off at a set time.
Last but not least, Do not sleep with your phone next to your bed or if you can in the same room that you sleep
I not only sleep with my phone on DND, but I also put my phone on the other side of the room. The reason I do this, aside from the countless research around how blue light can impact our sleep, is because bedtime is my time to unwind, and I decided to fill that time with reading a book via my Kindle Paperwhite vs. mindlessly scrolling though Twitter or IG. Another benefit here is that when my alarm goes off, I have to get my lazy ass up out of bed to turn that off removing the snooze option all together for me.
