Building a Balanced Relationship... with your Phone
At a time where distractions are endless, the most urgent thing for most of us to do, is to somehow break free and actually arrive in the moment. Imagine actually being present at a dinner table without being compelled to check how many likes you got on that Instagram post. Imagine hours of deep productive work rather that hopping from inbox, to social media to online rescue cat browsing. Imagine looking at the people around you, whilst navigating rush hour streets, rather that watching a TV series on your phone and hoping the other commuters will clear a path for you!
As a self-employed person in the wellness industry, with no permanent base, mobile-tech is absolutely key to my career, but I’ve been working on building a healthier relationship with my devices. Here are a few strategies I’m playing with. All take work and perhaps a lot of brain re-wiring.
Tip One - Notifications Off!
There has never been a single pop-up notification I’ve ever received that has been urgent. Not one. And they don’t just notify us do they; they tempt us to press and explore a little bit deeper until the rabbit hole swallows us up. If we let these apps pull us in their direction, every few minutes there will be fewer and fewer moments of effective working and effective peace in your life, guaranteed.
The Practice - Turn off all notifications on all devices, except ones that may legitimately be used for emergencies e.g. phone calls. If you can’t let go of WhatsApp beeps quite that easily, perhaps at least mute most of the conversations except your closest friends/family and break free from those group chats! Where possible, press that big do-not disturb button - remember you can often allow calls from certain numbers to come through after a specified amount of attempts.
Tip Two- Work out intention and don’t deviate
Standing in queue? Get phone out. Walking busy streets? Get phone out. Sitting on the tube? Get phone out. Just made love? Get phone out…. Really? I think we might need to retrain our autopilot so that we stop automatically filling every empty moment with a screen. Let's enjoy the company of our our minds and not fear the slightest whiff of boredom.
The Practice - before you get out that device, take a split second to decide what you actually want to use it for. If there isn’t a need, leave in in your pocket. If there is a need, do that thing, then put device away. Simple as that.
Tip Three - Sacred spaces where tech is no-go
Given our globally, ever connected world, your phone could fill you with a blur of distraction and incessant work emails 24/7. Where do nurturing relationships, self-development or good literature fit around that? We need time away from our devices, but having them in our pockets and simply not using them can require quite a lot from our willpower. The most obvious way to remove the distraction of a phone when you want space, is to be as far as you can away from it; meaning far less willpower needs to be invoked!
The Practice - Decide the times or places when you want space from your device. Times where you know the device would offer nothing, but take away a great deal. My sacred spaces are my yoga mat and our bedroom (I bought an alarm clock!)
Tip Four - Distracting apps out of sight
Some apps are purely functional and no matter how much you want them to, they don’t bring the fun times and offer little by way of procrastination. I’m thinking; Google Maps, Uber, banking apps, stopwatch, calendars etc. These are the apps that go on the first page of my phone screen! The more distracting the app is the deeper it goes in to the belly of the phones and the more clicks I need to make to get to it, hoping somewhere along the way, I stop clicking.
The Practice - Put all of the boring, but useful, apps on the first screen of the phone. Put work apps on the second screen. Put the entertaining apps on the the third screen, in folders. Put the time-killer apps on the fourth screen, in a folder with a name like ‘Really…?” or “U sure…?” If you can bear it, maybe delete the app entirely and only use the associated service on a laptop/desktop browser. That’s one for the brave!
Tip Five - End of day closure
Our devices often keep our lives ticking over and we’re increasingly reliant on them. Along with emails and social. media, I’ll often have a list of task I need to to on my devices by the end of the day: ordering the brother-in-law a birthday card, making a last minute restaurant reservation for that anniversary or checking in for a flight. At some point, we need to be able to switch off, so once you realise you’ve done all you need, close off your online day and find some digital peace till the next morning
The Practice - At some point in the afternoon, make or remake a list of things you’d want to get done on your device, by the end of the day. Do those things as soon as possible and once the last one is done, put that device away unless there is an absolute, in the moment need, like ordering a Uber.
Tip Six - Screen and app time limits
When will power isn’t enough, your device can, with slight condescension, give you a hand. Speaking as an Apple user, their devices have a wonderful function (under ‘Screentime’) where you can set limits on usage time for individual apps and if you try to use it past that time, you have a choice of; not using it, going for 1 more min, 15 more min, or admit you have zero willpower and using it the rest of day, with guilt. I’m sure other phone operating systems have similar functions.
The Practice - My iPhone now stops me from using any entertaining or work related apps, including browsers from 8pm to 8am. I’ve also added a separate time cap on my use of social media apps. If there is something I absolutely need, in the black out hours, I go though the process of getting my laptop out, which normally involves me deciding I don’t actually ‘need’ that thing after all.
Tip Seven - Limit using you device for entertainment
You’d have thought that our wonderful devices, with all their functionality, would mean that we could get all of our work or life tasks done quickly, leaving us with more time for hobbies, socialising, reading and whatever else tickles your fancy, for entertainment . Turns out that we’ve ended up staying on our devices for watered down versions of all of the things above and that new found free time has somehow disappeared. If we can avoid picking up our device for shallow, quick hits of entertainment, we may be able to seize back our leisure time and use that to make the most of the short lives we have.
The Practice - be as deliberate about your ‘free time’ as you are about your ‘work time’. Recognise that you potentially have a good number of free hours, each day, to play with and then plan what you are going to do with them, as much as you might plan a work week. Start by writing down a list of all those things you’ve been wanting to do/read/see and work out how you can fit it in. With that increased focus on maximising the use of your free time, you might hopefully reach for your phone for entertainment, a little less.
Do I do all of the above? Hell no… but I’m trying; relatively hard, actually. The result is that I’m more present, attentive, calm and walk in to things less while, while navigating London.
“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.”
If you’ve got more tips or strategies, pop them in the comments below.