Through the years, I see more and more people saying, “I can do it on my phone”. And an advertising campaign from Apple with the slogan “There is an app for that” doesn’t help. The problem is, they do everything with their phones nowadays: walk, eat, sleep, …
I’m not a doctor, but that behavior doesn’t look healthy. And some health expects agree. Some say that modern tech is addictive by design.
Why not limit the phone usage and slow down from time to time? By following a few of the below steps:
- In the morning, try to wash your face and do the breakfast without any tech.
- While eating, try to enjoy every bite of your meal, not rushing it.
- While walking, try to observe the surrounding nature, listen to the birds, feel the wind, …
- Before sleep, try to limit cold light sources and spend some quality time with the close ones in a lovely conversation, for example.
- During the day, try to limit each phone usage to be under 20 minutes, with a few minutes break to look around and take a break.
- Dedicate a day in a week to be phoneless/screenless/techless, don’t forget to notify your close ones about it, in advance ;).
It can be hard to do it at first. But you can leverage other tricks on the phone itself:
- Disable notifications for most of the apps.
- Use a monochrome/grayscale mode (usually hidden under “Accessibility” settings).
- Use a screen limit (“Digital Wellbeing” in Android and “Screen Time” in iPhone).
- Remove the most annoying and rarely used apps from the phone.
- Prefer web version instead of app.
Personally, I prefer to have an almost-dumb phone (a smartphone, which can hardly do a single messenger app and some music player at best times). Because it’s hard to enjoy spending too much time with it. Just the bare minimum to complete the task at hand, be it a weather check, a one word reply in a messenger, or a call… In any way, don’t rush anything new; start slow and see if it fits you well.