Addicted to Phone, Want to Stop

Stuff other people didn't say:

- You can make your screen black and white (gray scale) on both iOS and Android. This make is much less fun.

- If you have the habit of instinctively taking your phone and unlocking and opening something, make your phone harder to unlock (by having a hard to type passphrase and disabling the other unlock methods) and hide all your favourite apps deep under menus, submenus and folders. You can also wrap it on elasctic band, baby socks or whatever that makes it a little more inconvenient to automatically grab and unlock it. This may give you some time to realize you got your phone again and maybe it should go back into the pocket.

Recognize the underlying needs. For example,

- People need to read news. It isn't optional for most people. Suppressing it will only make it worse. So read offline, get a physical news paper if necessary. Or read on designated computer at a designated time. Stick to it, and your phone as your connection to the civic world dissolves

- Are you meeting family/people? If you are not, please do. If you use chat/whatsapp, stop doing it. Call them frequently

- Do you day trade options? May be consider changing your investment strategy

- Do you play games? May be play them on console of your choice.

I hope you are seeing a pattern here. If you can see what you spend most of your time on phone(most modern phones do it), you recognize the underlying need, and be able to substitute it.

Lots of people will come in here with technological solutions. Adding limiting software and blockers may help with some aspects of a phone distraction habit, but they're unlikely to solve the problem long term.

The first step is to notice why you're using the phone. Since this habit is likely very strongly engrained it will be difficult to notice.

Here's an example from my life:

I'm working on problem -> I don't understand what to do next -> I feel confused and anxious -> This feeling is unpleasant and I want to avoid it -> I pick up my phone to browse something meaningless to take my mind off of the unpleasant feeling.

Your exact triggers and feelings might be very different. Finding the pattern of your thoughts is the important thing. With this in mind, you can start to understand why getting rid of the phone probably won't help. You will just replace it with another activity.

I tried switching to a dumb phone and cutting the internet off to my house for 6 months. It didn't help that much. Instead I would deal with the unpleasant feelings by watching TV or picking up a book.

Your habit was built over months and years. You won't change it in a day. The first step is just noticing your feelings (harder than it sounds!).

I recommend the book Indistractable [1]. It gives a lot more detail about how these internal distractions are the root cause of a lot of procrastination habits. Just reading the book will not fix your problem in the same way as reading a book on running will not get you through a marathon. You have to put in the work over weeks and months.

Good look. With time and effort you can change this habit.

[1]https://www.nirandfar.com/indistractable/

Drop the phone, and I mean it. Switch to a dumb phone, switch off from social media, use only phone calls and text messaging as much as you can.

If you must carry a smartphone, keep it in airplane mode and offline when out and about or when working. If it can switch off at a predetermined time every day, make it switch itself off for the night to avoid staying up late.

It's challenging, but it's possible. Don't be put out by failures to stick to the plan, just move on and do it.

Interestingly enough, I just found these articles recently and implemented this, it has been huge for me. I get hooked on my phone for work, but then end up falling into the black hole of distraction. By making it into a tool, and removing work related stuff, I find that I end up only using it for a few minutes each day. I still have it for the useful stuff though, maps, music, strava, etc. but when I need to look something up or check in on work, I have to go grab my computer.

I honestly feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I am way more present with my family.

https://medium.com/make-time/six-years-with-a-distraction-fr... https://medium.com/make-time/the-distraction-free-android-2f...

Haha, I lost my phone literally 3 weeks ago and I realized that's the best way to deal with it, lol. It sucks when I have to do 2FA, forces me to borrow someone's phone and plug my sim card, but nonetheless the peace of mind is really there.

Generally, there are ultimately 2 options:

1. If it's really addiction — then any addiction is a symptom. No much value fighting it if root causes are not addressed.

Find what are you running from, what are you hiding from, what is it that you scared about etc. Good therapist can help.

2. Else — you just trying to escape the ultimate act of "just stopping it" by fooling yourself and trying to hide behind some fancy technique or smart advice.

Or even worse — you're trying to find excuse to continue doing it.

This never works — in the end you'll have to make the final act and just stop it, and it's 100% on you to do. No other way. So don't waste your time and start with final step — just stop it, turn off all notifications, delete all apps etc.

1. Don't keep social media, work email, or slack on your phone. Just have a browser, texting and phone. Resist apps.

2. Turn off all nearly all notifications

3. Treat it like a wired phone. Keep it in one room with the ringer on. Go to it if someone calls…

4. Aggressively use Do Not Disturb to limit times when you’re disturbed by calls/texts

5. Silence calls from people not in your contacts.

6. Read paper books. They have the added feature of being distraction free.

7. Learn to live without it. Go places without your phone. Even a walk or outing is a good break. You’ll learn you don’t need it.

8. Meditate to reduce the need to alleviate boredom and discomfort.

9. Camping and outdoor activities without a phone can be a great detox.

10. Look at situational reasons you are avoiding/hiding from via your phone.

I have the same problem... things that have helped a little:

use sempo launcher Wich diminishes the amount of notifications one has

for a while I switched to an eink phone... with this my YouTube consumption went down considerably...

but still not enough. Now I'm planing on getting a dumb phone.

In my experience, 'the phone' is a proxy for another issue. Like am I avoiding my family? Am I avoiding thinking of something uncomfortable? Or procrastinating something important? Or avoiding some hard feelings or a tough reality?

As an example, I know of a family where some children of divorce withdrew to compulsive MMORPG gaming. The parents blame the games. The reality is it's the divorce and the kids avoiding the feelings around it. OTOH I've seen families have their own minecraft server where that's a source of play and fun with kids...

So stop.

Leave the phone on the charger. When you fail and pick it up again, even hundreds of times, recognize what you did, and immediately put it back on the charger. Repeat.

Yeah you can make your phone show in black and white, or set up artificial locks, but your lack of willpower will quickly make its way around those poor restrictions.

There is no "magic pill". Work on your willpower and self-control. When you falter, forgive yourself and immediately get back on path. It will pay dividends throughout life.

I've never owned a mobile phone, that works for me. (I still have the problem of other people in my life addicted to theirs though!)

Get rid of the phone.

What would you tell someone with a Drug problem?

ScreenTime on iPhone helps. Have someone else set the pin for you so that you can't work your way around it.

Also, one of these timer based lock boxes may help: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=lock+box+timer+for+phone

95% of the world is hooked on the screen drug. Most people under 30 can't even socialize.

tldr: Cold turkey.

Recently read 2 books about this: indistractable and digital minimalism

Recommend them

Main takeaways for me

- turn off all notifications

- screen time + give passcode to spouse

- set specific times and places to check things i.e I only check Facebook on my desktop , I only open Twitter on Saturday mornings

Change launcher, if you’re on Android. Try Olauncher.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.olauncher/

Search for dopamine detox. I believe the issue is bigger than the phone itself and it's coming from our body. We need to understand our brain more, why it's always seeking for phone.

You could try screen time which is built in

Change to an older, crappier phone

go prepaid using voucher system where you have to go to a physical store to get the voucher and then practice cold turkey for 1 whole day between recharges.

I recently went through the same thing with relatively good success, here is what I did

1. Turn off notifications. Originally my lockscreen was always flooded with notifications. Turning off notifications helped me to look less after my phone. My Gf and my parents are the only ones who can reach me immediately with a notification

2. Get rid off social media. I initially tried limiting my screentime to 30min a day for my social media apps. But 30 minutes for 3-4 social media apps does add up and it's hard to resist the urge of disabling the screen setting entirely. So drop your social media apps entirely. It also helps if you block/limit them on your computer as well.

3. Don't sleep with your phone in your bedroom/don't use it as an alarm clock. I usually used my phone as an alarm clock in the moring, which often lead me to scroll through instagram/youtube before even getting out of bed. Instead of using your phone as an alarm clock, get a radio alarm or something similar for cheap. Leave your phone in the kitchen or somewhere else for charging.

4. Leave your phone at home. Try to leave your phone at home when going grocery shopping or similar tasks. Don't try to go without a phone for a whole day in the beginning, that is a huge mental hurdle and makes it likely to fail. Take baby steps, but going without a phone for a day should be your goal.

5. Develop a coping mechanism. I mainly use my smartphone to fight boredom and stress. Identify situations that make you use your phone and find an alternative coping mechanism for those. When you're bored, start a sideproject, find a new hobby or start working out, etc. When you're stressed find alternative coping mechanisms like meditation etc.

6. Establish phone free days. This is one step further than 4.) but should be possible once you already saw some improvements. I spend one day a month entirely without a phone and go on a day trip with my partner. Try to establish such a day to, but make sure that such a day doesn't lead you to being stuck in situations where your smartphone initially was your coping mechanism. This would most likely result in a relapse.

7. Cancel data plan/limit volume. A more dramatic approach would be cancelling your data plan for your phone. Being able to reach someone via phone is enough availability when on the go. So a regular phone plan is sufficient. However, this approach is not really helpful when your main problem is being on the phone while at home.

Alternatively you could try quitting cold turkey, but in my experience this is super hard and basically impossible to maintain the success. The more gradual approach as described above might seem slower, but personally I was able to realize improvements much faster than when trying to quit cold turkey. It still required quite a bit of discipline, but it is doable at least in my experience.