avatarNiharikaa Kaur Sodhi

Summary

The article outlines five practical strategies for optimizing personal life by reducing smartphone dependency and enhancing productivity and well-being.

Abstract

The author shares personal insights on how a period without a smartphone led to significant improvements in health, career, wealth, and relationships. The article emphasizes the importance of creating distance from one's phone to enhance focus, suggesting keeping it in a different room during work hours. It also advises limiting social media use, such as downloading Instagram only once a week, to reclaim personal time. The piece encourages readers to engage in activities other than reaching for their phones when bored, to strategize participation in group conversations to avoid constant interruption, and to curate their digital feeds by deleting and unfollowing accounts that do not contribute positively to their lives. The author argues that these practices can lead to a more fulfilling and present life experience.

Opinions

  • The author believes that smartphones can be a significant source of distraction and that reducing their use can lead to improved mental health and productivity.
  • There is a suggestion that constant connectivity is not aligned with human nature, and that periods of disconnection can lead to increased happiness and self-contentment.
  • The article posits that social media, particularly Instagram, can occupy an excessive amount of mental space and that limiting its use can free up mental capacity for more meaningful activities.
  • The author expresses that the urgency felt in replying to group conversations is often misplaced and that prioritizing responses can help maintain focus on personal goals.
  • It is implied that curating one's social media feeds by unfollowing or muting accounts can significantly reduce negative self-comparison and enhance overall well-being.
  • The author advocates for intentional use of technology, emphasizing that individuals should be deliberate about how they spend their time and energy in the digital space.

5 Things You Can Do Right Now with Your Phone to Optimise Your Life

It improved my health, career, wealth, relationships.

Photo by Bruno Cervera from Pexels

What do you do when you wait for your friend in a restaurant? What do you do while standing in a long queue waiting for your coffee? What is your primary source of distraction while you’re at work?

Was the answer any of this related to picking up your phone? If yes, fret not because the average time an American spend on their phone is nearly 4 hours.

My phone randomly died in July 2020. I was so upset because I bought an expensive phone hoping it’ll work for 5 years. Little did I know phones don’t believe in happily ever after. What happened in the following months changed my life. I got back to my childhood passion of writing, my confidence shot up when people actually wanted to pay me well with the side hobby of mine (as it wasn’t a side-hustle yet), I spent more time with my family and heard their stories, and I genuinely enjoyed eating food without clicking pictures.

My most favourite change was how not scrolling all day impacted my self-talk. I no longer thought I’m too fat or too thin or not good enough, I just got better things to divert my energy to. Funnily, not being self-critical led me to feel so happy and loved, entirely on my own. It’s these little practices I started following when I bought a smartphone four months later.

Imagine living in a mountain with everything you love, Wi-Fi too. You’ll feel so content and happy when every day feels like bliss. That’s exactly how I felt for those few months and tweaked a few things to continue feeling that way as the modern world functions on connectivity. So while I’m back to using a smartphone, my relationship with it has changed so I can continue feeling the contentment and happiness I felt without it.

“Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired.”― Cal Newport

1. Keep it Away

When it’s time to work, keep your phone in a different room. I earlier kept it on DND, then paid for an app that will grow a virtual tree which will die if I touch it. None of it worked as much as eliminating the source of distraction altogether.

Do you catch yourself scrolling in the middle of a boring task? Just for a minute, you tell yourself. That minute could become ten minutes because you also had to check DMs and send memes. These 10 minutes a day equates to losing 5 hours a month, but let's be honest, you scroll out of boredom for more than just ten minutes a day.

Keeping my phone away sharpened my focus. Now when I need a distraction, I look away, realise there's nothing around me to entertain and get back to work.

2. Download Instagram Once a Week

I know this sounds weird, but let me explain.

I was a cringe-y influencer on Instagram with 11,000+ followers. But when I was suddenly left without a smartphone, I realised how amazing everything feels without this app. If my brain was a hard drive, a huge chunk of storage got freed up because I wasn’t seeing hundreds of pictures a day and being so distracted all the time.

Now, I have a small private account so I’m under no pressure to post. I also don’t find the need to check what the world is up to, so I do all celebrity stalking on weekends when I download it for a bit. The entire effort of downloading an app, even though it's just a few seconds, kills the urge to open it. And limiting using it on weekends can help you be productive during the week.

3. Don’t Touch When You’re Bored

Don’t touch the phone* when bored, and even other things, because some things shouldn’t arise from boredom *wink*.

When you’re bored, engage your senses. Look around. Take a few deep breaths, maybe sit up straight and roll your shoulders back. Stretch, go have water. These things will refresh your system and probably get your focus back whereas scrolling can kill your brain cells.

Your brain has a limited capacity to think and function, so why waste it? In fact, be selfish about how you want to use it. With all that dopamine you’ll receive from social media and all the online distraction where one thing leads to another, refrain from using your phone as play-time because the play can last longer than you want it to.

4. Strategise Group Conversations

None of us want to feel FOMO and want to be available for group conversations. Whether you want to network or even when it's a casual group chat with your school friends which is usually dead and comes up once in a while. It’s fun, but you do not need to leave everything and rush to text because a notification is triggering your brain to reply.

The only thing is, this takes away time off what you need to do today to get closer to where you want to be tomorrow. Texts feel urgent, and the read receipt makes people expect a reply as soon as they see a blue tick. But tell me, how often is it really urgent to open that meme or talk about futuristic travel plans?

The intent isn’t to take you off your social circles, but to make your time work for you instead of you working around your phone. Pick and choose what's really urgent, and everything else can wait till you know you’ve used your brain energy well and can expend it on other things.

5. Golden Buttons on Your Phone: Delete and Unfollow

Let go of what no longer serves you. Unfollow whoever makes you feel a lack in your own life, or at least mute them. Delete all those pictures with your ex which take you down the unpleasant memory lane. There’s such a limited time we all have here, why are we choosing to suffer by indulging in this?

When I created a new Instagram account, I muted everybody except my three closest friends. Oh, I also didn’t mute dog pages because it doesn’t hurt seeing them do silly things! I didn’t follow any celebrity or influencer. I confess I have a guilty pleasure of stalking celebrities… but I must do it by owning my time. I do it when it’s convenient for me and when I have extra time, not when something pops up on my feed and takes away my precious time.

You’ll be surprised at how much of your mental chatter reduces when you no longer feel a void. Sometimes we subconsciously compare our daily lives to others’ well-captured life. But when you do this, all that reduces and happier thoughts pop in, and you deserve that.

Takeaways

Here are the five things that changed the relationship between my phone and me and optimised my life:

  1. Keep it away: to eliminate this source of distraction
  2. Download Instagram once a week: to own your time
  3. Don’t touch when you’re bored: refresh yourself instead
  4. Pick and choose group conversations: don’t fall for the fake sense of urgency
  5. Delete and unfollow: let go of what no longer serves you

You deserve to live your best life and take in the little joys. Life’s too beautiful to not experience so many things around you that go unnoticed!

Subscribe to my (free) weekly newsletter about health, travel, and personal development — https://niharikasodhi.substack.com/

If you enjoyed reading this, you might relish:

Self Improvement
Advice
This Happened To Me
Mental Health
Productivity
Recommended from ReadMedium
avatarDeni Sahaya
The Content Strategy That Helps Me Earn $500/Day From Writing Online

I’ve been writing online for four years.

6 min read
avatarRyan Holiday
Character Is Fate: 10 Habits That Will Help You To Live And Be Better

There aren’t too many of us who are satisfied with the person we currently are.

9 min read
avatarFelicia C. Sullivan
How To Write — Even When You’re Not Writing

A deep-dive into my process with examples

17 min read
avatarAnangsha Alammyan
I Started Pole Dancing at 30

5 months later, here’s how waltzing on a pole has changed my life

9 min read
avatarNiharikaa Kaur Sodhi
I’ve Taught 100s of Creators. Here’s What Makes Some of Them Winners on the Internet.

It doesn’t take much but goes a long way.

4 min read
avatarTanvee Dharmadhikari
How Drastically My Life Changed After I Removed Instagram From My Phone

Life became blissful!

4 min read