I Gained back Control over my Phone-Habits with these 7 Radical Measures
Every time I spent countless hours on pointless scrolling through meaningless stuff I forgot seconds after it made its way from my tiny screen through my retina, I felt an uncomfortable mix of self-loathing and a creeping headache. Setting up some radical relationship-rules for me and my phone a while ago, therefore, felt tremendously empowering. It was like gaining back control over something that slowly started to gain control over me. Almost like going from smoker to occasional smoker. Here are my radical tips if you too want to make your phone work for you and not on you:
1. Turn off raise to wake
Raise to wake is that nasty function that lights up the screen as soon as you have the thing in your hand and turn it into an upright position. This way you’ll have to actively push a button to turn the screen on.
2. Delete every app you don’t use at least once a week
Thanks to a lot of disk space I literally had hundreds of apps installed. I now have a total of 50, all of which I use regularly and which help me to improve my daily life, not destroy it.
3. Turn off all notifications
I don’t allow any notifications, not even for any kind of instant texts. To see if someone wrote to me I have to go into the app directly and check for messages.
4. Block all incoming calls
Uncontrolled phone calls, at best, interrupt your personal schedule and, at worst, put you in a bad bargaining position. To be fair, I barely did any classical telephoning in the first place, as I usually go by email or instant message, but unexpected phone calls now all go straight to my mailbox.
5. Delete all social media
There is something wonderful and immensely empowering about deleting Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter from your phone. I still love finding creative people on Instagram and Twitter, I just do it on my desktop these days.
Related: How to Reinvent Your Instagram and See More Interesting Stuff
6. Decide on one instant messaging channel and delete all others
I use WhatsApp only and got rid of the Messenger and Telegram.
7. Delete all games
While there are some truly wonderful games with great graphics out there I got rid of all of them without showing mercy.
Pro-tip for true phone-ascetics: Turn your screen black and white
You can actually derive your phone entirely of color in your screen settings which makes it just sad to look at and it’s hands down the best way to not want to look at the thing ever again. I must confess that I couldn’t pull this one through (but tried for two weeks!), as it was just so depressing.
After months of strictly regulating my phone habits, I can safely say that none of my close relationships suffered and I don’t know of any opportunity or occasion that I missed and regretted missing. It’s seriously been just great.