Screen -Life Balance | 7 Ways to Have a Healthier Relationship With Your Phone

Is your phone the first thing you reach for in the morning and the last thing you touch before bed? Do you say you want to spend less time on your phone—but either you tried and it didn’t work or you have no idea how to do so without giving it up?

When we frequently pick it up “just to check,” only to look up,  forty-five minutes later wondering where the time has gone? The average person spends more than four hours a day on their phone. That adds up to 60 full days a year—and nearly a quarter of our waking lives. 

Next time you complain that you don’t have enough time to read more books or exercise, remind yourself of this. You spend almost 60 days on the phone in a year!

This has two major major consequences;

1. FOMO ( Fear Of Missing Out): This causes stress because we release cortisol. We are often unaware of this stress. When we are reaching for the phone every minute, we are constantly alert. Sad thing is: when we let go of the phone, it is a constant feeling of emptiness, a state of controlling something. 
2. Lack of Attention: Looking at our phones constantly has become a default state: in the elevator, in the car, on the subway, in line, on the street, in the office, at dinner with friends, in the living room with family. Whenever there is a moment of boredom we reach for our phone to distract ourselves. We’re less productive and less engaged with the people and the surroundings in our lives as a result.

7 Tips for a healthy relationship with your phone

1. Questions to Ask Yourself

Catherine Price - author and science journalist - suggests the questions below;

• Why did I pick up my phone? Was I waiting for an important mail? To buy something, check something?
• Why now? To handle something urgent? We usually pick it up for emotional reasons. When we are alone, when we are nervous and want to calm down, or when we are bored.
• Once you answer the above, ask yourself again;  what else can I do instead of playing with  my phone? If I'm nervous, can I make myself a cup of tea or coffee? Maybe I can try a short breathing exercise or walk?

If loneliness is the case, can I call a loved one instead of looking at people's lives on social media? Or can I go out and mingle with people? Studies show that loneliness is as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

If boredom is the case; can I read a book or do something I’ve been putting off? Or, the hardest but most useful thing, can I just watch my thoughts without doing anything?

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone," wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal.

It's a line repeated so frequently, in the era of smartphones and social media, that it's easy to forget how striking it is that he wrote it in the 1600s.

2. Set Boundaries

Price recommends turning off all notifications, including email notifications. If you are worried about missing a call or email from work or a family member, put them on a special VIP list so they alone have notifications. Price also recommends creating no phone zones like the dinner table and the bedroom, and time limits like no phones after 6 p.m. She champions deleting social media apps from your phone and only checking them from a desktop. If you can’t delete social media from your phone for work, or other apps like games or shopping that distract you, download an app blocker. Write rules and set boundaries that dictate the sort of relationship you want with your phone–use them as a tool to set you up for success.

3. Delete the apps that are not vital

If you have apps that take a lot of your time and aren’t vital, what do you lose if you delete them from your phone? 

4. Practice trial separations

Leave your phone at home while you go for a walk. Look out of the window during your commute instead of checking your email. At first, you may be surprised by how powerfully you crave your phone. Pay attention to your craving. What does it feel like in your body? What’s happening in your mind? Keep observing it, and eventually, you may find that it fades away on its own.

5. Make it Inaccessible 

Can't you just look at it from the desktop instead? To prevent it from being easily accessible to you. For example, if you're trying to eat healthy, you wouldn't always keep unhealthy food in the fridge, would you?

6. Make a priority list

Make a priority list of the things that are important to you. Stick it on the back of the phone or take a screenshot. I.e: one of my friends keeps his daily routine as a screenshot and it works pretty well for him. So you can decide how you want to spend your time instead of spending time on the phone.

7. Create a habit

Establish a habit and routine about what you want to do and what you postpone. For example, when we finish work in the evening, what can you do instead of swiping on your phone while watching Netflix? You can find other things to do with the time you usually fill playing games, scrolling through social media or mindlessly looking at your phone can be shifted toward taking up a hobby or trying something new. You can hike, go to a museum, host a game night, draw, go on a date, cook, do a crossword in a café, sign-up for a class, read a book you’ve been meaning to pick up, spend more time with your friends and pets. All of these activities are healthy, help you to boost dopamine hormones and are productive uses of time that will ultimately make you a happier, healthier person.

Cal Newport in his book called Digital Minimalism, reported that most of the participants  read more books, spend time on their hobbies, spend more productive time with their families and loved ones, and do more sports and volunteering activities when they spend less time on the phone.

I also think it's  important to ask, does the time I spend on the phone or on social media support my values and what I want to do in life, where I want to be? If you say yes to this answer, continue using it.

If you ask me do I really apply all the things I listed above?  I can proudly say yes! Thanks to them I can work 9-5 job, produce podcast content, exercise 5 days a week, walk in nature, spend time with my loved ones, read a lot of books and create time for my hobbies. But whenever I start to spend a lot of time online, my stress levels are high and I am not productive at all. That's why I'm trying to keep my awareness high on this issue. 

Further Reading and watching

Catherine Price- How To Break Up With Your Phone

Cal Newport- Digital Minimalism & Deep Work

Mark Boyle - The Way Home: Tales from a Life Without Technology 

The Biggest Little Farm - Netflix documentary - tells about the farm they built from scratch in nature

Captain Fantastic - Movie

Social Dilemma - documentary - I guess there is no one who has not watched

Thanks for reading Mindfully Yours newsletter, I hope you enjoyed the topic. Here are some ways to access more mindful living tips:

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Warmly,

Emine