Dealing with your phone addiction

Published on February 12, 2023

The title may be a little exaggerated, but we all use our phones too much. Rather than changing everything at once and giving up your phone entirely, there are better intermediate options.

A phone is not inherently bad, but it does invite mindless use. Something that takes up an enormous amount of time and eventually costs you sleep too.

The goal is really to explore when your phone can help you be productive.

Your phone is a wonderful tool

When you stop to think about it, today’s mobile phone really is a wonderful tool. You have the internet, video editors and word processors. Almost everything you can do on your laptop, you can do on your phone too.

You do not need to give all of that up. Just work out how to use it the way you want! Some things may work a little less well on a phone, but there is often a way around that too.

For example, I use my phone to write for fri.so in spare moments.
When I am relaxing on the sofa at home, my phone sits on the coffee table with an external keyboard connected. That lets me half-watch TV and half-type away.

You make things easy and enjoyable for yourself.

Using your phone consciously

Using your phone consciously starts with being aware of how you use it.

Just try opening the digital wellbeing tools that come with Android or iOS. What do you spend most of your time on? What time of day is that? Is it before work? After work? When you are relaxing on the sofa, or while you are at work?

The second step is to ask yourself whether that is what you want. There is nothing wrong with enjoying some reels and sending them to your friends now and then. As long as you are aware of it. A conscious choice is always better than doing something mindlessly. That way you understand what it costs you and what you get out of it.

Producing versus consuming

While most people only use their phones to consume, you can also use yours perfectly well to make things.

An instructor I used to have made entire presentations on her phone.

Creating certain content on a phone often takes some getting used to because of its small form factor. But sometimes that is precisely what makes it useful. When you are on the bus, for example, or when you arrive somewhere early and have some time to wait.

All these little moments add up. How nice would it be to decide for yourself: at these moments I will produce things, and at those moments I want to enjoy consuming some information?

No particular balance is right or wrong. It only becomes a shame when you mindlessly do one thing while you would actually rather be working on your blog.

Consuming consciously

You can also consume content deliberately. It does not have to mean endlessly scrolling through Instagram reels.

Reading books on your phone

Your phone is an excellent device for reading books.

There is a very nice Android app for this called Lithium. It even has day and night modes and remembers where you left off.

Audiobooks and podcasts

Along similar lines, you can listen to podcasts or audiobooks.

The good thing is that you can listen without holding your phone or looking at the screen.

Ideal for making something boring more interesting, such as a train journey or household chores.

Curating your feeds deliberately

You can also deliberately set up the apps that normally pull you into a vortex of shorts, reels and timelines.

Create new accounts where you ONLY follow subjects you are interested in.

If, like me, you love triathlon, follow informative feeds that explain things about triathlon.

Are you looking more for humor? Then you can follow comedians on YouTube or Instagram.

Asking questions and looking things up on Reddit

These days it is also very easy to access Reddit communities, or subreddits, Discord or Facebook on your phone.

You can always ask questions about your sport or work there. You can also give feedback or share insights. In other words, a great way to be productive with your phone.

Producing consciously

I deliberately chose to discuss consuming first. It is a dance. You gain insights from information you hear, read or see. You combine that information with the knowledge and creativity you already have. From that new perspective, you can share your own insights in turn.

A little later, someone consumes the knowledge and insights you have gathered and puts their own spin on them.

In other words, once you are being deliberate, consuming and producing alternate in a never-ending dance. Yin and yang.

So how can you use your phone to produce consciously?

Quickly capturing insights

Your phone is almost always in your pocket or on the table. That makes it ideal for immediately writing down ideas
when they come to you.

To make this quick, it helps to put a dedicated app or note on your home screen. I use the “Note to Self” feature in Signal messenger for this. It is very quick to access and available on all your devices.

Writing blog content

Writing a blog post involves several stages. Some of them work perfectly well on your phone.

It begins with writing an outline, often just a few bullet points. Ideal for working on between other things. Then comes the first draft. I write that on my phone too, using a physical keyboard at home and otherwise the touchscreen.

Only the final stages, reviewing and publishing a blog post, are a little harder on a phone.

There are a few apps you can use for this:

1. Google Docs - This is the most popular, with apps for your computer and phone. You can access the same files and folders everywhere.

2. Microsoft Word - Microsoft Word also has an online interface that works very nicely.

3. Obsidian - This is the app I use. You write your documents in Markdown. The nice thing about this app and software is that it is available for every platform, and there are lots of plugins to extend it. The only disadvantage is that you have to arrange file syncing yourself.

Making presentations or visuals

Creating visual content works surprisingly well on your phone. A somewhat larger screen is useful, so if you are buying a new phone soon and want to produce visuals, choose one with a large screen.

There are several apps that make it easy:

1. VN Video Editor.

2. PowerPoint / Google Sheets.

3. Canva.

These apps let you make general-purpose visuals for Facebook and Instagram, among other things.

There are also many niche apps that specialize in a single kind of editing.

For example, some apps remove backgrounds from images, or take a picture as input and turn it into a cartoon.

Plenty to choose from!

Keeping a journal

Keeping a journal is an extremely useful way to become more aware of yourself, how you feel, and what does or does not work.

It is an ideal thing to do on your phone. And it does not have to take much time either.

There are different types of journals. Some apps let you indicate how you feel each day with an emoji, for example. After a while, you begin to see patterns.

You can also write one line each day in Google Docs or Obsidian, my favorite text editor.

Producing and consuming at the same time

Both conscious consumption and production are perfectly possible on a small screen.

It is best to keep consuming and producing in balance. Creativity and your ability to produce are closely connected to WHAT you consume.

You can also combine the two quite well:

1. Consume while you produce: work with something on in the background, such as music.

2. Produce while you consume.

That second option is enormously powerful, but what does it look like in practice? When studying for a course, for example, you can make digital notes and share them.

This has a few advantages:

1. You learn it better because you are explaining it to someone else.

2. Someone else can gain insights because you add your own twist.

3. You can also turn what you produce into a website to connect with people, or even earn money from it.

The same applies to everything, not just notes or homework.

Schoolwork or a course is simply an idea you are working on. You can also get those ideas from books, YouTube videos or even conversations with someone.

Use that to your advantage. A website is easy to set up, so if you consume a lot about a particular subject, it is worth thinking about how to share the knowledge you add or the way you interpret it with the world.

How to set it up in practice

The most important thing is to keep doing things on your phone deliberately. Slipping into mindless scrolling is what you most want to avoid.

Fortunately, your phone also has tools to make that easier.

Making what you want to do easy

Now you know all the things you can do to consume and produce deliberately on your phone, we can look at some tips to make this easier.

Home screen
Your home screen is one of the most important places. You can pin the apps you want within easy reach here.

Which widgets and apps do you want here? I have an Android phone myself and use a few built-in apps and widgets.

The Digital Wellbeing app has a widget that displays your top three apps by screen time. I have put that widget on my main screen. That lets me see immediately whether I have spent most of my time in Obsidian, my blogging app, or slipped into mindlessly scrolling Instagram.

I also keep my grocery apps, a link to ChatGPT for programming, and the calculator there. I want these apps accessible in one tap.

Making mindless scrolling harder

Fortunately, your phone also has tools to curb mindless scrolling.

Android has something called app timers. You get a notification when you have spent a certain amount of time in an app. I believe you can even block access to the app after that if you want.

There are also apps that can block other apps on a schedule.

It feels strange to need this, but remember that it is difficult to leave an addictive app alone entirely by yourself. Humans have not evolved along with all the stimuli coming at us. Fortunately, practice can help us get better at this.

As well as blocking apps, you can block whole websites across your home network. That can be useful too. OpenDNS can help with this.

Instead of blocking apps and websites completely, you can also simply make them a little harder to access.

On my Android device, I use Microsoft Launcher. It has a feature for hiding apps behind a password. It then takes five or six taps and a password to get to them. This barrier makes you less likely to casually open the app, while keeping it available.

I do this for the following apps:

1. Messengers: Telegram and Signal.

2. Social media: Twitter and Instagram.

3. YouTube and Chrome.

I do not know iOS very well myself, but I think you can recreate similar setups. If necessary, you can bury the app on the sixth page of your home screen, four folders deep.

Use your phone, rather than the other way around

There are two times of day when your phone can have a negative effect.

These are the two times when it is harder to be deliberate anyway.

The morning, when you are still “starting up,” and the evening, when your “battery” is empty.

Protecting your sleep

Sleeping with your phone is not particularly good. What you are doing before you go to sleep has an enormous influence on your sleep.

So do try to leave time to let go of your thoughts and put your phone away.

Protecting your morning

You do not want to grab your phone and open Instagram immediately in the morning either. That encourages a reactive mindset rather than a proactive one. All sorts of things come at you first thing: the news, missed messages, Instagram reels and so on.

At least try to wait until after breakfast before using your phone. By then you have started up, and hopefully you have already thought about what you want from the day.