Breaking Up With My Phone
This month Iâve been reading the book âHow to Break Up with your Phoneâ by Catherine Price. Itâs a very practical book with exercises to assess how we use our phones, identify if thereâs something we want to change, and change it.
This weekend I did the 24 hours phone separation exercise. For about a month the author proposes some activities to help us prepare for this âtrial separationâ.
Preparation
The preparation activities included:
- An assessment of my current relationship with my phone: what do I love about it? What I donât love about it? What changes do I notice in myself when I pick it up and spend time with it? What would I like my new relationship with my phone to look like?
- Pay attention and notice the situations in which I use my phone. Does my body posture change? What is my emotional state before and after I use it? How do I feel when I realize I donât have my phone? How do I feel while Iâm using it?
- Track data: I used the iOS Screen Time feature to analyze how many times I picked up my phone and how I used it throughout 1 week.
- I picked up my phone 27 times per day
- I spent 2h 40 min on a daily average
- Delete all social media apps: Iâve done that a couple of years ago.
- Build a âspeed bumpâ before I pick up my phone. Ask myself the WWW questions:
- What For: What am I picking my phone to do?
- Why Now: Why am I picking up my phone now instead of later?
- What Else: What else could I do right now besides checking my phone?
- Get in touch with offline activities I enjoy doing (and do them without my phone)
- Turn off notifications: Iâve done that a couple of years ago. I leave only notifications from âreal peopleâ (phone calls, text messages)
- Delete unused apps, leave only apps that are âtoolsâ. Delete all other âjunk food/slot machineâ apps.
- Reorganize the phone Home Screen. Remove all temptations.
- Stop, breathe, meditate. Practice mindfulness.