This month I’ve been reading the book “How to Break Up with your Phone” by Catherine Price. It’s a very practical book with exercises to assess how we use our phones, identify if there’s 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 “trial separation”.

Preparation

The preparation activities included:

• An assessment of my current relationship with my phone: what do I love about it? What I don’t 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 don’t have my phone? How do I feel while I’m 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: I’ve done that a couple of years ago.
• Build a “speed bump” 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: I’ve done that a couple of years ago. I leave only notifications from “real people” (phone calls, text messages)
• Delete unused apps, leave only apps that are “tools”. Delete all other “junk food/slot machine” apps.
• Reorganize the phone Home Screen. Remove all temptations.
• Stop, breathe, meditate. Practice mindfulness.