5 Ways You Can Minimize Phone Use

Ever wondered why you’re always so anxious? No, not really because you know this already! We don’t even respect our phone well enough to fully charge it. “40%, this will do it. Now back to cleaning my room in one-handed mode.” That sounded really stupid, but what makes it even more stupid, is that it happens.

Photo by Cristian Dina from Pexels

Are we really surprised as to why I made an article specially dedicated to phone usage? Most, specifically, how to minimize your phone use.  Look, I’m sure your excuses as to why you’re nosediving is because you have important things to do with your phone (sometimes). We’ve all been through conversation(s) with our parents concerning our voracious, and often times, unhealthy relationship with our phones. “Why are you always on the damn phone!”, exclaimed your mom who is one step away from smashing the abstraction in front of you.

Now, there are myriad ways that we can minimize the use of our phones, and I’m about to share it with you guys. I personally use these techniques on a daily basis, and I give them my stamp of approval for the effectiveness that they showcase. I’m not bullshitting you here by giving you obvious advice. I’m going with a counter-intuitive approach, see how it works.

WAYS TO MINIMIZE PHONE USE

Uninstall the Netflix app on your phone

You bring your phone with you everywhere you go. To school, to the library, to the park, and where ever. So, when you’re getting tedious with whatever it is that you’re doing, you just produce your phone right out your pocket, and open the Netflix app, for a little break. The next thing you know, you killed 60 minutes of your time doing all but productive. Because of how portable it is, and how we can download episodes, we are implicitly being told by the Netflix Team, to watch it on our break time, but our brain, of course, can’t define what constitutes a break time and confuses every moment of the day as a break time.

What you do is rather than having it on your phone, have it on your PC. This way, you don’t always bring your laptop with you, right? This will force you to do what you’re supposed to do, in time to submit, and dedicate a time of the day to catch up with your favorite shows, in the comfort of your home. This simple strategy does wonders, believe me!

Sidenote: The same rules apply to YouTube, don’t even think for a moment.

Use Night Shield (BW) even during the day

Have you ever thought, why of all colors, are notifications colored in red? Or why the YouTube logo is red? Scientifically, red sends an alarming signal to the brain. It's the most visible color in the spectrum; therefore, it causes us to heed and pay attention. The reason why we don’t paint our walls red is because of the color red causes us to become more anxious.

Activating a color filter, most preferably, a Black and White filter reduces our urges to constantly check whatever notifications we have-- disable notifications, and you’ll sprint a mile in this #LessPhoneUse Journey.

It also makes your phone dull, and uninteresting-- This is your way to go, remember your goal here. Less light emitted from the screen doesn’t only protect your eyes, but also slyly makes you want to use your phone less.

Don’t read from your phone

If you’re a bookworm, who doesn’t have the budget to purchase physical books, you most probably downloaded epub formats on your phone. While there’s not a single conspicuous reason to dissuade you with, one underlying problem is that it’s cajoling you to use your phone outside Moon Reader, or whatever reader you have installed. The time that you read, is during the night before you go to sleep. At this time, our brain’s still hung up with the excruciatingly boring last period we had with Mr. Porowski, which by the way, drained the last drop of blood in our femur.

We sometimes even skip reading, and just head straight to bed. Our body is flaccid at this point that we just want to rest-- not exactly. I caught myself, several times during the night, unconsciously exiting Moon Reader, just to scroll in my twitter feed. This is what we call “hidden agenda”-- not really, just distraction. Because we read on our phones, we can’t help ourselves but to think there’s running in background application, that is much more delightful and entertaining, in our state of tediousness.

That’s why I recommend, buying a Kindle tablet-- this is in no way, a sponsored blog, although, I’d like to think it is. Or if you have an old SAMSUNG tablet, that also would be fine. The point of having a tablet is for you to focus on what you’re reading, and have no other app competitor to contend for your attention; thereover, you have no choice but to read (unless you install Facebook in it too, or smuggled movies, which would defeat the point of having a tablet in the first place. Please don’t do that).

Access Social Media via Browser

If you can’t bear with the idea of totally deactivating your account(s), and is still a big step that you’re certainly not yet willing to take, do this instead. You know how drenched your phone is. With all the apps installed there, there’s no wonder why you’re always preoccupied! Social Media apps are crabs in a bucket. They’re toppling over one another for your attention. Those pesky red numbers on the top right corner of each icon, are the most vicious.

Having them in one app called “Chrome,” will do yourself justice. Don’t be generous with those apps, be cruel to them! They’re partly responsible for your irresponsibility.

P.S mostly you’re the one responsible, so don’t ever think of victimizing yourself here.

Doing this alone will not do the trick. The way to do it is:

1. Open the Chrome Browser App

2. On the upper right corner you’ll see ellipses, click on that

3. A drop-down list will animate in, scroll to settings (and click on it)

4. Click Notifications

5. Toggle the “Allow Notifications” to off if it’s on, if it’s not, leave it as it is.

6. Done! (You’ll not be receiving notifications from frivolous websites)

Don’t overindulge listening to Music

I was skeptical before the audacity in me flew in and said, “music is wasting your time!” I know, this sounds crazy, and you might be thinking,” It’s not like I WATCH music, I listen to it, and do work simultaneously!” Well, the truth to that is, it’s affecting the quality of your work (depending on what you’re working on, of course). Take this as advice from someone, who according to Spotify.me, a statistics website, spends 9,438 mins (a total of 6 days) in the past 25 days listening to music. THAT’S CRAZY.

One of the main reasons I drafted the blog that I had worked on was because of this reason. I nonchalantly listen to music when I’m writing. Considering that English is not my native language, this intervened with the quality of my writing. Why we turn into music, and how we decide in a split second that we want to listen to “Norman Fucking Rockwell” or “Lover,” is because of our inability to be mindful. We want to filter the work with fun. We so much crave for the tapping of the feet, and the intermittent dances that we make to distract us from how boring the work is. It’s what we do as a reflex. When a trivial inconvenience comes our way, we make a satire of it. This is some learn-to-dance-in-the-storm kind of moral that we stick to. Reality check: It’s affecting our work, transversely.

Conclusion

Some, or all of this might be impossible for you to do, but I have you know these are merely the details to the issue: Using your phone in an obsessive manner. If you chose to address, then good for you, if not, I’m sure you’ll learn it on your own. The thing about sacrifices is that it kicks us in the nuts, and pushes us beyond our boundaries. .We’re infuriated by this that we don’t attempt to make change, we just live life the way we do. We think we’re being deprived of freedom because of the sacrifices that we have to make. But in the words of Mark Manson:

“Ultimately, the most meaningful freedom in your life comes from your commitments, the thing in life for which you have chosen to sacrifice”. - Mark Manson,Everything is F*cked (2019)