How to reduce phone usage

Do you spend a large portion of your day on your phone?

Do you go onto YouTube or TikTok and realise you’ve spent an hour on your phone while you could’ve been doing something more productive with your time?

If so, this post should be of great use. These are my personal thoughts on reducing your phone usage.

While over the past 20 years phones have become incredibly powerful machines, just because we have them doesn’t mean that we should be always using them.

Constantly using your phone can impact you negatively in a variety of ways!

Just look at the happiest and most successful people in the world. They tend to use their phone less than most people because while they can be utilised to your advantage you shouldn’t allow your phone to take over your life.

Why your phone is actually harming you…

Phones allow us to connect with the whole world instantly and this is incredible. But they also distract us from what’s important in our lives. They are a form of instant gratification.

Phones provide us with distractions through:

• Social Media
• E-mails (that distract you from doing real work)
• Notifications (this is due to the fact that it takes on average 20 minutes to get back into flow state according to this study)
• Games (that you’re tempted to play because they’re on your home screen)
• Endless scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok (which are all designed to keep you on their platform as long as possible due to the fact the feeds are infinite)

Practical Tips to reduce your phone usage

There are many ways that you can reduce your usage of your phone.

This greatly depends on you, but there should be something below for everyone!

Some of these may not apply to you for example if you require Social Media to promote your business for example

Track how much time you’re spending on your phone

If you go to the settings on your phone, you should be able to see information about how much time you’re spending on your phone and where you’re spending it.

If you’re spending 2 hours a day on Candy Crush and don’t particularly even enjoy playing it, just by deleting the app you’ll be able to reduce the time you spend on your phone

Clear up your home screen

Clear up your home screen. Remove everything you don’t often use anymore. This lets you find the important stuff faster and save you from being distracted as much.

If you want to keep games on your phone, put them on another page on your home screen and in a folder, you’ll turn to it fewer times than if it’s just there when you turn on your phone.

Use Airplane or Silent mode

While you’re trying to focus or at work utilise airplane or silent mode. This simple trick will allow you to focus on what’s truly important to you, and to put your mind at ease you can set it so that phone calls will go through if you’re rung twice.

Delete Social Media

Social Media is toxic and damaging for your productivity and your mental health. While it can be a great place to share information with your friends or to celebrate happy moments and post pictures. If you’re spending time each day scrolling through people’s Instagram pages then you’re wasting your time.

Not only during that time could you be doing more productive endeavours but also you’re damaging your mental health. Every time you look on someone’s Instagram wall you see highlights of their life and exactly what they want you to see – it’s not reality!

Remind yourself of what’s important

If you use your phone a lot throughout the day, try this tip!

Change your background to something inspiring or something that reminds you of what you’re aiming for in life. This way you’ll see it every time you open your phone.

Equally, add a To-Do list to the home screen of your phone. Every time you open your phone all the tasks that you have to accomplish are immediately available. Then by the end of the day, you’ll see there’s nothing left to do and you can relax and play some of those games that you should have been avoiding!

Conclusion

I hope you’ve found this post useful and it’ll allow you to reduce your phone usage significantly and let you focus on what’s truly important in your life.

If you’ve enjoyed this blog post comment below and let me know you’re thoughts on using your phone!

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