3 strategies to Untangle Your Bad Phone Habit
No gimmicks. The L.E.S framework saves me 10 hours weekly.
I cut the time I stare at my phone in half, from 3 hours to 90 minutes. I now get back 10 hours weekly.
You can achieve similar results if you follow the L.E.S framework.
Liberate — create physical separation from your phone.
Examine — track usage and notice when you mindlessly scroll.
Substitute — find replacement activities instead of being on your phone.
Before you can take these actions, you need to understand the underlying foundation behind the relationship between us and our phones.
Don’t Call It an Addiction
You’ve just formed an unhealthy habit around your phone. The words we use matter. By framing it as a habit, change is possible. Addiction gives phones more power than they have.
If your phone was taken away, you wouldn’t have withdrawal symptoms. You would distract yourself with something else or maybe spend the time in a better way.
The reason we are constantly on our phones? Visual cues and unconscious behavior.
We are visual creatures. Our eyesight dictates our behavior. In our sights, in our minds. When you have your phone right next to you, you will notice it more often.
Visual cues act as a reminder to start a behavior. Phones are obvious to see and easy to pick up.
Bundle an obvious cue with behavior that gets repeated and it turns unconscious. This makes phones the definition of a habit.
To illustrate this further, people are surprised to hear the average person picks up their phone 150 times daily. It feels like more than it should be because habits put us on autopilot.
Misplaced attention on social media apps
Some focus their attention on the apps inside the phone. The argument is that social media apps hijack our brains and work like slot machines using variable rewards to get the user addicted.
But if social media is the slot machine, then the phone is the casino.
I am not discounting apps have addictive properties but using words like “hijack” takes away control from us.
In psychology, there is the principle of internal locus of control. It means we have the ability to influence outcomes and events. We are in the driver’s seat. When we use words like addiction and hijacking, it prevents us from taking responsibility and modifying our own behavior.
Even if addiction properties exist, our environment is an even more powerful deterrent.
Put a smoker on a transcontinental flight and their cravings for nicotine subside. The trigger to light one up decreases. You can’t go outside. It’s one of the hidden ways we curbed smoking in the United States.
While the idea of banning or downgrading our phones may seem appealing, we don’t need to take such a drastic approach.
The Case Against the Large and Small Tactics
It’s hard to untangle what the iPhone did in 2007. We had separate devices for music, communication, GPS, and the internet.
The iPhone ate everyone’s lunch. All our single-purpose devices turned into one slab of metal.
It’s easy to be tempted to turn back time. Downgrade to a dumb phone, a flip phone, or a light phone. But these are futile attempts at the problem.
Read any article or watch a video on someone replacing their phone with one of these devices and the conclusion is the same. The amenities we take for granted are not worth giving up. Can you even scan a restaurant QR code with a flip phone?
Sorry, a smartphone is a necessity. Let’s not throw the baby with the bathwater.
On the other side of the spectrum are so-called “hacks”, like turning on the grayscale feature, rearranging the phone’s home screen, and turning off notifications. These are worth trying but insignificant.
Deleting apps is another approach that has the same inconvenience as downgrading but without being as effective. There are positives to removing certain apps (social media, news) but don’t expect it will reduce your screen time.
I haven’t had Instagram on my phone in 3 years. My usage shifted over to other apps. This is because the tug of distraction isn’t one-sided.
Internal Distractions & The Existential Question
Any moment of discomfort, boredom, or plain lack of energy means scroll time.
We have always had this problem. We just consolidated everything into a distraction device that goes with us everywhere. Blame it on the apps and the phone but the truth is, the call is coming from inside the house.
If you focus only on external distractions, your brain will create new habits to seek pleasure and avoid discomfort.
This is normal, though. Be gentle with yourself. Our brains evolved to conserve energy. The path of least resistance is the most likely behavior.
When the decision is up to us, if we want to work from home or go into the office, the choice is clear. Waking up, dressing up and commuting are energy-draining activities. Crawling out of bed and working in our PJs is obvious.
And it is the same reason we choose our phones. It is easy, provides novelty, and eradicates boredom.
If you want a fighting chance to change, you must ask yourself “How do you want to spend your time?” It’s an existential question that is harder than deleting apps.
Answering this, however, does not mean never using our phones for distraction. That isn’t realistic, attainable, or even desirable but it is where we need to start.
The L.E.S. Framework
Now we know what the problem is and what won’t work, let’s go into my framework that provides long-term solutions.
There are 3 levers you can pull to get off your phone. Each works independently, but they complement one another and together are potent.
These are in order of most effective (and hardest) to less effective (but easier):
Substitute: find replacement activities
Rather than focusing on the removal of your phone (and its apps), it’s easier to offer more enticing alternative options.
This is a sound strategy advocated by BJ Fogg, author of Tiny Habits, and James Clear, author of Atomic Habits.
James explains we cannot eliminate a bad habit, only replace it. He gives the analogy of overcrowding bad habits with good ones. BJ gives a similar example in his own life. The desired option of surfing early in the morning replaced his bedtime procrastination.
Without you knowing it, adding something ends up subtracting something else.
To get prescriptive, start by finding one activity and a specific time period (done daily or weekly), where you engage in it without your phone for 1 to 3 hours.
In my life, I try to tackle creative work like writing or a work project first thing. During these first two hours of waking up, I keep my phone out of sight.
Your replacement activity doesn’t have to be productive and even new. Feel free to double down on exercise or socializing with friends/family but it is a great time to pick up a new hobby or interest.
When you get engrossed with other activities, that are either more fun or more fulfilling, there isn’t time to pick up your phone since time is a zero-sum game. If we think of it this way, screen time should be a by-product of the leftover time not doing something better.
Another way to think of replacement activities is trading your phone for a book or ebook. Reading books is more valuable than doom scrolling the latest news headlines anyways.
I also rely more on my Apple Watch and Macbook to send out text messages, control my music, and pay for things since I put my phone in a locked box during this time.
Liberation: have phone separation time
Time with your phone means time on your phone.
It’s worth repeating, the obvious behavior is the one that occurs. We always keep reaching for our phones because its always there with us.
Imagine you are in bed. Your iPhone is in the living room. And you are cozy under the sheets. The path of least resistance says you won’t grab your phone. We need to construct these types of scenarios in our day-to-day lives.
To do this, we need to understand the concept of friction. Friction is making your phone harder to access. It comes in three types:
Energy
Annoyance
Commitment
Each one also has different degrees of difficulty you can dial up.
For example, your phone in another room is the friction of energy. You need to move your body to get to it. You can increase the difficulty (more energy) by placing your phone on a top shelf of a cabinet or in your car.
The friction of annoyance is powering down your device. You can increase the annoyance by logging out of apps like Instagram each time you wanted to open them.
The last type of friction is commitment. It lets your present self lock in your future behavior. This turns friction into a fortress. It’s not for the faint of hearts.
In the Greek story the Odysseus, Ulysses instructs his crew members to tie him to the ship, so he doesn’t jump overboard when he hears the singing sirens. The modern-day version of this is called a commitment device.
There are many ways to construct a commitment device but my favorite is an actual timed lock box called the kSafe. Here is how it works.
You place your phone (or other temptations) into it and turn the wheel from 1 minute to 2 days. It counts down from 5 seconds and you hear a satisfying locking sound. It will not open until the time expires.
Most mornings, I will place my phone into it and set the timer for 2 hours.
The objection people have is what about emergencies. And I get that. I’ve thought about the nightmare scenarios you are thinking of. In the unlikely event, you can break the box. It’s made of plastic. The company even shows you the safest way to do it.
This is the level of friction I need and what I am comfortable with. As mentioned, being in the Apple ecosystem means replacement devices like my watch or computer can substitute for my phone at times.
Once the two hours are over, I let myself use my phone but I make sure I use it mindfully.
Examine: monitor and build awareness
Screen time is an important metric but it’s not going to give you a complete picture. There is good and bad screen time. Let’s call them time “sucks” and time “optimizations”.
When used as a utility, phones make life more efficient. Texts to coordinate dinner with friends, Google maps to get home, and grocery lists at the store.
Take screen time with a grain of salt but don’t ignore it either. Use a combination of objective data and subjective feelings.
The iPhone has a built-in screen time feature for this but there is a better app called OffScreen that I recommend.
Offscreen sends nudges in the form of notifications that make you notice how you use your phone. Like your fitness tracker tells steps or exercise minutes the previous day, Offscreen sends a notification the next morning on screen time usage.
Additional metrics to get even more context are the number of unlocks (or pick-ups), length of usage, and usage past your bedtime.
This has changed my behavior. When the app tells me I’ve unlocked my phone 50 picks by noon, I know I am using my phone impulsively.
The app also knows when you are walking and staring down at your phone and smartly gives you a warning about the fact that it’s a dangerous behavior.
Don’t Wait For the Future
Everything is done on our phones. It makes life convenient. The net positives outweigh the side effects of excessive screen time.
The truth is we will never get a complete grip on our phone usage. But that shouldn't mean we can’t manage it.
It’s easy to assume how we stare at our phones will always be this way but it won’t. Technology changes fast. It will fix this problem for us or make it worse.
But who has time to wait for the future? Not me and not you. Take responsibility and take back your time now.
Thanks for reading!
Irfan
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