Like everyone, I'm trying to cut back on my phone time these days. So I will tell you some things that are working for me, but as usual, I'm no expert. These are pretty basic things, but sometimes I'm surprised at what people don't know about their phones. Also, all of the steps I describe here are for iphones, apologies about that, but I've never owned an android phone, so I don't know much about them.
1. I don't remember where I heard this but it is not an original thought. The first thing to do is figure out what is most addictive for you about your phone. Social interaction? Games? Keeping up with breaking news? Feeling involved? Passing the time? In other words, what do you get out of it? For me, it's partly a way to pass the time when I'm bored, but mostly I'm addicted to information. Google and iMDB are my downfall. I mean, you can get the answer to anything, and I love that. I can start by trying to remember the name of an actor in the show I'm watching and twenty minutes later I've moved on from the TV show to her co-star in her most recent movie and an interview with the director and before you know it, I've learned all kinds of things that I'm curious about but none of them are things I need to know. And I do that multiple times a day.
2. Then the next thing is to figure out what you do want to be able to do on your phone. For me, it's usually texting, phone, camera, calculator, reminders, GPS, and weather. (I almost never make phone calls, and my texting is usually under 15 minutes a day, so I don't worry about those. If those are your downfall, your list will be different.) So you go to settings, then Screen Time, and then "Always Allowed," and move all of those things to the Always Allowed section.
3. Then you go back to Screen Time, and under "Downtime," schedule the hours of the day that you want to restrict your other apps. My downtime is currently set for 9:00pm to 7:00am. (I stay up till 11:30 or 12 most nights, if you go to bed earlier, you may want your downtime to start earlier.) During those hours, the only apps I can easily access are the ones I set to be Always Allowed. You can override your downtime, but so far I've been able to keep that to a minimum-- or at least enough of a minimum that I haven't had to figure out a stricter system.
You can also set a "Focus," which is a more flexible way of scheduling downtime, but it will take too long to give step-by-step instructions here. If you want to just wing it, choose Focus under Settings and follow the prompts, or google how to set it up. You can turn a Focus on and off on the Control Center (the screen you get when you swipe down from the top right of your home screen).
4. I also have an app called Forest, which you can customize in a lot of ways, but basically it throws up a lock screen for an amount of time you specify--say, 30 minutes. During that 30 minutes, a tree or a shrub grows on the lock screen. If you dismiss the lock screen, you kill the tree. It's surprisingly effective if you just need to keep yourself from using your phone for awhile while you get something done. You can set it to allow phone calls and texts.
5. The thing I am loving the most right now is something I read about back in January when everybody was making New Year's resolutions-- you can turn color off on your phone so you're looking at a black and white screen. This is supposedly less addictive-- the bright colors are part of what keeps your eyes glued to the screen. To turn this on, go to Settings, then Accessibility, then Display & Text, then scroll down to Color Filters, and turn Color Filters on. Grayscale (Black and White) is the default option. But the surprising thing is, after you've been looking at a black & white screen for a couple of hours, when you turn colors back on, they are positively garish.
6. The next super-cool thing you can do is set this up as a short cut. Start at Settings, then Accessibility, then scroll down and choose Accessibility Shortcut, and choose Color Filters. Then you can use a triple-press of the side button (the one on the right) to go back and forth between colors and black&white. It is great. This is my current favorite phone trick.
7. I also try to remember the things that make phones great. Like, if I'm sick or I've got a travel day, I destroy my screen time stats because why not use my phone to pass the time when I don't have anything else to do? It's one of the best things about having a phone. I'm not a big fan of the screen time stats, because sometimes I do want to use my phone. I just want to feel more in control.
So those are my ideas. This is obviously a work in progress, because I still spend more time than I'd like on my phone. But it's better. If you have some good hints or tricks or whatever about managing phone use, let me know. And have a great weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment