How To Break Up With Your Phone

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How often does your phone buzz in a day? Do the red glaring notifications suck you into a 45 minute jaunt down the rabbit hole of digital distraction? Does it interrupt family meals, quiet moments with your spouse, or the sacred spaces of solitude and concentration we all need? Probably. Mine did. If I allowed it to it would just keep doing it, but I stopped. Five months ago I broke up with my phone. You can too. Here’s how:

1. Know why you want to break up with your phone.

Maybe you want to reclaim your evenings or precious family time. Perhaps you just can’t seem to get anything done. If you spend a lot of time looking at your phone you may even feel anxious at the end of the day. You didn’t accomplish as much as you wanted to, but you were “busy” so you don’t understand why. This is the physiological and psychological result of staring at your tiny glowing screen instead of engaging with what is happening in the room around you. 

You need to know why you want to ditch that fancy phone you paid so much money for. If just the thought of that makes you nervous research suggests you’re a prime candidate for anxiety and stress related illnesses resulting from too much time with your device. Resolve to know why. I suggest writing it down on a sticky note and sticking it somewhere you’ll see every morning. The more addicted to a device you are the more reminders you need to write yourself. You’ll never break the habit until your motivation to do so is as big as the pull to stare at the screen in the first place.

2. Turn off all nonessential notifications.

Notifications are designed to get your attention. But your attention is the most important mental resource you have. Your attention is how you mentally spend the one thing you can never get back, your time. So get rid of anything that notifies you of something not critical to your success. I only leave notifications on for calls and texts, but even with texts I turn off the sound and vibrating alert for all group discussions.

3. Delete your favorite apps.

This is where it gets real. Those apps you can’t live without are the ones that suck you in. But your mental real estate is too precious to sell it cheap to Instagram, Reddit, the Bleacher Report or whatever other flavor of distraction takes your fancy. Everything goes that’s not absolutely essential. Find creative solutions that allow you to maintain your interests and responsibilities without sacrificing your days on the altar of distraction. I suggest intentionally scheduling moments with those things in small chunks once or twice a week. 

4. Don’t carry it around.

Stuck in the grocery line. Phone. Waiting for your meal. Phone. A pause in the conversation with friends. Phone. Evict your device from those moments by not having it with you all the time. At first it feels like you’re walking around naked. But it’s only because we’ve trained our minds to wrap our attention in the paltry offerings of our favorite devices. Productivity will soar, relationships will deepen, and life will be sweeter when you’re not a slave to your smart phone.

5. Do something better.

When I began this journey in the thick of winter I was a mess. I was at home for three weeks with my wife and our newborn baby. I was going nuts. That’s to be expected. I was experiencing the psychological withdrawals. Our brains literally reroute mental pathways when are addicted to our devices. The more addicted we are, the more our brains reroute our thought processes. This leads to the inability to hold our attention on any one thing for long. Beat it by feeding your attention something of value instead. 

When I got serious about breaking up with my phone I started doing more of the things I enjoy. I like small carpentry so I made some pieces of furniture. I became more intentional about exercising. I spent more time with my kids. I engaged things in my life in ways that added value to my days rather than serving up my precious time to meaningless distraction. Do it. You have a long list of things you’ve always wanted to do and have been putting off for far too long.

6. Eliminate excuses.

Anything worth doing will be met with a host of reasons you think you can’t or shouldn’t. The key is you only think you can’t or shouldn’t. Shift your thinking. Know you can. Know you should. Take back control of your day-to-day activity and attention. Do it today. I promise you won’t regret it. Break up with your phone.