7 Tips to reduce your Phone Addiction

Working on or with your phone is not a bad thing, but it becomes a bad habit when we spend more time on our phones than in our own life.

🌙 Replace your phone time
A simple trick you can do is every time you're getting the urge to grab your phone, replace that urge with something else. Just for a bit. For example, get up from the chair (if you are sitting) and do some sit-ups or walk 10 times up and down in your room. Or go to the window, open it, and take 5 breaths. Or scribble a rough monster in your sketchbook. Or going to the kitchen and grabbing another cup of tea or a glass of water. Find something that is easy and what you can do EVERYWHERE at ANY TIME and do it instead of grabbing your phone. Try not to do something unhealthy during that time, because we don’t want to replace a bad habit with a bad habit. If that makes sense.

🌙 Hold your phone and breath
One thing i realized having a phone addiction, is that we act out of quick impulses we rarely can control. That’s why it’s so hard to get over it. I was pretty addicted to my phone in the past. I unlocked it 60 times a day and sometimes was active on my phone 5h a day as well. (it’s crazy how much time we waste on our phones instead of putting this time into our skills and life). But i found out that i just need to get over the first few seconds of addiction.
Every time i felt the urge to look up what was on my phone, i grabbed it, not turned it on, just holding it in my hand. Then i closed my eyes and took slow deep breaths and focused on it. And while i did that i said in my mind to myself 'I don’t need it'. I did this maybe 1 min or 10 breaths long and then opened my eyes again. And i found out that the first strong urge was away. So i could just lay down the phone and keep going with the more important stuff. Of course, you have to do that sometimes 30 times a day (because it’s still an addiction, and you can’t get rid of it overnight), but after a time, i had days when i was on my phone maybe 30min only. What was a huge success in my case?

🌙 Turn off notifications
It’s a thing you hear everywhere, but it’s really necessary to not look at your phone all the time. I’m a person who gets obsessed with the light on my phone when i get a new notification. I also can’t handle having all these numbers on my apps which tell me i have 5 unread messages there. So the best thing is to get rid of this feeling. What you can’t see you will less think about. On my phone these days i don’t have any notifications. The only thing i hear is when my family is sending me a message. (They are the most important people in my life, and they are a high priority in my life). But everything else is just turned off. Even messages from friends don’t have a sound at all, because most of the time they don’t want anything specific. If something is important people could just call you or visit you as friends and family. But everything else is not important at that specific moment. It doesn’t matter if you answer a message or a comment a few hours later. If people are confused about your new availability then just tell them the truth and say you will answer in your breaks or in the end of the day. Also, the emails i need for my business are turned off as well. Better set time frames where you check in to your emails. You don’t need to look at it 10 times a day. Maybe only in the morning and after work.

🌙 Airplane mode on
Most of the time private messages from people we know are not the worst reason why we are addicted to our phones. It is more the social media presence nowadays. So the best way is to turn off the internet. Airplane mode is one way. Another way is downloading specific apps on your phone which can control what you can open at which time or if you can be online in general.

🌙 Long or complicated unlock system
People are often lazy so let’s make it a benefit now. We know that you can add a lock system to your phone before you even can use it. There are fast ways like fingerprints, but you can also make everything a bit longer, so you will be too lazy to do this all the time. Make along with a password or a complicated code, or use for example the swipe function but make it way longer. Try to make it hard to unlock your phone. You will lose interest in it because our laziness can sometimes help us too. We just need to use it wisely.

🌙 Place it far away from you
Talking about laziness. When you put your phone during your work time in another room or far away from you then this will help as well. Because we don’t always want to stay up and go to the phone and then unlock it (maybe a complicated unlock system as well) and... you know.. Humans are often too lazy for that.

🌙 The Mornings are for YOU, not strangers
What i mean by that is, don’t go on your phone first thing in the morning. When we are addicted, we immediately search for proof and attention through our social media. "Who thought about me, who wrote messages, who did what while i was asleep, did i miss anything". But is it not weird to think about all the strangers we 99% don’t know and give them our attention and time as our first priority? What about taking this time and importance into your own life again? Into people who are close to you, you live with or who are physically in your area. Or take this time to have a nice breakfast while thinking about your day or talking with your inner soul, which we rarely do, because we are always so busy throughout the day. People try to be constantly in action with others because they fear being alone with their own thoughts. That’s why phones are so important to us.
So if you master your addiction in the morning, it is so much easier to do that throughout the whole day as well. You will relearn how beautiful time can be without the phone.