6 Ways to Stop Phone Addiction
Are you worried about your habit of overuse of smartphone? Is it affecting your productivity and everyday life? Let me tell you, your worry is justified and you’re not alone as millions of men of today’s age are facing the same.
Studies show cell phone user touches his phone 2,617 times every day, 2,617 times! It’s an addiction that’s damaging human habits from within. It plagues our life, creativity, and productivity. It is most certainly a vice and slowly steals our attention and causes major self-esteem issues.
We need to first admit that excess usage of smartphones is an addiction and we need to curb our addiction in order to increase our productivity and save more of our precious time. However, like all bad habits, getting rid of it will be no easy task. However, if you believe that your phone addiction is getting the best of you, here are 6 simple and effective ways that will help you bid adieu to your phone addiction.
1. Set aside a day or two of limited phone use.
This practice is known, by far, the most experimented approach. If we assume this step as a learning curve and observe our surroundings, we will notice a lot of people who have considered intentional steps to reduce their cell phone addiction. But credit goes to Tammy Strobel to be the first person considering this set aside process as a thoughtful idea, almost ten years ago from now. Take a day or two in a week, put your phone aside, and focus on other important tasks in your life. It will work over time. Remember, you can’t get rid of this addiction in a day, but with conscience efforts and certain blocked out period of time dedicated to other things, you certainly can jumpstart the process.
2. Put your phone away while you work
This tip can be our biggest tool if we want to get anything done in time. Focus on the work at hand and you will certainly get a lot more work done when you have undivided attention to your project. I would also suggest that you use the phone as a treat. Maybe after 20 minutes of consistent work, you can stop for a few moments and scroll through your phone. That is another way that you can use this method. It truly works as I have found I have been able to be more productive with my work and even with my housework and personal development projects.
3. Remove all social media apps from your phone – including Instagram and Snapchat
Scrolling on social media apps is one of the greatest time killers as it makes us less productive and more lazy. I would suggest deleting social media apps from your phone as they are actually designed to be as addictive as casino slot machines. One of the reasons why social media is badly addictive is due to the fact that we start comparing our lives with others through their posts. As such, we begin feeling low self-esteem and low self-confidence.. We need to exercise the habits of perseverance, discipline, and regularity by curbing social media usage. Once we will master these habits, gradually we will start observing positive changes in our day-to-day life.
4. Disable Notifications
As you might already be aware, when you use or download any app, it will automatically begin sending you notifications that will pop up in your home screen. This notification is actually quite addicting and it conditions you to check your phone more often and begin exploring the app that has pinged you. I would implore you to mute all notifications in order to prevent you from scrolling through all these apps. Go to phone’s Settings, and start modifying your notifications. Begin by turning all the apps off and then check the list again reloading for anything that might be crucial. By practicing this habit, will eventually awaken the spirit in us by planting a seed of self-growth and self-awareness.
5. Do not keep your phone by your bedside.
This is probably the easiest step to accomplish, as you can control your action. Don’t charge your phone in the same room that you sleep in. It will certainly will disturb your sleep. Taking a step back, we can see that if we do not get adequate rest, we will never be able to accomplish all our dreams and goals that we have. In the event that you need an alarm, I would suggest you to use an analog alarm clock instead. Don’t let the smartphone be the first thing you check upon waking either.
6. Set a Time Limit
Set a time to use the devices, it may be in the evening or your break time in mid-day. Check your important emails anything on a smartphone within that time. Your other duties and chores demand more time than your smartphone. By scheduling a time in advance, this helped me tremendously gain control of my productivity and accelerated my personal growth.
To make a better version of ourselves, we need to practice a form of self-discipline. We need to be honest with ourselves and not lie to ourselves. If we have an inkling that we are addicted to our phone, we need to face the facts and take the first step.
As you try to rid yourself of this addiction, the first thing you must conquer is self-awareness. You have to be able to step back and evaluate what we can do better in order to get to the next level of our personal development. We need to take baby steps as this will eventually be the first seed that we are planting in our personal journey of growth.
It’s all about determination and self-realization. Confession is the key, we’ve to admit the fact that we’re addicted to smartphones, and we must stop this addiction. The above-discussed tools are very useful and applicable to all men.
To take one step at a time, you can use a notebook and pen to record each small milestone. If you practice these above tools, after one week, these practices will turn into your habit. Consequently, you won’t feel the urge to use smartphone frequently.
For more information on how to start your own personal journey, I would suggest reading our other blog post here.
