intentionally ditching my phone and creating less urgency in my life.
the overconsumption of our phones
I’m the type of person that has to have every notification and little red dot on my phone cleared. My inbox number has to be at 0, just like my text messages and phone calls. I’m sure it’s definitely related to my OCD.
We all know our phones are a distraction (hello, people driving whilst using their cell phones!) and yet I think we gaslight ourselves to think it’s “not that big of a distraction”.
For me, I get notifications of nearly everything. Every time a car drives by, my Google Nest doorbell alerts me and every time I received an email, etc. Honestly, it got to the point where I’d be doing a task and the phone would light up and I’d immediately have to check to see what it is. Same with my Apple Watch (which is why I got rid of it). I just felt so DISTRACTED and UNENGAGED. I also felt like I was being rude by always glancing at my phone.
Giving my phone power allowed it to create a sense of urgency and importance in my life. It gave me anxiety. It made it habitual to open up my phone and click on social media apps to see what I missed.
I started becoming more self aware of this behavior after being diagnosed with OCD and starting sertraline. I was frustrated how easily it pulled me away from work or other things in life.
So, this is what I did:
On iPhones, you can create a ‘focus’ setting and choose which apps you want to mute and/or notify you while in that setting. You can also choose who can contact you while you’re in that setting. For me, I created a ‘home’ setting for whenever I was at home (it uses your location you set). The only apps I allowed for it to notify me was text messages, phone calls, doorbell alerts, and Libby. Everything else was silenced. I absolutely love not checking my email the second it comes into my inbox. I also enjoyed ‘catching up’ on things on my own time. And that’s exactly what this created: I gave my phone attention on my own time. That sounds so silly to say but it’s true. I was the one in control now of who gets my time.
I schedule my do not disturb (DND) setting to turn on every evening at 8 so I get nothing. I do allow my favorites list to be able to call me because those on my favorites list are family, my partner, and my besties. Just in case something happens, you know? But everything else is silenced and it really helps me wind down at night.
I turned off the red notification badges on apps. For someone with OCD and the constant obsession of needing to clear out the red badges was so time consuming. After I turned them off, nothing tempted me to tap into the apps.
I moved all my social media apps to the 2nd page of my phone. I started to notice every time I opened my phone, I’d habitually tap on Instagram or Facebook. After I moved those to the 2nd page of my phone, I no longer check those apps as often. They also got their red notification badges removed so no sense of urgency to see what’s going on.
Being in control of who and what gets my time has been really freeing. It never really occurred to me how often I was being pulled away from something to glance at my phone.
Have you done anything to force yourself to limit how often you are on your phone? Do you have any ‘hacks’ on your phone to keep it distraction-free during work hours? Would love to hear it!
xx
-Julie
THIS! I truly hope that this becomes the new trend. I think we've hit max capacity with technology, and I hope that the next "new" thing becomes reverting to how it was in the 80s and 90s before we carried around pocket-sized computers. Remember when we used to leave the house and no one would know where we were until we reached our next location?? IMAGINE!
I have experimented with many different ways of living with my phone. The most successful? Treating it like a phone. The only notification sound is the phone ringing. No red bubbles alerting me to notifications on any other apps. Email only on my laptop (unless I'm traveling). Leaving my phone in my bedroom so when it rings, I have to literally go to the other room to get it (it's kind of nostalgic, having to run to answer the phone!)
My brain is 1,000,000% calmer when I do this. I have diagnosed anxiety and it was really flaring up last week. I realized I'd let my phone creep back into being nearby at all times, and I was checking it and brainlessly scrolling throughout the day. Once it was back in the bedroom, my anxiety decreased exponentially. I think we don't realize sometimes how much we're hurting our brains with this stuff.
I'm a similar way, and I didn't realize how often I was picking up my phone to open (and mostly delete) emails. I turned off the notifications for my emails one day, and when I opened it later in the afternoon, I had 75 emails! I couldn't believe I was spending time on a given day managing that many emails.