Nomophobia is short for
“no-mobile-phone phobia”.
It’s the fear of being away from your smartphone or not having
network coverage. And it’s on the rise.
87% of young adults say
that their smartphone never leaves their side, while 80% of smartphone
userscheck their phone within 15 minutes of waking up.
Smartphone addiction is becoming a big problem. Here are some signs
of addiction:
- You frequently use your phone at mealtimes.
- You spend more time on your phone than interacting with others in
person.
- You frequently use your phone when you know you should be doing
something else more productive.
- You frequently use your smartphone while performing tasks that
require focus, e.g. completing an assignment, writing a report,
driving.
- You feel uncomfortable when your phone isn’t with you.
- You sometimes check your phone in the middle of the night.
Are you an addict, or do you know someone who is?
(If you’re interested, you can take this free online smartphone
addiction test designed by The Centre for Internet and
Technology Addiction.)
No matter how mild or severe the addiction is, here are 15 ways to
help you overcome it. If you implement the tips, I guarantee you’ll
break this potentially destructive habit.
Here are the 15 tips:
1. Turn off notifications.
Many people get distracted by the endless notifications they
receive from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, and other
apps.
You don’t need to know right away if someone “likes” your status
update, follows you on Instagram, or sends you an email.
The more often you check your phone, the more it becomes an
ingrained habit. So turn off notifications, and you’ll feel less
compelled to use your phone.
The only apps for which you don’t turn off notifications might be
your text messaging app and your calendar app. This is because
sometimes you’re urgently waiting for a text, or your calendar app
notifications keep you on schedule.
2. When you feel the urge to check your phone, close your
eyes and take a deep breath.
You’re reading a set of notes or
writing a report. All of a sudden, you feel an overwhelming urge to
take out your phone and check your Facebook news feed.
You give in to the urge. You look through your friend’s latest
vacation photos and comment on three of them. Next, you read a long
article about the hidden lives of supermodels. Then you watch one
cat video and one baby video.
Before you know it, 20 minutes have passed – when you only intended
to take a 3-minute break.
Sound familiar?
The urge to check your phone comes in waves. If you hold out for
just a few seconds, the urge will pass. You can then get back to
work.
Here’s what I recommend: When you feel like you
just have to check your phone, close your eyes
and take a deep breath. Inhale for three seconds, and exhale for
three seconds. The urge will usually disappear.
If the urge is still there, take another deep breath. You should
then have the willpower to return to your original task.
This is a simple but powerful technique to help you break your
smartphone addiction.
3. Delete all the social media apps on your
phone.
This sounds like a drastic measure, but it isn’t. You’ll still be
able to access social media sites through your phone’s Internet
browser.
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have mobile-friendly
websites. Sure, the mobile web experience isn’t as seamless as the
app experience. But it’s good enough to satisfy your occasional
social media craving.
Plus, the extra step of opening your Internet browser app and
typing in the site’s URL adds inconvenience to the process. This
will deter you from mindlessly checking your social media
updates.
I challenge you to go one step further: Delete every single game on
your phone.
I did this four years ago, and I’ve become a much more productive
person as a result.
4. Delete all the apps you don’t use.
This will help you remove the clutter from your phone, and reduce
the time you spend “exploring” your apps. As such, you’ll be that
much closer to overcoming your smartphone addiction.
Deleting your unused – or little-used – apps also frees up storage
space, and improves your phone’s battery life and performance.
5. Set specific boundaries for smartphone
usage.
Telling yourself that you should “use your phone less” isn’t
effective, because that phrase is too general. To limit your phone
usage, set specific boundaries instead.
Here are some possible boundaries:
- No phone usage at mealtimes
- No phone usage in the restroom
- No phone usage at social events
- No phone usage during in-person conversations
- No phone usage in the bedroom
Start with an easy one, and add one a month. Over time, you’ll see
a huge difference in your phone usage patterns.
6. Mute your group chats.
I’ve muted all my Whatsapp group chats except my family group chat.
This way, I don’t get bombarded by messages throughout the day.
If you’re like most people, the messages you receive from your
group chats aren’t time-sensitive. So it’s fine if you only read
through the messages a few times a day.
Besides, muting your group chats is a more polite alternative to
suddenly leaving the groups.
7. Archive your inactive chats.
Smartphone users often scroll through dozens of chats before they
find the one they’re looking for. In the long run, this wastes a
lot of time.
What’s the alternative?
Archive your inactive chats.
If the conversation has ended, archive it. If you currently have
hundreds of chats in your messaging app’s home screen, take 10
minutes to go through them and archive the inactive ones.
It will be 10 minutes well spent!
(If you prefer, you can delete your inactive chats instead of
archiving them. Note that if you delete a chat, you’ll lose the
chat history. But if you archive a chat, the chat history will
remain.)
After you’ve completed this process, you’ll probably be left with 5
to 10 active chats in your messaging app’s home screen. This will
make it easier for you to find the chats you’re looking for. It
will also reduce the clutter in your phone, so you’ll be more
organised.
As such, you’ll spend less time processing your text messages,
which will help you overcome your smartphone addiction.
8. Reply to text messages just three times a
day.
Apart from urgent text messages from family and close friends,
don’t reply immediately. I know the temptation to reply right away
is great, but you must resist it.
Why?
Because it’s more efficient to reply to text messages in batches,
rather than one at a time.
I recommend replying to messages once in the morning, once in the
afternoon, and once at night. This will save you time on the whole,
and will prevent you from compulsively checking your phone for
messages to reply to.
This is in line with the bigger goal: removing your dependence on
and addiction to your smartphone.
9. Turn off your phone before going to bed.
Turn off your phone before going to bed, and leave it to charge
outside your bedroom. It can be tempting to use your phone in the
middle of the night, but you won’t if it takes too much effort to
even get to your phone.
If you follow my recommendation, you’ll need to walk out of your
room in a half-awake state. Next, you’ll need to wait 30 seconds
for your phone to boot up. So you’ll probably just go back to sleep
instead – which is what you ought to do anyway.
I can almost hear you saying, “I can’t do this, Daniel. I use my
phone as an alarm clock. If my phone is outside my bedroom, I won’t
hear the alarm in the morning.”
If that’s you, read on to Tip #10 for the solution.
10. Use an actual alarm clock.
It seems like everyone uses their phone as an alarm clock, right?
Well, you can be different and use an actual alarm clock
instead.
This way, you’ll have no excuse not to practise Tip #9. Which means
you’ll also be on your way to fighting off your smartphone
addiction.
11. Before you start work, put your phone at least 10 feet
away from you.
Better still, put your phone outside the room where you plan to
work. To eliminate temptation completely, turn your phone off – or
at least to airplane mode.
Erik Altmann, a professor of psychology at Michigan State
University, found that an interruption of just 2.7
seconds doubles your error rate at
work.
So use Tip #11 and you’ll get your work done
faster and better.
12. Use apps to track and restrict your smartphone
usage.
These apps run in the background, so they won’t distract you.
Here are three handy apps:
- RescueTime
(Android). This app helps you understand your
phone usage patterns, so you’ll know how to become more productive.
It gives you a detailed breakdown of how much time you spend using
different categories of apps.
- Moment (iOS). With this app, you
can track how much you use your iPhone and iPad. You can set daily
usage limits and choose to receive notifications when you exceed
those limits.
- AppDetox
(Android). AppDetox allows you to set phone usage
rules. For example, you can prevent yourself from opening your
email app after 8pm every day. Or you can limit the number of times
you open your text messaging app each day, among other types of
restrictions.
13. Wear a watch so you don’t need to check your phone for
the time.
You probably use your phone to tell the time. But I’m sure this has
happened to you before …
You glance at your phone to see what time it is. As you do this,
you see a flood of Facebook notifications and text messages. You
start going through them, and in the blink of an eye 15 minutes
have gone by.
And all you wanted to do was take two seconds to
check the time.
What’s one way to prevent this from happening?
Wear a watch. It’s that simple, really.
14. Tell others about your decision and enlist their
help.
If you tell others about your decision to break your smartphone
addiction and ask for their help, you’re more likely to
succeed.
Here are a few ways you can do that:
- Inform your friends and family about your decision, and ask them
to check in with you once a week.
- Before you get down to work, give your phone to a trusted friend
or family member.
- Tell your friend that every time you don’t stick to your plan,
you’ll give her $10.
- Find a friend who’s also addicted to his smartphone, and persuade
him to join you in breaking the habit.
15. Lock your phone with an annoyingly long
password.
Most people set a short password so they can unlock their phone
quickly. But if you want to reduce your smartphone addiction, set
a long password instead.
Make it at least 15 characters long, and include symbols and
uppercase letters. (You can set this type of password for both
Android phones and iPhones.)
The inconvenience of unlocking your phone means that you won’t use
your phone mindlessly. In other words: mission accomplished.
The bottom line
Smartphones are meant to help us lead better and more productive
lives. But when we succumb to smartphone addiction, we become
slaves to our phone. This affects our relationships, work, and
life.
By applying the 15 tips in this article, this won’t happen. In
addition, we’ll have more time and energyto
build meaningful relationships, serve others, and make a
contribution to our community.
All because our eyes aren’t continually glued to a small, glowing
LCD screen.
So let’s get to work eliminating our over-reliance on our phones.
The world is counting on us.
yahoo