What I Tried To Spend Less Time On Smartphone

You use your smartphone for long hours every day. Sometimes, you use them effectively to solve daily issues efficiently. But in other cases, you may use them as a mere way of distraction.

Come to think of me, I struggled to spend fewer hours on my smartphone. I wanted to spend less time being distracted by my smartphone. I did several things to save my precious time from my smartphone. Now I spend less time on my smartphone than I used to.

In this post, I'll share which worked and which didn't.

Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash

What worked #1: Remove apps from my Home screen

This is one of the easiest ways that works. You won't get distracted if you don't see any stimulating things.

Whenever you unlock the smartphone, colorful icons come into view, which is attractive enough to make me forget why you unlock the smartphone. Notification badges also catch your eyes and tempt you to open those apps. And if you get caught in a notification badge trap, that's the beginning of a long trip in the app world.

However, you won't get caught in such a trap if you see only a few app icons when you unlock your smartphone. If you want to reduce your smartphone time, keep only essential ones – Notes, Mail, Settings, and others, in my case – and remove the others from your Home screen, and you'll be less distracted. As a result, your smartphone time will decrease.

What worked #2: Uninstall SNS apps

This is the extreme version of the previous one. Eliminate the temptation, and you'll get tempted less frequently. SNSs are full of temptations.

For example, open the Instagram app and find countless beautiful photos or so-much-fun videos. Breathtaking mountain views, colorful flowers under the bright sunlight, cute puppies running around on the grass, or crazy guys diving into the beautiful blue sea with perfect posture and without any slightest splash.

Since SNS apps always provide brand-new stimulations endlessly and constantly, I often found myself checking an SNS app more than ten minutes before I knew it, yet I never got bored.

The problem, however, was that I didn't want to kill time. As an unconscious routine, I always opened SNS apps when my smartphone was in my hand, so the problem was critical to me. To defy the gravity of SNS apps, I decided to eliminate the sources of gravity. I uninstalled those SNS apps, and it worked. Immediately after uninstalling, I realized that I didn't really like looking at SNSs.

What worked #3: Delete passwords stored on my device

Another thing I did to get SNS away from me was to delete passwords stored on my device. Inconvenience weakens the desire to do something.

After uninstalling SNS apps, I tried with some effort to look at new posts via browser apps. Password auto-filling enabled me to log in effortlessly, so I deleted memorized passwords from my device. At first, I made an effort to enter passwords for logging in. But entering passwords each time was so tedious that I gradually came to try to log in less frequently.

What worked #4: Use smartwatch

I bought a smartwatch to stop the overuse of the smartphone. And now I can keep my smartphone away from me longer than before I got a smartwatch.

Smartwatches are helpful from the following two points of view:

You won't need a smartphone as a clock

You don't need to use your smartphone as a clock if you have a watch on your wrist.

I used my smartphone as a clock. I would turn on my smartphone screen to check the time, putting my finger on the home button. Due to fingerprint authentication, every time I put my finger on the home button, its screen turned on, and my smartphone was also unlocked. Once unlocked, my smartphone caught me for a while.

By wearing a smartwatch (it doesn't need to be smart, in this case), I no longer had to see my smartphone only to check the time.

You can check notifications on your smartwatch

Check notifications on your wrist instead of your smartphone, and you'll get less distracted.

Before wearing a smartwatch, my smartphone rang or vibrated when it received some notifications. To check them, I turned on my smartphone screen, putting my finger on the home button, and my smartphone was unlocked. Yes, it was the beginning of my useless smartphone time.

After wearing a smartwatch, however, I can feel new notifications on my wrist. I can check the overview of the messages on my smartwatch. Not so many things can be done with smartwatches, so just checking notifications on the smartwatch doesn't trigger endless smartwatch use.

What worked #5: Measure how long I sleep

Some of you use your smartphone in your bed before sleeping. I used to do so. By measuring how long I slept, I found out how long I'd sacrificed my sleep for my smartphone. As the book Better Than Before indicates, measuring is a good strategy for changing habits.

As mentioned above, I bought a smartwatch to not let my smartphone bother me, and it worked.　Moreover, the smartwatch enabled me to measure my sleeping time by sleeping with it on my wrist. That helped me stop using my smartphone in my bed before I slept.

Before buying a smartwatch, I thought I slept enough for almost seven hours a day. I was usually in bed at night for seven hours or more. However, sleeping is not just literally being in bed. When I actually measured the sleep time with my smartwatch, it turned out that I slept for six hours and a half or less on average.

Come to think of it, that wasn't a surprise. At that time, I spent thirty minutes on average for no purpose on my smartphone during bedtime. Sometimes I wandered from page to page on the browser for over one hour after turning the room light off and slipping into bed, but I felt nothing about it because it was one of my habits.

By measuring how long I sleep, however, I realized how useless it is to view the smartphone screen only to distract myself. Which is meaningful for me, another thirty minutes of sleep or aimless web browsing?

What worked #6: Disable fingerprint authentication

This attempt worked, at least in the short term.

Fingerprint authentication is so helpful that I can unlock my smartphone unconsciously. Hold my smartphone in my hand, and place my finger on the home button. That's it. I can do it even when I am half asleep in bed or just a few seconds after I wake up. Once I unlock my smartphone, my smartphone time will begin.

But if I disable fingerprint authentication, I can't do that so easily. Hold my smartphone in my hand, place my thumb on the home button, and... the smartphone remains locked. That is why disabling fingerprint authentication lets me spend less time using the smartphone for no purpose.

What didn't work #1: Try not to touch my smartphone

The last thing that helped me avoid my smartphone was trying not to touch my smartphone. Just making up your mind won't change your behavior.

Although I did keep my smartphone away from me, it wasn't realistic to live without a smartphone anytime. And once I used my smartphone, that was it. Everyday life always with a smartphone returns soon. Every time I decided not to touch my smartphone, I always realized my smartphone was in my hand unknowingly.

What didn't work #2: Use Screen Time

This was a little more helpful than trying not to touch my smartphone, but that inconvenience wasn't enough.

With Screen Time on iPhone or Digital Wellbeing on Android, you can limit your time on an app. Speaking of iPhone's Screen Time, the app will be locked once the time is up. You need to enter the passcode to extend the time limit.

In my case, however, I could extend time limits freely as I by myself set the passcode. I enter the passcode and get another 15 minutes, again and again. Using Screen Time was insufficient to stop me from spending time on the smartphone.

What didn't work #3: Remove SNS apps from my Home screen

I surely said above that removing apps from my Home screen is helpful, but there is an exception, SNS apps. Even if I could not see SNS apps' icons on my Home screen, SNS apps are so much fun that I made an effort to find the apps in App Library. When it comes to attractive apps such as SNS, just hiding them from my sight wasn't enough.

Conclusion

In this post, I told you which attempts to reduce smartphone time worked for me and which didn't.

Other than what I explained, there are many things you can do, such as turning the grayscale mode on. Some tips are also suggested by Insta-Brain, a book about how the human brain is not designed to adapt to smartphones. I read the book after successfully reducing my smartphone time – I wish I had read the book earlier!

Anyway, there are so many things you can do. Why don't you try what you can do if you want to avoid the overuse of a smartphone?

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