When I started my business almost 12 years ago now, I noticed that I started using my phone a lot more, which on some level makes sense because of an increased demand for things like email, social media, scheduling etc. however phone use in general has ramped up a ton over the last decade or so for just about everyone.

Personally, it got to a point where it was diminishing my ability to pay attention for periods of time, absolutely crushing my productivity and just reducing my quality of life…so I took a step back and looked at how I could develop a better relationship with my phone and so I’ve made some modifications over the years and I’m going to share them with you here.

I want to be clear, I’m not one of those people that thinks that phones are evil and social media is toxic…in my eyes it’s all about the user, for example…alcohol in and of itself isn’t bad, however if someone abuses it (like I have in the past) and becomes an alcoholic, that is clearly a problem, however most folks aren’t alcoholics…meaning, the ownness is on the individual.

Phone use is actually a lot like dietary choices in the sense that everyone has different priorities, goals, preferences, needs, wants…and so I’m going to share with you what works for me right now and so as I’m outlining how I choose to use my phone, feel free to implement something or not, or just give something a shot like you’d try on a shirt to see how it fits…you can always take it off after.

Also, if you know right away something just isn’t going to work for you practically speaking, skip it, on the other hand if something really intrigues you and you think that it may benefit your life as a whole, give it a go…no pressure!

I also mention that because I fully understand that I choose to use my phone in a very uncommon way as you’ll notice when I go through the modifications that I’ve personally made and so ya don’t have to go to the lengths that I have and to be honest, most people almost certainly won’t, however…there may be a few changes that work really well for ya!  

I came up with 10 specific modifications that have worked really well for me, so let’s dig into them, the first one is…

Silent

I keep my phone on silent 24/7 without the vibrate feature and I do this to protect my attention span, but also because I cannot stand all the beeping and buzzing…it drives me nuts. Now, this does mean that I miss some phone calls and don’t always get back to texts immediately, however that trade-off is 100% worth it to me.

This allows me to keep my attention span intact, be way more productive and a whole lot more present in my day to day life and relationships. Also it’s worth mentioning that you don’t have to go from 0 - 100 via keeping your phone on silent all the time, maybe you just have specific hours that your ringer is on and other hours when it’s not…you can jig this up however you’d like.

Airplane Mode

I put my phone on airplane mode every night and I originally implemented this because I often check the time when I wake up to pee and when I did in the past, I was seeing messages that had come through from friends or fam which I would feel tempted to check and if I didn’t check them, the wheels in my head would often start turning about what they may have reached out about, so…

I now put my phone on airplane mode and instead of receiving messages and calls throughout the night, I get them in the morning when I take my phone off of airplane mode. There was a minor adjustment phase where I thought that the world might end if I’m not reachable because I’m just SOOO important, however I got over that quickly because the earth continued to revolve around the sun and this is just what I do now…also as result, I sleep much better.

Notifications

Another change that I made was I turned off all of my social media, email and app notifications because before I was being notified every single time I received an email, a like, a private message, a mention, a tag…it was outrageous because I was choosing to be constantly interrupted and so this was absolutely huge for again, my productivity and attention span.

The only notifications that pop up on my phone now are silenced phone calls and silenced text messages, that’s it…no news, no sports stuff, no apps in the background, nothing. Also, I have group text message notifications completely turned off because I have a fantasy football group and a boys group that absolutely pop off from time to time and so those notifications are off entirely.

The kicker is that at first when I implemented this, I noticed that because I had turned off virtually all my notifications, that I started checking social media and email a lot more often to see what was going on and that led me to make another change which was…

Limited Checks

I allow myself to check email and social media a maximum of 3x per day and I track it, I have a little tally in my handwritten Moleskine scheduler to keep count and because of this I no longer mindlessly check social media or anything like it, meaning…every time I open my email, Instagram etc. it’s intentional i.e. I’m doing it with a purpose in mind.

Post & Ghost

Something else that I’ve implemented is…when I do check social media (no more than 3x per day), I essentially have a post and ghost approach in the sense that I post, check my personal messages and I log off…I don’t scroll the feed. If you’re struggling to make time to cook, go for walks, sleep more etc…I would highly recommend scaling back your scrolling and you’ll likely be amazed at just how much time that frees up.

Phone & Computer Not Linked

I’ve noticed that a lot of folks with mac computers and iPhones have their text messages come through on their laptops and I personally don’t do that just because it would destroy my productivity and attention span and so my computer and phone are not linked that way and it’s been super helpful.

Face Down

I also have a little rule for myself that I always keep my phone face down whether I’m at home solo, out with someone at a restaurant or whatever…it’s just a habit that I’ve gotten into and even though my phone is always on silent, I don’t want the visual stimulation of a message or phone call coming through interrupting the experience that I’m having…even if it’s just watching Netflix because when I’m watching a show, I want to be watching a show.

The Auto-Grab

Next up is what I call the ‘auto-grab’ because I noticed that when I was out and about at a restaurant with someone and they got up to go to the bathroom or if I was waiting in a lineup, that I would immediately reach for my phone to fill that ‘gap’…and I wanted to stop doing that because I thought to myself…I’m rarely having any quote unquote ‘empty or open moments’ anymore where I’m just being, for example…

Sitting at a table in a café, bar or restaurant and just sitting instead of filling that moment with my phone. Nowadays, I like to actively leave my phone alone and just people watch, think, strike up a convo with someone or even be slightly bored heaven forbid and ultimately use that opportunity to just be for a few minutes…it’s quite nice.

Limited Phone Plan

I have a super old phone plan that I’ve been using for years that only has 3GB of monthly data on it and I’ve chosen not to update it because I don’t want to be tempted to use my phone more than I already do…

Also, when I’m out of the country traveling which is a lot as you know, I’ve yet to get data ever and so I limit myself to exclusively WIFI and again, I do this to set myself up for success or what I deem as success in terms of maximizing my real life experience instead of my virtual experience.

When I’m abroad and I can access WIFI, cool…I may use it, however this added effort barrier simply has me on my phone less and I like that. Also, if I’m in a new city that I’ve never been before and I need to navigate, I load google maps before I leave my apartment and I navigate no problem!

Now I want to address the most important aspect in terms of all of this stuff, which is the how in terms of implementation because so many of us are so attached to our phones that it can be difficult to stay aware enough to actually make some of these changes if you’d like to…

The notification stuff is easy because you can just go into your settings and change them right now, but what about things like mindless scrolling, reflexing grabbing for your phone etc.

The key is pattern interruption, for example…

One thing that you can do is start putting your phone in a different pocket and so let’s say that it’s typically in your right pocket and you begin putting it in your left or back pocket and for the ladies a different part of your purse…when you grab for it automatically and it happens to be in a different spot, this will interrupt your typical pattern and remind you of how you may not want to check it.

Another example, if you usually place it right next to you at home, put it in a place where you actually have to get up to get it and when you mindlessly reach for it, it won’t be there and you can provide yourself with the opportunity to do something else.

If you usually place your phone on the table at a restaurant face up, try putting it face down or in your pocket on silent sans vibration and you can soak up more of that experience.

If there is an app or game or whatever that you find yourself using more than you’d like to, you can delete the app from your phone so that if you want to use it, there is the effort barrier of needing to re-download it again beforehand.

This is also really helpful for things like Skip The Dishes or UberEATS if you’d like to order in less often because it creates an effort barrier via needing to download the app each time and that time that it takes to download the app also may provide you with just enough of time to reconsider whether you really want that food or not.

 Another cool tool that you can use to your advantage on the iPhone specifically is, go to your settings and then scroll down a little bit to screen time and there are all sorts of helpful little ways that you can set up your phone in a way that fits you.

You can set daily app limits so for example, if you don’t want to use Instagram for more than ‘x’ amount of time per day, you can organize that in there. You can also just see how much time you’re investing on your phone in total and for a lot of folks it’s going to be a pretty sobering number!

Like I mentioned at the outset, I’m not saying that the way that I interact with my phone is the right way, it’s just what works for me and so feel free to implement none, one, two or all 10 of the adjustments that I talked about and you can figure out what works best for you!