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Okay, let’s say you’re me. You use your smartphone a lot. You use social media a lot. When you wake up in the morning, the first thing you do is check your phone. You need to feel connected because people might be trying to reach you.
At the same time, you can kind of sense that it’s not great for you. You feel drained sometimes after being on social media. You open an app to do something and then get distracted and think, “What was I doing again?” You don’t pay as much attention to the people around you as you should when you’re out to dinner.
Does this sound like you? Here are a few practices I’ve adopted that have helped me. Maybe they’ll help you too.
1. Don’t sleep with your phone. The first thing is, don’t sleep with your phone in the same room as you. The blue light emitted by phones suppresses melatonin, a hormone that tells your body it’s time to sleep. Notifications might disturb you. There’s some thought that electromagnetic radiation from your phone also might reduce sleep quality.
Now, some of you are thinking, “Then how will I wake up??” You can get something called an alarm clock. It’s maybe twenty bucks and it also tells the time. Put your charger in your living room, and leave the phone there.
Screen time before bed also makes it harder to sleep. Try to avoid using your phone for an hour before bedtime. So what to do with that hour? Experts recommend books; no blue light, and if it’s boring, hey it’ll help you get to sleep.
2. Adjust your notifications. “I need someone to be able to get in touch with me because it’s an emergency.” Okay . . . but what constitutes an emergency? Some rando on Instagram liking your avocado toast pic?
You can make it so that your loved ones can reach you in case there’s something really going on, but not the borderline work contact or social media notification.
For iPhones: Go to Settings > Focus
For Androids: Go to Settings > Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls > Focus Mode
For example, you can set ‘Personal’ mode so that all of your friends and family can call or text you, but your social media apps are muted. Problem solved. You can have 4 modes: Work, Personal, Do Not Disturb, and Sleep. It’s up to you whether you want people to see those modes when they try reaching out to you. Silencing social media apps is the true godsend here.
This is awesome because if you do the settings once then you’re good to go, and it can become a habit.
3. Give yourself a break. Is there something you can do during the day during which maybe you can leave the phone off or at home? A workout comes to mind. If you go for a jog, do it without your phone. It can also be an hour of work focus time, or reading, or just relaxing. Or, dare I say it, a bathroom trip. What will you do in the bathroom without a phone? It’s unknown and unknowable, it’s just you in there.
I sometimes go for a quick walk without my phone just to get some air and let my mind reset. If you have a quick errand to run, maybe don’t bring your phone with you from your apartment or office. It will still be there when you get back, unless you owe your roommate money.
4. Phone-free meetings or lunch. Try this the next time you meet a friend for lunch; bust your phone out and scroll through it the whole time. Super rude, right? You would never do that. But will you check your phone when it buzzes during salad?
Studies have shown that we trust people more when their phone is not in evidence. Seriously. The reverse is true too – if your phone is out we think your attention is divided. So mute your phone during your next meeting or coffee and keep it out of sight. You might find that you do a better job catching up and the person likes you better.
5. Give yourself some lag time. We often think getting back to someone right away shows that we’re on top of something. But the truth is that 99.9% of things can wait 60 minutes. Heck, many communications chains will even benefit from a bit of breathing space. You can consider yourself reachable and able to respond to things but not necessarily moment-to-moment instantaneously. If you’re out-of-pocket for 30 or 40 minutes, that’s totally fine. Heck, maybe it will make you seem more important, like you’re actually doing things or in the midst of high-impact meetings. You’re very important and busy.
Look, I’m a heavy phone user. But I know there’s too much of a good thing, and sometimes it seems like social media apps run on the power of human souls because I feel depleted after using them. We should all pursue balance in our lives, and most of us have a liiiiiiittttle bit too much screentime in our waking hours. Hopefully, these 5 things can make it a little bit better and they seem achievable. “Go to the can once a day without having your phone with you.”
Now, most of you know I’ve started a new wireless company, Noble Mobile, that is trying to help by giving you money back to doomscroll less and live a little more. But regardless of which carrier you use, these tips might help you feel a bit less captive to what Hasan Minhaj called “our rectangles of sadness.”
Let’s look at our screens a little less and look up at the faces around us a little bit more. Oh yeah, that’s what my kids look like.
This week’s Offline Party [ [link removed] ] in New York on September 18th has over 1,000 RSVPs! Noble Mobile [ [link removed] ] is off to a rousing start and people tell me that our first ad [ [link removed] ] made them laugh. For my convo with Zach about starting Noble check out our podcast here [ [link removed] ].

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