4 Non-Extreme Ways to Use Your Phone a Lot Less
Here’s how to maintain your digital resistance
If you made a resolution to get off your phone, it’s probably starting to fall apart. The senseless alerts are back, your resolve to “just check one thing” bleeds into the next digital thing, and before you know it an hour (or two or three) have gone by.
You know what it’s costing you. You don’t want to be like the majority of Americans who spend on average 1,200 hours a year on their phone — a full waking month out of every year, a full waking year out of every decade. And yet: That greedy shard of metal and glass continues to gobble up your time and productivity.
Approaching my second anniversary of being iPhone-free, I can say from experience that lapses are inevitable. Remember: While you think that it’s just your two eyes looking at a screen, in reality, 10,000 programmers are looking back at you, recording your every click, constantly adjusting your digital environment so you’ll keep on scrolling.
A permanent digital diet is not only better for you financially, emotionally, and spiritually, it’s also very doable. Before you say, “I’m sorry, the phone is just too woven into my life for me to give it up,” let me offer a few tips. Not for going cold turkey, but for putting the phone in its proper place. You…
