5 Things You Can Do Right Now with Your Phone to Optimise Your Life
It improved my health, career, wealth, relationships.
Hi everyone, how is your Saturday coming along?
Here’s what I’m up to:
Watching: Working Moms on Netflix
Eating: Quesadillas
Listening: The Habits & Routines behind Great Artists Podcast, Remember This by Jonas Brothers and Working by Tate McRae and Khalid
Reading: Still on my 19th book of the year, Death by Sadhguru. I’ve never thought this much about death as I have been every day because of this book (in a positive way though). Will write about this sometime :)
Now, here’s something I hope helps you because it’s helped me a lot.
What do you do when you wait for your friend in a restaurant? What do you do while standing in a long queue waiting for your coffee? What is your primary source of distraction while you’re at work?
Was the answer any of this related to picking up your phone? If yes, fret not because the average time an American spend on their phone is nearly 4 hours.
My phone randomly died in July 2020. I was so upset because I bought an expensive phone hoping it’ll work for 5 years. Little did I know phones don’t believe in happily ever after. What happened in the following months changed my life. I got back to my childhood passion of writing, my confidence shot up when people actually wanted to pay me well with the side hobby of mine (as it wasn’t a side-hustle yet), I spent more time with my family and heard their stories, and I genuinely enjoyed eating food without clicking pictures.
My most favourite change was how not scrolling all day impacted my self-talk. I no longer thought I’m too fat or too thin or not good enough, I just got better things to divert my energy to. Funnily, not being self-critical led me to feel so happy and loved, entirely on my own. It’s these little practices I started following when I bought a smartphone four months later.
Imagine living in a mountain with everything you love, Wi-Fi too. You’ll feel so content and happy when every day feels like bliss. That’s exactly how I felt for those few months and tweaked a few things to continue feeling that way as the modern world functions on connectivity. So while I’m back to using a smartphone, my relationship with it has changed so I can continue feeling the contentment and happiness I felt without it.
“Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired.”― Cal Newport
1. Keep it Away
When it’s time to work, keep your phone in a different room. I earlier kept it on DND, then paid for an app that will grow a virtual tree which will die if I touch it. None of it worked as much as eliminating the source of distraction altogether.
Do you catch yourself scrolling in the middle of a boring task? Just for a minute, you tell yourself. That minute could become ten minutes because you also had to check DMs and send memes. These 10 minutes a day equates to losing 5 hours a month, but let's be honest, you scroll out of boredom for more than just ten minutes a day.
Keeping my phone away sharpened my focus. Now when I need a distraction, I look away, realise there's nothing around me to entertain and get back to work.
2. Download Instagram Once a Week
I know this sounds weird, but let me explain.
I was a cringe-y influenceron Instagram with 11,000+ followers. But when I was suddenly left without a smartphone, I realised how amazing everything feels without this app. If my brain was a hard drive, a huge chunk of storage got freed up because I wasn’t seeing hundreds of pictures a day and being so distracted all the time.
Now, I have a small private account so I’m under no pressure to post. I also don’t find the need to check what the world is up to, so I do all celebrity stalking on weekends when I download it for a bit. The entire effort of downloading an app, even though it's just a few seconds, kills the urge to open it. And limiting using it on weekends can help you be productive during the week.
3. Don’t Touch When You’re Bored
Don’t touch the phone* when bored, and even other things, because some things shouldn’t arise from boredom *wink*.
When you’re bored, engage your senses. Look around. Take a few deep breaths, maybe sit up straight and roll your shoulders back. Stretch, go have water. These things will refresh your system and probably get your focus back whereas scrolling can kill your brain cells.
Your brain has a limited capacity to think and function, so why waste it? In fact, be selfish about how you want to use it. With all that dopamine you’ll receive from social media and all the online distraction where one thing leads to another, refrain from using your phone as play-time because the play can last longer than you want it to.
4. Strategise Group Conversations
None of us want to feel FOMO and want to be available for group conversations. Whether you want to network or even when it's a casual group chat with your school friends which is usually dead and comes up once in a while. It’s fun, but you do not need to leave everything and rush to text because a notification is triggering your brain to reply.
The only thing is, this takes away time off what you need to do today to get closer to where you want to be tomorrow. Texts feel urgent, and the read receipt makes people expect a reply as soon as they see a blue tick. But tell me, how often is it really urgent to open that meme or talk about futuristic travel plans?
The intent isn’t to take you off your social circles, but to make your time work for you instead of you working around your phone. Pick and choose what's really urgent, and everything else can wait till you know you’ve used your brain energy well and can expend it on other things.
5. Golden Buttons on Your Phone: Delete and Unfollow
Let go of what no longer serves you. Unfollow whoever makes you feel a lack in your own life, or at least mute them. Delete all those pictures with your ex which take you down the unpleasant memory lane. There’s such a limited time we all have here, why are we choosing to suffer by indulging in this?
When I created a new Instagram account, I muted everybody except my three closest friends. Oh, I also didn’t mute dog pages because it doesn’t hurt seeing them do silly things! I didn’t follow any celebrity or influencer. I confess I have a guilty pleasure of stalking celebrities… but I must do it by owning my time. I do it when it’s convenient for me and when I have extra time, not when something pops up on my feed and takes away my precious time.
You’ll be surprised at how much of your mental chatter reduces when you no longer feel a void. Sometimes we subconsciously compare our daily lives to others’ well-captured life. But when you do this, all that reduces and happier thoughts pop in, and you deserve that.
Takeaways
Here are the five things that changed the relationship between my phone and me and optimised my life:
Keep it away: to eliminate this source of distraction
Download Instagram once a week: to own your time
Don’t touch when you’re bored: refresh yourself instead
Pick and choose group conversations: don’t fall for the fake sense of urgency
Delete and unfollow: let go of what no longer serves you
You deserve to live your best life and take in the little joys. Life’s too beautiful to not experience so many things around you that go unnoticed!
If you enjoyed reading this, I’d love for you and your friends to subscribe to this newsletter.
Also using this moment to give a shoutout to my fellow writing buddy. Btw, her book was shared by Priyanka Chopra on Women’s Day as the top 5 female authors to check out. Super cool, isn’t it?
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Will be back after a week and share my progress, if it's gonna work.
Great read! I can resonate with the advice . Will be writing about my experience with technology soon 😊