With the advent of new technology, our life has improved a lot. Cell phones or smartphones are such inventions which has changed the way of our life. But, the question lies on the part where cell phone is a boon or bane. Definitely, cell phones are a boon for us, but is it used in the right manner? This is the point to be noted.
An addition is basically when a thing begins to control your life and interferes with your daily activities, work and relationships. When your phone starts to do that to you, it has become an addiction you need to immediately break. So how do you break the addiction? How do you restore a healthy relationship with your phone without the negativity of it all? In this post, we will share three suggestions on how to do just that.
Delete Apps you don’t need
There’s no point in reorganizing and optimizing apps you don’t need, so the first step is to delete apps you don’t need.
If there are any apps you don’t use at all, delete them. Maybe you had plans to use the app in the future, or perhaps you used to use them, but now you don’t. Whatever the reason, if you don’t use it, it’s got to go.
Bonus: If you’re big on data security, don’t just delete the app: take the time to delete the account associated with it. Sometimes you can do this in the app, and sometimes you need to contact the company’s customer support. Then it’s like it never existed.
Next, delete all your phone games. Yeah, I know, phone games are amusing — but the whole problem here is that you spend too much time with your nose in your phone instead of living your life. If you like games that much, invest in an actual gaming system.
I’m not making you go without. Later in this guide, we’re going to go over healthy apps that can replace your phone games. But welcoming healthy habits in your life means saying goodbye to the unhealthy ones, so goodbye phone games.
The First Few Minutes of Your Day
The first way to break a phone addiction is to dedicate the first 10 to 30 minutes of your day, at least, to planning and creating a good start to your day, rather than unlocking your phone to browse various internet or social media platforms.
Create No-Phone Periods
You have to be strict with this one because this can significantly decrease your productivity and efficiency once you are unable to carry it out. If you find yourself constantly being distracted by your phone, it is necessary to create a no-phone period, where for a specific number of minutes or hours you close off your phone and stay completely dedicated to your work.
Don’t Lose Sleep Over Your Phone
Set limits. You should never allow your phone deprive you of your sleep. Be disciplined and set limits. The moment you stop putting energy into caring for your basic needs and start putting all your time and energy into your phone, you are allowing your phone dictate your health and well-being. Please stop that, your phone is not worth your health.
Customize Your Notifications
The fact is the lesser notifications you receive, the less likely you are to get distracted by your smartphone and constantly check your smartphone. Therefore, customize your smartphone notifications by turning off notifications for the apps that distract you the most.
Work on Building Real Life Relationships
Rather than spending hours building virtual relationships, try to get real and work to develop real world relationships. Real world relationships are more physically and emotionally gratifying than virtual relationships, so try to move your relationships with people from your phone to a real world platform. Instead of chatting, try to meet up somewhere next time (but be careful with this however and take this step with people you are without a doubt sure you can trust. The key word here is ‘without a doubt’.)
Install addiction-breaking apps
Counterintuitively, you can reduce your phone use by installing certain apps. We can’t cover them all here, but we can recommend a few that have caught our attention.
Checky
This app simply gathers data about your phone use, showing you how many times you unlock your phone in a day and logging this behavior over time. If you want to slowly cut down on your smartphone time with some of the methods we’ve mentioned above, Checky can effectively chart your progress.
AppDetox
To wean you off your phone, this tool lets you set limits on the time you spend inside individual apps. For any app on your phone, you can see stats for how often you’re dipping into it, and then set rules about daily usage: AppDetox can control which times of day you’re allowed open up the app, how many times you can launch it, or both.
AppDetox is free for Android.
Flipd
Like AppDetox, Flipd focuses on blocking access to certain apps for set periods of time. If you lack the willpower to stay away from your phone on your own, the app can give you a helping hand. Premium features start at $6, and if you pay for them, the app will give you longer lock times and let you chart your phone usage over time.
Forest
This app takes a slightly different approach: It gamifies the process of easing you away from phone distractions. In this program, you plant a seed, which eventually grows into a tree—as long as you don’t navigate away from the app. If you ditch Forest during the growth period, perhaps to check Facebook or play your favorite game, the tree will die. This sounds gimmicky, but it’s actually a very effective and almost peaceful way of avoiding the temptations of your other phone apps. The free version has ads, but you can purchase extras starting at $1 on Android and $2 on iOS.