Your smartphone is useful but dangerously addictive. And every day, we are sucked into it for hours on end not because we love it, but because we think we have no choice.
We often assume that we only have two options:
- Give up our phones, OR
- Use the phone without any control or restrictions.
When we frame it this way, we naturally get sucked into our smartphone apps since giving up our phones is impossible.
But this is a false trade-off. It doesn’t have to be either this or that. There is a third option — we can use our phones mindfully instead of surrendering completely.
You DON’T need to give up your phone. You just need to train your mind and follow a few protocols.
Here are some ways to break phone addictions:
- Create rules or protocols for using the apps that are the source of major distractions (e.g., Instagram, WhatsApp). Without clear ground rules, the intention to control your smartphone usage will just remain that — a pious intention.
- Break the habit of checking your smartphones by using a set of habit-breaking techniques, e.g., substituting checking your phone with alternative actions, creating friction in using the phone (e.g., removing autosaving of passwords), etc.
- When you feel the craving to check your phone, train your mind to dissolve that craving using a vipassana meditation-like approach.
Try them out. We combine these and many more techniques in our digital detox program and they really work.
Every hour lost to distraction is a slice of our life gone, forever. Don’t wait — fix it now.
Check out here: https://www.habitstrong.com/undistractable/
– Rajan