We live in a noisy world, with constant distractions. Doing focused work has become all the more challenging in a work from home based environment. We are jumping screens- from a laptop to a phone to a tablet. I am certain that this is not just my story but one that many people will resonate with.
When everything in my Masters degree moved online, it was hard to cope up. I am old fashioned that way, I love my notebooks and pens. It became difficult to differentiate my classroom from my personal room. Cut to a year after finishing my degree, it became difficult to separate my sleeping space and my working space.
Before I knew it, not only was I burning out, but also had a ridiculously high screen time. It led to dry eyes, headaches and ineffective sleep. As I started toying with the idea of giving myself a release, I stumbled across Nathaniel Drew’s amazing video series on “Digital Minimalism“. You can check it out!
My digital decluttering journey
Drew starts his video series with decluttering email, which I will come to in a follow up post because I started with my phone. At the start of the year, I wanted to build a habit of not being a slave to my phone, as horrible as it sounds, I was glued to it. Here are some of my red flags:
- Reaching out for my phone mindlessly
- Checking time on my phone despite wearing a watch
- Responding to every single notification the moment it showed up
- Feeling a sense of urgency to respond to text messages
- Filling snippets of free time with scrolling on my phone
By now, I had observed my behaviour enough to know that something needed to be done. So I went about checking my screen time (most smartphones will have that feature) and checking my social media time (Instagram has a feature that tells you your insta time)- it was sky high compared to what I wanted it to be! Don’t tell me you don’t scroll your phone in an office meeting where your video is off and you are not the notetaker.
Step by step process
Once it became clear to me that this needs to change, I researched about ways in which other people had tried to incorporate it (thanks to Youtube!), and tried to implement some of the ideas I got.
- Delete unused apps: I had so many UK apps in my phone (groceries, bus tickets, train tickets, city guides etc.) that I was not using anymore. In hindsight, maybe I had kept them for memory’s sake but it wasn’t helping. So I went about deleting all apps which I had downloaded and never used, or hadn’t used as regularly (this also includes Dominos!).
- Remove shortcuts on landing screen after unlocking my phone: My phone’s landing screen had the biggest devils- WhatsApp, other social media, Gmail and Outlook. Naturally, the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, and unlocked my phone, I would see the luring red bubbles with the number of unread messages/emails I had. Even before I had time to make sense of having woken up, I was neck deep into work/other people’s life updates. So, I cleared my home screen.
- Put a nice wallpaper: It may sound petty, but a wallpaper that motivates you, is a really useful way to steer your mind in the right direction.
- Using the hidden area: I put all the distracting apps: YouTube, Amazon Prime, Netflix, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook- into my phone’s hidden area. Basically, I put barriers between myself and the apps. Because the human mind works on least resistance, my inclination of using those apps decreased.
- Grey scale: This is a magical feature because it makes even the most engaging thing to watch super dull. Sucks out all colour and everything becomes grey. For me, this automatically turns on closer to sleeping hours.
- App timers: Lastly, I put app timers. For example: Instagram tells me when I have spent my day’s worth of 30 minutes on it, which is a reminder for me to get off the app!
I haven’t taken the leap of faith to keep my phone in a different room while sleeping, because I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that I can wake up with some other mode of setting an alarm- but it’s on my list and I’ll try and see if there’s a difference.
Here’s a snippet of my insta screen time, that I still need to work on (not too bad though I guess?):
P.S. I am doing loads better screen time wise. My world has not come crashing down. I still talk to my friends AND my phone is a device that I control, instead of it controlling me.
