In my last post here, I spoke about why we get addicted to our phones and the psychology behind it all. Feel free to give that one a read first to give you a better understanding before I make some suggestions.
Now, something that didn’t sit well with me around our phones was when I realised how these small mobile devices can make us lose complete awareness of our surroundings. It is honestly quite frightening if you really think about it. Countless times, when I would be focussed on a task, or engaged in a conversation, I would feel a vibration or hear a noise that is a notification from my phone. Automatically, my attention instantly goes there. I then proceed to spend the next few minutes (or more) on my phone, oblivious to everything else that may be happening around me. Though seemingly small, these distractions will hugely disrupt our productivity, and our ability to maintain an uninterrupted conversation with the person in front of us. Whilst losing awareness of our surroundings in some cases is beneficial, such as when we are in ‘flow’ or ‘in the zone’, it is detrimental when we lose our awareness to low-value activities i.e. looking at our screens. Our phones are the biggest attention seekers, and we seem to be the biggest attention givers to them. And so, that brings me to my 5 suggestions on how we can take back control over our digital consumption.
1. Establish your low-value and high-value activities
The Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule is the idea that around 80% of consequences often come from 20% of causes. This principle could work across many domains, but essentially says that 80% of our results come from 20% of what we do or how we spend our time. Therefore, it is vital to establish which few activities provide the highest value or highest output in our lives.
Once you do this, you will start to become aware of how you are spending your time, and will hopefully see that a lot of our screen time provides very little value to our lives. This might look different for everyone, because some people use social media for work, and others may enjoy gaming to relax. In this way, it might be a high-value activity for them, and they should not eliminate them completely. However, boundaries do need to be set in these situations in order to eliminate the (often tempting) low-value sides to them. It may be useful to distinguish which specific apps are providing low or high value for you, because I do believe phones can certainly provide high value, if we are mindful of how we are using them.
2. Let go of the fear of missing out
This one is so important and is what will enable you to maintain this habit in the long term. We often live in a debilitating fear of missing out (FOMO) on news, gossip, what others are up to, whatever it may be. If you want to take control of your digital consumption, you have to let go of FOMO. Know that you won’t be able to keep up with everything that is going on with your friends/family, but do you really need to keep up to date with what everyone else is up to? If you step back and think about it, does it provide you any real value? For the news that is worth knowing about, you will probably find out by word of mouth, and for the people who you care about what is going on in their lives, I think it would be much more meaningful to organise an actual catch-up with them rather than rely on their social media updates.
Cultivate the ability to happily miss out on the things that do not align with what you value, and be okay with missing out on small things that may provide little benefit, but the potential detriments far outsight those benefits. Yes, it’s important to stay informed, but I believe there are much more efficient ways of doing that than social media. To let go of your FOMO means to let go of your digital clutter.
3. Do a digital detox
Delete all your social media/low-value apps. I’m not saying you should permanently delete them, but at least experience what it is like without. This is because if we have access to low-value activities, we will almost always choose them over high-value activities, even though we know we shouldn’t. Low-value activities give us instant gratification but no real long-term benefits (e.g. scrolling on social media), whilst high-value activities do not tend to give instant gratification, but have immense long-term benefits (e.g. reading, work). It is extremely easy for us to choose those instantly pleasurable activities, over ones that are not. Therefore, completely eliminating them from our phones for a short while will mean we no longer have the choice to choose them. It allows us to strip down the unimportant, spend time on doing things that we truly value, and realise just how little we have actually missed out on.
I would recommend a month, but if that’s too much, even one week should be enough, whatever is manageable for you, as long as you at least try it out. I promise you won’t miss out on much, but what you gain will be much greater. Digital detoxes are still something I incorporate every so often when I feel like I am spending too much time on social media, or if I have an important task to get done, and would highly recommend others to do this too!
4. Turn off unimportant notifications
Now that you have done a digital detox, and know your low- and high-value activities, it’s time to eliminate the unimportant. If you do choose to re-download the low-value apps, I would recommend turning off notifications for it. This stops the app from taking your attention to provide low-value information, and when you check your app for notifications is completely in your control. You have control over the app, rather than the app having control over you.
If you’re able to turn off all notifications, amazing. However, for many who have responsibilities that may require you to be accessible reasonably quickly, specifying which notifications you want to keep or eliminate may be the best option. Just do what works best for you and your lifestyle. Personally, I just keep notifications on for my messaging-only apps, as I would tend to just reply to the message then be off my phone again. Whereas with social media apps, once I’m on, it can take a while to come off again.
5. Utilise do not disturb mode!
Lastly, my favourite tool – the do not disturb button! Whilst sometimes it may feel like we should be, I don’t believe we need to be accessible 24/7. Imagine being able to set a boundary with the press of a single button…insert do not disturb mode! This button is what makes me truly have control over my digital consumption, and has changed my relationship with my phone the most.
In conjunction with turning off unimportant notifications, those notifications that do come through, will never disturb me. This way, my phone never grabs my attention, and I consciously choose when I want to check my notifications, rather than being interrupted by vibrations or noises. I am aware this is probably not possible for everyone, but I think it’s a lot more possible than people may think. The way I see it, is that are all these notifications really something that we have to know in that moment? Can it wait an hour whilst we finish meeting up with a friend, or even two hours whist we finish a task? I honestly don’t think it would make much of a difference, apart from you being able to have an uninterrupted period of time to complete an important task, or be present in a conversation with someone. However, for emergency purposes/more important matters, the only thing I do allow in do not disturb mode is incoming calls, as I’d like to think incoming texts/other notifications can wait and rarely require my instant attention.
Final thoughts
I understand that these ideas are not completely revolutionary nor original, as you have probably heard of them before in some capacity. However, I do believe that not enough people are proactive and serious about taking action to implement these into their lives. From my experience, becoming harder to reach by phone means I’m more likely to call or meet up with someone to catch up, rather than rely on seeing their Instagram stories, and simply liking or commenting on their posts as a way of maintaining our relationship (which I have certainly done in the past). Overall, I have found myself to be much more productive, my relationships have strengthened, and it honestly just keeps me sane! We are simply not wired to deal with the chaos of social media 24/7. So, I hope that this post has provided some encouragement for you to truly take control over your phone with me, so that we can spend our time on things that we truly value!
Fee Teng Liew 