13 WAYS I'VE MADE MY PHONE A HEALTHIER PLACE TO BE
I’m ashamed to say I’ve often scoffed a bit at those who say they need a screen break or people who’ve talked about their phones being a happier healthier place to be but this year has really tested my own restraint on the same topic.
I love being on my phone, I like social media, it doesn’t make me feel bad and I constantly consume all forms of content. In my mind, if your phone makes you feel bad just put it away - but of course it rarely is that simple.
The last year has tested us in so many ways but I didn’t expect it to test my relationship with my phone as much as it has. The constant availability because for real, what else are you even doing? The doom scrolling online, the constant shit news, everyone having a bad time and offloading - it all got a little much and then throw in working from home where work life balances basically don’t exist and I found myself sick of the sight of my iPhone. Let alone the clicking feeling I’ve been getting in my thumbs…..
With that in mind and combined with a panic induced social media blackout over Christmas and a new year new me attitude, I took control of my phone, my notifications and my consumption and I have popped what worked for me below. Thirteen might be unlucky for some but I’m much happier nowadays.
1. LIMITED SOCIAL MEDIA APPS
First and foremost, if you waste time on it, delete it off your phone. I enjoy my time on Instagram so I left that but I found myself mindlessly scrolling Facebook and Twitter and not enjoying the content I was consuming. Both apps can be nasty places to be but are often essential to business running or getting local knowledge so I kept my accounts but deleted the apps so I was forced to log in via the web if I want to access them.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA CULL
Following that I did a big cull of my social media following and who I was following. I deleted as many inactive accounts as I could find and then massively reduced my Facebook friends down to 60 actual pals, members of my family and people I still actually like not just people from school I knew 10 years ago. I also culled who I was following on my personal Instagram account so I am only seeing the content of people I know or celebs I like, not just relying on it for celebrity gossip.
3. BREAKING NEWS ALERTS
In the first lockdown I had BBC breaking news alerts on my phone as there was so much of it I wanted to keep abreast of. However following a massive burnout in December and the new lockdown before Christmas when I started to find myself panicking I took a big social media break and deleted my news app to avoid doom scrolling. When I felt able to re-downloaded my news apps I kept breaking news alerts off and haven’t missed a thing.
4. ORGANISING MY HOME SCREEN
The introduction of IOS 14 allowed us to organise our home screens in a way we’ve not seen before on Apple. I have dabbled plenty of times with organising apps into folders but nothing has ever really stuck until last September with the introduction of the app library. My initial home screen has my main apps on like email, social media, whatsapp, weather, banking and the like and then everything else is saved in the app library. There’s shopping apps, photo editing apps, exercise apps and so on and so forth but they’re not there in my face, meaning I waste less time on my phone opening apps mindlessly.
5. NOTIFICATIONS
Notifications is something I’ve controlled on my phone for a long time as most apps have unnecessary pop ups but I really took the time to go through them one by one a few months ago. I’ve always had social media notifications off but I also removed banner notifications from messenger apps, shopping apps etc etc and left them as badges only. That way I know if there’s something on that I need to deal with but don’t have to deal with the distraction of constant banners of info.
6. NOTIFICATION SOUNDS
One thing I never really controlled was notification sounds, leaving all apps as if notifications were on sounds were on too. Recently I turned notification sounds off lots of apps including my emails, facebook messenger and banking but it’s been emails that has made the biggest change. I can see my emails, I can see what’s come in as I still have banners and badges in place but my phone is not constantly pinging so I don’t feel constantly available.
7. DOWNTIME
Downtime has been a major game changer to me especially in work hours as I often found myself reaching for my phone when I had a quiet moment instead of moving on with my to do list. On screen time on iPhone you can set downtime hours for scheduled time away from the screen and can customise those days to suit. I have downtime set between 9am - 5.30pm which are the hours I work and off on weekends as I’m not too arsed - if I’m busy I won’t access my apps on a weekend. You can set certain apps to always be allowed even in downtime so I have Whatsapp allowed, emails, banking apps etc - the things that don’t distract me.
8. APP LIMITS
Combined with downtime I also have app limits set for my social media and it’s surprised me how much I do follow it. If I find myself picking up my phone in work hours, the fact my social media, messenger apps and news apps are faded out makes me so much more likely not to even try accessing them. If the apps are clicked there’s a reminder of my limit and I have them all set to an hour per day which is plenty of time for mindless scrolling imo.
9. MUTING CHATS
This is something I have done for a while, particularly for really busy group chats (sorry blog squad love you) but I recently took a long hard look at my Whatsapp and who I wanted to be constantly accessible to. I now have all group chats muted except my family chat with my parents and brother but I have also turned sound notifications off for the majority of my contacts too. I am on Whatsapp a lot anyway, I use it to communicate with colleagues whilst we all homework and I chat to friends there too so there’s nothing I miss - but my phone isn’t constantly tweeting at me when a message comes in. If you don’t want to mute contacts you can set a custom tone to ‘none’ so you’ll still see banners and badges but your phone won’t ping aloud.
10. DO NOT DISTURB ON OUTLOOK
My work life home life balance has been shocking the last six eight months and one of the biggest factors has been having my work emails on my phone. When I was working in the office I’d log off at 5.30pm and not look at them again until I walked into the office the following morning but these days I need to be able to see emails before I’ve logged in as the nature of my job has changed since working from home but I found it hard to switch off completely. It’s such a simple action but putting do not disturb onto my outlook app and switching off badge notifications on evenings and weekends allows for a better balance as I can’t see the emails come in and be tempted to open.
11. DELETING APPS ON HOLIDAY
I had a bit of annual leave at the beginning of the month and made myself completely uncontactable from my boss and colleagues, removing myself from social media and Whatsapp for the week and deleting all my work related apps. I got rid of Outlook and Microsoft Teams completely to avoid the temptation to peep at my inbox and it worked wonders. Out of sight out of mind really does work.
12. TEXT AND CALLS
One thing I had never put effort into before was who could contact me via text or the phone. The majority of my contact is done through Whatsapp and the majority of the texts I get are from my Dad or from companies like Royal Mail, Asda, Tesco etc. I like to leave my phone on loud overnight but constant 6am texts about my click and collect was getting a little much. With that in mind I turned off all notification sounds from texts and set them all to no ringtone, except those from immediate family which are set to custom tones. I did however leave all phone calls on loud as I rarely get called by anyone who isn’t work or family.
13. MAKING SURE I CAN STILL BE CONTACTED
At the end of the day, although this is all about making my phone a healthier place to be, ultimately I still need to be contactable. I don’t have a landline and our signal isn’t always fabulous in the middle of the forest and I always need to be able to hear from family in an emergency. Like I said above I leave my phone on loud overnight and you’d be surprised how many calls I’ve had in the early hours from someone who needs me so minimising all the other rubbish that comes through my phone has been a blessing. Now the only Whatsapp and text messages that make a noise are immediate family so I know if my phone tweets at me, it really is something I need to look at.