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Home » Diets that Work » Reality Check: Need more time in the day? Go on a device diet – Brownwood Bulletin

As we enter the 2020s, mobile phones increasingly dominate our daily lives. Some of us older folks still use them to make calls, but more often we are sending and receiving texts, emails, Facebook messages and Snapchats.

Or were looking at photos and videos on Instagram and YouTube. And Facebook. And Snapchat.

Or were watching full movies and television series on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Apple TV+, or Disney+.

Or were catching live sports on several of the above, plus ESPN, NFL Network, or one of many other apps Im not hip enough to know about.

Some call it an addiction, or even an epidemic. I dont know if I believe all of that, though I will admit that kids who can operate a cellphone better than I do may have a different experience by the time theyre in their thirties.

I decided that I needed to limit my time on these devices and apps. And I feel like Ive been more productive as a result.

The Internet is littered ironically with articles and blog posts about how to limit ones time on social media and consuming visual entertainment. But I never paid much attention, sure I was not frittering away all my time on my device.

Then Apple, perhaps to help combat this wasting of hours, introduced the Screen Time feature on its iPhones.

I still didnt pay much attention, until I started trying to balance more plates. And as my commitments grew, my free time shrunk.

Or did it?

When looking ahead at how I could get everything done and still sleep, I thought about the entertainment hours I could cut.

I could not stop reading new books. In fact, I needed to make time to read more.

Cutting television and movie viewing was the first logical choice. But how much time would that really save me every day?

The report was not flattering. I had, on average, three hours of visual entertainment I could cut. And as I dug deeper, a bigger problem emerged: social networking.

All the time mindlessly scrolling through social media was adding up. Adding up, on some days, to more than four hours on my phone consuming memes and status updates and reading pointless arguments.

The truth was stunning. On some days, I was spending an entire workday on my phone getting nothing done. There is a section on the Screen Time app for productivity, but it was the smallest bar on the graph. By far.

As a first step to limiting my time on social media and television/movies, I borrowed a trick from my struggles with overeating.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Keeping my phone in a different area while working helped immediately. If the phone wasnt in my pocket, constantly buzzing and asking to be checked, I didnt.

Of course, the distractions offered by the phone are also available on the Internet via my laptop. (If I used a tablet, the same would apply.) And when I began finding my browser open to Twitter or Facebook or Amazon Prime, I realized Id have to take it a step further.

It took a few minutes, but I eventually figured out how to turn off the internet on the Wi-Fi for my computer. (Yes, it is possible.)

Without instant access to the Internet or my cellphones data, I was cut off from the distractions.

I could turn the wireless capability back on and retrieve my phone from its hiding place, obviously. But trying it out, even for a few hours, was liberating. In those three hours, I could write or edit or do whatever work needed to be done noticeably faster.

Next up was creating a schedule. I considered going eight straight hours cut off from the digital world, but two things occurred to me.

First, my cellphone is the best way to reach me for emergencies. The thought of an eight-hour delay from getting such news was unsettling.

Also, Ive gone eight hours straight with no breaks, and its not conducive to producing quality work, no matter what field youre in.

So I now take a 15-minute break in the morning and the afternoon, and a longer lunch around midday, with no more than three hours between them.

And its only during these breaks that I check social media on my phone or computer. I try to adhere to this schedule even on the weekends, with moderate success.

I indulge a bit in the evenings, but I now find it easier to reach for a book even if its on the Kindle app on my phone rather than the endless scroll of social media.

By the time you read this, itll have been about three months since I went on my device diet. I highly recommend it to anyone who feels like they need more hours in the day.

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Reality Check: Need more time in the day? Go on a device diet - Brownwood Bulletin

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Home » Diets that Work » Reality Check: Need more time in the day? Go on a device diet – Brownwood Bulletin