4 tips on how to stop wasting time on your phone and be smarter than your smartphone
In this article on how to stop wasting time on your phone, I share with you some useful tips that will help you reduce your smartphone addiction.
Before we get to the tips, below you will find some of the negative consequences of this addiction.
Handa & Ahuja (2020) show that fear of missing out is a predictor of problematic smartphone usage behavior. Further, the study points to poorer quality of sleep as a consequence of high smartphone usage.
Smartphone addiction has been found to disrupt sleep which in turn can impact memory, affect the ability to think clearly and reduce cognitive and learning abilities (Azaka, 2021).
Duke & Montag (2017) show that smartphone addiction decrease work productivity.
Excessive smartphone use can interfere with concentration at school or work and can cause physical difficulties, such as neck stiffness, blurred vision, wrist or back pain, and sleep disturbances (Kim & Kang, 2013; Korea Internet & Security Agency, 2011; Kwon & al., 2013; Mok & al., 2014). It can also reduce in-person social interaction and academic achievement and lead to relationship problems (Kim & Kang, 2013; Kuss & Griffiths, 2011; Mok & al., 2014). (Choi & al. (2015).
Alhassn & al. (2018) also show a positive correlation between smartphone addiction and depression.
Now, let’s move on to the tips.
1 – Identify what triggers you to use your smartphone
Sharma (2021) shows that lack of mindfulness, assessed as a thoughtless characteristic, is significantly related to smartphone addiction, as well as health and quality of life.
This means that the first step of your change process is to become more aware and therefore more attentive to the way you think and act.
Your smartphone addiction depends on several factors that will initiate your behavior.
These may include life situations in which you use your phone to cope with temporary discomfort.
For example, when you are on the platform or in the subway, you observe that the majority of passengers use a smartphone.
These people start using it to psychologically manage the arrival of their train or their travel time. Using the phone becomes a way to better manage this discomfort.
In this case, you just need to prepare in advance an alternative solution that is also motivating to start reducing the time you lose by using too much your phone.
For example, you can bring along a book that you are passionate about so that reading replaces the automatic use of the smartphone while maintaining the same benefits for you.
But this addictive behavior can also occur when you encounter certain people with whom you have difficult relationships.
You feel an unpleasant emotion, you don’t know how to deal with it and a few seconds later you find yourself with your smartphone in your hands.
Generally speaking, there are certain events that will generate automatic responses to a situation that is perceived as difficult to handle.
Uddina, Baigb & Minhas (2018), De Pasquale & al. (2017), Lopez-Fernandez (2015), propose a questionnaire to test smartphone addiction.
Actionable tip: Identify and jot down a list of situations that make you feel uncomfortable
The best way to take back control of your behavior is to think about all the situations that stimulate the repetition of the habit you want to change.
Then, you can write down this list, and next to each situation, you can choose an alternative behavior that you can try out to start reducing your addiction.
2 – Get over the fear of missing out
Fuster, Chamarro, & Oberst (2017) and Handa & Ahuja (2020) show that the fear of missing out is a predictor of smartphone addiction.
Fear of missing out (FoMO) is described as a pervasive unpleasant sensation that others might be having rewarding experiences of which one is not part, as well as the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing.
It is therefore important to consider whether you are affected by this fear.
If you have the tendency to be connected all the time to the virtual and the simple idea of disconnecting stresses you out, then it is time to change your behavior.
As you probably know, the need to be part of a group is one of the most important psychological needs and as Meena & al. (2021) show, loneliness facilitates smartphone addiction.
You can find another way to satisfy it. For example, by being more active in real life and joining groups of people who share your interests.
Unlike what happens on the Internet with your phone, in real life interactions with others have a definite beginning and end.
This allows you to have time to process events and make sense of what is happening in the relationship with your professional and personal environment.
This time that allows you to integrate the relationships you have with others is one of the main differences compared to what happens in a virtual space that is constantly connected.
Another difference is that in real life our need for social validation is also limited in space and time. This again allows you to develop more objectivity about the interpretations you give to relationships and to the emotions you experience. This does not happen in the virtual world where the need to be liked can become more important than the need to be ourselves.
For some people, the addictive use of the smartphone can also be an expression of a certain perfectionism. Again, the desire to appear at one’s best can become pathological in some individuals.
Actionable tip: Plan your real and virtual life
An effective way to reduce your smartphone use is to schedule real-life appointments for meaningful interactions.
On the other hand, you can schedule time for your virtual life.
For example, you schedule 30 minutes of smartphone use every day at the same time just to relax and do whatever you want.
3 – Take action
It’s time to take action by taking advantage of the principles that promote addictive behavior regarding your smartphone.
Among these principles, there is the social reward that is powered by everything your device does automatically from its current settings.
To be more specific, Veissière & Stendel (2018) show that smartphone addiction is mediated by the grip of intermittent social reward reinforcement programs.
This means that anything you can do to reduce the control level of your smartphone will reduce your addiction.
For example, you can turn off all notifications on your phone or at least a few.
The previous authors also advise that if you set regular times to check your phone, you can reduce the strong cravings that arise from chaotic patterns of anticipating rewards.
Actionable tip: Reinforce your productive behaviors
Make a list of actions you can take to regain control of your phone use.
You can start with the tips in this article.
Then, write a list of rewards that you will enjoy each time you act consistently with your decisions.
When you don’t perform adequately, be kind to yourself and try to improve next time.
4 – Reduce stress
Cho, Kim & Park (2017) show that when stress increases self-control decreases, and smartphone addiction increases.
You have two ways to act on stress. These are coping strategies aimed at solving problems and avoidance strategies.
The first category consists in managing the situations that stress you, for example by taking concrete actions to improve the quality of your professional or personal life.
The second consists in improving your well-being, for example by practicing activities that you are passionate about, taking time to relax, strengthening your resilience, and more generally disconnecting from your worries from time to time.
The two categories are complementary and their combination is more effective than using them separately.
What are your coping strategies when you are stressed?
Which strategies are effective and which ones would you like to change?
If you want to change your behavior more easily, you can use implementation intentions and mental contrast.
Implementation intentions are phrases like if…then that act as action rules that will facilitate your behavioral change.
For greater effectiveness, you can combine implementation intentions with mental contrast.
The purpose of the mental contrast is to list all the factors that might prevent you from acting as you want, in order to find solutions in advance to deal with these potential problems.
Actionable tip: Create and test at least one implementation intention
Identify at least one major stressor in your life and write down an implementation intention that allows you to reduce your stress through a coping strategy focused on action or avoidance or on strengthening your resilience.
Then, evaluate the effectiveness of your implementation intention and modify it if necessary.
Conclusion on how to stop wasting time on your phone
In this article, I shared with you 4 tips based on scientific research to stop wasting time on your phone in order to improve your well-being and productivity.
If you are interested in the topic of productivity, I invite you to discover all my articles on productivity.
If you are looking for tools to improve your time management skills, I recommend you read my article on the best time management apps.
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Français : Dépendance au smartphone : 4 conseils pour vaincre l’addiction au téléphone
Italiano: Dipendenza da smartphone: 4 consigli scientificamente provati per uscirne