5 Habits to Help You Be on Your Phone Less
Keep reading this post to learn:
Why having screentime boundaries are important & why we should care about them
What happens when we aren't intentional with our screentime
5 tangible tips you can start implementing today to spend less time on your phone
Raise your hand if you are embarrassed by your weekly screen time report every Sunday when it shows up on your phone.
Now that we pretty much all probably have our hands up, let’s talk about it. 😜
We’ve done another blog post about this before but it’s been a few years and the last few weeks when I’ve done my weekly Instagram Q+A box, I get some form of this question: “How can I be on my phone less?”
That tells me that we are due to talk about it again!
Let me get transparent with you for a sec:
Maybe 2-3 weeks ago, when we were in the thick of planner season, I was on my phone more than normal. I tried to brush it off as a “need” because of work. Because I kept making that excuse, I kept letting it slide more and more.
One morning, I was scrolling through an answering DMs while I was sitting on the couch with Evvy. And do you want to know what she said to me?
“Mommy phone down.”
Immediate reality check.
For those of you who don’t know, Everly is not even 2 yet. She’ll be 2 in December, and for her to already be aware that I’m on my phone more than normal and to tell me to get off my phone was a serious wake-up call.
Now I will say, that I am usually pretty proud of my phone usage around her but like I said, during planner season, some of my healthy phone habits flew out the window and I could tell a difference in certain parts of my life. It was a good reminder of why I have these phone habits/boundaries set up in the first place.
The reasons why I care about my screen time:
I’m more present with my family when I’m not on my phone as much.
I’m not as anxious when I’m not on my phone as much.
I don’t feel burned out by content creation when I’m not on my phone as much.
I’m more productive when I’m not on my phone as much. As in I get things done that I actually want to get done and it doesn’t take me twice as long as it should from being distracted by my phone.
When you have habits and boundaries in place for phone usage:
You use your phone intentionally - you are in control of your phone usage.
You have a purpose when it comes to being on your phone (education, personal growth, etc.).
You’re able to spend time with someone without checking your phone.
You feel light after being on your phone. It’s not a struggle for you to stop scrolling and focus on your priorities.
When you don’t have habits and boundaries in place for your phone media usage:
Your phone consumes your day - you spend an ungodly amount of time scrolling.
Your time spent scrolling isn’t only unproductive but it’s distracting.
It’s super hard for you to not reach for your phone when you’re spending time with someone.
You feel foggy/anxious after being on your phone. It’s tough for you to stop scrolling and focus on what needs to be done.
Your phone is a distraction.
I’ve tried many different types of phone habits and boundaries and these are the 5 that I find myself always coming back to because they actually help me spend less time on my phone.
01: Have designated phone-free activities built into your day.
The key here is having these phone-free activities built into your day – so that means they need to coincide with things that you do daily without having to think about it.
I personally need set activities in my life to not be on my phone or else I wouldn’t be able to tell you when the last time I wasn’t on my phone was – because when I’m not mindful, I reach for my phone in any random pocket of free time that I have and I don’t like that.
Right now, my “phone-free” activities are:
~ Dinner
~ Everly’s bath/shower time
~ 30-minute stretch after work when I’m playing with Everly
~ Driving
These change as my season of life changes – because as you know, our schedules and routines are tools, not chains.
02: Set screen time limits and share your weekly screen report with an accountability partner.
So I had to ramp this one up in my own life because doing it by myself just wasn’t cutting it.
I have a set amount of time that I am comfortable with being on my phone each day. I personally don’t have specific limits for certain apps – I just have an overall hour number that I try to stay under each day.
And to tell you the truth, I don’t count listening to music or audiobooks or watching YouTube videos as part of my screen time.
For YouTube videos, I only watch them when I’m in my bathroom (showering and/or getting ready) so I don’t feel like that takes away from other areas of my life if that makes sense. I intentionally decided that when I’m in my bathroom is my designated time to watch YouTube, lol. Sounds weird but it works for me.
I am mostly focused on my social media scrolling when it comes to monitoring screen time.
Honestly hour – when I would get the screen time report pop up on my watch every Sunday, I’d immediately close it out without looking because I wanted to stay in denial.
Denial keeps us in unhealthy cycles. We have to face things head-on if we want to change them. So now, when my screen time report pops up, I open it, screenshot it and send it to a friend. This friend knows what my screen time limits are so she can lovingly call me out if I’m not adhering to them. Adding this extra layer of accountability has made a HUGE difference in my screen time because I know I have to show my screen time to someone else.
Actively monitoring my screen time helps hold me accountable because I can actually see when I’m on my phone more than I’d like to be.
Usually, we think we are on our phones much less than we actually are. When you see the cold, hard numbers, it can be jarring, but you can’t really argue with the data, you know what I’m saying?
So set a screen time limit for yourself and then ask someone to be your accountability partner…it can be a spouse, friend, or family member.
03: Put your phone to bed.
This sounds kind of funny but I physically put my phone to bed every night. I have a charging dock and I put my phone on the dock by 9 PM. I know myself and if I don’t actually put it on the dock in my bedroom, I will for sure get on it and mindlessly scroll. I am not disciplined enough to have my phone sitting with me on the couch and not pick it up…I’m just being honest, lol.
I like putting my phone to bed because it reduces my screen time, protects my evenings with my husband, and helps me to get better sleep because I’m not staring at a screen right up until I go to bed at 10 PM.
If you’ve never tried putting your phone to bed by physically putting it away somewhere at night, you 10/10 need to try it!
04: Limit notifications and use the “Focus Modes” feature.
Okay, let’s talk about notifications first. I am VERY picky about the notifications that I allow on my phone.
The only ones that are turned on right now are:
~ Phone calls
~ Libby
~ Texts from Adam, my parents, my grandparents, and my bestie
~ Voxer during my work hours
Everything else requires me to manually open an app to see notifications. Having to manually go in to check things, keeps me from feeling that urge to click anytime a notification pops up. I don’t feel like I am constantly being pulled in 20 different directions by my phone. I am the boss of my phone, not the other way around.
I don’t know the exact moment someone sends me an email or comments on and Instagram post and honestly, that’s the way I like it.
The other part of this one is using the different focus modes. I have an iPhone but I’m sure other phones have a similar feature.
On the iPhone, you can set up and use these Focus Modes:
- Do Not Disturb
This silences all notifications except for from the people and apps you allow. I have my DND set up to ignore everything except for calls from my husband, my mom, and my grandma.
You can set your phone to DND for 1 hour, until this evening, until I leave this location, until the end of the next event (mine is synced to Google cal).
- Sleep
This silences all notifications except for from the people and apps you allow during your “bedtime” + “wake up” scheduled hours. I have mine set to 9:00 PM bedtime and 7:00 AM wake up time. So my phone automatically silences notifications during this time every day.
And then I don’t use the personal and work modes since I have notifications off all the time anyway. I just hit Do Not Disturb if I need to be unreachable for a certain amount of time that is outside of my phone sleep hours.
Highly recommend taking some time to set up the focus modes on your phone if you haven’t because they are incredibly helpful!
05: Take regularly scheduled time off of social media.
Emphasis on the “regularly scheduled” part of this one – for me, this looks like social media-free Sunday. I’ve been doing this for over a year and it’s drastically changed my relationship with my phone and social media.
Taking an entire day off of social media every week is like a mental refresh for me. It gives my brain time to unwind and just be… because think about it: social media is consumption, even if it is positive stuff that you’re consuming! I don’t think our brains are wired to be bombarded with info all day every day.
Breaking the social media cycle on Sundays helps prevent me from feeling burned out when it comes to creating content, too… so pro tip there for fellow online business owners.
During the first few weeks of practicing this, it was tough to not open social media apps but now, it’s second nature and something I genuinely look forward to. And taking 24 hours off of social media every week really does add up. It saves me between 8-10 hours a month of phone time when added all up.
That’s 8-10 hours that I’m focused on my family and self-care. Pretty rad when you think about it like that, right?
And since starting social media-free Sunday, my overall screen time has actually decreased. I think it’s because my intentionally unplugged Sundays feel so good that it just naturally has carried over into other days of my life.
So take this one and make it work for you. Maybe it looks like taking a week off of social media every quarter. Or a month off every year. Or a day off every week like I do.
But I’m telling you – taking planned time off of social media is a game-changer if you have a phone addiction and you’re trying to be more intentional about your screen time.
And there you have it — 5 habits to help you be on your phone less! Here’s to us being the boss of our devices and not the other way around 🤝🏻🤍
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