3 Tips to Help You Minimise Phone Distractions
Helping your technology work for you rather than against you.
Let us start with a little housekeeping. The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that I have moved my fiction work over to this newsletter; it felt the right thing to do, so hopefully, you will forgive the odd short story sliding into your email to show you that I don’t just talk about writing; I do it. 😂
Now that is over to the juice stuff; how can you stop that tiny little light box in your hand from controlling your world?
Social media has made us all want instant gratification. We admire influencers when we should admire nurses, doctors, soldiers and people with brains.
We don’t tend to celebrate people who put clear boundaries and have control over their environment, but we should. So here are three simple ways that I have put control back into my life that you can adopt.
Use technology to your advantage.
Over the last couple of months, I have been looking at my phone usage. The trick is not to pick your phone up. Once you pick it up, those messages, notifications, and social media icons pull you in.
One of the times I used my phone the most was at the weekends, not because I had more free time, but because I didn’t wear my smartwatch. It sounds crazy, but I picked up my phone to see the time and got drawn in.
So I set up a face on my smartwatch, just a clock with no notifications. Since I started wearing my watch on weekends, I have gone without picking up my phone for days.
Using shortcuts on my phone.
I also use my phone to record thoughts and ideas that can be future articles. So, I set up a shortcut that sends text to my notes application without opening it.
I placed this shortcut onto my Home Screen. Now, I can save an idea without opening my phone and seeing all those social media applications.
A bonus tip would be to turn all notifications off so that even if you open the phone, you don’t see people interacting with your content.
Read physical books
This is possibly the most obvious of the tips, but if you read physical books, you are not opening your phone to read. A Kindle is almost as good as a physical book because they are just reading. No one in their right mind would use a Kindle to access the internet unless they had a spare day.
As well as reading physical books, ensure you take them with you. Wherever you go, carry a book with you. When you have those spare minutes, you can grab your book rather than your phone.
A daughter of a friend once told Donna Tartt, “You should never get social media, Donna, it’s a terrible idea for you, it’s noisy and shallow and distracting and it will sneak into your reading and writing life in a thousand horrible ways and be a monstrous waste of your energy and time.”
She took this advice, and her writing shows it; she can craft beautiful prose and stories that keep all engaged.
Thinking about giving up our smartphones or social media is something few of us would do. But, we can learn to use technology to our advantage rather than it using us.
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Until next week, stay safe
Sam 😊
Quote of the week
It is important to remember we are not the customer we are the product. - Cal Newport