How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan

by Catherine Price

When phone breakups fail, it’s usually due to a lack of preparation. As we’ve touched on, people tend to try to change their relationships with their phones without first asking themselves what they actually want their relationships with their phones to be. They start with a vague goal—“I want to spend less time on my phone”—without specifying what they’re actually trying to change or accomplish, or identifying why they reach for their phones to begin with. Then they try to go cold turkey, and end up feeling discouraged and powerless when it doesn’t work.

What do you love about your phone? • What don’t you love about your phone? • What changes do you notice in yourself—positive or negative—when you spend a lot of time on your phone? (Depending on how old you are, you can also ask yourself if you’ve noticed any changes since you got a smartphone to begin with.) “I love having the world’s information at

Over the next twenty-four hours, try to notice • Situations in which you nearly always find yourself using your phone. (For example, waiting in line, in the elevator, in the car.) Also note the first time in the morning and the last time in the evening that you typically look at your phone. • How your posture changes when using your phone. • Your emotional state right before you reach for your phone. (For example: bored, curious, anxious, happy, lonely, excited, sad, loving, and so on.) • Your emotional state right after you use your phone (Do you feel better? Worse? Did your phone satisfy whatever emotional need caused you to reach for it?) • How and how often your phone grabs your attention (via notifications, texts, and the like). • How you feel while you are using your phone—as well as how you feel when you realize that you don’t have your phone. The point here is to start to become aware of when and how your phone triggers your brain to release dopamine and cortisol—and what you feel like when that happens. (Very generally speaking, cravings are a desire for dopamine, dopamine itself feels exciting, and cortisol feels like anxiety.)

I’d also like you to pay attention to • Moments—either on or off your phone—when you feel some combination of engaged, energized, joyful, effective, and purposeful. When that happens, notice what you were doing, whom you were with, and whether your phone was involved. • How and when other people use their phones—and how it makes you feel.

I’d like you to choose several moments in your day when you seem to pick up your phone the most often, and see if you can identify a consistent trigger that makes you repeat this habit.

We’re not trying to put a judgment on any of these triggers; we’re just trying to become aware of them so that we can begin to identify patterns.

First, notice how you feel right now. How is your breathing? Your posture? Your sense of focus? Your general emotional state?

Now take out your phone and hold it in your hand without unlocking the screen. Notice any changes

in

your breathing, posture, focus, and em...

Next, actually unlock the screen and open one of the apps you use the most frequently (for example, email, social media, or the news). Spend a few moments scrolling through the feed. If you’re looking at email, an...

Lastly, turn off the phone and put it away, out of sight. How do you feel? Is anything different?

To help you notice when you reach for your phone, put a rubber band or hair tie around your phone or a piece of tape or a sticker on the back. That way, any time you reach for your phone, you’ll feel the prompt and be reminded to pay attention. You’ll probably need the reminder for only a few days; after a while, the noticing will become more automatic. You can also do something visual, such as changing the image on your lock screen to a picture of a piece of paper that says “Notice!” or “Why did you pick me up?”

How many times per day did you pick up your phone, and how much time did you spend on it? How does this compare to your guesses? What, if anything, surprised you?

Next, think about what you’ve noticed over the past twenty-four hours about when and why you typically use your phone. What did you notice about how—and how often—your phone interrupts you, or does something that grabs your attention? How did these interruptions make you feel?

What did you notice about how you felt physically and emotionally before, during, and after you used your phone, and during times when you were separated from it? For example, did you feel relaxed, tense, excited, anxious, or some other emotion? What did you pick up on about how your phone affects your levels of dopamine and cortisol? “Before

What did you notice about the moments when you felt you were in a state of “flow” (that is, some combination of engaged, energized, joyful, effective, and purposeful)? What were you doing? Whom you were with? Was your phone involved?

How did you feel when you saw other people on their phones?

Putting this all together, what patterns did you notice? What, if anything, surprised you?

Any time you notice that you are about to reach for your phone, take a second to ask yourself: What For? What are you picking up your phone to do? (For example, to check your email, browse Amazon, order dinner, kill time, and so on.) Why Now? Why are you picking up your phone now instead of later? The reason might be practical (I want to take a photo), situational (I’m in the elevator), or emotional (I want a distraction). What Else? What else could you do right now besides check your phone?

If you do your Ws, and then decide that you really do want to use your phone right now, that’s totally fine.

I’ve always loved to: • I’ve always wanted to: • When I was a kid I was fascinated by: • If I had more time, I would like to: • Some activities that I know put me into flow are: • People I would like to spend more time with include:

“a choice that we deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about, but continue doing, often every day.”

The easiest way to start is to make adjustments to our lives and environments so that we avoid things that trigger our habits, and to make decisions ahead of time about how we’re going to act when we encounter particular situations that we know are likely to trigger us. So that’s what we’re going to focus on this week.

Every time you hear or see a notification, you know that there’s something new and unpredictable waiting for you—two qualities that we are hardwired to crave.

Indeed, the mere presence of a smartphone on the table has been shown to have a negative impact on closeness, connection, and the quality of conversation—not to mention worsen people’s performances of tasks that require focused attention.

In summary: Every ding and vibration from our phones triggers chemical reactions in our brains that pull us away from what we are doing—or the person we are with—and compel us to check our phones, usually for someone else’s benefit. Push notifications turn our phones into

These are the apps that improve your life without stealing your attention. They are the only apps allowed to be on your home screen.

Why? Because they serve a practical purpose without being tempting. They help you accomplish a specific task without any risk that you will be sucked into a black hole.

These are the apps that are fun or useful in limited quantities, but that are hard to stop using once you start. They sometimes can be life-improving, but they also threaten to suck you in. The trick is to decide whether they steal your attention more than they improve your life, or if they improve your life more than they threaten to steal your attention.

it.) If your enjoyment of the app outweighs its risk, relocate it to your phone’s second screen and hide it in a folder, ideally with a title that reminds you to think before you open it. For most people, email qualifies as a junk food app.

Every app on our phones is a dopamine trigger—but slot machine apps are the worst. These are the apps that don’t improve your life and steal your attention.

Signs that an app is a slot machine/junk food app: • You feel a sense of anticipation when you open it. • You find it hard to stop using it. • After you use it, you feel disappointed, unsatisfied, or disgusted with yourself.

These are the apps that you never actually use. They don’t steal your attention, but they also don’t improve your life.

What you do with these apps is likely to reflect your approach toward your real-life junk. Some people will find it easy to recognize their irrelevance and delete them. Other people will hide them in a folder on the third page of their phones and, like overflowing closets, continue to ignore their existence. I will leave it to you to guess which technique I endorse.

There are some apps that you simply can’t delete because your phone won’t let you—which is a total dick move, if you ask me. You can hide them in a folder on your third page, with a title of your choosing.

If you’ve tidied your apps and put them into folders, and still find your phone too tempting, try switching your phone’s display from color to grayscale (black and white).

Menu bar: the chosen few • Home screen: tools • Second screen: curated junk food apps, email • Third screen: utilities, undeletables, clutter*2 • Deleted: slot machine apps, plus every junk food app that sucks you in more often than it serves a purpose or brings you joy

The easiest way to break this habit is to make it harder to reach for your phone while you’re in bed. And the easiest way to do that is to create a charging station for your phone and other internet-enabled mobile devices that isn’t in your bedroom—or, at very least, that’s not right next to your bed.

So do it now: pick a new charging spot.

For example, if you are trying to resist the urge to text while driving, your first step might be to keep your phone out of reach while you’re in the car (avoid the trigger).

it doesn’t have to be this way. The solution is simply to download an app-blocker: an app that blocks your access to sites and apps that you tend to get sucked into, while still letting you use the rest of your phone.

As the name suggests, a “No-Phone Zone” is a place where you do not use your phone. Full stop. No-Phone Zones are great because they remove the need for decision-making in the moment. They can also help reduce conflict: if everyone knows that phones aren’t allowed at the dinner table, then you don’t need to have a new argument about it each night.

If you think that going cold turkey will be impossible for your children/colleagues/students, you could offer a one-minute “tech break” in the middle of the meal or class or meeting so that people can check their phones.

First step: consider not responding. (What’s the worst that could happen? We all have a somewhat inflated sense of our own importance.) If you decide that you are going to take a call or engage in a conversation by text while you’re around other people, consider leaving the room, even if you’re home. It’s less rude, and it’s also annoying to have to do, which makes it less likely that you will take calls in the middle of meals or start texting under the table.

Ideally, you no longer have social media apps on your phone. But regardless, take a moment to prune your accounts. Unfollow people you don’t care about or whose posts make you feel bad.

Create lists of people based on their roles in your life (such as friends, family, colleagues, vague acquaintances) so that when you share a photo of yourself on vacation, you can specify which group of people will see it.

Where do you charge your phone? • At what time do you put it away for the night? • When do you check it for the first time in the morning? (This can be a time or a situation—for example, “I don’t check until I get to the office.” You could also have different times for weekdays and weekends.) • Where do you keep your phone while you’re at work? • Where do you keep your phone while you’re at home? • Where do you keep your phone at meals? • Where do you carry your phone? • What do you use your phone for? (For example: practical purposes like navigating, social purposes like calling and texting, or educational and entertainment purposes such as listening to podcasts.) • What are the situations in which you have decided that you don’t use your phone? In the elevator, waiting in line, or when you’re bored or feeling socially awkward? • Which apps are tools that enrich or simplify your life? • Which apps do you know are dangerous/the most likely to suck you in? This can be a particularly useful question to answer because it limits what you have to worry about. If you know you’ve got three apps on your phone that tend to steal your attention, then you can put yourself on high alert when you use those particular apps—and not worry as much about the other things you do on your phone. (Or you could delete those three apps. Just saying.) • Based on your answer to the previous question, which apps/websites do you block—and when?

The less time we spend beating ourselves up, the faster we’ll be able to get back on track.

your phone has gone from being your boss to being a tool.