How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life

by Catherine Price

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

WWW: WHAT FOR, WHY NOW, AND WHAT ELSE 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 lift), 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. The point is simply to give yourself a chance to explore your options for that particular moment, so that if and when you turn your attention to your phone, it’s the result of a conscious decision. Identifying your goal ahead of time also prevents an impulse to share a photo on social media from devolving into another thirty minutes spent absent-mindedly scrolling through your feed.

One obvious conclusion is that we value social media much less than we do real-life fun – and that we should probably prioritize the latter. Fair enough. But for some people, social media is an enjoyable tool that makes them feel connected to friends, family, and the world around us. Ideally, we’d be able to use social media in moderation, enjoying the good parts without risking the bad. But this is particularly difficult to do on our phones because, as we’ve discovered, social media apps are specifically designed to suck us in.

In short: just do it. Delete the apps for now. You will be okay. I promise. In fact, many people have told me that, in terms of breaking their addiction to their phones, this was one of the most useful things they did.

you delete social media apps from your phone, you are likely going to miss some posts. But instead of directing your FOMO towards what you think you might miss if you reduce the amount of time you spend on social media, try focusing on what you are definitely missing when you spend time on social media – which is to say, the rest of your life.

Lastly, spending less time on social media will help prevent a different type of FOMO: the jealousy that occurs when you compare your own life to someone else’s social media feed. The irony, of course, is that most people’s feeds do not accurately represent the proportion of their lives they actually spend skiing/surfing/sitting in hot tubs with models. Also, many people with enormous social media followings are actually paid to glamorise their lives. If someone’s existence looks too good to be true, it probably is.

That’s why we need to get back in touch with what makes us happy in our offline lives. We’re going to start with a few prompts. Just jot down whatever comes to mind. • 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:

The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.

The Power of Habit, journalist Charles Duhigg defines a habit as “a choice that we deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about, but continue doing, often every day”. As he describes it, every habit is a loop made up of three parts: 1. A cue (also called a trigger): a situation or an emotion that “tells your brain to go into autopilot mode and let a behaviour unfold”. 2. A response: the automatic behaviour (that is, the habit). 3. A reward: “something that your brain likes that helps it remember ‘the habit loop’ in the future”. For example: you’re feeling bored one day and see your phone on the table (the emotional and physical cue), so you reach for your phone (the response) and are distracted and entertained (the reward).

The good news is that, while habits can’t be eradicated entirely, they can be changed. 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.

This is exactly what happens to us when we enable push notifications – the alerts that show up on our home and lock screens countless times per day. Notifications use our brains’ natural ability to associate cues with rewards (and our anxiety over uncertainty) to get us to compulsively check our phones. 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.

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 slot machines, and reinforce the very habit loops that we are trying to change. They are evil and must be destroyed.

Go into your phone’s notifications settings and turn off all notifications except for phone calls and – if you want – messaging apps and your calendar.

EMAIL PRO TIP: THE POWER OF VIPS You may be resisting the idea of turning off your email notifications because there are certain people – like, say, your boss – whose emails you don’t want to miss. The solution is to set up a list of Very Important People, and then to tell your phone that you only want to receive notifications for emails from those people.

If an app’s risks outweigh its benefits, delete it.

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. Slot machine apps suck. Delete them.

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 colour to grayscale (black and white). It will make your phone look like a Xerox copy of itself – which turns out to be a very unattractive effect.

Many of us complain about automatically checking our phones first thing in the morning and right before bed at night (and in the middle of the night, for that matter). Well, of course we’re doing this: we’re sleeping within arm’s reach of our phones. 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. (If you haven’t already got hold of a non-phone alarm clock, please do so now.)

Now that we’ve removed some of the triggers that make us automatically reach for our phones, we’re going to add some new triggers: things that make it more likely for us to do the things we say we want to do, or that we know that we enjoy. In other words, we’re trying to help ourselves transition from a negative goal (using our phones less) to a positive goal: living up to our intentions. We’re trying to establish happier, healthier habits. For example, if you feel the urge to use your phone while driving, your first step might be to keep your phone out of reach while you’re in the car (avoid the trigger). Your next step might be to plan some positive alternatives. You could program your favourite stations into your radio, or hit “Play” on a podcast you’ve been meaning to listen to before you head out on the road.

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. Take a moment to establish several No-Phone Zones for yourself and, if applicable, your family or roommates. I suggest starting with the dinner table and bedroom: banning phones from the dinner table brings people together, and banning phones from bedroom improves sleep.

Phubbing is short for phone snubbing. Having your phone on the table during a meal? That’s phubbing. Checking your phone in the middle of a conversation? Phubbing. Texting while you’re at a party? Phubbing. These types of behaviours have become so common that we often don’t even notice that we’re engaging in them. But we are.

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.

Stop, Breathe and Be is just what it sounds like: you stop what you’re doing, take a slow, deep breath, and tune in to the details of what you’re experiencing in that moment.

The point of Stop, Breathe and Be is to create another speed bump between your impulses and actions, and to give yourself a moment to reorient yourself so that you can decide what direction you actually want to go. If you’re using it as a way to stop yourself from reaching automatically for your phone, try following it with a round of WWW (What For? Why Now? What Else?),

As Pema Chödrön writes in her book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times: “If we immediately entertain ourselves by talking, by acting, by thinking – if there’s never any pause – we will never be able to relax. We will always be speeding through our lives.”

Stillness also gives your mind the space it needs to be creative and come up with new ideas. So let’s experiment with deliberately making time to be still.

First, identify several situations in which you regularly find yourself reaching for your phone to kill a little bit of time (by “little bit” I mean anywhere from ten seconds to ten minutes). For example: taking the lift, waiting to cross the street, taking a cab, using the bathroom, having lunch. Next, choose two or three of those situations – ideally ones that you know you’ll encounter today – and commit to being still. Tomorrow, choose a few more, and do the same thing. From now through the end of our time together, try to make small doses of stillness a regular part of your day. There are many ways to be still. Stare at the ceiling. Notic...

One way to start is to devote a period of time every day – for example, your walk to work or class – toward actively focusing on something. You could think about a project or problem you’re working on professionally or personally. Or you can work on strengthening some mental skill, such as multiplying two-digit numbers in your head. (Don’t knock it before you try it.) The idea is to build your capacity for focus by, well, focusing. You can also play around with other informal practices. For example, you could take a “music bath”: get comfortable and close your eyes as you listen to a favourite piece of music as closely as you can, trying to pick out each individual instrument. You could write in a journal, or go to a yoga class, or send a handwritten letter to a friend or relative or mentor. Or, you could do something even more straightforward: read – in print, and with your phone off. Not only can getting lost in a book be a very relaxing and restorative experience, but it’s also exactly the type of mental exercise that strengthens our attention spans and encourages deep and creative thought.

HOW YOU DO ANYTHING IS HOW YOU DO EVERYTHING One of my favourite exercises is to practise doing just one thing at a time: choose a chore – such as folding the laundry or chopping onions – and devote your full attention to it. You may be surprised by how changing the way you perform these small tasks affects the way you approach other aspects of your life. There’s a saying, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” Think about that the next time you brush your teeth.

As neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley puts it, “ignoring is an active process”. It requires our prefrontal cortexes to exert top-down control, suppressing activity in certain brain areas so that the object of our attention stands out. The better we are at ignoring, the better we are at paying attention. And it turns out that being able to ignore distractions is good for our working and long-term memories, too.

In mindfulness meditation, you choose something from your present experience to focus on – for example, your breathing, external sounds, physical sensations, or even the coming and going of thoughts – and then you try to maintain your attention on that one thing for a set period of time, without judging yourself or trying to change anything.

The trick is not to fight your mind when it wanders. Instead, once you notice that your attention has drifted, gently bring it back without criticising yourself. You’re likely to have to do this multiple times during your practice – possibly every few seconds, depending on how quickly you notice that it’s happened. And that is totally fine. The very fact that you noticed that your mind has wandered means that you’re doing it right.

If you don’t want to use your phone, just set a timer, close your eyes, and try to train your focus entirely on your breath for five minutes. When your mind wanders – which it will – gently bring your attention back to your breath, over and over and over again. (You can also do this using prayer or mala beads, taking two or three breaths for every bead.)

If you are worried about getting sucked into a phone spiral before, during, or after your meditation, you can use your app-blocker to block access to other apps when you meditate. You can also reduce temptation – and increase the likelihood that you’ll actually stick with the practice – by giving your meditation app a prominent spot on your newly redesigned home page.

You can do your Trial Separation during any twenty-four-hour period this weekend. Make sure that you’ve done whatever you need to do to prepare. Then, when the time comes, simply turn off your phone – and whatever other devices you’ve decided to take a break from – and hide it someplace out of sight. Not Airplane Mode. Totally off.

Your Trial Separation is a perfect opportunity to allow serendipity to re-enter your life. Take a walk in a new neighbourhood. Try a restaurant you’ve been curious about. Look at the event listings in your local paper and go to something new. No matter what you do, it’s likely to be more memorable than staring at your phone.

Have a Fleeting Relationship No, I’m not suggesting you have an affair. A “fleeting relationship” is a brief interaction, often with a stranger, that creates a sense of connection. For example: a pleasant exchange with a waiter, a group cheer at a sports bar, or one of those oddly personal chats that seem to occur between strangers on a plane. You wouldn’t think that these interactions would mean much, but actually they can have a surprisingly dramatic effect on how “connected” we feel to society at large. The more time we spend looking down at our phones instead of at the people around us, the fewer of these fleeting relationships we will have. So during your Trial Separation, make a point of having at least one fleeting relationship. Notice if it makes a difference to your mood.

Do Something Fun with Real People Hopefully this is self-explanatory.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

We’ll start with a series of open-ended questions called “See/Think/Feel/Wonder”. Use them as writing prompts or as conversation starters with anyone who did the Trial Separation with you.

What did you observe about yourself and your behaviour and emotions during your twenty-four-hour Trial Separation? (That is, what did you see?)

What do these observations make you think about? When you reflect back on the experience, what thoughts come into your mind?

Now that you’ve made it through the Trial Separation, how do you feel about your phone itself, as well as your relationship with it?