I Reduced My Screen Time With This One Simple Change

Last week I bought a new phone.... (Team Android for anyone who was wondering).

When I was prompted to transfer my data from the old phone to the new one, I hit the “skip this step” button without pause.

It had been about 6 years since I purchased a new phone, but my routine hasn’t changed.

When I buy a new phone, I always start from scratch. The same way a person may choose to not bring their clutter from an old home into the new one, I do the same with my phones. I always use these times as an opportunity to “digitally declutter.” Considering the amount of junk and unused data that accumulates in a phone over a period of years, I personally think it’s good practice to just let it all go.

All of the photos, phone numbers, saved files, etc… gone.

The phone numbers will find their way back into my phone as I reach out to people in my daily life, or as they reach out to me. Otherwise all those unused numbers from distant connections that have faded away become a thing of the past.

In addition to not transferring anything over to the new phone, I also immediately began deleting the pre-loaded apps that I know I just won’t use, and I also turned off all notifications. I also use this time to decide which apps I will force myself to use desktop versions only for. Perhaps it sounds crazy, but I see this as a necessary part of the process of setting up a new phone.

It is a sort of new beginning where I will decide the settings that will determine how I interact with my new phone for the coming years.

For the past month or so I have been in a period of crazy intense focus. In this chapter of my life I simply just don’t have the time or luxury of spending precious hours on my phone for non-productive purposes. I know that I need to keep phone distractions to a minimum.

I've written about the need to reduce distractions and how too much screen time is impacting our health in previous articles.

The problem is that knowledge and willpower alone are not enough after going on 20 years of being habituated to turn to the phone for all distraction needs. Software developers and tech companies spend billions of dollars every year perfecting every aspect of the phone experience to capture our attentions, so having the will to simply ignore all distractions, notifications, etc is rather infeasible to sustain for a prolonged period of time.

So instead of relying on shear willpower along, I’ve turned to a few methods to keep my screen time down.

Today I’d like to quickly share with you one tool in my toolbox which I have been using lately and has proven to be quite effective.

The Minimalist Phone App.

For full disclosure, I have zero affiliations with this app or its makers. I just like that it makes it much easier to use my phone without being completely distracted and losing my focus. In short, the user interface is designed to reduce screen time as well as unhealthy sources of dopamine like app notifications, vibrant colors, and an overload of different features on the screen.

Between the minimal low-stimulation interface, app timers with automatic close features, and overall plain-ness in design, I’ve found the app to be extremely useful for people like myself who have ADHD and can be hypersensitive to over stimulation.

Here are a few screenshots from my phone using the Minimalist Phone app.

Unfortunately the app is only available for Android users but I did come across this blog article on how to minimize your iPhone. In addition to this, perhaps there are similar apps to the one I am using out there which are compatible with iPhones.

If you are searching for better ways to reduce your screen time, reduce your cheap dopamine, increase your productivity, and improve your focus then I highly recommend going with a “minimalist-style” phone so that you can maximize other areas of your life.