Three Effective Ways to Use Your Phone Less

mobile phones use distract

 

1. Turn ALL notifications off.

Keep only those notifications which come up when a real person is trying to contact you, meaning calls or sms. Any other kind of notifications, such as Facebook telling you that a friend posted in ‘The Salott’ or that annoying friend that constantly posts food on Instagram just added to their story, or any other non-social app notification, can be blocked. These secondary notifications are there just to get you to use the app and distract you.

Another easy way is to group notifications, mainly on emails, by disabling push notifications and setting the app to update once every hour.

2. Set your phone’s display to black and white.

Yes, black and white. Our brain likes colours. Our brain also likes contrast. Notification bubbles are red, and these will pop out on your homescreen. Just check the screenshots below, in the grayscale photo the notification icons are less pronounced and will tempt you to check them less. This can be done through your phone’s accessibility options.

3. Only have apps which will not suck you into endless content on your homescreen.

If you open your phone and the first thing you see is the Messenger app, you will have to check it. Same with Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram… you get what I mean. Keep your homescreen only with apps you need, such as camera app, dialer, sms, internet browser and maybe a mapping app. All the other apps can stay in the app drawer and access them when you really need them.

EXTRA: Android users, try out AIO Launcher.

AIO Launcher is a simple launcher that replaces your homescreen with a black background and gives you all the necessary info that you need on one screen, with all the apps hidden to a side. If you are into minimalism and like an uncluttered device, this launcher is great for you!

 

featured image source.

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About Nicky Zarb 7 Articles
Nicky is currently a final year Mechanical Engineering student. He is passionate about music, photography and cars.