Keeping it within Bounds

I have been spending a lot of time on my phone like the majority of the people in the world! When I was in full time work I had reasons to put the phone to one side. Over the last two months I have had to deal with my tendency to pick up my phone too much. So, how have I done this?

The first thing I have tried is reading a book in the morning rather than reading a screen. To an extent it’s working, though not perfectly, but it has proved to be a good first step. It is far more relaxing reading a paperback or hardback book than it is to read a screen. For that reason Kindle always has been and always will be a non starter for me. Anyway, since I left work I have reread the first two books in Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy to remind myself of the story and I am now over halfway through the final book which I preordered in June. Along with that I have read The Barbecue at No 9 by Jennie Godfrey and reviewed it on my blog. I am now looking forward to reading my collection of Christmas books with some I reread year after year.

The next way I have kept off of the screen is to prepare my project of analysing Christmas Magazines from 1896 to 2025. I have finished looking through every page and noting the contents, and this week I will be getting my highlighters out and picking out common themes and contrasts that I find across the years. Now, of course, this does mean that later this month I will spend huge amounts of time writing and editing blog posts but I feel like that is an excellent use of my screen time.

The real game changer, however, came just over two weeks ago. I decided that my screen time was getting out of control, with Instagram, Twitter, Chrome, Fishdom (a game app) and Facebook being the main culprits. I found an app called ScreenZen and it’s worked incredibly well for me. Initially, I included 9 websites on the restricted list, (which I was visiting for a combined time of about 4 hours a day!) and set ScreenZen to a maximum of 40 minutes each. The more adept at mental arithmetic will have quickly realised that this would still give me no less than 6 hours of screen time if I hit those limits!! 😱😱 However, the clever part is that it forces you to wait for 10 seconds before opening it and displays a message like ‘Do you need to check this now?’ This is working brilliantly because it is a proper stopping cue straight away. Many times I think, ‘You know what? I don’t!’ and I leave it unopened. Even if I do open it I have a limited amount of time to use it so I really need to prioritise my phone use and actually use it for a purpose rather than mindlessly looking at an endless scroll. I now use these websites for a short focused time. The four hours of scrolling a day is now down to 45 minutes! Yesterday I restricted myself still further and reduced screen time on those apps to 4 opens of 7 minutes each. If you are interested in the psychology of this take a look at the Ted Talk below from Adam Alter. I used it year after year in my lessons and every year it had at least a temporary effect on my screen use!

The unrestricted sites I have and use most are Word Press, Calm, Duolingo and Happy Color. All four contribute to improving my mental health and wellbeing through relaxation and focus. I wholeheartedly recommend all four.