How to Check Your Phone Less*

*No Willpower Required

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to the Phone Breakup Challenge. Did you experiment with deleting slot machine apps, getting your phone out of your bedroom, and/or taking intentional breaks from your phone? If so, tell us about it in the comments!

Speaking of experiments, instead of just writing newsletters for this challenge in the exact same order as the assignments in How to Break Up With Your Phone or in the 30-Day Phone Breakup Course, I’m playing around with writing posts in direct response to what you tell me. Not only is this more fun, but I think it will be more helpful. (Cue extremely non-diabolical laughter.)

So here’s what you’re telling me

In my last post, in which I explained some of the ways in which our apps are designed to “hack” our brains, I included a poll asking you what you’d observed about the triggers that typically cause you to reach for your phones. Here are the results so far.

What I find the most interesting here—in fact, it made me laugh in an “isn’t honesty refreshing?” kind of way is that “genuinely needing/wanting to have it” only accounted for 11% of phone pickups.

If you do the math, that means that 89% of your/our phone grabs are NOT the result of a genuine want or need. Instead, we’re reaching for our phones because we’re in an emotional state that we want to escape.

Now, technically speaking, you could argue that there are a lot of overlaps in the options I gave you. For example, boredom or loneliness can make us feel anxious and crave distractions. This is why I’m not an actual academic researcher. However, I still seem several major themes here:

1. We’re uncomfortable with boredom

2. We do not like being alone with our thoughts, no siree, not at all

3. We have the attention span of a mosquito (actually, that may be an insult to mosquitoes; they seem quite focused)

4. We turn to our phones to self-soothe and to escape emotional discomfort or pain — in other words, we use our phones like drugs

Is that depressing or empowering?

Probably both, but let’s focus on the “knowledge is power!” angle, and talk about a couple of techniques I personally have found to be useful and that I encourage you to try this week.

Identify What Reward Your Brain is Seeking (And Find a Different Way to Provide It)

In his fantastic book, The Power of Habit,

Charles Duhigg

explains the concept of a “habit loop” — which is the idea that each of our habits has three parts: the cue, the routine, and the reward (illustrated here by a graphic made by one of his fans):

When we think about habits, we often focus on just the routine part—because that’s the habit itself (in this case, reaching for our phones) and we try to “break” the habit, as if we are cowboys. Unfortunately, most of us are not cowboys, and our habits are definitely not horses, and this approach does not work. As Charles explains, habits can’t actually be broken . . . but they can be changed.

In order to change a habit, you need to recognize that while our habits (such as phone checking) often seem automatic, they’re actually nearly always preceded by an emotional or situational trigger (what Charles calls a “cue”). For example: feelings of boredom, or anxiety, or loneliness, or the desire for a distraction.

That’s why I asked you last week to notice some of the situational and emotional triggers that precede your phone checks—those are examples of your cues.

Once you’ve identified your habit (routine) and the trigger (cue), the final step is to figure out what “reward” your brain is ultimately after when it engages in the habit—and then (here’s the habit change part!) figure out a different way to give your brain that same reward. For example, if your cue is loneliness, what’s the reward that you’re seeking? (A moment of human connection? A feeling that you matter? Someone to commiserate with? ) And what could you do to actually give yourself this reward? (Maybe use your phone to actually call a friend?)

Stop Taking “Fake Breaks”

Among our many funny (by which I mean dumb) human habits is our tendency to respond to feelings of mental overwhelm by doing things that leave us feeling even more mentally overwhelmed. For example, when I was writing The Power of Fun I noticed I had a habit of “taking a break” from the hard work of writing by . . . opening a different browser tab and reading the latest news stories about politics or the pandemic. (I should be a fun guru!) It sounds to me like a lot of you are doing something similar: you want a distraction from what you’re doing so you . . . reach for your phone and open Instagram? I mean, I guess that does count as a distraction, but I doubt it’s delivering the relaxation or nourishment that you’re actually craving.

I’ve started to refer to these as “fake breaks” (which seems catchier than “total lapses in judgment”) because I realized that when our working memories feel overwhelmed—in other words, when we’re already juggling too much information—the last thing we should be doing is adding more information to our brains. That would be like deciding to take a break from juggling by picking up another ball.

Instead, what I try to do (I don’t always succeed) is to notice when my attention and focus start waning (often indicated by a twitch in my left hand, as my fingers start heading toward the keyboard shortcut that will open a new browser tab)—and then go do something else. If I’m really having an A+ student day, I’ll go through the Charles Duhigg-inspired exercise of identifying the reward my brain is seeking and go do something actually fulfilling, like practice on my drum pad (which I try to keep nearby). Other times, I’ll take the dog out, or exercise, or go on a walk, or just sigh loudly and stare off into the middle distance while my dog looks up at me, confused.

My point is that whenever I do take my own (and Charles’s) advice, I end up feeling much more rejuvenated than I would if I had allowed myself to, oh, I dunno, tab over AGAIN to the page on Substack where it tells you how what percentage of your subscribers are free versus paid, which is obviously a wonderful use of time and a behavior that should be repeated multiple times per day.

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Practice Being Bored

Our brains are constantly being overloaded with information, sensory stimulation, and distractions—just think of how many news alerts, text messages, social media posts, or work emails you receive or consume each day. Not only is this deluge exhausting, but it leaves us with no mental space to think or come up with new ideas. Instead, we’re constantly in reaction mode—and that’s exhausting.

So today, try to find at least one “moment” (defined as 1–5 minutes) to deliberately allow yourself to be bored . . . BUT instead of saying to yourself, “I’m bored and this sucks,” try saying, “This is great: I’m giving myself the gift of mental space!” (Yes, you can roll your eyes at me and use a sarcastic tone of voice while doing so.)

(Re)build your “muscle of attention,” your tolerance for emotional discomfort, and your ability to sit with your own thoughts

In the Phone Breakup Forum, a lot of Fun Squad members have been asking me about how to deal with their inability to focus, or the anxiety and twitchiness and discomfort that bubbles up when they try to take a step back from their phones.

I’ve found myself repeatedly recommending this free mindfulness meditation course led by two of the world’s most renowned teachers, Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield and so wanted to share it with the whole list. In it, Tara and Jack teach you mindfulness-inspired techniques that will help you develop more compassionate self-awareness, build your ability to maintain your focus and presence, and begin a meditation practice. It’s self-paced and 40 days long, and each lesson is only about 10-12 minutes, making it feel much less overwhelming than similar courses that I’ve tried. Strongly recommend, even to those of you who have absolutely no interest in mindfulness OR meditation.

And . . . that’s it!

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Fun Squad members:

Keep bringing your questions, comments, observations and suggestions to the Phone Breakup Forum. I read them all and will respond personally.

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Thank you to everyone who’s been participating—and to those of you who have shared the challenge with a friend.

To scrolling less and living more,

Catherine

PS: Click here to catch up on what we’ve done so far.

PPS: I am currently working on a revised edition of How to Break Up With Your Phone. If you’ve read the book and have any ideas or suggestions for how to make it better, I’d love to hear them.

Bonus Tip: Ask Yourself “What for? Why now? What else?”

As many of you know, I came up with a mindfulness-inspired exercise to help get in the habit of questioning your own phone habits. It’s called WWW, which is short for “What for? Why now? What else?” and here’s a video of me explaining how it works. (I look very serious in that thumbnail. Don’t be fooled.)