Declutter your brain: the minimalist phone
Declutter your brain: the minimalist phone
It's just 3 steps away.
If you missed last week’s thread about simple organization hacks, be sure to go back and take a look — readers contributed such ingenious ideas! A tiny smattering:
Keep your socks as well as your shoes near the front door
Hang a magnetic knife holder on the wall for bobby pins and keep hair ties on a carabiner
Pin gloves together so you can always find pairs in your winter gear bin
So. Many. Laundry hacks.
The Minimalist Phone
Worry over phone use seems to be ubiquitous lately, and I don’t need to rehash the arguments. You can read books, listen to podcasts, and read articles about what phones are doing to us.
So let’s say we can agree many of us have A Phone Problem. Let’s dive into what we can do about it tactically.
Note: None of what I’m sharing today is me judging others. I’m going to share what has worked for me. Hopefully some of this will be helpful for you, but if not that’s ok too.
This is part of the Declutter Your Brain(TM) series where we examine ways to reduce the mental load so we can focus on what matters most. Previously we covered ways to reduce the mental load while getting things done and organizing your home.
Unsurprisingly, many companies want to sell us Stuff to get us off our phones. Turns out more products aren’t the solution (shocker!). After 5 years of experimentation, I’ve finally figured out three free and simple steps that finally helped me cut my phone usage in half.
Living intentionally is a cornerstone of my definition of a good life, and noticing my stupid phone sucking stupid hours of my life felt very non-intentional. A foundational piece of my solution was to quit social media and the news, a journey detailed in this post.
But even without social media, I still was looking at my phone way too much for comfort.
How I Got Off My Phone (at Last!)
I tried so many things. I converted my phone to grayscale to make it less visually appealing (here’s how). I got an Apple Watch to serve as a fancy pager (fellow oldies know what I’m talking about) so I would be reachable in case of emergency but not tethered to my phone. I deleted social media apps off my phone. I considered buying a “dumb” phone, despite the cost and fly-by-night vibe of the companies making them.
None of this really worked. I inevitably found a way back onto my phone.
What finally did the trick was a three-part approach: