I wanted to reduce smartphone screen time, so I changed the phone and the rules around it. This is the personal experiment behind my later reflections on choosing a relationship with social media.
Reduce smartphone screen time: my Nokia experiment
Be honest with yourself.
Go check right now your screentime.
What is it?
Worldwide, the average person spends a total of 6 hours and 55 minutes looking at a screen each day (for internet-connected activities). And the majority of this (3 hours and 16 minutes) is spent on mobiles. This includes 2 hours 25 minutes scrolling through social media channels.
Source: Comparitech Source: DataReportal
Anyway – let’s get back to you.
Be honest, how much time of your – let’s say 3-4-5h? – you spend for nothing? Just scrolling on social media.
For things that are literally wasting your time on this beautiful earth.
For me, it was 5h. Until I decided to go ‘stupid’.
I remove my smartphone and bought a simple Nokia, like this one:
I removed the SIM cards from my iPhone, put them in the Nokia.
I keep the smartphone only for a few apps to stay in touch with some people. (Whatsapp, Telegram, the dua App for testing, etc.)
The boundaries I put around the smartphone
All other apps are deleted.
The smartphone works only with WiFi.
So whenever I’m not in the office, which is about most of the time, because I do home office and on weekends I’m anyway not in the office, then I don’t see or touch my smartphone at all.
Rule: Smartphone stays in the office and I use it only during working hours IF I am in the office (Mo-Fr, 09-17)
- My screen time was 5h daily before I did so
- 1st week it went down to 1h daily
- 2nd week it went down to 40min daily
- 3rd week it went down to 21min daily
- 4th week it went down to 15min daily. (-95%!)
This lead to a 95% reduction of my screen time.
From previously 5 hours to now 15-20 minutes a day.
The best thing that happened to me recently was that I came to the office in the morning, … and checked the phone only about 2 hours later – even that it was next to me all the time. But I just ‘forgot’ to touch it.
That showed me, I had broken this bad habit and need of checking my smartphone all the time.
𝐌𝐲 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘:
+ Responded to emails 80% faster (Email Meter)
+ Inbox 0 – which I didn’t achieve anytime before this year
+ Read 2 books, an average of 30 pages daily (didn’t “find the time” to do so before)
+ Did a pushup challenge (1’500 Pushups in 7 days) successfully which eventually started to become a habit now (day 11, still doing 200+ daily)
+ Spending every day some time (30-60min) in nature (‘Earthing’)
+ Better sleep, more energy
Before I thought I need an Executive Assistant to help me with the “huge workload”, apparently removing the smartphone was more than enough to have now a lot of free time – for work & life.
Suddenly I have time for all these things – with a super small change in my behaviour: Leaving my smartphone in the office and using a “dumb” Nokia instead.
What would you do with your new free time?
