Most of us, especially the young generations are heavily addicted to their personal mobile phone. There are a lot of things that make them stay on their phones for quite sometime, such as checking their social media, play games, and texting. Besides, parents were tend to let their kids play with their gadget to prevent them from being noisy and nosy while they’re busy with their work.
Phone addiction has been a common phenomenon and happened to people in all ages. Most of the people feel that they’re just can’t live without their phone and it makes them feel empty and bored without it.
What are the sign of phone addiction?
- You’re unable to resist of checking your phone every 5 minutes.
- You feel that playing phone before sleep is a must for you.
- Checking your phone is the first thing that you do when you just woke up.
- You feel uncomfortable when your phone is not with you.
If you having these symptoms, it is better to stop this bad habit as it lead to unproductivity and prevent you to achieve any of your goals. Remember that time is money and you can never turn back the time or pause it. It is very important to always use your time wisely. However, you don’t need to worry as we at Life Hack Solution are going to list down 10 smart tricks to stop yourself from being a phone addict.
1. Replace Your Phone Into an Old School Phone
Replacing your phone or having an extra old-school phone is going to help you to stop being strongly attached to your smartphone. The reason behind this is that the features of an old-school phone is very limited.
When you are using an old-school phone, you would not be able to access your social media or play online games since your phone is not capable enough of doing that. This way, you can focus on your work and not eager in always checking your phone as you usually spend most of your time in checking your social medias, playing video games, online shopping and more.
If you completely get rid of your smart phone or hide it somewhere, it is not a smart decision as if suddenly there is something urgent that requires your phone to do with it. By having an old-school phone as replacement, it will still allow you to communicate with other people. Therefore, this is a perfect solution that will totally help you to not be a phone addict and stay productive.
2. *Urgent, Call This Number” Status
To stop you from being a phone addict, this is a simple yet smart way in solving the problem. Ask one of your friend or family member to set a password for your phone. Set a period of timing to detox yourself from phone and do something productive during that period of time.
Change your social media status to: “Urgent please call this number *08xxxxx*”. Therefore, you won’t be able to procrastinate on social media but in the same time, you still can receive any call if there is any urgent thing!
3. Turn On Airplane Mode
Turning your phone into a silent mode or turning off your notifications might not be enough for some people. You might be still getting the vibrations that you will eventually notice and make you even curious with all the notifications on your phone. At the end, you’ll end up checking your phone.
Therefore, putting your phone on an airplane mode will be a better method as you will be turning off your phone’s internet connection. No internet means there is no reason for you to be opening your phone as you will not be getting notifications from your social medias or online messaging apps.
4. Get Yourself a Real Alarm Clock
Getting yourself an alarm clock will stop you from scrolling through all the notifications you get the moment you wake up. If you use your phone as an alarm clock, chance is, you will get tempted to check other things on your phone right after you stopped the alarm.
Putting your gadget away from you before you go to sleep will help you get rid of your bad morning habit as well as saving you from all the bad radiations. Therefore, checking your phone the moment you wake up is not going to be the first thing you do, and your day is going to be more productive.
5. Set Schedule and Limit The Time on Your Phone
The key to this method is to be discipline with yourself and be responsible with your schedule. Challenge yourself to only spent 2-3 hours on your phone. Allow yourself to freely use your phone once you are done with all your work and assignments, make it as a reward that you get after you have accomplished all your work for that day. Besides, allow yourself to play your phone for about 15 minutes during your break time after 1 or 2 hours of working intensively. Remember to start slow, be consistent and discipline!
6. Use a Smart Speaker
If you have a smart speaker, put it into use. One great thing about a smart speaker is that it helps you to not always be in front of a screen, whether it is your laptop, handphone or TV. It is good for you if you could live in a more screen-free life.
Smart speakers have a lot of uses. Once you put your smart speaker into use, you will stop using your gadget to turn on music or any podcasts. Moreover, you can also try to answer basic general questions by just using your voice. Try to use your smart speaker for as many things as possible and you will notice that your phone has been very far away from you this whole time.
7. 20 to 30 Percent Rule
This might sound absurd, but you might try this trick! Leave your battery around 20 to 30% before go to mall or any outing. By knowing that you have a little battery left out, chance is you will going to turn off the data while you’re outing to safe the battery. You won’t be using it so much as you know that you need to safe the battery for something urgent.
Just remember don’t use the free charger that is provided in shopping mall or public area, If you use the free charger, there will be no difference at all!
8. Go Outside
This is another effective way to stop you from being a gadget addict. Whenever you have time, try to always spend your time outside the house instead of staying inside the house being anti-social and just playing with your phone. Go for a run and get yourself moving, or maybe go to the mall and spend time with your family and friends.
When you are outside, you tend to not check your phone especially when you are running or chit chatting with your friends. Doing such activities does have much more meaningful and exciting rather than spending your time with your phone alone.
9. Switch to Grayscale Screen
By making your home screen and lock screen less attractive, it can reduce the time you spend on your gadget. Turning of your phone becomes very fascinating as there are a lot of colorful apps that you can open every time you unlock your phone, like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. So, turning on your phone’s grayscale is effectual as it will be keeping you off from those apps that will just make you stay on your gadget the whole day.
How to Change Your Screen to Greyscale?
For IOS: Setting > General > Accessibility > Display accommodation > Color filters. Switch the color filters on and turn on the greyscale.
10. Hide The Apps That Usually Takes Your Time
Hide or delete the apps that distract you the most off your home screen. If you did not see it, you won’t be having the desire to open the app. It is better if you can delete those unnecessary applications that just consumes your time. Try imagining the time you spent in checking all your apps from social media, news, and texts.
Therefore, in order to reduce the time of you being captured with your phone, put all the important apps on the first page of your phone and pile up the rest of the unimportant yet engaging applications into one folder and put it on second page. You’ll find yourself tired and lazy in looking for that specific application and ended up in not opening those unnecessary apps.
Bottom Line
Above everything, we need to realize that we are living in a real world not a virtual world. We have family and friends and family to spend time with, so use your time wisely. If time has passed there’s no way for you to turn back time. Instead of spending all your time playing your phone alone, create memories and moment with your loved ones, so that at the end of the day you won’t regret about anything. It is important to always cherish the time given to us since humans are mortal being and we have limited time living on Earth.
