The Only Thing That Actually Worked To Cut Phone Use

If the war against the rectangle is as hard for you as it was for me, you might need a change in tactics

I SO nearly caved yesterday.

Without the high-vis “idiot vest,” I would have given up. Because just like everything with phones, the failure would have been absurd, mundane, and deeply humiliating.

I was standing at the gates at Waterloo, and I saw my debit card flash up on my screen after touching in. Suddenly, the thought occurred: I should probably clear out the old cards on there.

Ooo, there’s an out-of-date one. This needs checking. This needs fixing.

Honestly, I was tempted by the most boring admin imaginable.

But then I detected the voice of the Evil Advisor. It was just a trick to get me started. I’d have been on WhatsApp in seconds.

I saved myself from this incredibly mundane and pathetic rebellion just in time.

I’m glad I did, because over this week there have been some definite benefits from this experiment. I want to talk about them in a bit more detail in another post.

For now I want to answer a more pressing question: why would I be tempted by something so comically boring as pruning my Google Wallet?

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ME AND MY PHONE - A LOVE STORY

My first vivid memory of phone addiction absurdity comes from the late 2000s. I was going to bed. It was about 1am.

I checked my emails. There were none. I checked my messages. There were none.

And then I checked how the tube was running.

To repeat - it was 1am, and I was going to bed.

This was the first time I noticed my instinct to make a totally pointless check that no reasonable person would have started.

Totally harmless of course in itself. Definitely not a problem. But odd.

It wasn’t until I had kids when I realised how comically incapable of being without my phone I was. It wasn’t just the worry I was letting them down. I saw myself through their eyes.

Then the ballet disaster (see my first post).

Okay I thought, I can sort this out.

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METHODS 1-999

Except I couldn’t. It turned out I was the most phone addicted person in the world.

Started off with “just trying”. Didn’t make a blind bit of difference.

Then I tried all the hacks. I turned it off (it found its way back on). I moved it to other rooms (it came back), I put an elastic band around it (at some point that pinged into the abyss under the sofa), and I tried greyscale (but film noir scrolling was even more dramatic).

I installed an app to monitor my restrict and monitor my usage. I muscle-memoried past all the restrictions. And then found myself addicted to checking the usage stats.

I found an app that fined me if I did too many pickups. I had to get rid of it before we needed a second mortgage.

If someone had suggested putting the phone in the oven I would have tried it. But I would have taught myself how to get at the Guardian website with oven gloves on.

All of it made me feel worse about myself.

Why couldn’t I do this?

I was ready to admit defeat. Must be modern life. Everyone seemed in the same boat. I relaxed into it. The commute - between home and family life - was the epicentre of phone party time. It was MY time. And boy did I scroll.

But then it came time to get my daughter a phone of her own.

Every time I looked up from my phone, I saw she was using hers. This would need to be fixed.

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I would call over to her to give it a rest. Excellent, parenting done. Now to return to trying to check out the Sainsbury’s basket - great done! Any new emails? Actually none. Oo, LinkedIn notification! Oh no I’m a failure and everyone is more successful than me. Any new emails? None. Now, what’s Trump up to?

I could see myself through her eyes. And not just toddler eyes. Now they were judgey tween eyes.

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THE BIG INSIGHT

Now I watched myself closer than ever. I became forensic.

I became sure of something: for at least some of the time, I was sure the behaviours were entirely automatic.

It was really odd. When I thought back, I couldn’t remember the moment that I decided to pick up the phone.

It reminded me of that first memory: the 1am tube status check. That wasn’t in any way a choice. (No one would choose to do that.)

What does it mean if something is automatic?

It means you can’t rely on willpower, and you need to put speedbumps in place.

But what good are speedbumps if the driver is not only doing over 100mph, but is sleeping so heavily while driving that nothing wakes them up?

I became convinced that - for an incorrigible phone addict like me - the fight couldn’t be won in the moments I picked up my phone.

The more I read books on neuroscience, the more I became convinced the battleground had shifted. It was about conditioning the mind.

And then it clicked.

I needed to carve out time to do anti-phone training.

I didn’t just need to “stop using my phone”. I needed to actively train my mind in the opposite direction.

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THE HEAVY IRON WHEEL

I had the bit between my teeth now.

My search for active training took me to the world of meditation. Working what particular method to use and forming a daily habit was nearly impossible. (I’ll come back later to all this). But I had a clear purpose.

And after a few weeks a strange thing happened. Increasingly I could make a choice as to whether to use the phone or not. It was like I could hear an Evil voice saying “Oo, shall we check how the tube is running”, and I could say, “No you’re alright actually, it’s 1am so I probably could guess. And I’m heading to bed.”

And, as a result, I used my phone less. I could measure it. The first reduction ever.

Somewhere deep in a dark corner of my mind, a heavy iron wheel labelled “Use The Phone” was turning at speed.

It had been turning for years, and given its weight had built up a lot of momentum.

It could never stop suddenly.

But very gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, it began to turn more slowly.

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DAD V PHONE

A form of meditation (I thought of it as anti-phone training) was the first thing that slowed that heavy iron wheel. But I hadn’t got there yet. There was still much more to do.

I knew I needed to double down with my anti-phone training. And so I zeroed in on the biggest chunk of free time I have.

The biggest chunk of available time we all have. And so here we are.

This is a phone free commute. But it’s also anti-phone training.

It’s training my mind to recognise the automatic instinct BEFORE I pick up the phone.

Okay get it, guy doesn’t like his phone. We all don’t like them but a bit OTT to start meditating surely?!

After years of trying everything, I honestly think it’s the only thing that’s offered me a chance of keeping my smartphone (I need it to tap in - and a hundred other reasons) but losing the unhappiness.

And it’s convinced me that the prize on offer from that is huge - much bigger than just reducing an irritating habit.

Thanks for reading! This is part of a series written in the early days of my Phone Free Commute. If you want to skip to the 30 day report and read about the (surprising) results of all this, click here.

[Images by AI, words all human]