24 Hours Without Screens

Just 24 hours without your phone is enough to know if you should change how you use it.

As part of the quest to change my life I am working on three challenges. The 50k steps challenge is completed, the couch25k challenge is underway and going well (I will write about that at a later moment) so it was time to tackle the third challenge: 24 hours without any screens.

It sounds so silly and childish, but I was dreading this challenge the most. It’s just 24 hours offline, why is that so terrible? I was scared to look in the mirror, I guess.

In the end my feeling of worry was misplaced because I picked a very easy day to do the challenge and it was an extremely pleasant experience. This turned out to be a “it’s not about how hard the challenge is, it’s about the lessons you learn on the way” type of challenge.

In short: I went to the gym in the morning with my workout written down in a notebook. I came home for a shower and lunch, then went to my mothers birthday party where I spent the rest of the day chatting with family. I came home by 8PM, read a book on the couch and then went to sleep at 10PM. I missed my smartphone exactly zero times. But like I said, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t challenging because I still learned a ton.

3 lessons

The overwhelming feeling I had the whole day was relief. I felt relieved not to be a slave to my smartphone habits for a day. Normally, I’m almost compulsively opening apps like Instagram and Twitter. The first time of the day I don’t mind it as there’s some stuff to catch up to, but every subsequent time I’m not feeling happy browsing my phone. Yet, I cannot seem to stop. This is why I deleted Reddit a couple weeks ago and it helps, but not enough. I ended up browsing Instagram and Twitter more. So it wasn’t Reddit’s fault, it was my own. Ouch.

The strangest phenomenon I’m suffering from with regards to my phone usage is that I pick up the device to do something (say: check my calendar appointments) and then I end up opening Instagram first, getting lost in that app and forgetting what I was going to do in the first place. It’s all so….unaware. It’s like I’m not able to control myself. But then, who is in control?! What is going on?! Taking the access to everything away for just a day made me aware of this.

Lesson 1: experience the relief more often by constraining access to the smartphone. In my case, I will restrict social media usage to a couple moments per day and see if that improves the situation.

The flow of time

The second thing I noticed during the challenge was that time flowed more naturally. When you get lost in your smartphone it’s almost as if you’re going to a different world. In this world time flows differently, it can get lost in large chunks if you don’t take care.

The algorithms on social media know what triggers you and keep serving you more content that’s tailored to you (it can be happy content or rage bait, as long as you keep scrolling). Before you know it, an hour has passed. This makes the way time passes feel strange. There are gaps, it feels staggered, the natural flow is gone. Not having my phone made me less aware of time, but the time did pass in a very natural way. I was constantly present and I felt 100% available to the people around me.

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Picking up the smartphone to browse when you’re with other people is something you see a lot and it almost seems socially accepted, but let’s be real: it’s rude. You transport yourself to that other world, you can’t really hear what people in the real world are saying to you, you’re distant.

Lesson 2: time flows more naturally without access to a smartphone as there’s no internet world to get lost in. I want to be more available to people in real life over escaping into my smartphone.

Why?

This leaves one very important aspect of my smartphone usage: the why. And I mean a deeper why than just saying “habits”. I think I have identified the core reason why I end up on my smartphone way more than I want: micro-boredoms. (Maaike, this isn’t a word. To quote Thor from Avengers: Infinity War: “all words are made up”).

I am a “oh look, a squirrel!” type of person. My brain is fast, my brain is easily distracted and my brain wants new stimuli all the time. There is probably a reciprocal relationship with my smartphone usage and these aspects of my brain that worsened over time. I don’t think it was this bad when I was a kid.

For the last 7 (!) years, whenever I have just a moment of time I have conditioned myself to grab my phone and go to Reddit. Boom, I am in that other world. This happens I don’t know how many times a day, at least 30 times and that might be a conservative estimate. Anyway, it is problematic. It feels so compulsive and it makes me so unhappy. Then I do it again anyway! Why!? Pavlov would like a word with me, probably.

Now I know what it is: it’s bad habits plus micro-boredoms that I can’t handle anymore. I can’t even go to the damn toilet without bringing my phone and it’s pathetic.

I know I’m not alone in this. So many people have conditioned themselves to grab their phone whenever they have an empty moment. Waiting for the bus? Taking a shit? Waiting for the microwave? Waiting for the coffee machine? Waiting for code to compile? Waiting for …..(insert your reasons). I even see lots of people walking their dog with their phone in hand.

I think it’s getting out of hand. It certainly has got out of hand for me and I think it’s really bad for my dopamine regulation.

That’s the main reason why I am going to change my behavior.

Lesson 3: deal with micro-boredoms the old fashioned way, just live through them. They are a part of life, give your brain a rest. I want to regulate my dopamine better by not feeding my brain small hits of dopamine all the time. Cope!

Ready to look in the mirror?

That leaves me with just a few things to say to you, dear reader.

Photo by Jovis Aloor on Unsplash

Are you ready to look in the mirror yourself and learn if your phone usage is problematic? Just 24 hours without access to screens is enough to get some answers! If you do this challenge too, let me know what you’ve learned.