How I Made My Phone Less Addictive

9 Easy Changes to Make Your Phone Work Better For Your Brain

Anna Seirian

and

Internet People

Dec 17, 2024

248

Everyone I know has a complicated relationship with their phone.

The average American spends around 7 hours staring into their phone every day. Yikes!

But, we have to live with our phones… and also I love my phone! A little too much sometimes, which is maybe why I’ve thought a lot about how to make it work better for me. Because tbh, am I using it or is it using me???

If you’d like to watch the Youtube version of this article, you can find it here👇 The text article continues below!

This week I thought It would be fun to screen share — literally. I’m going to show you how I organize my phone to make it less addictive and more like the functional communication tool it was intended to be.

Every time you unlock your phone with your face, it’s like looking in a mirror.

Whether we like it or not, what we spend time looking at makes an impression on our brains.

So, if my phone is a mirror, how can I organize it to suggest positive cues for my brain instead of reinforcing things like distraction or negativity?

🪞 Let’s start with the lock screen

🧹 Clean Interface

As you’ll see, there’s nothing on this screen. That’s because 🤺 I am a tyrant 🤺 about my notifications (more on that next), but the lock screen is where it all begins — all the chaos, all the stress, all the rabbit holes, all the distractions.

The average American picks up their phone 144 times a day (that’s every 12 minutes, for those playing along at home), so every time you pick up your phone you’re reinforcing something. What is it? Chaos and distraction?

Visual clutter can make you feel anxious and overwhelmed the same way physical clutter does, so I think this tip is pretty overlooked and makes a huge difference.

🚫 No Notifications

I have gotten ruthless with my notifications. I use Do Not Disturb 99% of the time, and whoever calls or texts me will get a reply when I get to them.

Now obviously, it’s important to be flexible with whoever actually needs your replies, which is why you can customize your notifications for texts and calls from your VIPs.

But if you are still getting notifications from Instagram and Tiktok? Girl. Get ahold of yourself and turn that sh*t off.

🖼️ Supportive Background

Once all your notifications are off, pick a simple background, something beautiful, something you’re manifesting, or just something that makes you happy.

For a while, I had a picture of myself as a little girl while I was doing some inner child healing, and I swear it helped so much. The Ru Paul Charles has also mentioned in interviews to keep a picture of little you on your lock screen! So, now you know it’s legit.

Use your phone background as an opportunity to reinforce some positive imagery and mirror back some peace and clarity.

🪞Now onto the Home Screen

Okay, so here’s the deal: every time you open your phone, you could get lost! Seriously. I call these scroll holes. So tip number 1…

🕳️ Avoid Scroll Holes

For a long time I had Instagram and and Tiktok on my Home Screen. Big, big mistake.

One of the first and most important things I did when reorganizing my phone was to move social media off the home screen. If I open my phone, my eye will travel there and I will fall into a scroll hole.

Do yourself a huge favor and minimize the opportunities to get off track from whatever you opened your phone to do. Organize your home screen to keep your silly little brain on track.

Remember, every time you pick up your phone, you’re reinforcing something. What is it?

👾 Use Widgets!

Not to be dramatic, but the screen time widget changed my life.

I knew I had a problem with being on my phone too much but, honestly, I was scared to look at the number.

If you’ve ever been scared to look at your bank account, because you’ll feel anxious or disappointed in yourself— it’s the same energy. It doesn’t make money magically appear. You’re just avoiding something you know you’ll eventually have to deal with and that creates even more anxiety.

However, you can’t change something you’re unwilling to look at.

So…

Add the Screen time widget if you’re serious about getting this under control and
Start tracking your screen times to a place where they make rational sense for your life.

Would it be amazing to have 1 hour of screen time a day? Yes, but it’s not realistic for my life as a digital creator.

However, since I added this to my home screen, now I know that when that number hits 5+ hrs a day, it’s time to wind down the phone usage for the day, otherwise I will get overstimulated and probably be accidentally mean to someone.

My whole life is organized in Notion, so I’ve also set up two widget stacks that direct to the pages I visit the most — one for personal and one for work. The widget stacks mean I can easily swipe up or down on the widget to access those pages and capture things more quickly (and makes it less likely that I’ll get lost in my phone).

If you’ve never used widgets, here’s an article that shows how to navigate widgets on iPhone

🧺 Manage Visual Clutter

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of scrolling several pages just to find the one app you need, you’ll be familiar with visual clutter. Let your inner Virgo out and get organized on the home screen (more on this in the next section!) I like to leave a full empty row to create some negative space and use a calming nature image.

🪞Finally, the second screen

📁 Use folders for all remaining apps

Everything else on my phone gets sorted into these 5 folders. This has changed over time, but right now this is working for me.

I label my folders with the way I want to feel while using them, which helps me only keep apps and tools that support my positive behaviors.

I use labels like “I am creative” for all my creator tools, “I am productive” for Slack, Notes app, Google Drive etc. This is a great way to enforce those affirmations you always forget to say.

💡 Another helpful tip is to make sure new apps go to the App library, not the home screens (learn more about that here)

📌 Vision Board

I have a long running Pinterest board that I use as my vision board, and I added the Pinterest Widget to rotate a new image from that board ever hour. All day long it’s serving me up delicious different slices of my vision board.

Hot tip: put favorite personal pictures of yourself on that board so every once in a while you can be reminded that you’re already evolving into that vision you have for yourself :)

🔮 Manifestation Note

A final widget recommendation from me is the Notes app widget! I have a little manifestation note of a moment in the future I want to create.

I’ve had one for about a year that says “You’re sipping wine at a cafe in Barcelona” because that’s a moment in the future that I want to experience soon, and by having it right in front of my face, guess what I’m reinforcing? That it’s possible and likely for me to be ticking that off soon.

You can also use the note widget for an affirmation or some kind of belief you want to reinforce!

This is your mirror, after all, so what do you want to be reflecting back to you?

What’s your version of this? Have you found any helpful hacks to make your phone less addictive and more supportive to the kind of person you are becoming? Let me know in the comments!

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