Using your mobile phone too much was a topic that came up during my recent question about your challenges. So, I picked that up for today.
Yeah, those tiny computers in our pockets are fantastic and bring endless convenience and possibilities.
But they also bring problems.
Folks pick it up when waiting in line, idling while in transit, or even when they have dinner with friends or family.
Some even hear notification sounds or phone rings were none are.
Or looking every couple minutes on the screen in the hope some exciting happened.
The most common solution to fight this is to put the device out of convenience reach, e.g. a drawer, de-installing apps, or adding app blockers with time restrictions and whatnot.
Or adding group restrictions like all putting their phone in the middle of the table and the first to grab theirs pays the bill.
That can work.
It requires discipline and willpower or a group setting with hard enough punishment.
However, it does not look deeper into why we pick that thing up in the first place.
Like with most things in life I believe there are reasons why we do something, be it consciousness or unconsciousness.
If you can figure them out, you can solve them.
To start uncovering this, you can start with the 5-Whys method. I’ve written about it before but don’t have it handy, so I linked it to the Wikipedia page.
Essentially, you ask why repeatedly to overcome shallow answers and dig deeper into the roots. Often you’ll get an answer before 5 repeats.
You might learn for example, that you pick up your phone to look on Pinterest when you’re alone at home after work. Not knowing what you want to do.
But when you dig deeper it turns out that the issue is that you’re alone with your thoughts and that is frightening you.
Digging even deeper might turn out that there are unsolved desires, wishes, etc which you’re afraid to face.
As a result, you scroll and pin on Pinterest rather than solving the underlying stuff.
Locking your phone into a drawer now might help shortly, but instead of using your phone and Pinterest something else takes over.
Or you might discover that a sneaky little app dev hacked into your routines and made you use their app.
There’s even a book (Hooked) about it, which I highly recommend if you want to defend yourself against such practice.
The solution here is to replace the unwanted tasks like picking up your phone and pinning, with something else, like a 1-minute meditation.
The technique isn’t good or evil per se. It depends on how it’s used.
And as always, it’s absolutely fine to start with small baby steps.
Pick one of your phone usages that you dislike the most and start uncovering why you’re doing it in the first place by asking the first why.
Doing that now is the perfect time :-)