Ceasing My Smartphone Addiction

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What would you do if you had more time? While I try not to glorify busy I do find I need more time in the day. I never seem to have enough of it. There are always more photos to be edited, more blog posts to be written, more belly rubs to give Cash, more yoga to be practiced, but where do I find an extra few minutes? I’ve cut out a lot of extraneous stuff already. I don’t own a T.V. and I watch maaaaybe five hours of Netflix each month. I deleted my Facebook app eight months ago. I almost never go shopping unless it’s for groceries and I work from home so there’s no commute to deal with.

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‘What the hell am I wasting time doing?’ I thought as I scrolled through Instagram. Oh. Instagram. I checked my battery usage under the settings tab and found that I spend over SEVEN hours a week on Instagram. WTF.  I spend another eight or so messaging friends and a measly one on Snapchat.

So what did I do? I deleted Snapchat for four days. Hahaha, I decided to quit my least used of my most used apps in an attempt to make myself feel better about my phone usage. Delusional? A little bit.

Once I came back from my epic Schu Tours trek in Nepal, I realized one thing. It was a big thing. Everything is too much. That’s right, it’s all too much. I long for simplicity. I want one goal for each day. I want fulfillment to come from focus, not from overachievement. I want nothing, but I want to do something, I just don’t want to do everything. Huh? I dunno. I’m still figuring it out, but I knew that carrying around a tiny computer and using it during 15% of my waking life each day was not what I wanted. It wasn’t adding value and so I wanted less. Less communication, connection, and consumption of virtual reality. I had just experienced weeks of authentic, unplugged connection and I wanted more of that and less of everything else.

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I don’t plan on going back to a flip phone. Although it’s kind of ironic that this post is coming exactly two years after ditching mine – read more about that here. It’s even funnier that last year around this time I posted about being addicted to my iPhone. I guess it’s taken another year for me to realize this lifestyle of constant checking and updating is not one that I want for myself. That yes, my phone helps my business and that yes, I use that as an excuse to scroll through Instagram for what amounts to roughly SEVENTEEN DAYS in a year. Holy Sh!t.

Below are some tools I’ve employed to use my phone a lot less.

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