

This will encourage you to sleep instead of staring into the display all night.
Minimalist cellphone download#
Download some educational apps you can play with instead of social media or mobile phone games.Delete your social media apps and commit to only checking social media on your computer.Start with some steps you’re ready to take today. All that will do is make you feel frustrated and discouraged. If you dive in right now and delete all your social media, all your apps, and all your notifications, you’ll probably break down and redownload them all again less than a week from now. I’m not suggesting you reconfigure your phone to look like mine today. My NotificationsĪnecdotes suggest the average number of notifications per day people get is somewhere in the range of 75–100 per day.
Minimalist cellphone free#
Since these feeds don’t make me feel bad about myself and I get free stuff from them, I’ve decided they’re OK. When I’m bored, I scroll through the Craigslist and Nextdoor “free stuff” sections to score cool stuff like orchid pots and office desks.



Technically speaking, I have broken the cardinal rule of digital minimalism: I have two apps with endless feeds on my home page. There are only 12 apps and one widget on my iPhone’s one home screen. The only way to save yourself from drowning in a sea of notifications and distractions - to take back that 24 hours a week and live it on your terms - is to take back control of your phone. Since then, I’ve written one year and two-year reflections on life without social media. I posted an article about what my minimalist phone looked like. Last but certainly not least, I deleted my Instagram, Facebook, and remaining social media accounts. Then I broke my phone addiction using an easy process that involved no digital detoxes. For the first time, I asked myself, what am I getting out of these apps? The answer was disappointing: a fashion shopping habit, unrealistic beauty standards for myself, and a raft of superficial relationships.įirst I deleted my Snapchat. My journey to a minimalist phone began in 2018, when I checked my iPhone Screen Time stats one day to find I’d spent six hours on my phone that day, most of it on Snapchat and Instagram. Would you like to feel more relaxed? Would you like longer, better sleep? Would you like to have more time off? The way to get all these things is right at hand: If you use your phone 3 hours and 30 minutes a day, which is average, you spend 24 hours a week on your phone. It’s shortening your attention span and worsening the quality of your life. Worse, it’s distracting you from your loved ones and meaningful activities in your life. It’s distracting you from work, which you know. You’ve known about how dangerous social media can be since the 2016 US Presidential Elections, when engagement-driven advertisement-serving algorithms had a demonstrable effect on the outcome of the election.Īnd yet, still, your phone is blowing up all the time. You’ve known about how distracting notifications and mobile apps can be since early 2014, when CEOs and silicon valley startup bros started posting blog articles about how they were doing 30-day digital detoxes.
