You’re spending 30% of your waking lifetime on your phone. Instead of spending time with your children, or doing a hobby, you are scrolling on your phone.
30% of your lifetime.
Is that how you want to spend your life?
It’s not how I want to spend mine — though I’m as guilty as anyone, tbh…
Here’s the thing:
I’ve tried everything under the sun. Black and white settings. Apps that lock you out of addicting things. Nothing worked. There’s always a workaround, and if your desire (read: addiction) is more powerful than the block (it is), you’re shit out of luck.
Now…
Here’s what I finally figured out:
Willpower is a finite resource. You cannot rely on it. Biology will beat you.
You will lose that battle. Every. Single. Time.
Your phone is literally designed by some of the smartest companies in the world to be addictive. Social media is a drug.
They’ve spent billions of dollars figuring out how to keep you hooked. Every second you are hooked is more potential money and revenue for them.
And you think a grayscale filter (undone with pressing the same button 3 times in a row) or a 30-minute app limit is going to beat that?
Come on.
Here’s what you have to do:
Engineer discipline into your environment instead of relying on willpower.
I’ve been experimenting with leaving my phone in ONE SINGULAR LOCATION in the house. It doesn’t leave the nightstand. And at 9pm, it moves to my office desk. If I need to do anything on the phone, I have to physically go to it.
It doesn’t come to the dinner table. Ever.
It doesn’t join me to take a dump. (Usually).
Sounds simple, right?
But here’s the catch:
Most people won’t do it.
They’ll download another app. Set another screen time limit. Promise themselves they’ll “be better about it.”
And in 3 days? Right back to scrolling away a third of their life.
Why?
Because they’re trying to use willpower to fight a system designed to destroy willpower.
It’s near-impossible to hack your way out of it.
You have to physically remove the temptation. Most of us can’t even watch a TV show without our phones. Let that sink in.
Out of sight, out of mind.
If your phone is in your pocket, you’ll check it.
If it’s on your nightstand, you’ll scroll before bed.
If it’s next to you at dinner, you’ll “just quickly check something.”
The environment always wins.
You can’t beat it, you can only change it.
Make it inconvenient, even painful to waste time on your phone.
Make it easy to not use it.
Will you miss some notifications? Yeah.
Will some texts go unanswered for an hour? Probably.
Will the world end? No.
But you’ll get back 30% of your life.
Time with your kids. Time for hobbies. Time for anything that actually matters.
And that’s worth way more than whatever’s happening on your phone.
To take even more time back, hire right.
We help you do that:
