Agreed!! I don’t have any sounds on mine, except the telephone or alarm/reminders. Much more peaceful. 
1 Like
Ive definitly considered reducing my phone usage. I find that when I get stressed, i turn to my phone and randomly go on apps and mindlessly scroll etc to “escape” for a bit. I dont like it. I am going to take a look ar ur link 
4 Likes
A bit late but here’s my update on my phone usage and on the assignment in the weekly Guardian email.
Just by being more conscious about it and using my phone much less at night I managed to cut my phone use by an hour a day or so. Happy with that.
I still have my phone next to my bed even though I’m using an alarm clock radio thingy now. My excuse is that it’s my back up alarm. Well, the radio alarm works fine. And having the phone within my arm’s reach is too triggering and crave inducing when I wake up at night. So I’ll follow the rules and take my phone out of my bedroom starting tonight. I already have a book at my bedside which I read a couple of pages in before sleep. A second telephone free zone will be my couch.
I deleted the Facebook and Instagram apps from my phone. Although, to be totally honest, these are not the apps that use up most of my time I spend on my phone. Talking Sober, Whatsapp, and the 4 scrabble like word games I play are.
I put the link to Talking Sober (the browser version that is) into a map on my home screen, creating an extra step before using it and hopefully making me more aware when I do. Same thing with Whatsapp. I quit playing one of my word games and will restrict myself from playing more than three games at the same time on any of these three remaining games, instead of the max 10 games per game I played until now. And see if that helps to reduce time. It should right.
I already did stop all notifications on my phone except for Whatsapp. and I’m still on the fence about that one. The excuse of wanting to remain in contact with my friends literally is in the mail -as an excuse that is- but for me these contacts are the closest friendships I have right now. That in itself is a sign I guess that there’s work to be done. True. But I’m not quite ready to cut this form of connection right of. And not sure I’ll ever be.
I feel this is enough for this week. There’s one big thing that’s not yet addressed by all this. For me it’s not just telephone screen time. It’s my computer screen time as well. At home I spend too much time on my computer. Way too much. Will need a similar program for that as well. But one thing at a time right? Hope you are doing well all. X
7 Likes
Wow!!! Fantastic work friend!!! Thats alot of changes being made this past week. Keep up the great work
3 Likes
Week three. This is where it gets serious as stated in the mail I got last night. Supposed to go out without my phone later in the week 
. But it’s going well so far. Making progress. I’m consistently actually reading two books atm. One work/therapy related, and a novel. It’s been years!
Hope you’re all well friends. ODAAT as with all. X
6 Likes
Dear all, I’ve had some consistent success with keeping away from the phone at bedtime, and I’m on almost thirty days of not playing phone games. For me, those are clear wins. I didn’t comment on last week’s email, as I don’t really use social media, except for a rather dormant Facebook which I only access on my desktop computer, and SoberTime. I don’t have Instagram, Twitter X, Tiktok… So I confess I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to last week. I also find that I’m perhaps reading more, though it tends to be in short breaks throughout the day and does not really add up to how much I was reading daily daft fifteen years ago. Well, slow and steady, as Menno says.
As to this week’s undertaking… Weeeell… The digital Sabbath sounds intriguing but I’m torn. As a family we’re not really “early planners”, so any weekend plans or meetups tend to be made last-minute or on the fly. From that angle, how will it work if my phone is put away? We don’t NEED to see other people in the weekend, but it’s always nice to do. Is this an excuse, friends? 
After all, my husband has a working phone too, so yeah, what do I fear, that he will suddenly become illiterate, unable to read WhatsApp and our friends will be offended by us ignoring them and we will be forever shunned? Also, isn’t it a bit of a cheat and unfair to think that I can detox from my phone as long as my husband’s phone is still on? Is there any way around this?
As to Sober Time, will not accessing the app for 24 hours drive me to drink? Yeah NO, unless I have severely overestimated my sobriety work over the last year and a half. Will TS implode if I don’t visit for one day? Again, NO. Just writing it out… It’s crazy how dependent we are on this little device. 
It’s not a healthy way to live, and, what is worse, this is what the younger generation see us doing, day after day after day.
So… Still a bit on the fence about this Sabbath, will let you know what goes down. The other suggestions are wonderful, meditation and reading (though I’m zero consistent with meditation and I don’t seem to break through into habit-building territory with it). I have no problem doing one thing at a time usually, and especially if I’m out of the home my phone is usually not really handy but in some backpack pocket, so I’m not so tempted to take it out. Now that I think about it, I might be more thorough in “burying” my phone in my bag when I go out, just so it’s not conveniently at hand.
Well, I hope everyone is sticking it out with the emails and at the very least gaining awareness of this time-consumer. It’s definitely more fraught than I imagined, so go you, everyone!
And by the way, is anyone reading the Rhik diary entries? I find him annoying, but I can’t look away! 
6 Likes
Thanks for the comments Merry. I do think it’s an excuse. Mine is I have foreign friends, and the only way I connect to them is through Whatsapp. A full 24 hours is too much for me ATM.
I’m also not quite ready to break my daily habit of reading and posting on Talking Sober that I’ve been keeping up for 55 months and 14 days now. My cheat on that one is my computer at home.
I like the other suggestions. I do see how my phone habit is a terrible time waster and fragmenter of my interests and time, which keeps me from doing other stuff that’s more single tracked so to speak, like reading, or exercising, or looking out of a window for that matter.
6 Likes