How to de-phone your life

5 ways to stop using your smartphone for absolutely everything

Many of us are locked in a daily battle with our smartphones: trying to reduce our dependence, but without losing the benefits. Most of us are losing. 

One of the reasons I check my phone so much is what I call the ‘While-I’m-Here’ problem.

Smartphones are not actually phones at all. In fact, the ‘phone’ element is by far the least useful thing about them. They are multi-purpose portable computers. They have dozens of functions which, until recently, were separate devices. Over the last decade especially, these functions have been centralised into your small machine. Check the time? Phone. Need directions? Phone. Listen to music? Phone. Set an alarm? Phone. Read an article on the bus? Phone.

The Smartphone from the 1980s. Source: r/oldschoolcool

And while you’re doing these formerly non-phone tasks, you quickly reply to a few messages, catch up on the news, scroll social media. Checking the time accidentally descends into 30 minutes of mindless doom-scrolling. An hour after setting an alarm before bed, you’re reading the Wikipedia entry about the 1980s quiz show ‘Bullseye’. This is bad for you, and if you have children watching and copying your every move, even worse for them. 

The solution is to de-phone your life. In other words, identify the tasks that can be done without using a phone - and switch. There are lots of ways to do this, and some are easier than others. (For example, installing a GPS in your car might be just too annoying). So here are five simple ideas to de-phone. I guarantee your unnecessary phone usage will decrease.

Buy an alarm clock

I reckon at least half of us use our phones as alarm clocks - and that is one reason your phone sleeps in your bedroom with you. This is easily fixed. Buy an old-fashioned alarm clock, the sort you can angrily whack at 6.30am like in the movies. This is more important than it seems. I spoke to Molly Russel’s father Ian Russell recently. He told me that the one thing he wishes he could change was insisting on a ‘no phones in the bedroom’ rule for Molly. Molly’s eldest sister was allowed a dumb-brick phone from a young age in her room because it was her alarm clock. Six years later, Molly was 12 years old and a precedent had been set. But the phones were now ‘smart’. We now know that Molly spent hours alone each night, viewing depressing content on her phone, late at night. And no-one knew.  

Wear a wrist watch (ideally with a back-light)

I am not the best sleeper in the world. And I used to check the time a lot during the night - always on my phone. The act of reaching over and grabbing the damn thing made me check - or think about checking - all the latest updates. That wasn’t helping me fall back to sleep. So about five years ago I purchased a wrist watch with a backlight.

Other watches are available. But I bought a gold Casio from Argos. Highly recommended. 

An old fashioned wristwatch with a backlight: helping you stay off your phone!

Of course, this is not just for the insomniacs. Checking the time on a phone is unnecessary any time of day or night. Even the act of pulling your phone from your pocket will make you more likely to fall into While-I’m-Here unnecessary scrolling. Especially if you wear tight jeans.

Use an old fashioned calculator

This is not as important as the two suggestions above. But I definitely use a calculator far more than I ever expected – at the moment it's usually bills and payments. Of course my trusted phone is a decent calculator. And I’ll check my WhatsApps while I’m at it.

No, no, no! Your phone should not be your calculator. You don’t need a top-of-the-range Texas Instruments with statistical capabilities. Just buy one of those oversize fun calculators for all your basic daily arithmetic, and keep it close at hand. Probably in that cluttered draw with the tape measure, scissors, and used batteries you’re planning to recycle, etc.

Always carry a magazine or book in your bag

Who just loves sitting peacefully on a bus or train, and taking that moment of tranquility to contently watch the world go by? Not me! At least, not for more than 90 seconds. And if you have small children, non-car journeys are one of the few times you might actually read. If I do not have a book, Kindle, or magazine with me, I reach for my phone and find something to read. Usually a long article I've saved.

But then I find some factoid in that article interesting – and so I Google it.

While leads me to a fascinating person I’d never heard of.

Whose social media account I find.

And then while I’m here…

Reading can easily turn into scrolling if you’re doing it on your multi-purpose portable computer. But it just leaves you feeling empty and annoyed at yourself. It’s easily avoided.

Listen to the radio on a radio

Music could be the biggest roadblock in de-phoning your life. Spotify and Pandora give you access to everything at a click. Unfortunately that click lives 150 millimetres away from Facebook’s front door too. Ultimately I’d like to own a state-of-the-art 1980s Bang & Olufsen hi-fi along with 500 vinyls, but that’s a long-term project. At the very least you might consider listening to radio on an actual radio, rather than via a phone connected to a speaker. Maybe even dig up that old i-pod shuffle? Plenty going on eBay. (I’m also someone who makes podcasts, and they are usually only available via apps. I don’t yet have an answer to that, except I’ll try to make them so enjoyable that you won’t even think about checking your phone while listening.)

There are of course, a dozen other things. The compass. The camera. Using web WhatApp on a laptop rather than the phone. I will keep adding to the de-phone list in the thread below, and please share any suggestions you have too because the exact mix will be different for each person. As someone with a sub-zero sense of direction, I will not be replacing Google Maps with a compass and GPS system any time soon. But at the very least you should run a ‘phone audit’ to find those things you can de-phone - and then do it.