How to be less addicted to your phone

A practice for co-opting your distraction machine

I’ll admit that, even though I’m supposed to be Mr. Mindfulness, I sometimes struggle with compulsively checking my phone.

I did, however, just hear about a little practice that I’m excited to try.

Here’s how it goes:

1. Pause. When you wake up in the morning—or whenever it is that you generally reach for your phone for the first time—try to remember to pause, ever so briefly. Ask yourself the question: why am I doing this? What is my motivation? Am I bored? Lonely? Is it just habit?

2. Feel. Having paused in this way, go ahead and grab the phone. But before you dive in, take a moment to feel the heft of it in your hand. Try to look at the device purely as an object, rather than getting sucked into all of its content.

3. Choose. OK, after those two pauses have been inserted into the system, pick one mission. Is it to check your texts? Instagram? Substack? What’s your go-to? See if you can limit your activity to just that one thing. Then put the phone down and pause again. What does that feel like? Are you jonesing to do more? Why?

4. Question. When or if you “fail” (which I’m fully planning to do) don’t beat yourself up. Just get curious. If you went from the news to your email to social media to asking ChatGPT what the actors from The Wire are up to these days, try to investigate how and why you got carried away. What’s that about?

Some people are naturally quite balanced in their relationship to technology. If, like me, you struggle to achieve balance, this little exercise is unlikely to be a panacea. However, injecting some mindfulness into the process might produce some interesting results. In effect, you are reclaiming your attention. 

Just remember, it’s crucial to have a sense of humor about your inevitable “failures.” As always, use those as moments to get curious—and start again. 

By the way, I picked his practice up from an amazing meditation teacher named Kaira Jewel Lingo. She’s on the podcast today, along with two other teachers, Valerie Brown and Marisela Gomez. They also laid out some practices to help staying sane in a tumultuous world, at a particularly trying time.

Listen or watch today’s pod for much more.

For paid subscribers, there’s a cheatsheet below, which includes takeaways, time-stamped highlights, and a full transcript. Paid subscribers can also hop into the chat with me today. I want to hear about how you deal with your phones, as well as other reactions to the pod. Hope to see you there.