Related to this: I have been working towards not carrying a phone around at all. Being a hyperconnected and reachable as we tend to be nowadays does not feel healthy. I recently set up a JMP Chat account so I can proxy SMS and calls to my XMPP account.
The experiment part (proxy to XMPP) is interesting. Here is how I did the crude and manual way.
- There are no social apps (Instagram, LinkedIn, etc) on my phone. I prune apps that I do not use, once a while and have set an arbitrary limit of less than 42 non-Apple apps on the phone. I will keep reducing that number and will negotiate my mind to less than 10.
- The first thing I did on any new installation is disable notification[1]. The only notification I have on the phone is the critical ones such as Health, Calendar. I have been doing this for more than a decade.
- I carry a phone but it does not even ring[2], except for some of my family and friends. I have left/forgotten and intentionally left the phone while walking around the neighborhood and had never missed it. I do have a watch on, at almost all the time and that also allowed me to de-tether the phone much more.
Super advanced pro level - keep the phone and just don't spend the whole time playing with it. Also when a notification comes in just ignore it. If it is important, they will leave a message.
It's like having a cigarette in your mouth, a lighter in your hand and not smoking - if you can do that then you have truly kicked your addiction.
Cheeky intermediate hack, put it on silent and in your backpack. Helps kick the habit by making it less accessible. You have enough time for self-awareness and shame if you have to take off your backpack to get to it.
