Overcoming Technology Addiction: Three Experiments To Try Now

In the last few hours of your life, you will not be reading the news or scrolling your Twitter feed. In the last few hours of your life, when you reminisce about the time you had and the impact you made, you will not wish you spent more time on your phone.

Time is truly the entrepreneur’s only finite resource and it’s wasted, stolen and requested by others each day. But when you’re wasting and undervaluing your own valuable time, there’s a bigger problem at hand.

Neuroscientists discover more about the brain each year. New measuring devices are used in new trials and breakthroughs are made that join the dots in old research. Neuroscience has a lot to do with the impact someone can make, because the state of their brain is responsible for what they do. Specifically, how creative they can be. How much deep work they can complete. How much they can access the slower and dreamlike brain waves commonly reserved for babies and sleeping adults, those conducive to creativity, intuition and ground-breaking ideas.

Find balance

Unlike other addictions, the solution to digital addiction isn’t to cut it out completely. All factors considered; technology has made human lives unequivocally better. Faster, cheaper access to products and services, enhanced connection to others, more opportunity for purposeful work. There’s little point going arbitrarily back in time. Instead, the solution is finding a balance that means you master your technology, not the other way around.

The three experiments suggested enable you to find peace and tranquillity in a busy world. They manage digital distraction. They make devices a less important part of your life. They bring about the realization that there are very few emergencies and nearly everything can wait. Here are three experiments to sustainably overcoming technology addiction.

1.   No email before 11am

The rule is simple. No logging on to any email programmes before 11am, or at least two hours after beginning work. This means that other people’s priorities, which inboxes mainly are, can wait until after you have done a decent stint of something that matters. Of deep work, that only you can do. A period of time, between ninety minutes and two hours, where you know you cannot be disturbed or asked for a quick response.

Focusing on your most important work first sets your day up exceptionally well and leads to feelings of accomplishment that raise resilience and confidence levels throughout its remaining hours. When the clock hits 11am, you can batch your email responses by firing them off at lightning speed, rather than in smaller chunks that cost you focus.

Before 11am, if you feel like you need to send an email or check something in your inbox, write it down. Incorporate that list in your batching; do your checking and send those five proposals you wrote in one go. At first it’s difficult, as you instinctively go to check your email. In resisting, you’ll realize just how powerful the urge can be and how distracted your brain has become. When the practice becomes a habit, email won’t occur to you to check first thing. Your priorities will be in the right order and colleagues will be trained not to require your immediate response.

2.   Social media limited to once per week

My most intense days of social media activity are book launch days. They are crazy. The book is launched in social media posts, stories and videos. My followers respond in support and send me pictures of their orders or holding their pre-release copies. I’m booked for podcasts and Instagram Lives and respond to comments all day. I check Amazon rankings, notifications on each platform, and get caught in a whirlpool of dopamine that lasts all day.

Monitoring how I feel during book launches is eye-opening. It’s like being on copious amounts of caffeine, totally wired. Easily irritated, with a short attention span. Stuck in lizard brain and compulsively checking for updates every few minutes. For that day, I lose perspective. I take myself too seriously, I internalise feedback. I’m led by the masses and my device, and my brain is in overdrive. The next day I wake up exhausted and in need of a digital detox to redress the balance.

Whilst this sounds extreme, most people’s technology usage doesn’t look all that different. Scrolling social media, checking the news, looking for things to be outraged or excited by. Each user is slave to their own PEZ dispenser of dopamine, it just takes different forms.

The experiment is to limit social media usage to one day per week. Choose any day you like. On that day, go to town. Check everything, scroll everything. Post and comment to your heart’s content. Read YouTube comments, scroll your Twitter, watch Reels on your Instagram Explore tab. See what everyone is up to on LinkedIn and check your Facebook messages. Succumb to clickbait and see where you end up.

On all other days, log out. Log out and clear your browser history so that the URL doesn’t even pop up. Turn on two-factor authentication so you’re reminded to steer clear even if you slip up. If you feel like you want to check something, write it down. If you have the urge to send a post, share your views or view someone else’s profile, write it down. Make yourself a big list ready for when social media day next rolls around and do it all then. When you re-enter each account, you’ll realize that everything was fine to wait.

3.   No phone usage before lunch

Continuing on the basis that the morning is a glorious time, before the day has worn you down, it makes sense that more digital distractions are cut out of it and postponed until later. The third experiment is no phone usage until lunch, or at least two hours after starting your work. This means no chat apps, no texting, keeping it in airplane mode until you have made progress towards your ultimate goal. Reserve your morning.

There are tricks to make this more doable at first. Setting your phone to black and white means it’s less shiny and attractive, using a watch means you don’t need to reach for it for the time. Buying a separate alarm clock means unlocking your phone isn’t the first thing you do each morning. Carrying a payment card means not using it for Apple Pay.

You survived before smartphones, and you can survive now they’re here. But being sworn off your phone all morning makes you realize the dependency that has unconsciously been created. Unlink dependencies to regain control. I don’t need an app to meditate, I just like that Calm plays music and records my progress. I don’t need to use the Wim Hof app to follow the Wim Hof Method, but it makes me feel like I have a coach. Work out what you really need an app for and what could be carried out just as well in an old school way.

Until phone-checking time arrives each day, your brain will trick you into picking it up. It will tell you that you must do certain things. It will try any hack it can think of to make you pick up your phone, do that one thing, then go down a rabbit hole of usage. That’s how addiction works. For all those must do things, make a list. Use a pen and paper to write down your to-dos. Sending that friend that link, logging your weight, rescheduling that delivery, booking that table. They can all wait until you have produced or made progress towards what actually matters.

The foundation

The basis for these experiments is cleansing your phone. Deleting nonessential apps including news and social media and setting downtime limits for any that remain. Training awareness and changing your actions, including resisting the urge to pull your phone out of your pocket at any opportunity, like when waiting in line or when a friend goes to bathroom.

The experiments might sound radical, but they are necessary. Email, social media, news checking and excessive phone usage are costing your potential. They’re costing you the life you could lead, if only you could find the time. See what you can cut out and monitor how you feel when you set clear boundaries that you don’t break for any reason. Overcome technology addiction once and for all.