Productivity Hack: How I stopped my phone from controlling me

Photo by Rami Al-zayat on Unsplash

Do you spend too much time on your phone and wish you would stop? Yep, that’s me. I check my phone all the time and I’m on my phone when I’m working, eating, sleeping, and even exercising. I know I have to make a change and take control of my life from my phone. I tried the various methods and I’d like to share with you my journey towards a more productive life.

You may just wonder: great, it’s just another story of someone who doesn’t have any self-control. Well, I do have a Ph.D., so I can assure you that I have some basic level of self-control. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to finish my Ph.D., I guess! So I think it’s something more than merely a self-control issue.

• We are fighting against algorithms and mental stimulations that are designed to provide us immediate gratification and to get us hooked. Engineers and data scientists like me run thousands of experiments every day, just to get people’s attention and time.
• As you can probably tell, it takes a lot of effort to fight against those carefully crafted temptations. Research shows that “willpower is not an unlimited resource. Resisting repeated temptations takes a mental toll.” Other research shows that even having a phone nearby can reduce our mental capacity because of the cognitive cost of avoiding temptations.