Last Tuesday, I spent forty-seven minutes—I checked the battery usage stats, so I know it was exactly forty-seven—looking at videos of people restoring old Japanese saws on Instagram. I don’t own a saw. I live in a third-floor apartment and the most ‘DIY’ thing I’ve done this year is tighten a loose screw on a frying pan handle. But there I was, at 11:14 PM, bathed in that blue light, feeling my brain turn into lukewarm oatmeal. It felt terrible. It always feels terrible.
The standard advice for this is always so extreme. Some guy with a perfectly curated minimalist desk and a $4,000 Leica camera tells you to delete every app, buy a light phone, and move to a cabin in Vermont. That is not happening. I like my memes. I need my group chats to coordinate which bar we’re meeting at on Friday. I genuinely think people who suggest ‘deleting all apps’ are either lying for clout or have zero friends. You don’t need to go off the grid; you just need to stop letting your phone treat you like a lab rat.
The 8-foot rule that actually works
I tested this for 19 days straight. I measured the distance from my bed to my desk. It’s about eight feet. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. The problem isn’t the phone; it’s the proximity. If the phone is within arm’s reach when you’re bored, you’ve already lost. Your willpower is a finite resource, and by 9 PM, you’ve used it all up on work emails and deciding what to have for dinner.
I started charging my phone in the kitchen at 8:30 PM. No exceptions. I spent $22 on a basic, ugly digital alarm clock from Amazon so I wouldn’t have the “but I need it for my alarm” excuse. It’s a clunky black plastic box with red numbers that look like a 1980s bomb timer. I hate it. But it works. By forcing myself to walk eight feet to check a notification, I ended up checking them 60% less. I tracked this. I went from 142 pickups a day to 58. That’s a lot of time back. That’s it. That’s the whole trick.
Moving the charger is the single most effective thing you can do. Everything else is just window dressing.
Why I refuse to delete Instagram (and why you shouldn’t either)
I know people will disagree with me here, and they’ll say that Meta is a soul-sucking vampire squid, which is true. But deleting the apps is a temporary fix. It’s like going on a juice cleanse; you’ll just binge on Twitter the second you get back on a browser. I keep Instagram because I like seeing my cousin’s new baby and I like the weird niche hobbyist communities. Browsing social media is like eating a sleeve of saltine crackers when you’re actually thirsty—it doesn’t satisfy you, but sometimes you just want a cracker.
The real move is to bury the icons. I moved Instagram, Twitter (I refuse to call it X), and LinkedIn into a folder on the very last page of my home screen. I named the folder “WASTE OF TIME.” It sounds stupidly aggressive, but seeing that label every time I try to mindlessly tap the icon gives me just enough of a pause to ask: “Do I actually want to do this?” Usually, the answer is no. I also turned off every single notification that isn’t from a real human being. If a brand sends me a push notification about a sale, I immediately block notifications for that entire app. No mercy. It’s a trap.
That time I looked like a complete idiot at a wedding
This happened in 2019, at my friend Sarah’s wedding in upstate New York. It was a beautiful ceremony, very small, very intimate. During the vows—the literal vows—my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a notification from LinkedIn telling me that someone I haven’t spoken to in six years had a “work anniversary.” I pulled the phone out just a tiny bit to see what it was, and the light caught the screen. Sarah’s mom saw me. She didn’t say anything, but the look she gave me… I felt like a total parasite. I was missing a real, once-in-a-lifetime human moment because an algorithm wanted me to congratulate a stranger on their five-year stint at a mid-level marketing firm. I still feel cringey thinking about it. Never again.
Anyway, that’s what we’re trying to avoid. The feeling of being physically present but mentally somewhere else entirely.
The “Grey” setting is a lie
Everyone tells you to turn your phone to grayscale. They say it makes the apps less “rewarding” because the bright colors are what trigger the dopamine. I tried it for a week. It was miserable. It didn’t make me use my phone less; it just made me annoyed while I was using it. It’s like trying to quit smoking by only smoking cigarettes that taste like dirt. You’re still smoking. I might be wrong about this, but I think the grayscale thing is just a way for people to feel like they’re doing something ‘hardcore’ without actually changing their habits.
I also have a bone to pick with the Calm app. I know everyone loves it, but I actively tell my friends to avoid it. The narrator’s voice is so performatively soothing that it actually makes me more stressed out. It feels fake. If I want to meditate, I’ll sit in a chair for five minutes and listen to the fridge hum. I don’t need a $70-a-year subscription to tell me how to breathe. Productivity culture has this weird way of selling us solutions to the problems it created in the first place.
Speaking of things that are fake, let’s talk about “Focus Modes.” I think people who use eight different focus modes for different times of the day are just performing discipline. You don’t need a “Deep Work” mode. You just need to put the phone in a drawer. It’s not that complicated, we just want it to be complicated so we can buy more apps to solve it.
Actually, I just realized I’m being a bit hypocritical because I spent $15 on a mechanical keyboard last month specifically because I thought the ‘clicky’ sounds would make me write more. It didn’t. I just have a louder keyboard now. But I digress.
The part nobody talks about
When you stop filling every micro-second of boredom with a screen, things get weird. You’ll be standing in line at the grocery store and you’ll realize you have nothing to do. You’ll just be… standing there. Looking at the gum. Looking at the person in front of you. It feels itchy at first. You might even feel a little bit of anxiety.
But then, after a few days, that itch goes away. You start noticing things again. Like how the light hits the buildings at 5 PM, or how weirdly specific people’s outfits are. It’s not some spiritual awakening; it’s just being a person. I used to think I needed my phone to stay “informed,” but I was completely wrong. Most of what I was reading was just noise. Checking my email at 9 PM is like inviting my boss to sit on the edge of my bed while I try to sleep. It’s a total waste of time.
If you’re just starting, don’t delete your accounts. Don’t make a big announcement on your story about how you’re “taking a break.” Just move your charger to another room tonight. See how it feels to wake up without a screen six inches from your face.
Will I still be watching Japanese saw restoration videos next week? Probably. But maybe I’ll do it for ten minutes instead of forty. I honestly don’t know if it’s possible to ever fully win this battle, but I’m tired of losing so badly.