Defeating Distraction Exercises
Building better habits is just like any kind of exercise. It takes time and practice, and you have to keep going even if you don’t succeed right away.
Here are some exercies you can do to build better tech habits. If you don’t have a phone, use whatever device (tablet, laptop, etc.) you mostly use instead. Try at least two:
The Do Just One Thing Challenge
- Pick one of the finite activities that you just identified, like checking the weather.
- Unlock your phone.
- Do just that activity. Stop when you’ve reached the end point you identified (for example, when you know what the day’s weather is going to be.
- Lock your phone.
App Trials
- Pick one of the activities that has no natural end, like playing a game, scrolling your social media feed, or watching videos.
- Decide how much time you’d like to spend doing it (for instance, five minutes watching videos.)
- Set a timer going with that time.
- Do the activity until the timer goes off, and then close that app and put your phone away.
Phone Penny Marathon
- Guess how often you check your phone every hour.
- Fill one pocket with pennies or other small coins or objects.
- Pick an hour of the day when you usually use your phone at least once, or set a timer for an hour.
- Each time you unlock your phone, move one of the pennies to another pocket.
- At the end of the hour, count the pennies in the second pocket to see how many times you unlocked your phone.
If you don’t have any pennies or other small items you can use (or you don’t have pockets), use this variation:
- Set your phone face-down in front of you.
- Each time you unlock your phone, put it down a bit further away when you’re done.
- How far away from you is the phone at the end of the hour?
Notification Sprints
Choose a frequency for checking your notifications (how often you will check them – for instance, once every hour, or once every half hour.)
Don’t check any notifications outside of that time (except for ones that are clearly emergencies.)
When the time comes, check all your notifications, respond to any that need responses as quickly as possible, then put away your phone.
Once you’ve done at least two, write a short reflection that answers these questions:
- How hard or easy were the exercises? What were the hardest or easiest parts?
- Did anything surprise you when doing the exercises?
- How hard do you think it would be to do these exercises every day? What would make it hard or easy?
- Which of these exercises would you be most likely to keep doing? Why? (If there are none that you would keep doing, why not?)
Having a natural limit or end.