Turning the Noise Down on Your Phone
For when the phone is running your attention rather than the other way around. It turns off the notifications that are not people, moves the worst apps off the first screen, puts the charger outside the bedroom, and keeps one hour a day free of it.
Screens · Habits · Sleep · 8 items · once a week
The checklist
- Turn off every notification but calls and texts — the rest can wait until you look.
- Take the badge counts off the icons — a red number is a job you did not ask for.
- Move the two worst apps off the first screen — a second of friction does most of the work.
- Charge it outside the bedroom tonight — the phone by the bed decides both ends of your day.
- Set one hour a day with no phone in it — dinner or the walk, the same hour each day.
- Turn the screen to black and white for a week — color is doing more of the pulling than you think.
- Unfollow five accounts that leave you flat — the feed is a room you choose the people in.
- Look at the weekly screen time once — the number is information, not a telling-off.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it once a week, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.