How to take your life back from your smartphone

This post is part of a series on How to take back your life from digital devices, where we give you some tips on how to recover your precious time from the devices we use all too much.

In the UK adults spend an average of 8 hours 41 minutes a day on screens, more time than we spend sleeping each evening. A huge portion of this screen time is spent on our smartphones, with the average user spending 1.72 hours a day on social media alone, and checking their device 150 times a day it’s clear that we’re letting these tiny devices take over our lives.

At Time To Log Off we understand that our smartphones make our lives easier, we rely on them. But we also understand that we need to have a healthy balance between our time on tech and our time unplugged from digital, this allows us to reconnect with the real world.

What’s the best way to do it? We have a few simple steps that will help you get your life back from your smartphone.

Remove work email from your smartphone

You finally leave the office, get home and sit down with your family to see a couple of work emails and think ‘oh I’ll just reply to these to save time in the morning’. But, getting home and replying to emails when you’re in the middle of cooking dinner, watching TV or just relaxing is less productive than you think.

Multi tasking is a myth. Although we believe we’re getting more done research shows that our productivity levels decrease. By simply switching off work emails you’ll have more time to relax at home, whilst also increasing productivity levels. Its a win:win situation.

Make all meals smartphone free

We’re all guilty of making a phone call on our lunch break, or sending the odd text at the diner table. After all it’s just one text. This time all adds up, and a pew research study highlights  62% of people think that is not OK to use your phone at meal times. If you ban your smartphone at meal times it will allow you to focus on the food and the people around you- and you’ll enjoy it more, we promise. Just think of all that extra time you’ll be freeing up.

Don’t sleep with your smartphone

With 63% of adults admitting to sleeping with their phones or tablets in their beds, it isn’t uncommon to go to bed and make sure the last thing you do each night is scroll though Twitter. Swap your smartphone for a book or even a conversation with your partner.

It seems like a small change but it will make a huge difference. You’ll improve your sleep by reducing your exposure to blue light, and you’ll get to catch up with loved ones.

Turn off push notifications

Push notifications are one of the biggest digital distractions, even if you think you’re ignoring them. As soon as our phones vibrate or beep in our pockets we immediately have to check them, regardless of what we’re doing. This in itself distracts you before you even reply to that tweet or check who’s liked your latest Instagram post.

Turning off push notifications will reduce the amount of times you check your phone each day and stop distracting you from your daily tasks. Simple yet effective.

These steps will help you get take your life back from your smartphone, and we’re sure that you’ll be glad you finally did it. And if you’re up to the challenge of saying goodbye to your smartphone for a whole week then check out our digital detox retreats.