A Beast on the Loose

For many, a phone addiction feels unbeatable. We are unlocking our phones 40+ times a day. We shudder to look at the usage statistics. “Really, I spent 6 hours on my phone today?” We are losing precious years of our lives, losing time with our friends and family. Potential prodigies are vegging fulltime.

The phone is like a lion, terrorizing our lives. It is the King of the Urban Jungle. You cannot live with a lion on the loose. You must cage the beast.

Options to Stop The Beast

A phone’s power comes from three things: it’s useful, interesting and accessible.

The different solution address these things in their own way.

Neuter the beast. If it’s not interesting, it doesn’t matter if it’s in your pocket all the time. So some people try transitioning to a dumb phone (like the LitePhone or a old Flip Phone) and remove what’s interesting … but also, most of what’s useful. For many people, the useful tools like Google Maps, cameras, Strava, LinkedIn and exercise programs are too important to give up.

Dominate the beast. Maybe if they were more intentional and tried harder, they could control their consumption of the interesting things - maybe I could beat the addiction. So they try a few tools to bolster their will power by setting timers, wifi-limitations, night-time routines.

Declaw the beast. Some people will delete, instagram, Netflix or the other addictive apps. Buuut, eventually they just add them back to the phone.

Cage the beast. Take the phone and put it on a stand by the front door and don’t let it move around the house, terrorizing your will power. Don’t have it with you in the bathroom, kitchen or bedroom. Part of it’s power is that it’s so easy to grab. 1

We are exploring the last one.

How to Cage The Beast

You can cage the lion by physically limiting where the phone can go in your house. Pick a stand near the door (perhaps where you put your keys) - that is your phone’s cage.

If you feel the need to scroll your phone, feel free to go to the stand and use it. Go pet the lion in its cage. Without the draw of it’s typical convenience of being right with you, the phone will lose a bunch of it’s draw.

A Beast on a Leash

You likely need your phone at other locations.

  1. You need a recipe in the kitchen.
  2. You use a youtube video so you can follow along with an exercise program.
  3. You want to take a picture of your daugther’s with her friends at her birthday party.

In these cases, bring the phone out for that express purpose, then move it back as soon as you are done.

These system fails late at night, when you bring the phone down to cast a show to your TV and you leave it beside you. You don’t feel like running it back upstairs, and then at some point, it sucks you in. Be diligent in returning it to its cage.

A Scoring System vs A Contract

If two trusted friends do business with each other, they still draw up legal contracts. The value is clarity.

We need this clarity now. No one wants a bunch of rules to follow, but you need to know exactly what to do to be free.

A contract with a bunch of rules is not as useful as a scoring system. A scoring system has the rigor of a contract, but will be attaching points so you could, theoretically, track your progress over time.

  1. Each day you start with 5 points.
  2. If you needlessly move the phone out of it’s cage: -1 point. (OK for beast-on-a-leash purposes)
  3. For each “session” of scrolling, -1 point.

What’s a Session?

Let me clarify what an “session” is with examples.

You are watching a movie, it gets boring and for some reason the phone was beside you and you scroll social media for 5 minutes until action resumes: -1 point. You finish the movie, then you pick up your phone and binge scroll through different platforms for 50 minutes: -1 point.

You might think: but one was way longer than the other! Why are they both a point?

  1. Keeps tracking easy.
  2. The goal is to eliminate sessions, so we focus exclusively on that.

The Cage’s Weakness: Communication

  1. I need to arrange rides for my kids and I’m texting three people at once.
  2. I text my friends because it’s hard to meet in person, we are having fun.

Some of these cases require a beast-on-a-leash attitude. But in other cases, attempt to solve in a different way. Add an app to your desktop or laptop where you can text your friends. If it’s time to enjoy friends, sit down at a computer, focus on it and enjoy it. Don’t let it bleed into everything.

On the Prowl Outside the Home

What about if I’m at the grocery store, and I pull out my phone and scroll while I’m waiting in line? It’s that a problem?

Sure. But the goal is to get an important win. Control it in your home. You’ll find once you learn to tame the beast in one location. You have much more power in other scenarios. There are other approaches to help there.

Identify Your Types and Level of Addictions

You may be addicted to your phone for deeper or even clinical reasons. For example, a pornographic addiction is much deeper and is not the intended audience of this approach.

A generic phone addiction is one where you spend more time on your phone than you want.

But phone addictions themselves vary. Beat the addiction in steps. Your first step must be a step you can achieve. Very few can just stop cold turkey.

If you want to be free, there are solutions. But you need a program that works with the level of will-power you have.

  1. Note that everything your phone can do, a desktop can do. But no one was a slave to their desktop. It was too inconvenient to walk to the office, boot it up, just to look at a feed for two minutes. ↩︎