Clear your mind and beat stress by removing social media apps from your smartphone

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Have you noticed that you get a little nervous when your smartphone is away from you for too long? Have you noticed that you are constantly worried about what is happening on the Internet without you? You take out your smartphone to check the time, and now you are flipping through the Twitter feed. This habit affects your communication with friends and family and even the clarity of your thoughts, but there are ideas on how to get rid of it in a few weeks.

Many of those who have completely deleted Facebook and Twitter recognize this as the greatest event that had a profound impact on their lives. Perhaps eliminating social media profiles is too harsh a decision. They can be useful to you even for work, and why give up the pleasure of occasionally glancing at them. But let's find the best way to interact with them.

Use web versions

Application developers do their best to increase your addiction and develop in you the subconscious habit of entering the application with and without reason. The game is called "make the user spend as much time as possible inside the application." And they win from us.

Facebook constantly reports that users are spending more and more time on the app, and so does Snapchat. As many eyes as possible for as long as possible - this is the goal of every startup.

And here's a way out of this situation - to use the most standard web versions. To open an application on your phone, you only need to touch the screen with your finger, there are already some barriers to your action on the web. Delete Twitter, Facebook, VKontakte from your phone and open it only in a browser, each time leaving your profiles when you are done with work or entertainment. The password manager should also be disabled.

This approach has two advantages:

1. You will significantly raise the barrier over which you need to step over just to flip aimlessly through the tape. You have to open Twitter, login, and then read it in the not-too-pleasant web version. During the first few weeks, the stage of entering a login will keep you from unnecessary visits to social networks: in these few seconds you will have time to think about whether you need to go there at all.
2. You will no longer be distracted by push notifications. Do you really need to know immediately when someone mentioned you, liked or left you a comment? Most likely no.

This approach will help you end reckless smartphone use.

Set complex passwords and then hide them

After a few weeks, you will most likely notice a problem: since you enter passwords often, you will do it without hesitation, and when you wake up, you will suddenly find yourself in the VKontakte news feed.

There is an exit. of 32 characters in some service, save, print and hide where you can find them, just do not carry with you.

Now logging into social media becomes a task that takes effort and time, and each entry of these ridiculous passwords will become a reminder that you are fighting a disturbing habit.

Can't kill the application - kill notifications

Notifications are a great primer and trigger for your habit: you see a notification, look into an app, get a reward and a burst of endorphins. Not only do notifications take you down the procrastination rabbit hole, they also disrupt concentration. Research has proven that after a distraction you will need to return to your previous task.

And the main reason to say no to notifications is that you don't need to know about everything that happens immediately. Likes, comments and mentions on Twitter can wait.

Apps do their best to get you to turn on notifications right away, but why do you agree with them? Right now, mercilessly disable absolutely all notifications in the settings, leave only vital ones. Disconnect without hesitation! In the end, you can always get them back.

Over the next week, notice how many more tasks you complete. You will probably be surprised that you were finally able to finish reading a book or solve a difficult problem that you have been postponing for a long time.

Customize your smartphone home screen

Remove from the home screen all applications in which you are stuck. This does not mean that you should not have interesting applications and games on your phone at all, it just should not appear in front of your eyes every time you unlock the screen.

You are just weaning yourself from the breast of smartphone procrastination, and one kind of these applications will make you dive headlong into stupid scrolling of tapes. Even if you have removed the main eaters of your time, you will quickly find a replacement for them, because you still need to scroll through something pointlessly. Leave only what you need for work on the home screen and helps you focus on tasks.

Breaking habits is easy

But in their place, new ones need to be created and reinforced. By removing the triggers that lead you to bad habits, and adding new triggers that remind you why you need to kick those habits, you will increase your chances of success in dealing with distractions.

Perhaps they will laugh at you and call you a retrograde for using the web versions of applications when you have a smartphone. But you will feel how you have taken a big step and now you see life much wider than when you constantly bumped into your phone.