Lately I’ve been feeling absolutely consumed by technology. As I shared in my day in my life post last week, most mornings the first thing I do when I wake up is look at my phone and it’s also the last thing I do before I fall asleep. In between that I’m on my computer and phone nearly all day, only taking breaks while we’re eating dinner and when I’m spending time with the girls. Besides feeling physical impacts in the form of frequent headaches I’ve been feeling emotionally exhausted. Work is stressful, social media is quite possibly more stressful, podcasts can quickly turn from enjoyable to overwhelming, and don’t get me started on the news. All in all, something had to change.
Last Sunday when I got my weekly screen time report from Apple via a notification on my phone, I decided to dig in to it. I’m embarrassed to share this but in one week I averaged 6 hours and 47 minutes/day on my phone. I was shocked. It was clear that something had to change.
So here is what I did. First, I put limits on my social media apps {for me this includes Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest}. The first day I set this at 30 minutes which obviously went quickly. I’ve been trying to set more realistic goals in all aspects of my life and not wanting this to be an exception I decided to increase that time to 59 minutes. It seems like a lot but I’ve hit the limit each day well before my kids go to bed, so definitely still room for more improvement there. Second, I set downtime. During downtime, my apps are disabled {but phone calls are available}. Currently my downtime is set from 9:45pm – 8:45am. This gives me enough space to check my phone or send messages before bed but helps me focus on being intentional with my time in the morning and with the girls before they leave for school. While the apps are still accessible during downtime if you choose to use them, having them disabled by default has encouraged me to think about how I want to spend that time. And third, I reminded myself we still have not returned back to normal since the pandemic started in March. Wile I’m committing to making an effort to spend less time on my phone I can go a little easy on myself about how I got here.
So that’s it. Maybe this is something everyone has been doing forever? Hoping it helps you to find a better balance in your days, too! xo
