You’re constantly on your phone and it’s wrecking your mental health and productivity. Here’s how I cut my phone screen time by 60% with five simple steps.

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Wake up. Grab your phone. Check your notifications.

Catch up on the few posts you missed on the socials while you were sleeping.

Skim your email to make sure the office didn’t burn down overnight because you left off a number on tomorrow’s deck presentation.

If you’re like me, then this seemingly innocent routine might be the very first thing you do to start your mornings.

But in reality, this little habit is putting you behind. Way behind.

You’ve already lost the initiative.

External factors have now seized your attention and have taken control of at least part of your mental state before the sun is even up.

The average American spends over 4.5 hours on their smartphone every single day. That’s more than one entire day per week devoted to your phone.

Want more scary math related to your phone usage? No? Well, you’re gonna get it anyway.

Here we go. This all adds up to:

• 6 days per month
• 70 days per year
• 12 years over the course of a lifetime (!!!)

Imagine what you could do with even half of that time back in your day, week, month, year … life?

Don’t tell me that you don’t have time to reinvent your health, fitness, business or even your life.

You do have the time, we just need to get more resourceful with it.

This was something I realized a little more than a month ago. My screen time on the iPhone was an embarrassing amount of mindless cheap dopamine consumption.

I was averaging well over six hours per day. Something I’m not proud of, to say the least.

But, instead of just accepting it for what it was, I decided to do something about it.

The results?

• cut my phone usage by almost 70%
• read more books
• reduced my anxiety
• increased my productivity

I took screen shots of my stats from the end of August when I was averaging almost six hours per day versus October when I reduced my phone usage to under two hours per day.

Today, I’m going to share the exact process I used to cut my phone screen usage.

It just takes a few simple habits that you can implement right now.

Let’s get into  it.

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Your phone is taking over your life

We get caught in the trap of wondering why we don’t have time in our day to do the things necessary to level up.

• I don’t have time to work out
• I don’t have time to cook something healthy
• I don’t have time to read

These are all just stories we make up in our mind. Excuses, really.

And it’s imperative that you break this addiction and cut back on your phone usage.

Higher consumption of smartphones can lead to:

• poor sleep
• increased anxiety
• reduced physical activity
• impaired cognitive function
• social isolation
• depression

Look, I want to be realistic about all of this.

I think some productivity gurus brag about turning their phone into an expensive paperweight and flex about how they cut their phone usage to like 13 minutes a day.

Cool. I love that for them.

I don’t expect either one of us to go that extreme.

After all, smartphones are like $1,000 pocket computers. I spent the money for it so I can use it.

Technology can be a good thing … at least until the A.I. overlords enslave us like CyberDyne from Terminator.

Kidding aside.

This is not a newsletter about cursing tech and telling you to turn your advanced piece of hardware into a brick.

It’s about being more mindful with how you use that smartphone so it can be more of a companion.

You are the hero in your own role playing video game.

The phone should be a teammate, the NPC sidekick that assists you along the way.

This is all about maximizing your time so you can really build more meaning and fulfillment into your life.

What would you do with more time in your day?

With less time on my phone, I noticed immediate benefits in that first week:

The obvious first one was simply more time back in my day.

More time for writing, reading, going for walks, mobility during breaks in my work hours.

Just more time in general.

Cutting back over 3.5 hours on my phone usage in a 24 hour day is getting back 14 percent more time. You’d be surprised how much even an extra hour can do for you, let alone three.

I got bored more frequently. And that’s a good thing (I talk about why you should encourage boredom if you want to reinvent yourself here).

I was spending less time on Twitter doom scrolling over the news and politics.

My blood pressure was not on high alert.

As someone who’s battled crippling anxiety before, removing a nerve-wracking onslaught of political hot takes did wonders for me.

Within a few days, I noticed improvements in my ongoing anxiety.

More time was spent reading actual books

There was more intention in how I consumed media.

Rather than spend all day looking at thousands of words randomly put together by influencers that I don’t care for, I consumed more thoughtful words produced by actual writers and creators that I admire and enjoy (like me).

I’m much more present in my day.

Since I’m placing my phone in a specific location and essentially leaving it there for the remainder of the day, I don’t have it handy to grab out of boredom, or just through muscle memory.

Instead, I’m forced to … be.

I noticed immediately how much more focused and present I was with my family and my kids.

It can be easy to let parenting shift into cruise control sometimes:

How was your day? Good.

Do you want (another) snack? Good.

Can you please go brush your teeth like I asked at least 23 times already? Good.

Without the phone around, there’s no pull, there’s no quick shot of dopamine luring me away from my kids.

I keep the phone tucked away during dinner. We play some music (no screen time whatsoever) and we catch up on each other’s days by asking:

What was your favorite part of the day?

AND

What was your least favorite part of the day?

Even my five year old intern gets into the act and shares.

We discuss things (positive and negative) and build trust and share stories and just … be.

Present. Together.

How I cut my phone screen time so you can do the same

There are a few simple habits you can implement today to start cutting back on your phone time.

It starts by having a plan.

And then making sure you have a place for your phone.

Find a home for your phone

The biggest thing you can do right now is to create a resting place for your phone at home.

You might also need to do this at your place of work, too.

Productivity expert and best-selling author Cal Newport calls this the Phone Foyer Method.

It breaks down like this:

“When you get home after work, you put your phone on a table in your foyer near your front door. Then — and this is the important part — you leave it there until you next leave the house.”
— Cal Newport

For me that means my phone sits on a tripod holder near my work station for the day.

If I need to answer a text message, I have to physically walk over to my phone to answer the text and will stay there by the phone foyer until I’m done.

Make your phone boring af

My cell phone is like my life.

It’s the new age Swiss Army Knife. Packed with every utility I could possibly think of:

• email,
• calculators,
• calendars,
• Internet,
• video games,
• movies.

Yeah it even makes phone calls from time to time, too.

If you’re not careful, you can lose yourself on the phone for hours on end.

Just like they designed it.

The solution is to make your phone far less enticing to pick up.

Remove apps you do not need.

I started swapping out many social media apps and committed to using the desktop varieties instead. Is the experience awesome? No. But that’s by design.

Try to utilize the desktop functions and versions over the phone whenever possible.

It’s not nearly as fun looking at Facebook on your computer.

So when you do open up that social media platform, you’ll be less inclined to spend excess time on it.

The experience is not nearly as enjoyable.

You still get the utility out of it, you’re able to check in on your racist Uncle and determine whether your brother’s high school girlfriend is really pregnant again.

But, now you can get in and out quicker and then you can get on with your day.

Consume with intention

The funny thing about never having time to read is that you do read thousands of words every single day.

They’re’ in the captions of Instagram.

You read tons of words from that Facebook post of your high school friends; that cryptic Facebook post from your distant aunt.

Or you’re skimming the thoughts, opinions and weird takes of all the posts on Twitter (or whatever the hell Elon Musk is calling it these days).

This is all mindless consumption.

You don’t even realize that you’re taking in all of these messages from random people.

Most of those messages are potentially damaging to your mental health as you devolve into nonstop comparison, arguing or going down the deeply problematic red pill rabbit hole.

What if, instead, you were more intentional with the words you read every single day?

What if you put the phone down and actually picked up a book?

Or if you wanted to read something online, it was from a well-respected newsletter (I happen to know a pretty good one to recommend) or a Medium post or even an online version of a print newspaper?

Stop mindlessly consuming random thoughts of others and be more intentional about how and what you consume instead.

Swap your phone habit for another

Reaching for your phone out of boredom is so ingrained in our culture that it’s just part of what we do now.

It can be really hard to break that cycle. Especially if you just try to white knuckle it and go cold turkey. You’ll eventually get super bored and find an excuse to get out of this “no phone prison.”

So, the best thing you can do is find a new behavior to swap with the undesirable one.

In my case, I wanted to focus on reading more books.

I started keeping my Kindle reader handy during my day. When I’m in the middle of a break and feel the urge to reach for my phone, I’ve now created two important barriers to prevent that:

My phone is across the room in the foyer and I’d have to physically get up to go get it.

And instead, I can just pick up my book (or my Kindle) and read.

No more mindless scrolling. I’m consuming with intention.

Maybe reading more ain’t your thing. But what can you replace that phone habit with?

Physical activity (even bite-sized exercise snacks can be incredibly impactful)

Journaling (you should be journaling for personal growth and here’s how to do it)

Mindful breathing

Get creative with what works for you. But be intentional with it.

Put the phone away for a day

Ever step out of the house and realize that you forgot to bring your phone?

Of course you have, we’ve all done it.

There’s that existential dread that creeps in as you realize your entire life has been left behind.

But, after a few minutes, there’s a bit of a calm that settles you. It’s fine. You’ll survive (like we did in the old days).

Because when you constantly have the phone on your person, it acts as a security blanket. You cure boredom by reaching for dopamine.

When that cheap hit of dopamine was left behind on your dresser, you can’t access it immediately.

You are left to your own devices and you have to embrace the boredom.

This is what life was like before we were phone-addicted zombies.

Your job is to be intentional with this concept one day per week.

Do your best to leave your phone behind one afternoon on a weekend when you’re with your family and don’t have to worry about random emails, texts or calls.

Try to spend a day as a digital minimalist without the phone.

Of course, an entire day may be a bit daunting to start. So as I always suggest, break it down into smaller, measurable steps.

Start by going to lunch or brunch without the phone.

If you’re with your family, there’s no need to carry the phone with you everywhere. Everyone you need to talk to is right there with you.

Eventually work up to maybe leaving the phone behind for an entire morning, afternoon or during sunlight hours.

I promise that as you start to adopt these tiny little behaviors, you’ll realize that there is so much more going on with life.

You’re not missing anything.

Now it’s your turn to put the phone down and get back your time and sanity

The simple process to cut your phone screen time:

1. Find a home for your phone
2. Make your phone boring af
3. Consume with intention
4. Swap your phone habit for another
5. Put the phone away for a day

This is exactly how I did it. And this is your playbook for cutting your phone time, too.

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

Take what you’ve learned here and slowly apply it over the next month or two and let me know how it works out for you.

I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “cut my phone screen time” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Until next time,
Pete