Do you know what boundaries you want to introduce in order to reduce your phone usage?
There are both online and offline boundaries you can activate to create friction.
The question is do you have a list of strategies you want to use?
Examples of digital boundaries are Do Not Disturb, blocking apps, greyscale, and Google’s Digital Wellbeing.
Examples of offline boundaries are no tech hour, moving the phone to a different room, and locking the charger in a drawer.
Once you know how you want to reduce your phone usage, it is time to introduce them.
But when? That’s the next question.
When do you want to introduce the friction?
You may say every day from 9 pm till 10 pm, or every Tuesday from 8 pm till 10 pm for example.
You want to write this down and discuss it with the people in your household.
Now that you know what and when, you want to make sure you’re reminded to introduce the friction.
That’s why it’s important to use the alarm for the time being.
Introducing such strategies is not a habit yet, so you will need an alarm for now.
Set up a unique alarm for each boundary.
The iPhone alarm for example allows you to set repeat alarms for selected days, plus you can give each a unique sound.
So you only need to set these alarms just once.
Once the introduction of friction becomes a habit, you may assess whether the alarm is still necessary.
It’s normal to forget great ideas since they are not part of your routine yet.
So keep using the alarm feature of your device till the online or offline boundary is part of your daily or weekly routine.