| Dear smartphone, You're the first thing my bleary eyes focus on in the morning and the last thing they see before I fall asleep. You kept me connected to the outside world during quarantine, and you're the tiny screen I look at after a long day of staring at larger screens. But I need space, because your endless feeds are breaking my brain. It's definitely you, but also me. Welcome to Day 1 of A Better Week. Here's a depressing exercise for my fellow iPhone users: Open settings, scroll down to the little hourglass symbol marked "Screen Time," then take a look at the awful number under "Daily Average." And if you feel like going deeper into this Russian doll of screen data, you can see all sorts of guilt-inducing stats, including the average number of times you pick up your phone and the apps you most frequently use. (There are similar apps for Android phones, such as Google's Digital Wellbeing.) Here are my grim averages from a recent workweek: - I picked up my phone 170 times per day.
- I received 172 push notifications.
- I used my phone for 227 minutes per day, or just under four hours.
Some of those minutes were helpful, like the 12 minutes I used Google Maps for directions. But there was far too much time spent scrolling through endless social media feeds. Sure, some of that is related to my job, but I can't pretend all those hours on Twitter and Instagram were productive. I spoke to Kostadin Kushlev, a behavioral scientist at Georgetown University, who has researched the impact of smartphone usage on well-being. My overarching goal was simple, but by no means easy: I wanted to be more intentional about my phone use, picking it up less frequently and using it more productively. My first target: incessant push notifications.  (Jennifer Tapias Derch for The Post) | Kushlev has researched the concept of "batching" push notifications, which basically means grouping them so that you get all your notifications for your various apps at set intervals, not throughout the day. The people who received batch notifications three times a day "reported feeling less stressed, being in a better mood" and felt more productive, Kushlev said. But Kushlev also found that people felt more stress when they had their notifications entirely disabled. "It actually seemed to increase anxiety and FOMO, fear of missing out," Kushlev said. Since his research was done with Android phones, I couldn't use the app he tested with my iPhone. So I attempted my own form of notification batching. I disabled text and WhatsApp push notifications for my most active chats, which can be especially distracting when I'm staring at a spreadsheet at work. I set my Slack notifications to automatically turn off, using the "do not disturb" setting, from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. I turned off my email lock-screen notifications, except for a handful of colleagues so I didn't miss an email from my boss. I did this using the iPhone's VIP list in the mail app. I created an automatic reminder at 9 p.m. each workday to check my email and Slack just to make sure I don't miss anything important. A week later, after making these changes I revisited my dreaded screen-time stats. - I picked up my phone 60 fewer times per day.
- I received 57 fewer push notifications.
- I used my phone about 30 minutes less per day – that's 3.5 hours saved each week.
Your turn: Try batching your notifications, then look at your screen time a week later. I recommend spending a few minutes going through your notification settings and reevaluating how necessary each vibration is. You could take it a step further by setting time limits for specific apps, which I may do. Weaponize your phone for good instead of evil with a few of my favorite apps: - Planta (Free): Free up brain space spent on keeping your plants alive. This app tells you when to water your green friends. (iOS, Google alternative)
- Flat Tomato (Free): Based on the pomodoro time-management technique, this app encourages you to work without distractions for 25 minutes at a time and then take five minute breaks. This got me through grad school. (iOS, Google alternative)
- Pocket (Free): Use the browser extension to save articles during your work day to avoid keeping a ton of open tabs. Then use the phone app during long commutes or flights, as it also works offline. (iOS, Google)
- YouMail (Free): Block those annoying robocalls once and for all by using your voice mail to find and block robocallers. (iOS)
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