A recent study by Asurion found that the average American checks their smartphone 80 times a day or about every 12 minutes! Millennials were found to check their phones nearly double that amount!
A few weeks ago I came across a technique suggested by a former Google designer to reduce the amount of checking and time spent on my iPhone.
Here’s what you do: set your phone to “greyscale.” This means that nothing on your phone is in color. Yuck. I HATE IT! But that’s the point. Here’s what color vs. greyscale looks like:
The concept is that by stripping away the color it makes using your smartphone less enticing. I have found that to be definitely true. It sucks. As reported by Inc., Thomas Z. Ramsoy, the founder and CEO of Neurons Inc, a Denmark-based company that studies how people interact with apps using brain scans and eye tracking technology says that “a grayscale screen puts you more in control of your actions. Instead of a cacophony of colorful apps trying to outdo each other for your attention (and often succeeding), the grayscale equalizes everything you see on your screen. Nothing looks more attractive than the app next to it. You’ll be more likely to use your phone mindfully and with better intention since you are no longer subconsciously being pulled in different directions by the apps themselves.”
Try it for a day. See what you think.
Here’s how you switch to greyscale on an iPhone: go to Settings > General > Accessibility >Display Accommodations >Color Filters. Switch Color Filters on and select Grayscale. To easily toggle between color and grayscale, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut > Color Filters
Here’s a link on how to turn on greyscale in Android: Android Greyscale
Here is another method that works very well for me. Get old – Then you do not hear very well so you do not look at your phone every time a notification, text message, or robo call arrives. After a while some of these people quite sending them. Don’t worry you do not have to adopt this method right away. It will happen as a matter of course. Just give it a more little time.