Detox Techniques
Offline, On Purpose
Practical suggestions for a technology detox
- Get a clear picture of your usage. Check the built-in Screen Time (iOS) or Digital Wellbeing (Android) dashboards for a full week and note the three apps that absorb the most minutes. UK adults now spend about 4 hours 20 minutes online every day, so most of us have slack to reclaim.
- Impose hard ceilings, not vague intentions. Decide on a daily screen-time cap that feels stringent yet realistic (for many professionals, two hours on weekdays, three at weekends). Apply app-timer locks; when the limit hits, the icon greys out and the extra friction is usually enough to make you pause.
- Create device-free places. Bedroom, dining table and bathroom work well. Put a £10 analogue alarm clock by the bed and charge the phone overnight in another room; no midnight scroll, no blue light.
- Strip out the hooks. Disable all push alerts except calls, calendar and two-factor codes. Switch the display to greyscale; colour is part of the reward loop, so draining it blunts the urge to “just check”.
- Schedule a regular digital fast. One evening a week without screens trains the impulse muscle; expand to a 24-hour period each month. Warn clients in advance and set a concise out-of-office message.
- Use single-purpose tools. A fountain pen and notebook for meetings, a mechanical wrist-watch, even a cheap MP3 player for music. Fewer multifunction devices mean fewer rabbit holes.
- Keep analogue diversions close. A compact novel, the FT in print, a chess set, pruning shears—anything you can reach for when a queue or train delay would otherwise push you back to a phone.
- Batch communications at work. Open email and Teams/Slack at fixed windows—mid-morning, mid-afternoon, end-of-day—and leave them closed otherwise. Colleagues learn to group requests; your focus survives intact.
- Protect sleep ruthlessly. Make a habit of shutting down all screens at least an hour before bed; studies show people who do so gain roughly twenty extra minutes of nightly sleep.
- Delete what you can access in a browser. Social networks, shopping and news feel less seductive when an extra login step stands in the way. Ruthless app triage cuts reflex checking.
- Consider a two-handset strategy. Keep a basic feature phone for evenings and weekends; leave the smartphone locked in a drawer. Nothing beats physical separation.
- Add accountability. Share weekly screen-time screenshots with a colleague or family member, or fine yourself £5 for each self-inflicted rule break and donate the sum monthly.
- Review periodically. Every Sunday, glance at the latest usage graph. Tweak limits up or down based on sleep quality, concentration and mood rather than guilt. The aim is deliberate, not abstinent, technology use.
Adopt the handful that fit your circumstances; most professionals report a 25–40 % drop in screen time after four weeks once these structural changes bed in.