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quitting the telephone (and what i do when i'm not on my telephone)

19/08/2026

this year has not been an incredible one in terms of real life events and throughout it all i have been trying to release myself from the tendrils of my telephone for the sake of my sleep schedule, my studies, and my sanity. im going to ramble a bit about the things i'm having problems with and the things i have tried to remedy them. a minor disclaimer - i will be knocking various behaviours and activities i do throughout this post, but this is not meant to be comment on you, dear reader. you likely have far more self-control and life fulfillment than i. i am sure that even if you do all these things, your misery is coming from somewhere else.

the problem

everyone and their mother is both addicted to their telephone and thinking "hmm maybe i should spend less time on my phone" at the moment so this isn't gonna provide a particularly unique perspective, but at the moment i would say that my main problem is that i'm not doing things i want to do. some examples of things i want to do would be:

a pretty generic list all things considered although there are probably several things i wanted to do that i've forgotten due to the telephone hole. looking back at my telephone for a minute i can see in the screen time app that i spend roughly 5 hours on my phone a day if i do some rounding. this is currently split between:

in isolation these things aren't really a problem. talking to people online is social in theory and if i'm using youtube in the browser it is a much more painful experience to be served videos from "the algorithm" so i tend to go to watch specific videos i know will have been uploaded based on the calendar. manga could be counted as "good media" because it is like reading and i can talk about it with my friends. however sadly i am thoroughly not in isolation.

more and more i get out of using one of these apps with only a sense of regret and urgency that i should have been doing something else. waking up with my phone next to me, i catch up on all the discord messages my us-based friends and acquaintances (as well as my nocturnal uk-based friends) have said, and reply to a few as i feel like i have opinions i want shared or jokes that need telling. i think that checking the various servers for new messages has a similar dopamine hole inducing feeling that people talk about with social media like instagram or youtube - the anticipation of what i will see is what is drawing me, not the actual content itself. sometimes there'll be an active conversation ongoing, which i will join into, with several people i don't really know or care about, and will leave either annoyed or empty half an hour later. even if i pass on my opinions, what good does it do. i'm not looking to change my mind about anything and i'm too tired that early in the morning to be able to "argue" effectively. this is coupled with the fact the conversations are pretty much only ever about media anyway. someone will say "hmm i watched this film lately and i thought it was bad" then i'll go "actually i thought these bits were good" and they'll reveal they actually thought it was bad because they already didn't like one of the actors for a side-character and it'll go round in circles and we'll both leave with our pre-existing biases intact.

then i will watch the new dr. balatro youtube video which he diligently uploads at about 4am, or i'll put off getting out of bed in favour of a couple of manga chapters. even though i've smugly uninstalled instagram and deftly avoided "the algorithm" the devil i know is still keeping me in bed with a very similar bag of tricks.

my current environment (1 bed flat on my own with poor lighting) doesn't lend itself very well to escaping the telephone either - my current options for reading/any non-pc based activity are at my desk (not particularly comfortable) or in my bed, due to my lack of chair-based objects on hand. this means if i want to read or watch a tv show or a youtube video there is a reasonable chance i'll just fall asleep or be too comfortable and not get up when i need to.

it is very easy to imagine that if i didn't use my telephone at all (no youtube, no strangers on discord etc.) that i would actually be filling that time with good things but i also thought this when i uninstalled instagram. another problem with this is also that if i stop going on discord as much i stop talking to my real friends as much. i've always been mostly online as my main friends went to other schools and lived a nontrivial distance from me, plus we played video games rather than whatever people did in real life after school in high school. would i drift away from them if we don't talk about nothing and play games every day? i would hope not but it has happened in the past.

"good media" and "slop"

while i have been ragging on youtube and shorts and whatever a bit already i'd like to talk a bit more about what i actually mean by that. as a very philosophical person i often have philosophies and my philosophy for this is that when i'm "consuming media" my line for whether it was worth it or not is whether i can then talk about it with someone. for example, when i saw the odyssey by christopher nolan and co. it was 3 hours "used" but i've had conversations about it with countless people in the time since. when i spent 2 hours watching instagram reels that one time, i sent several to people and they would heart emoji react, but even a day later none of us can remember what happened. on occasion i will remember a reel or a youtube video but not be able to find it again, because the nature of the platforms mean once i've swiped it up it's gone forever. my least favourite part of instagram reels before i managed to escape that hole was when i found someone i actually liked, followed them, and they immediately stopped appearing in the random feed, but without any good way to see their posts on the "people i follow" feed.

anyway

this isn't particularly hard and fast as a rule. in theory if i watch an hour long youtube video that's vaguely educational i'll probably be able to recall some facts or tell people about it, but often it'll be teaching me about some niche (sm64 glitches, cybersecurity breaches, yugioh tournament rules) where they are adjacent to my interests, but not actually something that impacts me in the day to day.

this also isn't to say that my goal here is to be productive 100% of the time. i don't think its a waste of time to relax and watch a tv show even if you don't end up telling someone about it. but it feels like a lot of activities nowadays are actively harmful rather than just neutral and i'd like to get my baseline up.

low effort activities

if you have ever googled "use my phone less" you will have seen a vast array of advice from self-help blogs about what you can do to fix yourself. simply go for a walk or read a book or meditate or write in your journal or practice an instrument or go on a road trip to see your grandparents who you've not really been trying hard enough to see lately even though you feel guilty about it or learn a new skill or get a masters degree.

the problem with this advice is that i'm not using the telephone at these times. my problem is i'm waiting for the bus and i instinctively pull it out. or i'm already out on a walk and i get bored/get a notification and check it. or i'm home from my hard 1 hour of work and 3 hours of farting around and i'm tired and don't want to expend my brain particularly. my theory is that eventually the self-help gurus guidance will actually be what i am doing when i'm tired, but all of these activities use far too much effort for the current level of brain-frying going on.

learning an instrument or checking a skill is all well and good but when you are (i'm not a scientist so i'm saying this buzzword style) falling down the dopamine hole, then simply putting down the phone and doing a thing that doesn't reward you instantly is not only difficult to start but will probably feel shit for a while even when you do.

the solution (real)

i think the ideal solution would be having someone standing behind me 100% of the time who hits me with a hammer whenever i do something that is bad. however i think that is outside of my current level of financial ability to obtain, so i will discuss some of the things i am currently doing and also some of the things i want to be doing but don't.

the routine

currently in the morning i wake up and do some yoga on a telephone call with my partner as mutual motivation. this works somewhat well as it is now an appointment to keep and i can't just go back to sleep (as easily as if i had no appointment at least). once that's complete i'm now in theory up, ready to start the day, and have done slightly more exercise than i usually do. it is nice to start off the day with a small "win". however once the call is over i could just get back into bed.

in theory after this i leave the flat and go to the office, but sometimes i either go back to bed and sleep more or go on my pc to either play games or do work. if i am in the office, i still check my phone on the regular, and i have unfiltered access to all the same internet distractions (youtube, reddit, etc.) that i want from my work desktop. the lack of direct supervision or consequences for not doing work on any given day are too abstract for the mind in the pit to conceptualise. if i had a "real job" i would likely be doing more work as the risk of not being able to eat next month would be far higher.

i tend to return home at around 4 or 5pm and begin searching for gamers to play counter-strike with. we usually get one or two games in before 7pm, when we break for dinner, and then the world is my oyster for the evening. if we don't get the gamers i sometimes try to read in bed and fall asleep, and consequently ruining my sleep schedule again. after dinner sometimes i go back to counter-strike, if there are people around, or i play overwatch, or uh. something else. it depends on who is there and asking me to do things. i sure haven't done any of the things on my list up at the top recently so it has probably all been farting around.

as of late i have been trying not to be playing games past 11pm and going to bed then. i seem to still be going to sleep after 12 but in theory i get to sleep faster and will be less tired when i wake up.

things i've already tried

i have been seeing some life coach person my mum recommended and it is pretty good for making me think about things i do in a "hmm ok i want to not do this how do i do it" sort of way and less in a "ok why am i doing this" kind of way. so often even though i manage to stop doing a bad thing i sort of latch onto a different one. so while the person is helping me and i think without them i would be significantly farther back in my experimenting, i also need to be trying to figure out why i feel terrible alongside it.

i've been trying to stop myself using apps/wasting time before using things like in-built app timers, uninstalling apps, asking people to hold me mildly more accountable, blocking on browsers, but it turns out that there are no consequences for disabling these things when you are in your lows. sometimes the extra barrier is enough to get me back on track but more often than not it is too easy to bypass.

i've also looked into harder limits - leaving my phone at home, switching to a "dumb" phone, fully quitting discord and whatever and switching to whatsapp, but it comes with significant barriers. i need 2fa to log into things at the office, some people i only keep in touch with on discord so i'd be saying bye to them permanently.

i've started doing more activities in real life - this has been going on for a couple of years now but once every week or two i have been doing some physical activity in the form of gymnastics or aerial hoop. this is good because it's real exercise and in theory i'm seeing people in real life, plus the fact i've paid for it in advance means i can't just miss it or i'd have wasted money. the trouble with this is that it requires paying for things with money, which is quite a limiting factor.

i've also started making notes in a real life notebook, instead of using google keep or whatever on the telephone. while it is a little lacking in convenience i do find i remember things written in there much more often, and having a pen/paper handy has actually been useful a number of times. i've also tried transferring the notes from the notebook to a longer-term obsidian thing but that has fallen by the wayside a little.

changes

i think if i were to paint an ideal morning routine, it would be: yoga or whatever after i wake up at 7:30ish get dressed, shower, maybe cook breakfast instead of eating something that i can grab and go, leave the flat and go to the office and maybe even get there for 9.

the problem with this is that all of these activities are not particularly "rewarding" and if i check my phone/go on my pc at any point in this process i will be sucked into a distraction hole again. clearly i need to start leaving it by my front door or something rather than having it next to me in bed.

again in theory, once i have done this for a little while it'll be engrained inside me as "what i do in the morning" and therefore will be easier to do, but historically this takes longer than i have the patience for.

once im in the office it would be good if i could just do work without constantly seeking distractions. this again is a problem born from the fact im constantly on my phone, and once this ceases it'll be easier to do work without mindlessly opening youtube or checking the phone. if i am so bored and can do nothing but work, surely i would work. this is not yet confirmed.

knowing this i should leave my phone out of reach while im working to reduce distraction. however it seems like taking actions that i know are for the intent of doing something hard is just as difficult. putting my phone away is admitting that once it is away, i will be bored and working and unstimulated. maybe i will surrender my phone to a colleague to have some accountability. this is a work in progress too.

the evening is where the most improvement can probably be shown. i enjoy playing counter strike and such but if every evening is super stimulating gaming then it is harder to go back to the calmer activities of not quite as stimulating gaming or watching a film or any sort of self-improvement at a skill. or doing the washing up etc. one plan i have come up with is doing a quota at the start of the week - a target number of hours to have spent doing things that the lucid me wants to do. without decision paralysis it might be easier to actually start doing the things, and if i only am "open for gaming" for a set number of hours that evening then i won't be drawn back in by notifications after that has been expended.

having more books on my kindle would be good, but it is hard to know what i want to read. i just finished a sad book, and only had other serious ones on there when i wanted something more lighthearted. but this added extra layers of effort, so instead of finding a new one to read and putting it on the kindle i went back to something with no barrier.

i should also do more research into real life outside activities i can do that are cheap or free and mean i'm not just alone in my flat every evening. leave a comment below about what you do in your free time! (there is no comment section)

conclusion

this hasn't really had the actual flow of any sort of advice guide, because it isn't meant to be. it was just me trying to organise my thoughts on my own self improvement and put to words what i think my current problems are.

my main goal out of all of this is to raise the "effort" floor - i want to be able to go "wow, i'm tired. i should read a book or watch a film" instead of "wow i'm tired, i can't be bothered to read a book or watch this film". i want to be able to stand in the queue at tesco without taking my phone out and checking to see what someone i haven't met thinks about a film i haven't seen in the #recreation channel in a server for a video game i haven't played for 5 years. i want to be able to do things without anything on in the background. i want to not feel anxious when my telephone is in another room. i want to remember what i spent my time doing.