Compulsions are time consuming and often intervene with essential obligations such as getting to high school or work on time. This is recognized as a “variable reward schedule.” Since looking for these random “rewards” by checking your e-mail takes such little effort on your half, you end up checking it periodically. Over time, it becomes a relentless cycle, and it impedes your productiveness and your capacity to easily sit back and loosen up. If you’re nonetheless checking e-mail continuously in your telephone, simply take your e-mail accounts off altogether so that you’re not tempted to sneak a quick peek in between meetings or throughout business lunches. The influence of dopamine texting on your mind is important.
It’s necessary to notice that OCD checking behaviors can manifest in varied elements of life, together with digital communication. For occasion, some people might expertise OCD texting, where they obsessively evaluate and rewrite text messages before sending them, fearing potential misunderstandings or adverse penalties. Research has additionally instructed that it can have adverse effects on our sleep cycle because the blue gentle from the device can interfere with melatonin manufacturing. Constantly checking your cellphone for texts can have detrimental consequences on each our mental and bodily health. There are many the reason why it’s a good suggestion to remove your smartphone out of your bed room.
Obsessive ideas and images may not be about real or precise events. These are unwanted fearful ideas that may cause emotions of shame and self-doubt. Compulsions are behaviors or rituals which are used to lower the depth of the obsessions and nervousness.
Turning off your notifications and silencing your cellphone will in all probability assist, but if it’s become a compulsive behavior, you would possibly find yourself doing it instinctively, even and not using a reminder. And while you might have the flexibility to take a break from social media by deactivating your accounts quickly, you can’t exactly quit e mail. Rather than combating your brain’s need for dopamine, create a “Dopamine Menu” – a personalized listing of healthy actions that present related or greater rewards than cellphone checking. This science-backed approach ensures you’re not just removing a source of delight, but changing it with extra fulfilling alternatives. Common obsessions include fears of contamination, harm, or making errors, whereas typical compulsions contain extreme cleansing, checking, or arranging. These symptoms considerably interfere with your every day life, inflicting considerable anxiousness, and even elevating the danger of developing other psychological health points, corresponding to melancholy.
By partaking on this behavior each jiffy or so, we miss out on necessary moments in our lives that would have been loved if we had put our phones away. Perhaps most strikingly, a recent study led by Adrian Ward at the University of Texas asked 467 members to put in an app that blocked their cell web entry for two weeks. Nearly three-quarters (71%) reported improved mental well being, with the average discount in depressive signs exceeding that of some antidepressant trials. Participants reported sleeping higher, feeling extra socially related, and experiencing a higher sense of autonomy over their time and selections. In other words, getting off our phones has a stronger useful effect than occurring antidepressants.
The checking compulsion is a symptom of OCD and is related to self-doubt obsessions. You don’t belief your own thoughts, reminiscence, and actions. Intrusive ideas by themselves usually are not the problem. It’s the reaction you must the intrusive thought that’s the problem. If you react with the assumption that the thoughts are harmful by making an attempt to stop the ideas or use avoidance, then you will expertise anxiousness and concern. Your response causes the nervousness, not the intrusive ideas.
According to the survey, 74% of Americans personal an internet-connected smartphone. Additionally, 55% personal a tablet, and roughly nine in 10 have a pc. Hiniker’s team asked their individuals to identify an aspect of their habits they needed to alter and to draw an thought of how their telephone could help them obtain it. Of Rosen’s 375 participants, 200 stated the suggested changes in use freed up a lot of their time each day. Heitmayer thinks that, in our extremely plugged-in world, we’re so used to fixed stimulation that we feel uncomfortable when we’re not doing anything, even for only a few seconds.
The more you’ve skilled your mind to count on fixed diversion, the tougher will probably be to kick the compulsion. Dr Heitmayer finds that persons are more likely to examine their phones when switching between activities. For instance, in between sending out an e-mail and moving onto the next task on their to-do listing. They also check their phones more regularly throughout significantly stressful work “‘to give their minds a break”’ or during dull duties corresponding to commuting. Be sincere and maybe choose in the future to observe your use of your cellphone. Most telephones will inform you your display screen time, the specifics of what you’re doing during that time, and your pickup price.
You’re not simply resisting your telephone, you’re replacing the reward with one thing that really feeds your soul. This is how you overcome the urge by giving your coronary heart what it’s really craving. Your mind seeks aid, comfort, and connection, and it’s not incorrect to need these things. You merely want to offer your heart one thing better than scrolling via strangers’ spotlight reels.
It’s the behavioral undercurrent that keeps you compulsively checking your gadget. One of probably the most jarring methods to curb the time you spend on your smartphone is to make its display much much less desirable to look at. Don’t let your telephone be the final thing you see at night and the very first thing you verify within the morning.
Remember, transformation happens once we invite God into our habits and belief Him to do the renewing. You check your cellphone for the time—and abruptly it’s 20 minutes later and you’re deep into an Instagram rabbit gap. Or you pick it up during a boring moment, and subsequent factor you understand, you’ve jumped between 5 apps with out even excited about it.
Lunch time within the workplace is not only a pause between meetings. It’s that brief stretch when the tempo shifts – conversations loosen, and folks step briefly out of their roles. More companies are beginning to see this second as a possibility… Almost any kind of morning routine is better than getting snared in a time-sucking black gap of checking every thing.
She is presently pursuing a ClinPsyD Doctorate in Clinical Psychology on the Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT). In her capability as a trainee scientific psychologist, she engages in specialist placements, collaborating with various borough clinical teams and therapeutic orientations. You may attempt a few of the next to decelerate the process of not checking your cellphone. Clear explains that the reason replacing a nasty behavior with an excellent one is so important is as a outcome of bad habits do present us with some kind of profit – that’s why advice like “just don’t do it! He suggests replacing a foul behavior with a new behavior that offers you a similar profit.
The concern hierarchy is a collaborative effort between the individual and their therapist. The aim is to steadily expose the person to the feared situations or stimuli whereas stopping them from participating in compulsive behaviors or mental acts. Checking OCD shouldn’t be solely self-managed, and working with a psychological well being professional is critical. But, in tandem with this, there are some daily self-help steps you’ll have the ability to take to ease the impression. A girl is constantly late for work due to her obsessive checking. Even although she woke up early and was ready to leave in time, she was caught at her home, bombarded with intrusive ideas.
The first step is to recognize the triggers that result in extreme cellphone checking. Identifying the situations or emotions that prompt this conduct may help break the cycle. Breakups can have a profound impact on our lives, and one surprising consequence is our phone utilization. In this part, we’ll dig into the connection between breakups and excessive phone checking. But simply because technology presents us so much doesn’t imply we have to take it.
They can present insights into how much time you’re spending on your telephone and which apps are taking up most of that point. With this data, you’ll find a way to set limits for your self. If you limit your telephone to solely the important apps, you’ll be amazed at how much much less time you spend glued to that display screen. People carry out these compulsions to be able to suppress their nervousness and neutralize their fears. They also carry them out to keep issues safe, make certain that the thoughts do not come true, and be sure that something bad does not happen. However, whereas compulsions would possibly “help” in the quick time period, they only make the intrusive ideas worse and serve to keep the OCD cycle going long-term.
This might help you stay targeted on patient care with out lacking important communications. Designate a “No-Phone Zone”Create phone-free areas in your apply, corresponding to treatment rooms or the break room. These designated areas can foster higher focus and encourage conversations with patients and group members. Sharing this strategy along with your workers helps set a collective commonplace for professional habits.
Here are some rules to help break the cycle of checking your telephone all the time that have helped me overlook about it and get on with actual life. Besides the wasted time, there’s also the psychological grind that comes from spending too much time in your telephone. Several studies have shown social media could be dangerous on your mental well being, and Facebook admitted final year that passive use of its social network can leave folks in adverse moods. Researchers are nonetheless making an attempt to figure out what long-term results channeling a lot time and energy into our gadgets will trigger. Moreover, disconnecting from expertise fosters deeper connections with these round you. When you take breaks from screens throughout social gatherings or household time, you create house for significant conversations and shared experiences that strengthen relationships.
Daily chores like cleaning or cooking might also be ignored. This leads to a messy residence and unhealthy eating habits. Poor performance can also affect grades and lead to job losses.
You can check all of the notifications and replies once you got a strong piece of your work done or wrote a web page of a paper you may have due. If you’re not home or at work, you probably can put it in your backpack or purse and put it out of easy attain. So, here are 3 tricks to make your telephone display much less enticing. You in all probability don’t want Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or YouTube on your phone. If you want extra help, don’t hesitate to hunt skilled assist or explore more assets.
It makes use of simple animations to minimize distractions and tracks what quantity of times you pick up your telephone or open one other app. If you’re using a phone that’s running Android 10, you’ll need to add the short access button to the notification shade. To do that, swipe down the notification shade twice. You’ll then see an edit button in the backside left-hand nook. You’ll then see a Grayscale tile, which you’ll want to pull to the top half of the screen.
So take pleasure in being less confused and less tense—relish your new life. Every time you examine your phone, you reinforce the behavior. Since it’s typically inside attain, in your pocket or on the desk, it’s straightforward to do repeatedly, in search of a little bit of something new.
Let’s unravel the intricate relationship between breakups and our telephone usage. We’ll focus on the significance of shifting on and specializing in therapeutic, and the means it pertains to our telephone habits. Intermittent reinforcement is at the root of know-how obsession.
Without that point, you can’t tackle, and even perceive, your wants. So, solely verify your cellphone at times you’ve scheduled prematurely. You may want to pre-empt the reality that you’ll break this rule, and stow your cellphone far away. That might mean placing your phone in your car or in a locked drawer.
Even if I’m in a gathering, at work, or busy doing something else, I can’t assist but be curious about who might have despatched me a message. These are known as triggers that fire endorphins in your mind they’re the good-feeling chemical compounds that create habits. In the previous, this helped people survive by being aware of risks around them. When they start to interrupt the fixed drip of updates and likes, most individuals find they turn out to be more current, more productive, and calmer.
Sticky notes are a great way to stay aware of your objective. Staring at your telephone display screen for too lengthy can harm your eyes. This typically leads to eye pressure and headaches, making you uncomfortable. Looking at bright gentle can also dry or fatigue your eyes. Just say what you what you need to hear or do, and voila! It’s like having a virtual assistant that retains you away from the temptation of diving into the infinite scroll in your phone screen.
New analysis highlights the totally different triggers that will cause you to compulsively verify your smartphone and provides recommendations that may assist you to kick the behavior. I watched the movies back with the participants and noticed their honest and frequent shock at how typically they had been checking their telephones. But if you’re in a place to name your depression and nervousness, instead of distracting yourself from it, you’ll be capable of do what you have to transfer ahead and feel better.
You can overcome digital distraction, and also you don’t need to do it alone. You are being led out, one surrendered moment at a time. God sees your struggle and is aware of the tug of war in your coronary heart between things that drain you and things that fill you. He’s not pissed off with you, He’s fighting for you. Focus on creating intentional pauses quite than full avoidance.
These rituals tend to be repetitive and time-consuming and only serve to relieve nervousness temporarily. Compulsively double-checking things can make you feel like a prisoner trapped by your intrusive thoughts. Individuals affected by Checking OCD will use checking compulsions to counter their fear-based obsessions. They imagine that one of the only ways to forestall something bad from taking place is to use a compulsive checking ritual.
“If you don’t have area for you and you alone and your mind, you’re not even going to find a way to tell … Do you have to course of some actually irritating situation that you simply went through? Rebecca Robbins, a sleep scientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, previously advised HuffPost that the blue light from screens has the identical wake-up effect that the sun has on the mind and body.
These unwanted, typically distressing thoughts are the fuel that drives the checking compulsions. As you go to examine your inbox, you have not any idea if you’ll even have new messages or not – and that’s part of what makes this habit so onerous to snap out of. When a conduct leads to rewards on a random basis, we really really feel extra motivated to do it again and again.
The cycle of obsessions and compulsions in OCD is self-perpetuating. Obsessive ideas or fears set off nervousness, which outcomes in compulsive checking behaviors as a means of momentary reduction. However, this reduction is short-lived, and the cycle quickly repeats itself. Over time, the necessity for checking typically will increase, because the momentary reduction provided by the compulsion becomes much less satisfying. Studies have proven that excessive use of cell phones can lead to a rise in stress and nervousness since we’re at all times searching for new messages or notifications. It often leads to a scarcity of focus, as our consideration is consistently shifting back and forth between the cellphone and different tasks at hand.
You’re significantly better off not seeing those notifications and undoubtedly not listening to a loud ping! If you reach for your phone, unlock it, and see a well-known icon with a purple dot within the corner, you’re going to tap it. It’s one of the easiest and worst habits to get into.
Make your phone much less visually interesting and you’ll be much less tempted to make use of it too typically. Feeling dangerous at the finish of the day, understanding you didn’t do your finest. Social media and different apps that rely on notifications want to draw us in.
This might be a valid concern, because it has been found that social media comparability is linked with decreased happiness and well-being and elevated ranges of stress. Unmanaged stress can take a toll on health in a number of methods. “For the very small minority which have problematic smartphone use, they’ve addictions on the smartphone, to not it. It is the purposes on smartphones that may prove troublesome somewhat than the telephone itself,” he said. “Individuals are no more hooked on smartphones than alcoholics are addicted to bottles,” Mark Griffiths, PhD, told Healthline. A distinguished professor of behavioral addiction at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) in England, he’s additionally the director of the International Gaming Research Unit of the NTU Psychology Department.
It’s really like reclaiming somewhat piece of your psychological real property. One minute, you’re checking a notification, and the next thing you understand, you’ve spent 20 minutes scrolling by way of social media apps. Use these data as a method to build confidence in your individual reminiscence and to reduce the quantity of checking you do. People with excessive OCD will spend several hours daily repeating specific checking behaviors to alleviate their overwhelming anxiousness. These strategies could be notably helpful for those struggling with particular forms of OCD checking, corresponding to the method to stop double checking every little thing. By consistently applying these strategies, people can gradually reduce their reliance on checking behaviors and build higher confidence in their capability to manage anxiety.
Plus, once I do take a minute to check my cellphone, all I see are missed texts and calls, and I can get back to individuals who matter most without the distraction of a distant relative’s comment on my photo. If somebody isn’t necessary sufficient in your life to have your cellphone quantity, they shouldn’t be able to come up with you any time via social media alerts on your cellphone. Constantly checking your phone can result in decreased productiveness, increased stress and anxiety, disrupted sleep patterns, and decreased consideration span. It also can negatively impression your relationships and social interactions. Not only does this constant e mail checking waste time, your performance suffers as a result of it takes your brain more time to refocus after you divert your consideration out of your work.
And if you’re nervous, your instagram will survive if you don’t post an image of what you last ate, trust us. When you understand you wish to dedicate the hour to catching up with an old friend, put these push notifications on maintain, send these calls directly to voicemail, in different words, get pleasure from life slightly. Disconnecting from the virtual world might help you reconnect to the real one. For some—myself included—the uncertainty of not understanding what’s in their inbox can set off nervousness, as properly. Or there might be stress tied to their despatched messages. (Did I make a mistake? Am I certain I actually hit “send”?) Frequent checking might ease these anxieties, but only quickly.
The thought is to make your self think about it extra, and to make social media much less available—but not utterly inaccessible. What was as quickly as perhaps a way to pass time whereas waiting in line or a approach to stay on prime of emergencies at work has now turn out to be a ordinary habits that many of us carry out without thinking. Young adults (18-29) are even more related, with totally 90% connected by way of social media in 2015 (compared to 12% in 2005). The numbers are trending upward as social media is connecting us more and more.
CBT sessions also provide education on the symptoms of OCD and the means to manage the emotional and bodily signs of tension. Obsessions are unwanted intrusive ideas, photographs, or impulses/urges that cause intense emotions of disgrace, guilt, and doubt. This can trigger uncomfortable levels of anxiety, including panic assaults (aka nervousness attacks). By acknowledging the underlying motivations in your telephone use, you probably can start to take steps toward breaking free from the cycle of addiction.
For one factor, using your cellphone within an hour of bedtime results in poor sleep quality and insomnia. If you examine your cellphone every time you get up during the night time, your sleep is even more negatively impacted. Then if you wake up and verify your telephone in the morning, you would possibly be reinforcing the behavior for the remainder of the day. Instead, buy an alarm clock and cost your cellphone outside of your sleeping space. The vibrant icons of your favorite apps, in addition to their purple notifications, hearth up your brain each time you see them.
You usually are not the disorder, and your OCD does not define you. Yes, it’s something you might be coping with, but you are not a defective human due to it. The intrusive ideas you experience aren’t necessarily a mirrored image of who you’re and don’t say anything about you as a person. Try to remember that intrusive thoughts are frequent and do not all the time align with your core values, beliefs, and morals.
It can have its personal dangers and can even be considered “contagious.” This connection has created an actual disconnect. Rosen created lists of strategies for his scholar individuals. He offered them 4 classes of ways to make changes to their phones, or to make use of their phones in distinctive methods. In reality, some of Rosen’s examine members reported that they got up in the course of the night to verify their telephones. Larry Rosen, PhD, additionally studies compulsive smartphone use and has found optimistic methods to alter person conduct.
Now you’ll be succesful of toggle Grayscale on and off easily. I try to ditch my cellphone a minimum of a few hours before going to bed. After my last spontaneous googling session at 12 AM, I was just mendacity in my mattress for a few hours staying alert and unable to go to sleep. In the morning, I felt exhausted and unable to concentrate on something.
This approach not only helps you regain management over your phone use but additionally permits you to be more present in your day by day actions. You might find that by limiting your phone checks, you turn out to be extra engaged in conversations and duties, leading to a larger sense of achievement. Another helpful tip is to turn off non-essential notifications.
Mindfulness is a powerful software that can help you combat the urge to verify your telephone continually. By practicing mindfulness techniques—such as meditation or deep breathing—you can prepare your self to be more current in each moment. This follow encourages you to focus on your ideas and feelings without judgment, allowing you to recognize when the urge to examine your telephone arises.
You should be fully present in the actuality of your relationship to know what’s true. If there are other issues bothering you in regards to the relationship, take care of THOSE issues. Don’t project it onto lies and made-up stories about what they’re doing with their telephone.
Every yr, the American Psychological Association (APA) releases a report on Stress in America, often overlaying what’s stressing us out. According to their findings, constantly checking your smartphone can really be a big supply of stress. “Our findings primarily goal designers, helping them perceive what makes digital experiences meaningful for people. Chances are, the final time you most likely did this, you didn’t even realise it. “Lots of individuals have developed sure patterns and habits when using their telephones. Some of these interactions are aware but many are unconscious and computerized,” explains Dr Maxi Heitmayer.
Daily meditation helped calm my thoughts and reduce stress. I additionally reached out to friends and family for support, constructing a robust network. Regular exercise played a major function in improving my emotional state. Taking small steps in the course of self-care and prioritizing emotional well-being helped me heal and have a constructive outlook on life. One of the reasons for extreme cellphone checking is the constant reminders of the previous relationship that phones hold. Social media, textual content messages, and photographs function constant reminders of the individual we’ve broken up with.
Taking advantage of the opportunity to construct stronger connections offline permits for emotional development, new connections, and help through the healing process. Breaking up may feel like successful to your self-esteem, however ditching your telephone habit will make you are feeling just like the damn superhero you actually are. Breaking up is like making an attempt to ascertain boundaries along with your ex – it’s a constant battle between answering their texts and smashing your cellphone. If you wish to spend much less time on your telephone and more time dwelling your life, listed under are some tips to attempt. You can turn on grayscale by digging round within the “Accessibility” class of your telephone’s settings.
The effectiveness of medicines can range from person to person, and it could take some time to search out the best medicine or combination of therapies. Phil Taylor, the visionary behind BodyLanguageMatters.com, launched into an enlightening quest to decode the subtleties of non-verbal cues and the complicated tapestry of body language. His fervor for understanding the unstated elements of communication led him to explore various psychological landscapes.
Since you’ll in all probability need something to wake you up, get an actual alarm clock as an alternative of utilizing the app in your phone. Instead of browsing your Facebook timeline, do something else. Pick up a e-book to learn, grab the report you haven’t finished, and begin a conversation with a pal or colleague. That way, you won’t drop the habit, however exchange it with one thing else that will fill your day with more quality time and productiveness. Here are some tried-and-true methods on the way to scale back your cellphone time, so that you may be more healthy, extra productive, and have extra time to do the things you enjoy. Even worse, excessive cellphone use impacts memory and learning.
When you’ve got a smart speaker synced as much as your network, you can control your music, podcasts, and even a few of your good house features with out ever having to choose up your telephone. So make a little room on your nightstand for an alarm clock and relocate your phone to another a part of the room – or perhaps a totally different room altogether. But how many people are responsible of cuddling up with our telephones right before bed and first thing in the morning?
That means you’ll find a way to pick up your telephone to verify for truly essential updates, whereas shielding your self from drifting on over to your social feeds. It’s not as should you don’t examine your e mail each 20 minutes anyway. If you need, set up a “call/text if it’s an emergency” coverage.
Reading a news article in your telephone, for example, could bring up completely different emotions than doomscrolling. Now that we do, our phones are mainly 24/7 all-you-can-eat buffets for our brains, endlessly and simply serving up the things they need. Of course our minds can’t assist but gorge themselves. Dr Heitmayer believes the answer is in digital literacy schooling from a young age. To perform this analysis, Dr Heitmayer analysed the smartphone use of 37 members aged 21 to 29 years old.
By immediately decreasing worry, checking prevents the pure course of of hysteria from gradually fading on its own over time. The individual by no means learns to turn out to be snug with regular levels of uncertainty. These obsessive concerns trigger anxiousness and fears, which trigger OCD victims to carry out checking compulsions to achieve certainty that one thing terrible has not or won’t occur.
Obsessions usually take the type of repetitive, persistent concepts, unwanted or intrusive thoughts, photographs, or bodily impulses which may be skilled as distressing. Breaking any habit may be troublesome and in search of help from others may help make the method easier. Once you’ve figured out what trigger you you probably can remove that from your life or gradual it down by using some kind of app. To present a custom-made ad expertise, we want to know if you are of legal age in your area. Counterpoint Research predicts Apple will ship round eight million more phones than Samsung in 2025. The neatest thing to do if you really feel you’re being distracted by your telephone at work is to maintain it out of sight.
Generally, utilizing my smart speaker for as many issues as attainable has saved my smartphone out of my arms for longer durations. Practically, this would possibly mean maintaining your cellphone in a unique pocket, so you can’t pull it out fairly so unconsciously. Get a wallpaper that reminds you to place down your cellphone. Android and Windows Mobile come with a driving mode that switches you to voice controls. IOS 11, popping out September 12, will include an automatic “Do Not Disturb While Driving” mode.
Like a slot machine in your pocket, your cellphone has turn out to be a source of unpredictable rewards that keeps you coming again for extra. Tell your family and colleagues that you’re establishing a strategic checking schedule. Worried that people will see you as unresponsive or slacking at work?
You can preserve necessary phone use while breaking compulsive checking. Set particular times for work-related telephone tasks, use app timers, and create physical boundaries like keeping your telephone in a drawer when doing focused work. The best first step is to aggressively handle your notifications.
Learn to understand yourself for who and how you are and practice leaning in, embracing, and accepting your unwanted thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Why It Matters for You and Your TeamLimiting telephone use isn’t just about lowering distractions—it’s about being current. When you’re less tethered to your system, you’re more more doubtless to have interaction with your patients, group members, and the tasks at hand. Consider passing the following pointers alongside to your entrance workplace employees and practice staff.
People additionally report turning off social media notifications (19%), although there are other ways to chop down as nicely. Your telephone lights up, you look over on the notification promising not to really open the app it got here from, however you simply can’t resist. Fifteen minutes of scrolling later, you possibly can’t imagine you’ve got fallen into the trap yet once more. You’ve in all probability guessed that there’s a psychological reason to elucidate why you are continuously checking social media, but that purpose is actually fairly complicated. Deciding whether or not to block or delete your ex from social media after a breakup is decided by your individual state of affairs and the potential influence on your emotional well-being. Some folks find it helpful to create distance and avoid constant reminders, while others favor to maintain their ex on social media to indicate them how properly they’re doing.
Many individuals all the time maintain their telephones inside 5 feet. Heavy use might signal underlying points like anxiousness or loneliness. This guide will assist you to cease phone habit and can assist you to recognize the indicators and symptoms of this concern. I help solopreneurs develop their side-hustle and startup businesses by instructing them tips on how to create For ongoing support and data, contemplate exploring assets such as the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) or the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA).
If you might be utilizing your cellphone for work or faculty, hold it in another room so that you simply can concentrate on the task at hand with out being distracted by incoming calls or messages. Turn off all notifications that don’t require immediate attention. Some examples are Facebook, Twitter and every app with a “follow” function. After all, you are already checking your cellphone greater than you want to! When you download a brand new app, disable notifications (or just do not enable them). If some alerts are essential, make them silent and conceal them out of your lock screen.