If you want to reclaim your time from technology, you are not alone. If it seems like technology consumes most of your day, it’s not your imagination. The average American spends over seven hours a day looking at screens…and most of that time is not intentional. It’s reactive.
All day long we have a constant stream of technology demanding our attention. A notification pops up, you decide to just do a quick check of your phone and suddenly an hour is gone on something completely unrelated. If this scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. It’s an easy trap to fall into for even those who have been digital minimalists for a long time.
7 Steps to Reclaim Your Time From Technology.
Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but for most of us it has quietly become the biggest thief of the time that it promised to save. Fortunately, this is something you can fix. You can reclaim your time from technology and it doesn’t require an extreme solution like getting rid of all your tech and going analog.
Let’s face it, for most of us that is not a realistic option and it does away with all the actual value that our devices provide us. What you need need is a clear strategy for using technology on your terms. I’ve put together seven practical and realistic steps to help you reclaim your time from technology starting today.
Step 1: Track Where Your Time Really Goes
It’s impossible to reclaim your technology if you have no idea what is actually consuming it. Most people drastically underestimate how much time they spend on their devices every day. Studies have shown that people check their phones on average between 144-205 times per day! Before you make any changes, you need to get honest about where your time is going.
Both Apple and Android have free built-in tools for this. On the iPhone go got Settings and look for Screen Time and on Android go to Settings and look for Digital Wellbeing. These tools will show you exactly how many hours you spent on each app, how many times you picked up your phone, and even what time of day you used each app.
Spend a full week tracking before you change anything. The numbers can be surprising. I know they were for me. When I dug into mine initially, I found I was spending upwards of four hours per day on Facebook alone. That was a lot of time mindlessly doomscrolling.
Figure out what your biggest offenders are. For most people, this is going to be social media, YouTube, and messaging apps. With the culprits identified, you can make a plan.
Step 2: Schedule Tech-Free Blocks in Your Day.
We schedule everything the matters. We schedule meetings, workouts, doctors appointments. However, we pretty much never schedule time away from our screens. If you are serious about wanting to reclaim your time from technology, that needs to change.
Start small. Pick one or two consistent windows in your day where you can go device free. Some of the most effective ones include:
- The first 30 minutes after you wake up. Don’t reach for your phone. Just let your brain ease into he day without immediately flooding it with news, messages, and notifications. If this is difficult for you, it can help to charge your phone outside of your bedroom and use a regular alarm clock in the morning to avoid the temptation.
- During meals. Eating without a screen is a simple way to make a significant impact on how present you are and how others see you during meals.
- The hour before bed. Blue light from screens disrupts melatonin production and makes it harder to fall asleep. Protecting this window from tech can actually improve your sleep!
This shouldn’t be a massive sacrifice. They are just small windows of disconnection to help free your mind up for other things. Over the course of a week, these small changes add up to hours of reclaimed time and mental space.
Step 3: Replace Scrolling With Intentional Activities
This is a very important step if you want to reclaim your time from technology. There is a trap that almost everyone falls into. You decide to spend less time on your phone, so you put it down. Great!
Within ten minutes, you have picked your phone up again without even realizing it. Uh oh! What happened?
This happens because you removed a habit without replacing it with anything. In much the same way I couldn’t break my habit of consuming what felt like a billion calories worth of ice cream every night before bed until I found a sweet, low calorie alternative to replace it with, if you don’t replace the habit, you are setting yourself up for failure.
Behavioral science is very clear on this point: habits are not broken, they are replaced. So when you carve out tech-free time, you have to fill it with something that gives a similar reward. You can still get novelty, connection, entertainment, or relaxation. You just need to get it from an offline source.
Some ideas you can try: read a physical book, start a journal, go for walk without headphones, or cook a meal from scratch. None of these things have to be productive in the traditional sense. You just want to engage your brain in something real and present. Over time, these activities will become the habits you default to instead of your phone.
Step 4: Turn Off the Digital Noise
Our phones are designed to hook you in and keep you engaged. Every app on your phone demands your attention. They aren’t designed with your wellbeing in mind, they are designed to suck you back into the app as frequently as possible and for as long as possible.
Research shows the average person receives around 146 smartphone notifications per day, or roughly one every ten minutes. Each one of those is a tiny interruption that breaks your focus and costs you time to recover.
One of the easiest ways to reclaim your time from technology is to just get rid of the notifications. If you go through every app on your phone and ruthlessly remove notification permissions, the apps quickly lose their ability to disrupt your focus. Here are a few practical rules that you should follow for a better chance at success:
- Keep only calendar alerts, items from your ‘Reminders’ or ‘To Do List’ apps, and direct messages, and the actual phone app itself. Honestly, I even found that I stripped down notifications for direct messages. I personally have several group conversations set so that I never get notifications from them because they are otherwise too distracting.
- Disable App Badges and Push notifications where you don’t absolutely need them. Specifically social media, news apps, games, and shopping apps should have all of these notifications disabled. Out of sight, out of mind.
- Use Focus Modes and Do Not Disturb schedules to create automatic quiet windows during work hours and at night. Personally I have my phone set to a Sleep mode where only those on a very select list can contact me during hours that I have designated as ‘sleep time’. It does wonders. My iPhone also has a physical button on the side that I was able to configure to turn on Do Not Disturb mode at a moment’s notice without ever having to open my phone. This has been monumental in protecting my focus.
Once all those extraneous notifications are gone, you’ll be surprised at how much quieter and calmer your day feels because those apps no longer have permission to interrupt you whenever they want.
Step 5: Reevaluate Your Digital Commitments
Take a long hard look at every platform you use, every group chat you are in, and every account you follow. Ask yourself very honestly, does this add value to my life or is it just adding noise?
Digital minimalism isn’t about punishing yourself, it’s about being intentional. If you want to reclaim your time from technology, it means you have to be very intentional about your digital commitments.
This means that you follow people who add value to your life. The goal is to ensure that your digital life reflects what you actually care about rather than what the algorithm decides you should see.
Don’t be afraid to unsubscribe from newsletters you never read. Mute or leave those group chats that drain you. Unfollow accounts that make you feel worse about yourself, your life, or that cause you anxiety. Each thing you remove is a small piece of mental bandwidth that you recover.
Step 6: Create Clear Boundaries Between Work and Personal Tech Use
Remote work and smartphones have virtually erased the line between office and home in ways that never existed before. When your work email is on the same device as your family photos, it’s pretty much impossible to fully disconnect.
I know this one first hand. I am a fully remote worker, but even before that I had the ability to login from home and my personal phone had my work email on it. I found myself constantly checking and responding to work emails when I was out with family and friends. Responding late at night when there should have been zero expectations of my availability. It ensured that work was able to consume my life and it wasn’t healthy.
Setting firm rules for yourself is not optional. Even going beyond your goal to reclaim your time from technology, this rule is essential for your mental health and your relationships. Here are some boundaries worth implementing:
- Set a hard stop time for checking work email and stick to it. This is especially important if you work from home.
- Keep your personal phone out of your workspace when you need deep focus. Keep your work devices out of personal spaces like your bedroom.
- If at all possible, use separate devices for work and your personal life. This has multiple benefits. First, it’s just good data hygiene. Your employer does not need access to your personal accounts or data. Don’t give them any reasons to be able to access it. Second, it makes setting that hard stop time for checking your work email much easier. I have a phone charger on my desk just for my work phone. When the end of my shift hits, I place the phone on that charger and I don’t look at it again until it’s time for me to work again. It’s incredibly effective at keeping me from responding to work emails outside of work hours.
Boundaries are important. They protect your time and energy. With our them, technology becomes an always on obligation rather than a useful tool.
Step 7: Make Rest a Non-Negotiable Priority
This last step may seem obvious, but it’s the one most people skip. Rest is not laziness, it’s not wasted time. It’s the foundation that allows you to reclaim your time from technology. Without it, everything else starts to fall apart.
Think about it, when we are tired and burn out, our willpower is depleted. Where do we usually turn in those moments of weak willpower? Our phones.
Rest replenishes our capacity for choosing intentionally. It’s what gives you the mental energy to pick up a book instead of the phone or to go for a walk rather than getting sucked down a rabbit hole on YouTube.
A big part of rest is allowing yourself to be bored. As a society, we have become so afraid of boredom that we fill ever idle moment with a screen. Just the other day, I took my kids to the playground. Looking around at the dozen or so other parents who were there watching their kids, I was the only one who wasn’t on their phone. It was disheartening.
Boredom is an amazing thing! It’s where creativity, reflection, and clarity live. Boredom has helped me figure out so many things that had left me perplexed or frustrated. Boredom breaks down barriers in your mind.
Let yourself sit with boredom occasionally. You’ll be surprised what comes up when your mind is not constantly stimulated.
Ready To Reclaim Your Time?
Learning to reclaim your time from technology is not a one time fix. It’s an ongoing practice of noticing when your devices are controlling you instead of the other way around. Then making the deliberate choice to course correct.
You don’t have implement all seven steps at once. You don’t even have to implement them all, though I highly recommend it. Start with choosing one or two that feel the most relevant to where you are right now and start there. Track your screen time for a week. Turn off notifications from just one category of apps. Schedule that single tech-free hour into your evening routine. Small steps and changes compound fast.
Technology is amazing. It can connect us, educate us, entertain us, and so much more. You just need to remember, technology is a tool. Tools should serve you, not the other way around. When you reclaim your time from technology, you reclaim your attention, your creativity, and your life. You can do it. It’s worth the effort.