Hey!
So… I put up a post the other day that got a bit of attention –
Comments, DMs, all of it. And I wasn’t surprised.
I’ll start here – ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’.
Then I’ll follow that up with this… Your phone, and the apps, are NOT the problem. And here’s the kicker, (apologies in advance), YOU are. Ouch, right? Hold up…
Now, am I talking to you?
Not sure. Maybe.
Answer me this. Do you struggle with phone addiction? Are you struggling to pull yourself away from mindless scrolling when you know you should or could be doing something much more productive?
If the answer is yes on any level, then yes, YOU are the problem.
Relax. Relax. Relax. I am the problem too. This is not about accusations, purely acceptance.
Starting here is important, because at least we can take ownership of it. We can stop saying things like “man, Apple really screwed us here”, or “these apps are terrible.”
No. No they are not. It’s just how you are using them. e.g. baby, bathwater etc…
Accountability and personal responsibility are very important in personal growth and in life, and are the fastest way to grab life by the proverbial balls and start living it on your terms. 
So, with all that in mind, I want to take you through 7 levels of breaking phone addiction, or a better way to put it, 7 ways to prevent ending up in mindless doom-scrolling for good!!!
Because that’s all we are really talking about here. REELS. Specifically, reels that you did not sign up for, but somehow gave hours of your day over to. Sound familar?
Before we dive into the addictive side of things, I want to say this first…
I really like my phone, and all the benefits it gives me. Music, podcasts, maps, notes, banking, emails, camera.. Man, the list goes on. The benefits are endless. What a time to be alive! I mean I run my dam business from my phone, its incredible.
And I also really like the apps I use to share my journey too. So Instagram, Facebook, YouTube etc. For me, the upside of these apps far outweighs the downside. But the downside seems to have more control over the population.
Here are a couple of sobering realities about the current phone situation…
One tracked study found that people were tapping, swiping or typing on their phone over 2,600 times per day. Every little hit. Every check. Every “I’ll just quickly look at this”.
Average daily use is no longer that old 3 hour number either. We’re now sitting more in the 4 to 5 hour per day range, and a lot of people are waaayyyyyy beyond that.
But the real killer isn’t even the total time. It’s the frequency.
Pick it up. Put it down. Two minutes later… pick it up again.
That constant breaking of your attention absolutely cooks your brain. And the flow-on effect is real –
Worse conversations.
Less focus.
Average problem-solving.
Sleep getting smashed.
Higher stress and anxiety.
A very obvious link with depression.
When you actually step back and look at it, it’s pretty full on. And the wild part is… this is normal now.
Quite scary when you see it for what it is, isn’t it?
But fear not! I have strategies that range from level 1 to level 7. Level 7 being what I personally do now, and that completely solved the issue for me. But we’ll get to that. First, there is level 1… (Levels Jerry)
Let’s dive in….
1. Turn notifications OFF.
Seems like an easy one, and that’s because it is. I’d actually wager that a lot of you do this already, but it really is ground zero when it comes to getting a handle on these things.
I started doing this years ago when my social media first took off and the noise got too much for me. (Luckily it’s way quieter these days, haha).
It helped initially, but the mind is a wicked temptress. What started as quieting the noise became a compulsion to check my phone “just in case”.
So level 1 no longer sufficed. We had to ante-up.
2. Move the problematic apps to another page and put them in a folder.
For me, it’s IG and FB. (I tried TikTok for a month a couple of years ago, and it was waaaaayyyy too addictive, so I deleted it and never went back.)
Believe it or not, this works. It’s the two-step process that acts as a circuit breaker. That’s the goal here. Breaking habits and compulsions. Also, this pairs well with level 1. But overtime, it still wasn’t enough for me.
3. Start leaving your phone at home when out on small missions.
I started doing this back in Melbourne, and it had a profound impact on my need to have my phone on me at all times – another ‘circuit-breaker’.
The beach. Coffee with my wife. Family missions. I just don’t take my phone. Nothing is more important to me than undistracted time with my wife and kids, yet it’s so hard to manage. So I cut it off at the head. If it’s important, I’ll get to it soon enough.
Trust me. This one is POWERFUL.
4. Get a manual alarm clock. NOW.
Much like #3, the big gains are made when we sever our connection at the hip. Times AWAY from our phones.
This one should not be optional IMO, it’s something, as functioning adults, we should ALL be able to do, which is – Don’t take your phone into the bedroom.
This is HUGE and shows a real commitment to the cause.
I opened it with ‘get a manual alarm clock’ because most people instantly say ‘I use my phone as an alarm’, when I suggest this.
This is my little guy that cost like $10 or something –
It takes 1 x AA, and just takes its presence alone, chills me out. I love it!
Look, your room should be for 3 things only – sleeping, reading, and sex. That’s it. Severe the connection by literally severing the connection. This is a non-negotiable for me. 🙂
5. No phone for the first and last hour of each day.
All I’ll say about this is our mindset is EVERYTHING.
Stop book-ending your sleep – the subconscious reset, with shitty noise. Honour it!
Instead, seed it with quality information when you wake up and before you go to sleep. Then let it get to work. That’s honestly one of my secret weapons. Do it.
6. Get a lock box. Yes. Lock your phone away.
When I had the vision for MasterMind Drummer and could see the mountain of work ahead of me, there is absolutely no way I would have built it without a lock box.
I’m a dumb monkey with minimal self-control like the rest of us, so I simply had to remove the option.
We had just bought our first house and had young Maximus, so the pressure was on big time. I was waking at 3:30 to 4am each day and doing 4 hours of uninterrupted work before the family woke. The lock box made that possible.
Any deep work block during the day. Same thing. Phone locked away. That’s how MasterMind Drummer was built. Overriding my monkey brain.
Best $20-30 dollars you’ll ever spend.
Finally, what I do NOW, and what I’ve had the best ongoing success with as someone that loves my phone (and the apps)…s
7. Delete the apps when you are not using them!!!
Let’s get some perspective here. The phone is not the problem, and neither are apps, necessarily. What seems to be the biggest problem is getting lost in the algorithm of mindless scrolling.
The biggest problem across the board seems to be REELS, and how easily we can all fall into them.
So, my system is this. I post, and then I delete. Yip, I delete.
Now some people might think that this is extreme, or maybe you feel that deleting and downloading is too much work for you, but you need to understand that with Facebook and Instagram, when you download them again, it takes literally about 10 seconds, and you are automatically logged into your accounts once they are downloaded. That’s how much they want you on their apps.
So the point is, it’s a minor inconvenience for such a massive gain, and honestly, I just never go on REELS anymore. It has completely broken my addiction.
I love these apps. I love sharing what I’m up to, promoting my business, communicating with my audience, and I love checking up on what my good friends are up to. There are so many great things that these apps do, I just don’t want to get lost in REELS. And now I don’t.
As a helpful addition to all this, here are two ways in which I communicate with my audience and my friends, without the apps themselves –
1. My laptop – both apps are available on desktop obviously, and
2. I use the app Business Suite purely as a way to reply to comments and messages etc.
This app gives you analytics of your accounts, but you cannot see videos, so can’t get stuck in algorithm REELS, and don’t need IG or FB on your phone either. It’s just the communication side of things. And that is gold!
So yeah, I finally cracked it and couldn’t be more stoked!
It’s been a journey, and quite a battle, but I really feel like I have a handle on things now, and can use them for what they are good for.
I hope you got something from this, and it helped in some way, as I know this is a very big problem for most people that I work with / talk to.
In my new 4-week program ‘The Key To Personal Mastery‘, we spend a decent amount of time addressing this is Week 2 – Wellbeing / Confidence.
I back this up with goals and expectations, so if you want some support and accountability built into your own journey with this, I highly recommend checking out ‘The Key To Personal Mastery‘ – use code ‘mastery‘), as that’s exactly what I designed it for – to build a better, more in control, version of you!
I’d say it’s my most important program to date.
Let’s leave it there, as I’m about get another coffee, then jump on my bike to go play my drums before lessons kick-off this arvo.
As always, let me know your thoughts, otherwise,
Stay hungry and healthy,
Stan
ps. Use the code ‘MASTERMIND’ for 20% off any course. Just click here
pps. I’ve just released my new ‘5-Lesson Coaching/mentor Bundle – save $200!
If you want 1on1 guidance, structure, and accountability, but with flexibility, this is the place to start. Sign up here.