I thought being a cyborg would be cooler. Generations of sci-fi books and years of development invested in crafting futuristic game characters assured younger me that I’d have easy access to a jet-pack, a food synthesizer, and an embedded HUD in my eyeball by the time I reached adulthood. Instead of unencumbered flight to cut down on my commute, I got Uber. Instead of pushing a few keys and zapping a medium rare Wagyu steak into existence, I got GrubHub. Most infuriatingly, instead of integrated cybernetic enhancements implanted in my epidermis, I got a smartphone,

The love-hate relationship and addictive quality of smartphones is well-documented and I tread no new ground when I write about the insidious perils of these devices. Several years ago I wrote a post titled: “How to Give Your Phone a Lobotomy”. This was when I embraced technological asceticism in the pursuit of a healthier mind. What astonished me after purging my phone of much of its smart functions was that I still regularly failed to moderate my access to information that did nothing for me.

Case in point: I regularly checked in on news websites that were just slightly more than clickbait headlines atop shoddy articles. It probably started with a link to these sites, then an algorithm noticed my web traffic and sent similar recommendations. Before consciously realizing it, I was checking these these sites almost every hour. Hunting for evocative statements paired with photographs of angry people. This satisfied my lizard brain while simultaneously ruining my day. I got angry and frustrated at things that I could no nothing about, and then I had to deal with the corresponding physical and mental fallout for the rest of my day. That impacted my work for the worse and I’d generally arrive home miserable.

I couldn’t stop! It didn’t matter how much I wanted to avoid upsetting myself because I carried my smartphone. My willpower would never be sufficient to overpower such easy access, and each time I failed I beat myself up even further for not being “strong enough.” Instead of continuing this cycle that steadily wore down my self-esteem, I needed to change the paradigm.

Andrew Huberman, Stanford professor and producer of the Huberman Lab Podcast, introduced me to the term “context-dependent triggers”. Human temptations do not exist in a vacuum, they depend heavily on the environment. This is why you don’t bring a family member attempting to get sober to a sports bar. The problem I ran into was that my phone was always in my environment. The damn thing is in my pocket constantly piping out its siren song of “what’s new on the internet that I haven’t seen yet?” Imagine how difficult it would be to quit drinking alcohol if a bar-cart followed you around all day with an incessant bartender telling you about Happy Hour specials. That’s the difficulty with smartphones. I needed to limit my use but I also needed the device to interact with my world in certain situations. Here’s how I did it.

It took about two months before I even started on the news sites. Instead, I went for easier wins and looked at my social media use. I typically checked Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn multiple times a day and would lose myself to the scroll. I checked LinkedIn the least, so I purged it from my phone first. Trying to see if I could survive a few days with only being able to check LinkedIn updates on my computer when I got home. Worked pretty well, so a week later I deleted Facebook. Then it was time to delete Instagram, and that was the hard one. Biologically speaking, Instagram is the most addictive social media account available. Combine infinite scrolling with snazzy pictures and short videos on topics that I already like and my brain happily releases all the serotonin and dopamine it has available.

Deleting Instagram took some doing, but once it was gone I noticed that I pulled my phone out of my pocket less and less. I could still access the information from all my social media accounts. Just a simple matter of opening an internet browser, logging into the web-based versions, and pulling up my feeds. But I never did that. Those extremely hurdleable hurdles were enough of a barrier. No willpower needed! No berating myself for not being strong enough! Now, did I check these accounts when I got home? Of course! I like knowing what’s going on with my friends and the wider world, but I don’t want to be pulled into those stories at any time of day.

Social media accounts limited to my home computer, I turned my attention to these pernicious news sites. They were more of a problem. I needed access to an internet browser, but specifically didn’t want access to these sites. Enter my favorite app of all time — Blocksite. I paid for this app so I could blacklist certain websites from my phone. I now had a way to delete websites just like I deleted my social media accounts. Could I get to them from my home computer? Sure, but that was less of a problem to me than wasting my attention during the bulk of my day. The important fact was that by changing the functionality of my phone I changed my context-dependent triggers. It’s been a few months since I made my phone work for me and I’m pleased with the results.

I check my phone less. My mind is clearer during the working day. I have less FOMO (fear of missing out) because it is easier to put my attention on what I’m doing and not what could be happening on the internet. The smartphone is a tool. Let us not forget that. There are user guides for the proper and safe operation of every tool ever made, but none for smartphones. Perhaps because we think we have more self-control than we possess. We don’t. We don’t have the internal mechanisms to stop ourselves from accessing internet gossip because gossip may have been the impetus for language as we evolved. Most of my research gives me great confidence in our need to reach out to others, but the old adage of too much of a good thing still applies. Excessive connection dragged my mood and confidence down to the point of ruining entire days. Changing the paradigm of how I could access information has been the most effective means yet to a better mood. If you’re looking for similar results then give this idea a try!