My phone is kind of the bane of my existence. Like, I know it’s useful for staying in contact with people and finding stuff online and navigating strange areas and all that jazz, but there are times when the drawbacks definitely outweigh the benefits.
For example, there are plenty of times when I’m at home or on the train or waiting for someone and I instinctively pull out my phone to check…something. Maybe it’s a new text, maybe it’s the news, or maybe it’s social media—in any case, that smartphone time is usually time I’d rather be spending doing something else, and I usually finish these screen-staring sessions feeling distracted and scatterbrained.
Oh yeah, and the more I use my phone, the more I want to use it—like I can’t just use it a little bit.
And I’ve been trying to find ways to control that.
Mornings Matter When It Comes to Phone Use
I once heard a quote from a famous writer (it might have been Nicholson Baker, but I could be totally making that up) saying that you should never reach for your phone first thing in the morning, because if you do, you’ll be a phone zombie for the rest of the day.
I think about this quote kind of a lot, but I never really considered how it applied to me. I figured because I wasn’t lying in bed scrolling through Facebook for forty minutes every morning that I was in the clear—or was I????
In America my morning phone use was pretty minimal—I’d wake up using my trusty wood-paneled 1980s digital alarm clock, turn on a podcast, then carry out my morning routine. Maybe some mornings I’d send a text or check social media after breakfast or when I got to work, but nothing major. Back then, my routine felt fine.
In Japan, though, my mornings look different. When I came here, I started following the rest of the world and using my phone as my alarm clock. I’d left my trusty wood-paneled 1980s clock back in New Hampshire, and because I work at different schools on different days that require me to wake up at slightly different times, a weekly set of programmable phone alarms made more sense.
In Japan I also tend to get a lot of text messages during the night. This includes not only friends and family back in the States and elsewhere, but people in Japan who text me after I’ve turned my phone’s sound off for the night. I hate hate HATE being bothered by text messages when I’m trying to sleep, and I’ve been really good about keeping the sound off at night for the past few years.
I still NEVER checked social media first thing in the morning, so I figured I was in the clear. However, the problem with my wake-up routine was that
- I’d wake up to my phone alarm
- I’d shut it off
- I’d see one or more text message notifications on my screen
- I’d start thinking about those text messages (even if I didn’t actually open them)
This focus on early-morning texts got to be so bad that even on mornings when I had zero messages I’d still think about texting—like, why hadn’t X person that I texted about Y problem responded yet?
Those text message-related thoughts began dominating my first hour of waking time: I thought about them as I opened my drapes, while I took a shower, while I got dressed, and while I made breakfast. I thought about them constantly, so that even if I wasn’t actually using my phone I was still thinking about phone-related things.
And that was mental energy that I wanted to be spending in other ways.
Not Checking Text Notifications in the Morning Changed My Whole Outlook
Then, during my extended New Years break, I got an idea that changed everything.
Now, whenever I reach over to turn my phone alarm off in the morning, I grab the phone, close my eyes, and then swipe to turn the alarm off. This allows me to access the home screen without seeing any overnight text notifications.
I then cover the top of the phone screen (where there are also notification icons) and turn on my podcast app, since I still like listening to podcasts in the morning.
Then I go about my morning as usual, completely oblivious to whether I’ve gotten any overnight texts. I could have gotten 80 notifications or zero, there could be amazingly good news or crushingly bad news waiting for me, or I could be missing an amazing joke or a friend’s panicked cries for help (though to be fair, that last one’s never happened and isn’t likely to).
The point is that all those things have to wait until I’ve started my day, gathered my thoughts, and enjoyed an hour of phone-free time.
My usual timeframe between waking up and leaving the house is one hour and ten minutes, of which my morning routine takes about an hour. This leaves me ten or so minutes to spare before leaving the house to check and respond to overnight texts—or leave them until later if I need to. Because I’m not seeing them immediately when I wake up, I can think about them with more clarity, and it’s easier to deal with them and then set them aside so I can think about other things.
How’s the New Morning Routine Going?
All kinds of awesome, that’s how.
Since cutting early-morning text notifications out of my routine I’ve been feeling more focused, more clearheaded, and less bothered by bad news when it does come. Turning my phone off with my eyes closed is easy to do, and after only a few days it became second-nature.
I don’t know how common the early-morning text problem is for people whose friends and family live in the same time zone, but if you find yourself bothered by notifications, I recommend trying my method or figuring out a different one that works for you. It might also be easier for you to just buy an actual alarm clock (wood paneling optional!) separate from your smartphone, or keep your phone out of sight until it’s time to go to work.
Whatever you do, though, don’t be an early-morning phone user, and don’t be a zombie for the rest of the day :-)
Bonus Fun Fact: The cover photo for this post shows Swedish prime minister Tage Erlander talking on a video phone all the way back in 1969. How cool is that????